What I got for xmas
I’m baaack in shiny 14850 after adventures in the Maineland. My poor little Fraser fir is sitting outside on the sort-of compost heap at the back of our parking lot. Every time I pull in and it jumps into my headlights I feel guilty and want to take it back inside.
I got a bunch of CD’s for Christmas. My girlfriend bought me some Wagner overtures, including Tannhauser - which we heard at Severance hall, and which is growing on me more and more. The others are heavy and slow moving and I haven’t got them down yet at all. I also got all six Bartok string quartets, which sound promising, but a little tricky as the genre tends to be (for me at least) I got Prokofiev’s Cinderella and Scythian suites, which I really wanted for the latter because of it’s relation to the second symphony, which I absolutely love. It sounds good, but much less satisfying - a bit too ballet-y. The last thing is Schnittke Concerto Grossos one and five, which haven’t really been listened to preoperly yet at all.
In the meantime I have been listening a lot to Shostakovich symphony No. 1. The first movement is great - I’ve noticed that the second theme is the same one he uses in the last movement of the ninth symphony, that of over-the-top circusy one. It’s also reminiscent of the climax in the first movement of the fifteenth (an interesting parallel… I think that he was deliberately harking back to the first a lot in that). Additionally… there is major theme in the last movement which is based on the Wagner “fate” motif! The same thing which comes up in the last movement of the fifteenth! So in that last symphony, he is echoing the conclusion of the first, while also bringing in the idea of Fate… how all too appropriate.
I have to go back to work tomorrow. Boo-hoo me. I’ll spend a tonne of time deciding what to grow in my garden this year instead, the 2007 Burpee seed catalogue just arrived.
