Virst Impressions Of Vasks
Vasks is the way forward! That was the advice from my friendly readers (hi there, you) after a post last week about baby-steps into Penderecki’s music, and my quest to find a new composer that I heart as much as Shosty. Heeding this advice like the heedonist I am, off we skipped to eMusic to download this sucker — which contains the fewest tracks of any CD I own. The three tracks are:
- Violin Concerto, “Distant Light”
- Music Dolorosa
- 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.
Tags: classical music, peteris vasks