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Some Christmases have themes, and some Christmases have very strange themes. For me, the theme of this Christmas was War and Peace . It all began last Tuesday, the 18th. Deirdre got us tickets to Prokofiev's opera of War and Peace at the Metropolitan Opera, and we drove into the city to see it. The curtain went up at 7:30 and when we staggered out to the subway, it was nearly midnight. Prokofiev knew that he couldn't possibly include all the various plots and subplots of Tolstoy's novel in his opera, so instead he chose 13 scenes divided in two parts, relying on the audience's knowledge of the novel to fill in the gaps. (I read War and Peace when I was a teenager oh so many decades ago, but Deirdre read it in the spring of 2003 and loved it.) Part I of the opera mostly centers around Natasha Rostov and the three men in her life — the dashing military man Prince Andrei, the kind and gentle humanist Pierre, and the rake Anatole. These were some of my favorite scenes at the various Read More...
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WQXR, New York City's only all-classical radio station, is having their annual "Classical Countdown" on the two days preceding the new year. The selections are compiled from listeners' favorites. Even if you don't live in the broadcast radius, you can still vote here for your three favorite compositions, and then listen via their web site. The deadline for voting is 5 PM EST today (December 14, 2007). Selecting three favorite pieces of music is harder than it seems. Obviously you don't want to go with the chestnuts, but you don't want to be too obscure either, or your selection won't make a difference in the final tally. Fortunately, my musical tastes are utterly conventional, so here goes: 1. Schubert's String Quintet in C Major (D. 956) Composed a few months before his death, Schubert's only string quintet is one of staples of the chamber music repertoire. Rather than add another viola to the standard string quartet, Schubert added another cello, giving the music a deep rich sound. The Read More...
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What finally sold me was the new iPod+iTunes commercial featuring Sir Paul McCartney's stunning new song Dance Tonight which not only features a toe-tapping tune but some of the most inspired lyrics by a former Beatle since George Harrison rhymed "Bangla Desh" with "sure looks like a mess." The very first line sent chills up my spine: Everybody gonna dance tonight Here McCartney celebrates the dance of life, from the first kick of the newborn baby, to the boogie of the child's first step, to adolescents running and playing and leaping and laughing, to teenagers engaged in the dance of flirtation and first love, to young adults in the dance of procreation and childbirth — a cycle of joy and life. But the final emphasis on "tonight" seems to suggest a wistful twilight. Perhaps the dance is ending soon? The deep irony of the next line confirms our worst fears: Everybody gonna feel alright The focus of the song now shifts from the universal to the personal as the earlier juxtaposition Read More...
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An article by Bob Tedeschi on page C4 of the Business section of today's New York Times (available online here ) proclaims “Amazon Seeks to Fill Classical Recording Niche,” yet nothing in the article gives me any hope. The article begins by noting how the closing of Tower Records has taken away a large retail source for people who buy classical CDs. But this schizoid piece gives no indication that Amazon is inclined to actually pursue that particular market. Instead, the article focuses on a new discount Blowout store that Amazon has opened that serves as "an introductory service to those who wish to build classical music collections but are not willing to spend large sums on a genre they know little about." Music education is a fine thing, and Amazon should be commended for trying to get people interested in classical music. And the prices in the Blowout store (some as low as $2.98) are certainly enticing. But according to the article this Blowout store consists of only 2,000 CDs, which Read More...
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You would think that New York City would have literally dozens of radio stations devoted to classical music. Several decades ago, we did more than we have now. But with the long-ago disappearance of WNCN and the more-recent transition of the public radio station WNYC-FM to mostly talk, pickings are slim. Some of the college radio stations (such as WKCR, "King's Crown Radio," the station of Columbia University) play classical music, but not consistently. The one that remains is WQXR (96.3 on the FM dial), a commercial radio station owned by the New York Times . The programming is generally intelligent, and the DJs know their stuff and can pronounce French, German, and Italian titles with ease. When Deirdre and I aren't listening to an audiobook in the car, we're probably listening to WQXR. According to Wikipedia, WQXR is the most popular classical radio station in the country. But for awhile, WQXR was available over the Internet only to AOL subscribers, which pretty much meant it wasn't Read More...
