Beet Farming
I’ve been craving, CRAVING, the Liszt piano orchestrations (isn’t that backward? De-orchestration?). Unfortunately they were left standing, wailing at the altar of my other computer: the old, crummy, dusty leviathan of a desktop hiding in the undertable dust. It’s a scary proposition to boot that baby up. I’d have to grease the wormgears and prime the pumps and lower the cooling rods, and that’s too tiring after another 11-hour workday (boo-hoo me).
So instead I redownloaded them off of eMusic, which (I bloody hope) you get to do for free. Or at least, I downloaded the one that was really rattling the bars of it’s cage: number 6. Despite the classical music hivemind selecting 5 and 9 as THE SYMPHONIES, I prefer 6 and 7. Especially the first movement of 6. The introductory bars are so… well… what’s it like? It’s like the satisfaction you feel when given a beautifully wrapped parcel, or spectacularly presented desert. It’s the anticipatory x-factor. The mouth whetting.
After satisfying THAT von-Beethoveney urge, I moved over to the Appassionata, which also has a stupendously awesome first movement. That trill, man, it rocks. It sounds so stereotypically classical and prissy, and then those plundering, pounding octaves blast the hell out of it. I love the way Arrau plays it, doing the trill in a really precise, delicate, prompt fashion. It’s almost — not quite — sarcastic.
And musical sarcasm is the quickest way into my heart. And/or pants.
Awesome Beethoven Transcriptions
Guys! After all of the mentions of transcriptions in the last week, and JonJ and Yvonne commenting that there is a well established history of transcripting stuff, I got off my internet arse and discovered several very joyous things. Firstly, the clavier-wunderkind Liszt did piano transcriptions of all of Beethoven’s symphonies — this is probably exceptionally common knowledge to all the seasoned classical listeners out there, but news to me. Secondly, there is a box-set of these available on Naxos, which is itself available on eMusic (see: cheap, good quality, DRM-free MP3s). Hooray!
So far I have listened to the ones I know the best: 6, 5, 9, 7. Only once each so far, as it all just got downloaded about an hour or two ago. Aside from noticing a bunch of stuff which apparently had been completely obscured by my ears during the myriad previous symphonic listens (key changes and modulations seem way more obvious, for example), it’s striking how similar certain sections sound to the (Beethoven) piano sonatas. I don’t yet know if that’s due to Liszt deliberately orchestrating them like that, or if it’s pure Beethoven shining through… or if it’s me trying to be clever. I’ll try and keep you posted on that one. Hopefully it’s the middle one.