Classical Convert

One of my favorite bits in Shostakovich Op. 43

This section from the third movement of Shosty’s wildly rampant Symphony No. 4 is one of my favorite bits from the whole great big opus (and I seriously mean great, in the dictionary definitioney type way: it’s a 65 minute monster) is that which I have shoved below. To get you in the mood, It’s the second big climax of the movement - there’s just been a building, driving fugal section which you can kinda hear the tail-end of in the snippet below. It keeps rising, tensing up even more -and then snaps at 0:37 into a wonderfully flowing, weighty Russian melody. It’s the bit after that which is especially fun though…

… in the cheeky little section starting at 1:02, there is a fanfare played on a select few of the brass instruments which is repeatedly punctuated by blasts from a bunch of other members of the orchestra. If you listen to the pattern of these blasts they are first in groups of one (this happens seven times, up until 1:08) then it’s a group of two (dum-dum) then two groups of three (da-da-da) then a four, and finally a very quick five.

Whenever that bit comes on in the car the steering wheel gets smacked in time to those “counting” orchestral hits. Either that, or my poor suffering girlfriend’s leg.

Sort Of Away For Labor Day

Wow, I’m completely, totally dead in the legs. Me and my girlfriend climbed up Snowy Mountain in the Adirondacks this morning. Since graduate students are obliged not to believe in the holiday nature of Labor day, we decided to scoot off just for one night. That was last night. Now my legs are aching and I am very much looking forward to sleeping in a real bed which does not spontaneously deflate at three in the morning.

And more importantly, I get to satisfy another desire. All the way back, past the scenic overlooks and plethoras (yeah plural, each town had their own personal plethora) of yard sales the last two Shostakovich Op. 127 Alex Blok songs were in my head. They’re so mournfully, beautifully, ominous. Sort of like the threat of the huge numbers of experiments and data analysis I need to have done yesterday looming over the horizon of the mountains. A dark dream weighs down upon my breast indeed…

Oh how sombre we are tonight.

The last few dissonant notes on the piano at the end of “music” are amazing. Have a listen to the last minute and a half or so below:

Click here if the flash player doesn’t work for you

Velvety Blue

Oh dearie old me, real life is getting way more than a tad too intrusive at the moment. We’ve had a whole inundation, a cavalcade, an avalanche of friends coming to visit; my supervisor is demanding results in a thinly veiled fashion; I have to understand a journal article that makes little-to-no sense before tomorrow morning, and learn all of the fundamental amino acids by tomorrow evening. Where’s all the time gone for writing up here?

Well, there was a bit of respite last nite (no, I can’t resist the double t-e thing) when my girlfriend performed a wonderful act of dinner, and then subversively persuaded me to watch Blue Velvet, instead of studying molecular biology. I love Blue Velvet. I love pretty much all of David Lynch’s stuff. What I had not realized on previous viewings - because they were more distant than quite recently - was that the Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack to B/V was Shostakovich inspired.

I noticed it first, when, while ignoring the biochemistry textbook in my lap something remarkably like the invasion theme in the 15th symphony (the doppelganger of the invasion theme in the 7th) crept out from the television. It’s right at the beginning of the film, when Jeffrey is going for a walk at night and his mother and aunt tell him not to go down by Lincoln street. I think it’s number 2 on the soundtrack, which is winging it’s way over to me right now as we speak, or I type, or you read. The sample on Amazon isn’t long enough to really hear it (though, it has the start of the tattoo on the timpani), but you cool kids with iTunes might be able to give it a play.

According to the wikipedia entry, Lynch had indeed been listening to Shostakovich 15 at the time, and asked for the soundtrack to be:

“like Shostakovich, be very Russian, but make it the most beautiful thing but make it dark and a little bit scary.”

Hmm. The bit about 15 is unsourced, unfortunately.

Lessons in Listening

Ooo I kind of like this. These two musicians have decided to run “lessons in listening” out of their home: they pump you full of light refreshments and then play classical music at you. Well sort of. The idea is to experience classical music without the snobbery, but with a pretty expert guide leading the way a bit. Now if they could stick some of their classes up online it’d be pretty great and I’d gush over it.

And if that isn’t an incentive I can’t possibly conceive of what is.

Admittedly their webpages could do with a little tad of touching up - the text is all overlapping everything when I view it in Firefox, but that doesn’t really detract much from the niceness of the concept. I hope it’s successful. Also, The Green Hornist is a pretty cunning name.

You can read a bit more about their aims an, errr, stuff where I read about ‘em originally, on Kenneth Wood’s blog here and here.

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On a completely unrelated note - I just listened to Prokofiev’s violin sonata no. 1 for the first time and it kicks arse. I think it has certain standard Prokofievy elements to it (there’s something frequently common in the scales he uses, and of course there are the omnipresent slow-fast changeups) but instead of sounding all “Ahh yes, Sergei’s at it again. How cute.” it’s a little more biting, a little sharper. It has a mouth packed full with a little more teeth.

When my new headphones get here tomorrow I’ll be able to listen to it a lot more, they bloody died by accidentally getting crushed into a knot in my hand luggage on my recent Trip of Doom and Despair.

Shosty’s Symphony No. 4

Blah blah blah Shostakovich. A while ago I was wondering if this piece was going to move off of my “monopolizing mp3 listening time” and onto my “top x favorites of all time” list. Well, it’s pretty much there I reckon. Here’s a youtubefied bit of probably my favorite section from the last movement:

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCS2OI4j2LM[/YOUTUBE]

I think it’s Gergiev and the LSO. The playing is a bit dry and uninspired sounding in a couple places (particularly the stringy section which goes on for a few minutes before the huge old banging climax) but it’s a pretty decent rendition. I like my Rostropovich version better though.

I love the first section in particular. It’s flitty and flighty and playful right at the start, and almost lets itself get out of control - but then there is that wonderfully ominous interruption about 12 seconds in, which then fades back into a ridiculously lighthearted bassoon theme. The section which follows is then a sort of loose and messy bunch of variations on that cheeky bassoon section. Then, after a couple of minutes of this (at about 2:05, and again at about 5:50) it switches gear into a weird circusy sort of waltz. Fantastic (and schizophrenic) stuff.

When you listen to the whole symphony this section is smack in the middle of the last movement, which comes in at almost 30 minutes. This is a frickin’ huge symphony. The first movement is almost the same length, and the middle one is an additional 10 minutes. It’s a huge orchestra as well. I’d love to see this one live.

I remember the first time I listened to this I thought all the mood changes sounded completely stupid, and that the playful bits were completely over the top and out of place. Now after listening to it repeatedly I think their out of place, contrasty nature makes it even better. It’s funny how that works out. Often the things which seem most appealing at first end up fizzling out very quickly, whereas the uncomfortable, unappealing stuff ends up growing on you.

The rest of the symphony is on youtube at (broken up because youtube can’t handle videos longer than 10 minutes):

1st movement: 1 2 3 (third part includes start of 2nd movement)

2nd movement: 1 (includes start of third movement)

3rd movement: 1 2 3