Classical Convert

Mahler Umlaut Issues

Today is Sunday, and significant parts of it were spent geeking out in a serious fashion. I cashed in five hours worth of precious non-work time installing a new distro of Linux on my desktop (gentoo -> arch, for those who care). This rash action was brought on by me getting insanely frustrated that all the umlauts in my Mahler recordings looked like question marks.  I do not care to listen to “gem?chlichen l?nders”. For those reading this who aren’t Linux geeks (probably about 98% of you) this involved about four hours of typing into terminal windows, restarting, swearing, etc.

(Note: it isn’t this painful if you use one of the pretty graphical installers, but that takes all the fun out of it)

Well anyway, it turns out that I could have fixed my little umlaut problem in about five seconds, but I like my new system better anyway. We are all happy: me, Mahler, and my computer.

Yes Mahler. I tried listening to the 9th symphony today. The second movement rocks! There are weird wobbly bits of sarcasm and uncomfortable tonalities, all wrapped up in a snidely cheerful 3/4ish rhythm. I love all that. And since it’s Mahler it lasts about ten years. That bit is more difficult to love. It’s really freakin’ intimidating when a single piece lasts over an hour. *cough* Bruckner *cough*

Tags: classical music, linux, mahler

Vurther Thoughts on Vasks

All day, all labtime, I have been looking forward to sitting around on my arse on this Friday night. And that — by a supreme combo of hard work and precise timing — is exactly what I have accomplished. But secretly, in my sloth I have been doing things. Like this. Type type type. And other things, like manufacturing my second-ever YouTube contribution:

This extremely well-produced and soon-to-be-multi-award-winning video features a melodic similarity between Vasks and Shosty that I noticed today. I’ve listened to the Vasks Cello Concerto a bunch now, and parts of it are starting to grind themselves into the understandingy parts of my head. One of those parts is in the video above. Today, humming it while wandering between lab-rooms, I found myself slipping into the middle snippet in the video, from Shostakovich’s cello concerto #1.

I like noticing stuff like that.

Vasks is getting good. The fast movements (like the one the video clip is from) are the best for me so far. By best, I mean that I am starting to remember the melodies and understand the flow of ideas a bit. The two outer movements are not working out as well, especially the last, but that’s sort of expected because they are slower and build-uppier, and those always take me longer to work out.

I like how he combines Romantic type tonality with all kinds of interesting bits of percussion and brief bizarre outbursts from the orchestra. And it doesn’t have that “deliberately wacky!!!111!” feel Schnittke almost always does. It fits together.

Tags: classical music, vasks, youtube

Hot Wednesday… errr… Performers

The sacred ritual of raising money with a nudey calendar has been part of human culture since at least prehistoric times. The latest kids to get into the sort-of-naked act are the guys and gals of the Royal Opera House. It’s only 10 quid from the ROH store and there are 12 months of guys and 12 of girls in every action-packed one of them. Buy a dozen and re-wallpaper your living room.

Tags: classical music, opera, sexy calendar

Hot Sunday Linkage

Some links for you to start off this extra-political week, and for me to ease back into blogging after a dry bunch of days…

• The economic crisis is hitting violin funds. Yeah, violin funds exist. Puts a damper on that wood investment scheme me and Miss M. wanted to pull off.
• A bunch of the earliest ever classical music recordings will be released within a couple of months. Watch out for the audiophiles who diss the quality of MP3s to suddenly forget their fidelity concerns.
• There are a whole load of beautiful visualizations of classical pieces on YouTube, which I managed to not notice after finding one of them last year.

I hope everyone had a good Hallowe’en!

Tags: classical music

Look what the mailman dragged in…

Check out what I got today boys and girls, hommes and femmes, cowboys and cowgirls:

Do you like the sexual backdrop? Those are my own handmade curtains. I’m SO domestic.

Haven’t had a real listen through yet. I played the first couple of movements and it sounds pretty awesome: I’m definitely a cello concerto (cf. violin) kind of guy. I’m probably skipping off to NYC tomorrow, so it might be a few days until I give it a proper listen, but I shall definitely keep you up to date in the most exciting fashion conceivable.

Tags: classical music, vasks