Classical Convert

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:

And here is the same section performed by the sextet:

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.

Tags: classical music, shostakovich

What I’ve Been Listening to Lately: Shostakovich 14

One of the relatively few remaining late Shosty pieces which I had not yet up to this point had much exposure to is the 14th symphony. The reason for the lack of exposure was mostly because I had been put off by the operatic nature of it, which even still feels annoying and grandiose at times. The thing is, when I start to like pieces involving voice they seem to have become favorites (at least with Shostakovich: the Alex Blok and Marina Tsvetaeva poems, and the 13th symphony) but there is a rather large hurdle to getting into them still. (Resist… dorky analogy… ahh screw it: the activation energy is high even though the free energy change is large and negative. Euugh.)

For everyone else who hasn’t been exposed to it, it’s less of a symphony and more of a song cycle. It contains the setting to music of 11 poems all of which are rather not cheerily about death. Yes, classic depressed, sparsely orchestrated, uncertainly tonal late Shostakovich. Nice. It veers between moping, melancholy strings and astringent clanging chromaticism. Confusingly there are three different authorized versions of the piece, one in Russian, one in German, and one in the original languages (almost… “Loreley” is still in German) of the poems.

In fact, the high point of the cycle/symphony so far is Lorelei (or Loreley), which I incidentally hated at first. Here’s one of the best bits:

I’ll write about this movement a bit more in a few days probably, but at this point the heroine, Lorelei, is throwing herself off a cliff into the Rhine — and not too surprisingly this is the big climax of the song. I love how the frantic strings bubblingly warp into the tolling of the bell. Even better is the harmonization of voice and strings in the eerie section that follows, it’s smudged and not quite resolving, kind of creepily innocent. I know negative amounts of stuff about vocal techniques, but whatever the voice equivalent of glissando (sliding between notes) is sounds fantastic (quite literally) here.

Tags: classical music, lorelei, shostakovich, symphony

An Effective Meme

via Musical Perceptions and Chandler Branch there is a list of alternative Mozart Effects doing the rounds. The original list contains tidbits such as:

LISZT EFFECT: Child speaks rapidly and extravagantly, but never really says anything important.

MAHLER EFFECT: Child continually screams - at great length and volume that he’s dying.

And via comments and editing at musical perceptions we have in addition:

RZEWSKI EFFECT: the child tells the teacher that s/he is a victim of capitalist society in 36 different ways.

BACH EFFECT: Child weaves multiple sentences into an eloquent whole that takes ages to be properly understood.

So I am going to submit:

SHOSTAKOVICH EFFECT: Child appears to work diligently, but on careful examination you find his work mostly consists of disguised remarks about how much he hates you.

Anyone else fancy a go?

Tags: classical music, joke, mozart effect, shostakovich