There are a handful of pianists whose every note I’m hungry to hear—he’s one.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Sonata No. 8 in A Minor; Dinu Lipatti (1917-1950), recording, 1950
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), Palisades, New Jersey, 1958
Whether you live for 50 years, 500 years, or 5,000 years, it makes no difference: always there are new things to hear.
Dieter Ammann (1962-), Violation (1999); Lemanic Modern Ensemble (William Blank, cond.) with Karolina Öhman, cello; live, Russia (St. Petersburg), 2014
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lagniappe
reading table
The old pond—
a frog jumps in,
sound of water.—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694; translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
career plans for the next life
Maybe, instead of those other things (tap dancer, rubboard player in a zydeco band, bass player in a reggae band, guitar player in a Malian band, cellist in a string quartet), I’ll be a bird.
John Luther Adams (1953-), songbirdsongs (1974-80), Callithumpian Consort (Stephen Drury, dir.), recording (2012)
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art beat
Tony Fitzpatrick (1958-), Lunch Drawing #48: A Bird for Bruce Lee
Sometimes nothing is more enlivening than to hear something that sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before.
Rebecca Saunders (1967-), Fury II (2009); Remix Ensemble (Emilio Pomarico, cond.; Antonio Augusto Aguiar, bass), live, Portugal (Porto), 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
after the dance
right away, cutting
the morning grass—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
never enough
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Suite No. 3 in C major for Unaccompanied Cello; Anner Bylsma, live, 2000
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lagniappe
art beat: Thursday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Vase in the Form of an Exotic Plant, 1886/87
astonishing
Lee Hyla (1952-2014), String Quartet No. 4 (1999); Spektral Quartet, live, Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.), 2011
Need a jolt?
Felipe Lara (1979-), Corde Vocale (2006)
Mivos Quartet, live (studio performance), New York, 2013
This I listened to for the first time yesterday. Then I listened again. And again.
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lagniappe
radio
Tuesday is the centennial of Billie Holiday’s birth and WKCR (Columbia University) is celebrating in the best possible way, featuring her music all day tomorrow and, because twenty-four hours just aren’t enough, the next day too.
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taking a break
I’m taking some time off—back in a while.
alone
John Cage (1912-1992), In a Landscape (1948)
Anton Batagov (1965-, piano), live, Moscow, 2014
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Paul Cezanne, The Bay of Marseilles, Seen From L’Estaque, c. 1885
This, too, I never tire of.
otherworldly
Turgut Ercetin (1983-), String Quartet No. 1 (“December”); The Jack Quartet, live, Stanford University, 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
Lacan said that there was surely something ironic about Christ’s injunction to love thy neighbour as thyself—because actually, of course, people hate themselves.
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We know almost nothing about ourselves because we judge ourselves before we have a chance to see ourselves.
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Self-criticism is an unforbidden pleasure: we seem to relish the way it makes us suffer.
—Adam Phillips, “Against Self-Criticism,” London Review of Books, 3/5/15
never enough
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.])
