Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Suite No. 5 in C minor for Unaccompanied Cello; Anner Bylsma, live, 2000
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lagniappe
reading table
I haven’t got a kopeck, but as I see it, it’s not the person with a lot of money who is rich, but rather the one who has the wherewithal to be alive here and now in the lush, bountiful setting bestowed upon us by early spring.
—Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), letter to Lidia Avilova, April 29, 1892 (trans. from Russian by Cathy Popkin [Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories, Cathy Popkin, ed.])
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)/Ferrucio Busoni (1866-1924), Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme; Solomon (AKA Solomon Cutner [1902-1988]), recording, 1948
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), String Quartet No. 14 (Op. 131, C-sharp minor), 1826
Alban Berg Quartet, live, Vienna, 1989
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Végh Quartet, recording, 1952
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Budapest String Quartet, recording, 1951
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Opus 131 . . . is routinely described as Beethoven’s greatest achievement, even as the greatest work ever written. Stravinsky called it ‘perfect, inevitable, inalterable.’ It is a cosmic stream of consciousness in seven sharply contrasted movements, its free-associating structure giving the impression, in the best performances, of a collective improvisation. At the same time, it is underpinned by a developmental logic that surpasses in obsessiveness anything that came before. The first four notes of the otherworldly fugue with which the piece begins undergo continual permutations, some obvious and some subtle to the point of being conspiratorial. Whereas the Fifth Symphony hammers at its four-note motto in ways that any child can perceive, Opus 131 requires a lifetime of contemplation. (Schubert asked to hear it a few days before he died.)
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