Tag: Something For Thursday

Sometimes you need a little Leonard Cohen, so here’s “Democracy”.

Share This Post

I’m on something of a Russian classical music kick of late, so here’s a fascinating piece by one of the most idiosyncratic composers ever, Alexander Scriabin. Scriabin was something of a light unto himself. He doesn’t fit into any of the usual convenient labels for music. Scriabin is too Romantic to be modern, but too free in his formal approach and his choice of thematic fare to be really Romantic. He exists in his own soundworld, and what a soundworld it is. I tend to think of him as being most spiritually attuned to the French Impressionist composers (Ravel, Debussy), than the Russian tradition (Tchaikovsky, and later, Stravinksy). But even those categories don’t hold him very well.

The best word for Scriabin is probably ‘mystic’.

Here is Scriabin’s symphonic tone poem “Le Poeme de l’extace”, or “The Poem of Ecstasy”. This work is as astonishing to me now as it was when I first listened to it in college. I really try to avoid making visual and literary associations with concert music, but sometimes I can’t avoid it. This is one such work. It sounds to me like the union of a god with a goddess…and a universe springing to being afterward….

Share This Post

Regular readers of long duration will know that an annual New Year’s tradition at Casa Jaquandor — not yet indulged this year, but likely Saturday night, when The Wife is home from work — is the viewing of the New Year’s From Vienna concert, which features the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and various other artistic groups, most often ballet artists, in a wonderful concert of music by the Strauss family. It’s invariably a magical evening, and one of my greatest dreams is to attend it in person one day. (One of my great dreams of youth, now ruled impossible by choices I’ve made since, was to actually conduct the concert. But that was always unlikely….)

The concert always ends with three encores: a galop or polka chosen by the conductor, and kept secret until the concert itself, followed by a waltz, and then closing with the Radetzky March, which is the Austrian equivalent of The Stars and Stripes Forever. That waltz? Not just any waltz, but the most famous waltz ever written: On the Beautiful Blue Danube.

Most years, the concert footage of Blue Danube is combined with ballet footage, but a couple of years ago, they did something different, using the waltz to trace the flow of the river itself, from its headwaters in Germany all the way to where it empties into the Black Sea. How utterly captivating! Here is On the Beautiful Blue Danube (conducted by Georges Pretre).

And hey, why stop there? From the same concert, here is that final encore number, the Radetzky March. Note the snare drum opening, before our conductor even reaches the podium, and note the audience participation, with our conductor indicating when they should clap softly and when they should clap loudly.

Let 2013 commence proper!

(For those interested, through January 16 you can watch this year’s concert broadcast here.)

Share This Post

I’ve never seen the movie Kismet, but I’ve loved this song from the movie for years — its melody is just achingly beautiful. (As well it should be, really, considering that it’s actually swiped from the Polovtsian Dances by Alexander Borodin.) Anyhow, here’s “Stranger In Paradise”.

Share This Post

Here’s a small selection of stuff!

Share This Post

So much of Tchaikovsky, I can live just fine without. But there’s stuff of Tchaikovsky’s that, well, if you asked me to live without it, I’d cry.

Here, in time for The Season, is the Nutcracker Suite. I played this every year in college with the orchestra there; this is one of relatively few pieces of music that, for me, has very definite ties in my mind to a specific time and place. This is also one of those musical works that I point to whenever anyone tells me that there is no magic in our world. Oh yes, there is!

Share This Post

Clearly I need to do a better job of planning for this feature! Anyway, Johannes Brahms’s Symphony #2 in D has always been my favorite of his four symphonies, although #1 is always right there behind it in strong contention. The #2, though, is generally conceded to be the ‘sunniest’ of Brahms’s symphonies, and that’s saying something, because Brahms is not a composer known for long moments of optimism. Such moments abide in this symphony. Below is the symphony in its complete form, as played by what appears to be a youth orchestra from someplace in Asia.

You know what? I had a hart time picking which performance to use for this post, because there are a ton of good ones on YouTube, and I was down to this one or one other. But it’s my blog and there’s no reason to impose any arbitary limits, so if you feel like hearing the same symphony in the hands of a different orchestra, a European one this time, listen to this one, also wonderful. (This one splits the first movement across two videos.)

Share This Post

Busy day today, and when I’m busy and don’t get to this feature until the evening, I tend to default to my easier choices. Which means…here’s John Williams! Huzzah! It’s the End Titles to Hook, a movie that takes a good idea and completely buries it beneath every possible bad instinct that exists in Steven Spielberg’s body. Good score, though.

Share This Post

Late today, sorry! Sometimes you just need to return to the basics…so here’s a brief track from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, “A Far Green Country”. This plays when Gandalf is talking about death to Pippin, and if memory serves, this is the first time this particular melody is heard:

That brief tune is heard again, in full, at the film’s end as part of the gorgeous song sung by Annie Lennox, “Into the West”:

Share This Post