Classical Convert

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

Slow Music

CDs are as dead to me as Yangtze river dolphins. They are functionally extinct, but still pop their head up for air occasionally. Plus they have fins and eat fish.

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.

Tags: CDs, classical music, vasks