Classical Convert

Classical that kicks arse: “Iron and Steel”

Rap should not have a monopoly on being blasted from car stereos. Although classical music isn’t typically well suited to in-car listening — you lose the ability to hear about half of what is happening, and what you can hear is pretty wet and muddy — there are some pieces which shine when the volume is cranked up. This automotive appreciation is not your typical classical listening experience. Gone is the following of themes, the stealthy interplay of instruments; all the delicious subtleties are shot. You have no hope to hear what is really going on with the music when the windows are rolled down and the engine is revving a few feet from your lead foot.

But the pleasure of driving is visceral, and the appropriate soundtrack is feeling, not thinking. Parsing apart a piece is for headphones, for an easy-chair and mug-of-tea; not for rollicking and rolling down the roads. A good classical driving piece is still full of power even when you’ve skinned off the top of the music — when you’ve compressed the hell out of it. It’s probably already pretty fortè. It’s oozing rhythm. It’s got so much drive it’d be out cruising the streets if it wasn’t already in your car.

Here is one of my favorites:

Prokofiev - Symphony No. 2 “Iron and Steel”

This is a hidden gem. After it’s not well received premiere in 1925, Prokofiev claimed that neither he nor the audience understood anything in it, and promptly started doubting his compositional skills. I think it is a beautiful mechanical beast. It’s fierce, but frequently playful. The “Iron and Steel” moniker is so suitable: it has the aggressive, angry beauty of a blast furnace.

The start of it is a blatant, blaring example of good driving accompaniment:

Especially those obnoxious little initial blasts on the brass. It’s like sixteen steel wheels of Soviet locomotive bearing the hell down on you.

A healthy dose of rhythm from the drums is particularly driving-apropos, like this bit from the end of the first movement:

While the beginning of the next movement (theme and variations, YES) might start off a little quiet for the road:

It builds and riles and roils and gets violent again in fairly short order:

And you have to hold on tight to your steering wheel through the climax just to avoid running people off the road in exhilaration:

If your appetite got all whetted up by that, you can download it from Deutsche Grammophon for a hair under $8 here, or go the luddite route and pick it up from Amazon. It might be on iTunes also, but unfortunately I have an Apple allergy.

Tags: classical music, driving, prokofiev

Prokofiev Through the Phone Line

On Friday I did one of those guess the piece competitions, which was guessed almost immediately, so in revenge I did one which seemed like it would probably be a lot harder. And it was. No-one guessed it. Well the answer is the opening notes of Prokofiev’s 2nd piano concerto, one of my favorite pieces:

Now, I wanted to put up a bunch of other Prokofiev openers up for me to blab on about. However, the ease of doing this is greatly reduced by it all having to squeeze down the rather small and rather invisible tubes connecting my laptop to the internet through my cellphone. So that’ll have to wait.

The point I wanted to make was that the 2nd piano concerto is one of Prokofiev’s fairly rare calm openings. A lot of his pieces start out totally in and all over your face, sort of like he wants to ensure that you get how wild he is right from the get go. Some of those I enjoy (e.g. the 5th piano concerto and the 2nd and 4th symphonies) but sometimes it feels all a bit too… well, predictable in all it’s deliberate unpredictability.

Unpredictability isn’t quite right. Barely in control is perhaps more accurate. Prokofiev liked to make his music sound all wrong notey, like tonality is barely holding a slippery grip on a piece (and according to the authoritative source of “some book I flicked through in the music library” he would in fact write out a “regular” melody and then adjust some of the notes afterward to wrong them up).

That technique makes me like a lot of his stuff, but it also prevents me from loving it. Most of my favorite pieces of his are ones which use it in a more restrained fashion, R&J, the 6th symphony, and the 2nd PC above. Conversely though, I love the all-out fury of it in the 2nd symphony, a piece which no-one ever seems to talk about.

Man, this would be so much more awesome with samples to listen to. I need a 3G phone, pronto.

Tags: classical music, guess the piece, prokofiev