Getting Smutty
SmuttyNOSED that is! Ba-dum tssch. It’s the guy over there on the left, one of these. This is basically my bestest, most favorite brand of beer, and there is one sitting next to me right now. Unfortunately it’s now a bit empty — about 99% empty, and I’m not touching the lukewarm dregs. Back in the glory days though, with knights and such, about fifty minutes ago, it was full.
It’s hoppy as hell. It drips IBUs like a wet cat.
Here I am tonight enjoying two acquired tastes. Hoppy beer and classical music. For the first unperformance of the evening I listened to that old standby, Shosty’s CC#2. It’s one of my oldest and deepest favorites, one which will ALWAYS shove a warm dagger directly between my cerebral hemispheres. SLICE, goes the first morose saw across the cello; ignore everything else but this.
Here is Rostropovich playing the first movement. Well sort of. The video cuts off right in the middle of the big climax, and there is no part 2 for the first movement. Aggggh! Well, what you do get is frickin’ sweet. He’s got this kinda coarse, throaty, push-it-to-the-last-millisecond way with his playing. It’s sexy stuff:
A Debauched Galop
Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of this:
I feel a bit naughty because I don’t actually know the other movements at all. I’m not really a big fan of 5-8. This movement though… there is something entrancing about it, in a sort of benevolently disturbing kind of fashion.
You know how sometimes you get seats on a train which are facing in the opposite direction to how the train is traveling? And sometimes you don’t realize that you are facing the wrong way until the station starts falling away from you.
That’s how it makes me feel, like I am being rushed very rapidly backward. Especially the last few bars — I’m convinced it is deliberately arranged to sound like a skipping record.
Melody Unresolvement
You know what is absolutely beautiful? (Aside from my hot bod?) Listening to a poor sound quality YouTubey type recording, and then immediately listening to the same piece in high quality. The first few bars are like the heavens expanding and exploding over shafts of sunlight, or stepping from a shivering, poorly heated room into a shower shimmering with steam. It’s freakin’ delicious.
The story behind this particular revelation is wrought out of blood and tears and toil. You see, earlier today I was simply GASPING and/or GAGGING to hear one particular piece of music. My old true love: Shostakovich’s 2nd Cello Concerto, Op. 126.
But I was at work, where only a few little escaped scraps of music live. “Still” (I thought naively, pacing the corridors and byways of the basement back to my office) “I MUST have a copy of that on my work computer — it’s always on my MP3 player. It must have been copied over at least once”. Oh foolish Ben, whiling the way back whistling the melody from movement one, plonking down on the blue spinny chair with the broken pneumatic cylinder. Ennhh wrong. It wasn’t bloody there.
If only I had found these excellent videos of Rostropovich performing the piece:
Mvt 1:
Mvt 2:
Mvt 3:
They don’t have the best sound quality, and the 1st and 3rd movements have tragically early deaths. But Rostropovich is gold. His performance of the lyrical bit (6:00-7:40) in the 3rd movement is particularly devastating. I love how he’s got this kind of coarseness, as if each of the notes is just about to fall off of it’s proper tonal place.
After listening to that I put on a CD performance of him performing the same piece. Wow. Clarity like nuts.
But… something is missing without being able to see him play.
By the way, does anyone know if that could possibly be the premiere performance of the piece?
Bloody Treadmilling
There was a dramatic face-off between me and the Russian imperial guard in the gym today. It ended with me turning the treadmill speed down to 4mph and holding down the play button on my mp3 player, which rather unintuitively turns the thing off:
That’s the spark igniting the battle.
Ordinarily classical music kinda sucks to listen to while exercising, and so I stuff my mp3 player full to the brim with audio-books. That movement rocks for working out to, though, even if it does put me in a close to bawling kinda state. It’s a musical reenactment of the 1905 Bloody Sunday massacre, from the 2nd movemnt of Shosty’s 11th symphony.
Today it totally took my mind away from the running, as I was scheming out a very dramatic, and cinematic, and award winning-scene from a movie, with this movement as the soundtrack. Someone needs to CGI it up.
It’s a spectacular soundtrack to a non-existent film. That huge, slow crescendo breaking into dissonant full-orchestra machine-gun fire… oooo. Chills every time.
Unfortunately the YouTube sound quality leaves a lot to be desired; even more than usual. This is one of those pieces that deserve to be blasted at high fidelity through a decent pair of speakers, with the volume cranked way up.
Rearranged
Well, we’re starting to get back into music again over here, despite having had a bit of a down few weeks. Sometimes your brain needs a break — everything’s all cyclical, right? A musical rediscovery which is right now dominating the highly in demand speaker-time is this guy:
Which contains, beyond the very sexy cover photo, the 15th symphony of Shostakovich arranged for six musicians, three of whom are percussionists. Kick arse. Here’s an example from the cheerfully sly third movement, first a Haitink conducted rendition of the orchestral version:
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And here is the same section performed by the sextet:
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They particularly seem to relish those impudent little glissandi at the end.
I love hearing pieces arranged for completely different instruments: aside from letting you distinguish all kinds of things that are either masked or you are accustomed to in the original versions, there is something purely delightful about listening to a familiar piece played in an unfamiliar way. Although, you purists out there might disagree…
You can buy the CD online over at DG, if you’re interested.