Classical Convert

Terzetto

This was on NPR during one of my beloved musical-accompaniments to falling asleep on top of the duvet a few weeks ago. In the interim period between over-then and over-now it had been sitting around as a note in my phone, quickly keyboarded out before all the sleepiness slipped away. Despite a total wipe of my phone, and a huge amount of hauling and installing furniture, my little nighttime notation managed to shove itself back into attention a couple of days ago: “dvorak terzetto”.

Dvorak I’ve never been crazy about. He seems too suspiciously late romantic. This is sneakily chromatic, though. It’s got some crunchy off-key sections. It reminds me a bit of the late Beethoven quartets. It’s also got a pretty sweet name — turns out a terzetto is like a trio, except instead of the plain-salted violin/viola/cello it’s configured violin/violin/viola. Which is, uhhh, pretty awesome I guess. I was hoping for a definition involving giant metal dinosaurs or something, but two violins is cool too.

The L.A. Phil. have liner notes about the piece here. And there are like ten different version on eMusic.

Tags: classical music, dvorak, terzetto, youtube

A Drop of Dvorak

Here’s what I’ve shamefully been listening to multiple times today. Kind of. It’s a “concertoized” version of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance No. 2, which is normally for the whole orchestra but here is mainly for Violin and Cello soloists (in this case Perlman and Ma):
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJp8cRLmqb0[/YOUTUBE]
Why did I say shamefully? Well… ordinarily Dvorak is somewhat over-the-top Romantic for my musical tastes. I usually prefer 20th century stuff which skirts around with tonality a bit more. Tchaikovsky, Brahms, et. al. are all a little too lush. However, Dvorak is growing on me. I’m still sick of everyone banging on about the New World Symphony and how great it is. Perhaps I’m just being elitist and want to be special and like stuff other people have a problem with. Ah well, tough. I can enjoy my semi placebo effect even if it isn’t really real. Hah.

Perhaps it’s because the sun is finally out and I’ve been working the community gardens and doing productive things like oil-changes and spring cleaning this weekend. And barbecuing with loads of yummy beer and jerk chicken. All of this summeriness and outdoorsy stuff cheers me up and makes me actually enjoy overtly emotional stuff. Welcome to a friendlier, cuddlier Ben.