Why? (I hear you cry out in delightful unison) I shall tell you. I like the contrast. I like I how within the writhing chaos there are melodies that move in and out of phase with each other. The best example: the way the brass pours together around the 27s mark. I love that crystallization of order, particularly contrasted against all the disorder. It’s analogous (in a sort of pretentious way) to the process I go through when getting to grips with every new piece of music.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

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.

This state of extinction has been stealthily advancing for the last half-year or so. I became aware of it’s extent after getting recommended that CD of Vasks the other day, and seriously debating if I could stomach buying music on a physical format. Electrons can kick polycarbonate’s arse any day. There’s still life in the old format yet: I ended up buying the CD.

The biggest disadvantage of ordering a CD is the waiting. The urge to purchase is almost always there because you’ve suddenly gotten excited about a new recording, or piece, or performer. When that happens you want hear it now, not later. It’s ain’t fun to have to wait for a week. Perhaps you could argue that like slow food, the anticipation is a benefit. You savor it more. But… if you had to wait for your food for a whole week, you’d probably feel more like the navarin d’agneau than the gaeng keow wan (check it out, I’m an elitist) by the time it arrived.

Another big difference between downloading and CDs is something I’ve frequently harped on about: liner notes. This time around I don’t want to call the lack of liner notes a bad thing because it is making me experience something interesting — I have absolutely no clue what the pundits think about the pieces I am listening to. It’s a little bit scary.

For example, the other day I said that I wasn’t getting hot for the shorter pieces — Viatore and Musica Dolorosa — on the Vasks CD, because they sounded musically cheaper than more hefty pieces. Shortly afterward, Zoltan commented that there is a very sad story behind Musica Dolorosa, which then made me start worrying that I had been prematurely dismissive. It’s fascinating how the non-musical aspects of a piece affect the way you listen to it. That one comment immediately made me more receptive to the music.

I still haven’t tried working out what the sad story behind Musica Dolorosa is yet — I want to listen in ignorance a bit more first.

1. Violin Concerto, “Distant Light”
2. Music Dolorosa
3. Viatore

I can see why you guys recommend Vasks for me. There is a lot of slow swelling, interspersed with funky interludes of fidgety strings. I like the latter bits best, but that’s not exactly surprising… when getting familiar with a new piece it’s always the least classical-musically bits that stand out the most.

I kind of wish that there was another heftier piece on the CD, along with the violin concerto. The shorter ones sound neat, but maybe a bit cheap…. well that’s my initial intuition anyway. It doesn’t seem like there is too much large scale structure to piece together, like it’s more cinematic than symphony. That doesn’t mean they short pieces are bad, just that they might not have so much staying power. That may be a totally wrong judgment call. Incidentally, I already woke up with the refrain from Viatore in my head.

The meatier piece — the violin concerto — will take extra-long to get into, as it’s another one of these monolithic one movement deals. The intro is pretty interesting, it’s like a violin pretending to be a tape-reel booting up. I haven’t identified enough landmarks to even begin to start understanding it yet, so no smashingly insightful and hilarious commentary yet.