My Classical Listening Equipment
Stupid iPods. They’re too trendy. You can probably tell from my textual intonation that I’m gonna complain about people only wanting iPods (instead of some other, cheaper, higher quality mp3 player) because of the cool factor that goes with it. I’ll bitch about that and then proceed to show how I consider myself too cool to be swayed by all that coolness, and go for something different. If you suspected that then… well, yeah you’re totally right. that’s exactly what I was going to do, until I mentioned it all pre-emptively in self-mockery.
Yes, I don’t use an iPod. I have a charming little ol’ Cowon iaudio U2 (pictured around here somewhere) which goes everywhere with me. It got chosen over Apple’s offerings due to 1) lower price; 2) better sound quality; 3) you can see it just like a flash drive when you plug it in; 4) you organize your own directory structure (which is bloody great because organizing classical pieces by artist, say, can lead to unpredictable results); 5) it has a radio and mp3 recorder built-in. I highly recommend it.
All my music is bought on CD’s, which cost just a tiny little bit more than buying the mp3′s online, but you get perfect quality audio, a set of liner notes, and an automatic “backup” of any mp3′s you rip from it. I won’t stop buying CD’s of classical music until I can get excellent notes and high quality recordings at a decent price online. I highly think that orchestras should start offering this directly, but that’s a story for another day.
As soon as I get a CD I rip and encode it to mp3′s using a bitrate (which indicates the fidelity of the recording you are making) of 192kbps, using VBR: Variable Bit Rate. This means that instead of encoding the whole track at a set quality the quality varies depending on how much stuff there is going on at that precise time. During quiet parts of the music it can use very low quality encoding, and likewise during a big crescendo it can record at a very high rate. At this quality I can’t really distinguish between a CD recording and my mp3 files.
The last ingredient is the headphones. I use Sony MDR-EX70LP earbuds. They are kind of like earplugs, in that they sit right inside your ear, which means they do a great job of blocking external sounds and actually give a nice solid bass sound from a tiny little package.
I’m very happy with my travelling music setup, I can take quality recordings of Shosty and Beethoven with me wherever I go.
Modern Classical for Beginners
Searching for “classical music beginner’s” on Google shoves up this result somewhere on the first page (I say somewhere coz Google magically switches around the order of results depending on where you access it from) which I actually read yesterday, or two days ago, or whenever. It’s a parallel interview with several of classical critics, specifically focusing on whether classical is getting young, new listeners, or whether it always has and always will be the same old, old, crowd.
The question that the link goes to is of particular interest as it’s about what new non-classical fans, who want to start listening to classical music should start listening to. That is to say, it’s pretty much what the theme of this site is supposed to be. One response stood bang up out to me (yeah dodgy grammar there I know) from Anne Midgette:
“I’ve heard from a couple of different people who have TA’d in university music courses that the kids responded best to 20th-century music–Shostakovich, Stravinsky–and that the best modus operandi was to start from there and work backward”
Which I totally agree with, but hadn’t quite realized or accepted until I saw it there. For me the older eras, romantic and classical classical, sounded so stereotypical at first. I couldn’t get past how totally classical they sounded, all those swoops and strings and trills. It’s only after a year or two of listening to mostly 20th century pieces that I can go back and appreciate Beethoven.
In fact, I’m pretty confident in saying that most new classical listeners would be surprised that a lot of modern pieces fall under the classical genre. I’m quite sure that before I got into classical I assumed it was basically all like Beethoven and Mozart. If someone had played me one of Prokofiev’s late piano concertos, or Shostakovich’s 8th, 12th or 13th string quartets I might have become a fan much earlier.
I think I might write a permanent page giving modern pieces as a jumping board into the start of classical appreciation.
Three (or more…) Kreutzer Sonata’s
Well, you see, it got to to thinking, it did. It being the subtitle, the alternative name, to Janacek’s string quartet number one. It’s called “The Kreutzer Sonata”, which initially seems more than just a little weird, as it’s not a sonata at all. Now, the other piece of information I gleaned from somewhere in my limited musical past and experience is that Beethoven’s violin sonata number 9 is also named this. Far more appropriately.
The really interesting thing is that the Janacek isn’t named after the Beethoven piece. Not directly anyway. It snakes through Tolstoy first. You see, apparently the T-dog (yeah, I’m calling Tolstoy the T-dog, you got a problem with that, fool?) wrote a book – also called The Kreutzer Sonata – referring to the emotional intensity of the Beethoven piece. Janacek’s version is based on that book. Confusing huh?
Even more confusing, but somewhat unifying, is that Sasha Chorny wrote a poem called The Kreutzer Sonata, referring to T-dog’s version, which Shostakovich set to music in op. 109, Satires (Pictures of the Past). In that song he uses a musical reference to Beethoven’s version. The Kreutzer Sonata really gets around.
Anyway, I now feel like I should go listen to the Beethoven and read the Tolstoy book.
A Bit o’ Birthday Janacek
Yet another item in the deluge – the cascade, the inundation of CD’s I’m having thrown all over me at the moment – arrived today. It arrived dressed merrily in a snazzy green get-up fresh from the fertile fields of Amazon, that’s the first time that gift wrap has been on this end of a gift exchange from me. Cheers to the folks in Sheffield for the Janacek. My first Janacek (perhaps that should be in all caps for historical significance) in fact. I don’t know precisely, exactly, 100% 
why it was on my wishlist to begin with. I suspect late night NPR sessions are behind it.
Anyway, it sounds like whatever forces stuck it on the list were not misguided, it’s a goodun
Since I don’t know a blind bloody thing about old Leos J, a bit of Wikipedia skimmage was necessary. He was actually born really early, 1853, just a bit after Tchaikovsky, and before Elgar, Mahler, and Debussy (according to this timeline). Apparently he didn’t really do much that was very appreciated until after 1900, when he was about 60. On first listen this seems to gel pretty well, it sounds like firmly 20th century tonality to me.
Actually, the string quartets (which is what I, like, got) sound quite similar to Bartok. Old Janacek was apparently into folk song and modal tonality as well. Nicely, it doesn’t sound quite as vicious as Bartok can, it’s more smoothly romantic and continuously melodic, a bit Shostakovichy even. It sounds promising. The quartets have wickedly enticing names as well: “The Kreutzer Sonata” and “Initmate Letters”. I like named pieces.
I Don’t Like Gergiev’s Prokofiev
I’m having a hard time with Gergiev’s Prokofiev symphony cycle. I am familiar with Ozawa’s right now, and switching my listening is a bit like dragging my ears down a blackboard. They’re, like, too bloody crisp! That’s something that I never thought would be something to complain about, overcrispness, I find it well hard to 
deal with really old acoustically smudged-up recordings, the modern ten thousand mikes around each instrument approach is just great by me.
There’s something frightening about this though. It’s not even a little bit smudgy. It’s lacking smudginess. It almost sounds like it’s a string quartet. (albeit a string quartet with, you know, a piano and brass and tonnes of thumping percussion) Apparently Prokofiev is Gergiev’s favorite composer, and I suppose I can see how the clinical precision fits with Sergei P’s mechanical, percussive, writing.
But I like my Prokofiev with more of a rushing, gathering of sound, and quicker where it counts! Gergiev seems to flop all over the place in sections which should be a constant, driving tempo.
Maybe I’m just not used to it. It’s hard to switch across to a new interpretation sometimes.