music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more

Category: classical

2013

Wednesday, April 10th

two takes

Julius Eastman (1940-1990), Evil Nigger (1979)

Julius Eastman, Frank Ferko, Janet Kattas, Patricia Martin, pianos; live, Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.), 1980 (Unjust Malaise, New World Records, 2005)

http://vimeo.com/58118363


*****

Jace Clayton, electronics; David Friend & Emily Manzo, pianos (The Julius Eastman Memory Depot, New Amsterdam Records, 2013)


**********

lagniappe

musical thoughts

Today’s composer, because of his problematical historical inheritance, has become totally isolated and self-absorbed. Those composers who have gained some measure of success through isolation and self-absorption will find that outside of the loft door the state of the composer in general and their state in particular is still as ineffectual as ever. The composer must become the total musician, not only a composer. To be only a composer is not enough.

—Julius Eastman

*****

reading table

Ecstasy affords/the occasion and expediency determines the form.

—Marianne Moore (1887-1972), “The Past is the Present”

Leave a comment
2013

Saturday, April 6th

Composers, too, like singers, saxophonists, even drummers, have distinctive voices. Here’s one we haven’t heard in a while.

Morton Feldman (1926-1987), For Stefan Wolpe (1986), The Choir of Saint Ignatius of Antioch (Harold Chaney, cond.), Benjamin Ramirez & Thomas Kolor, vibraphones

**********

lagniappe

random thoughts

My father, gone since 1977, does he miss being alive?

Leave a comment
2013

Thursday, April 4th

Feel like floating?

Steve Reich (1936-), Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76)
eighth blackbird, Third Coast Percussion, et al., live, Chicago, 2011

Leave a comment
2013

Saturday, March 30th

The other night, as Mitsuko Uchida was performing two of Mozart’s piano concertos (17, 27) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, there were moments so pure, so open, I would have liked nothing more than to disappear into one of the spaces between the notes and stay there.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, KV. 466; Mitsuko Uchida (piano and conducting), Camerata Salzburg, live, Germany (Salzburg), 2001

Leave a comment
2013

Tuesday, March 26th

I love the way he plays Mozart. Simply. Directly. There’s nothing fussy here. Nothing fey. Melodies unfold with the ease and grace of a bird flying from branch to branch.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Piano Sonatas & Fantasia,* Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000), live, Germany (Munich), 1981

*****

*Program (courtesy of YouTube):

0:00 – Nº4 in E flat major, K.282
14:35 – Nº9 in D major, K.311
32:58 – Nº12 in F major, K.332
55:54 – Fantasia nº4 in C minor, K.475
1:06:55 – Nº14 in C minor, K.457

Leave a comment
2013

Thursday, March 21st

the other night

I heard the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with pianist Yefim Bronfman, perform this piece. In The Human Stain Phillip Roth wrote of Bronfman: “Then Bronfman appears. Bronfman the brontosaur! Mr. Fortissimo. Enter Bronfman to play Prokofiev at such a pace and with such bravado as to knock my morbidity clear out of the ring.” Isn’t that what we want from music, one of the things, anyway—to have our “morbidity” “knock[ed] . . . clear out of the ring,” if only for a while, until it creeps back in?

Bela Bartok (1881-1945), Piano Concerto No. 2; Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana (Zoltan Pesko, cond.), Zoltan Kocsis, piano; live, 1995

1st Movement


2nd Movement (A)


2nd Movement (B)


3rd Movement


**********

lagniappe
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xkwlo2_pierre-boulez-talks-about-bela-bartok-s-music_music#.UUpW0xn_JiU

Leave a comment
2013

Tuesday, March 12th

Want to be swept away?

Bela Bartok (1881-1945), String Quartet No. 5 (excerpts); Aeolus Quartet

 first movement


***

 fifth movement

Leave a comment
2013

Monday, March 4th

alone

John Cage, Solo for flute, from Concert for Piano (1958); Eric Lamb, flute (International Contemporary Ensemble); Chicago, 2012


**********

lagniappe

musical thoughts

Music is theater for the ear. Take this performance. The phrasing, the interplay between sound and silence—this unfolds like something by Samuel Beckett.

*****

taking a(nother) break

Back in a while.

Leave a comment
2013

Saturday, March 2nd

last night

I heard a concert, at the University of Chicago, devoted to the work of this man, a composer, a longtime professor, a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient. The performances featured different combinations of violin, viola, cello, clarinet, and piano. The music was often thorny. Occasionally whimsical. Frequently emphatic. Sometimes beautiful. And wholly absorbing.

Ralph Shapey (1921-2002), String Quartet No. 6 (1963)
The Lexington Quartet of the Contemporary Players of the University of Chicago

#1

#2

**********

lagniappe

musical thoughts

To me, [it’s] very important that [the audience] can recall it as an emotional experience; as though it were something they could hold in their hands.

—Ralph Shapey

Leave a comment
2013

Monday, February 18th

yesterday afternoon 

I took a journey that began in late 18th-century Austria, proceeded to mid-20th-century Russia, and concluded in early 20th-century France. Joseph Haydn, Dmitri Shostakovich, Maurice Ravel—they were the hosts. These folks, playing at the University of Chicago’s new Logan Arts Center, were the guides. If one day I learned that my life would be over at midnight, I’d be happy to spend the afternoon, after lunching at a Mexican restaurant (maybe Nuevo Leon on 18th Street), listening to a string quartet.

Pacifica Quartet, New York, 2009; Leo Janacek (1854-1928), String Quartet No. 2 (“Intimate Letters”), first movement

Leave a comment