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Have you ever received a Christmas gift from someone that was so perfect, and so unexpected, that you just stood there with your mouth hanging open wondering how you were so lucky to even know this person, let alone be spending the rest of your life with her? That's how I felt when Deirdre gave me two tickets each for two back-to-back concerts of Daniel Barenboim playing Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier , Books I and II, at Carnegie Hall. What we know today as Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier was finished in 1722. It consists of 24 preludes and fugues in all 12 major and minor keys. The first prelude and fugue is in C major, the second in C minor, the third in C# major, the fourth in C# minor, and so on. The precise purpose of this work is unknown. Certainly Bach liked to assemble challenging practice pieces for keyboard students. It is also believed that he was trying to demonstrate the utility of a tuning system for keyboard instruments that would accomodate all possible keys (hence the Read More...
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I am a one-time customer of the Apple iTunes Store. Some time ago, I needed a recording of the Mahler 6th Symphony fast. I needed to play it on an audio CD-only car stereo, and I was up in the country — probably an hour's drive from any store that might sell classical CDs. So I subscribed to iTunes, paid some money, downloaded a Boulez recording of the Mahler 6th, and burned it to two audio CDs. It sounded like crap. And of course I knew why. I've experimented with ripping my own CDs, and I've concluded that the minimum acceptable compression bit rate for the type of music I listen to is 256 kilobits per second. (And believe me, there are much more discerning listeners who now believe me to be half deaf for finding 256 kbps to be acceptable.) The industry standard for sites such as iTunes.com is 128 kbps. And mostly everybody seems to be happy with 128 kbps. Apple needs to devote only half the server space as they would using 256 kbps, both Apple and end-users benefit from the reduced Read More...
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And who isn't at this point? I try to avoid the assault by staying away from malls and other public places during this torturous month, but enough of it reaches my ears to make me truly pity those people who must work in such environments. As an antidote, check out Bach's Christmas Oratorio , perhaps in the excellent recording conducted by René Jacobs and available in a 2-CD "deluxe" set on the Harmonia Mundi label. Bach's Christmas music isn't as good as his Easter music , but it certainly beats the standard fare. Read More...
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I'm not fond of concert gimmicks, but this one sounded too fun to pass up: The New York Philharmonic playing Prokofiev's score for the Eisenstein film Alexander Nevsky in synchronization with the actual movie. Eisenstein made Alexander Nevsky in 1938, based on a real-life 13th century Russian prince who drove away Teutonic invaders. Stalin wanted the film made to warn people of the threats posed to Russia by the German military. When the Soviet/German non-aggression pact was signed shortly after the film was released, the film was shelved, but then re-released widely in 1941. Unfortunately, the optical sound track of the original film didn't reproduce Prokofiev's score very well. (But I'm sure the version I saw in a theater in the late 70s didn't sound as bad as the one posted on Google video .) Apparently about 10 years ago, somebody stripped out the music track from a copy of the film and then rerecorded it for a DVD release, also making it possible for orchestras to do what the NY Philharmonic Read More...
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I've been listening to a lot of lieder recently, pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. In retrospect, it's not hard to see how I became afflicted with this disorder. I've always been a fan of Schubert's Winterreise , and of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder and Songs of a Wayfarer . These are works commonly regarded as peaks of lieder composition, so I guess I didn't feel the need to get deeper into the genre. A few years ago I started exploring the chamber music of Brahms (previously knowing only the symphonies and Requiem) and discovered many treasures. I started being intrigued by Brahms' musical progress through his life, and decided to try to assemble a "complete Brahms" (or more precisely, all the works he assigned opus numbers to). After purchasing a number of additional CDs and ripping at 256 kbps, I assembled nearly 5 gigabytes (44 hours) of MP3's, which I then burned onto 8 CDs in opus number order, and also carry around on my Toshiba Tablet. Here I am relaxing at DevConnections Read More...
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I was educated as a scientist, so I'm supposed to exercise extreme caution when analyzing data to discern Read More...
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We almost saw an opera entitled Boule de Suif, or the Good Whore . However, around last December, Glimmerglass Read More...
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As I suggested (rather crudely but presciently) in Sunday's blog entry , I don't think anyone will now Read More...
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