1 + 1 = infinity
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), Sonata for Viola (1975); Yuri Bashmet (viola), Ksenia Bashmet (Yuri’s daughter, piano)
This is the last thing Shostakovich composed before he died.
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lagniappe
Here’s another take on the last movement, with a younger Yuri Bashmet and Sviatoslav Richter.
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last night
I heard these guys at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, where the program ranged from Felix Mendelssohn to John Zorn.
Philip Glass, Mishima (1984-85, excerpt); Brooklyn Rider, New York, 2006
last night
I went back to Northwestern’s Pick-Staiger Hall—they’re in the midst of a Winter Chamber Music Festival—where I heard this string quartet, along with this clarinetist, play this piece.
Aaron Jay Kernis (1960-), Perpetual Chaconne (2012); Calder Quartet with John Bruce Yeh (clarinet), 2012
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
When we go out to hear live music, we realize, again, something that seldom occurs to us when we listen at home: the world, in its messy unpredictability, its insistent particularity, is way more interesting than we are.
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the music of words
Martin Luther King, Jr., Shreveport, La. (Galilee Baptist Church), 1958
last night
I heard these folks at Northwestern University’s Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, where they played another piece by this composer (Last Round), a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient.
Osvaldo Golijov, Tenebrae; A Far Cry, Boston, 2011
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lagniappe
Here’s another take (four players, no conversation).
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musical thoughts
Nobody sits down and thinks, “I’m going to create some classical music.”
Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), And then I knew ’twas wind (1992)
Aureole Trio, New Hampshire (Monadnock Music), 2011
My life sometimes seems to consist of a series of trips, back and forth, between the sublime and the wretched. Yesterday afternoon, for instance, I stumbled upon this—a piece I’d never heard before—during a break from work. What was I working on? An oral argument I’ll be presenting this morning before a three-judge panel of the federal court of appeals in Chicago, on behalf of a guy, now in his mid-50s, who spends each day, as he has for decades, in a cell about 45 miles southwest of the city, where he’s serving a sentence of “natural life.”
Some instruments seem made for certain seasons. Take the viola: it seems most at home when days are getting shorter, shadows longer, nights colder.
Sofia Gubaidulina (1931-), Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (1996)
Yuri Bashmet (viola), WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne (Semyon Bychkov, cond.)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
I am a religious Russian Orthodox person and I understand religion in the literal meaning of the word, as re-ligio, that is to say the restoration of connections, the restoration of the legato of life. There is no more serious task for music than this.
Forget harps—my heaven’s full of string quartets.
Franz Schubert, String Quartet No. 14 in D minor (“Death and the Maiden,” 1824), excerpt (mvt. 2), Takacs Quartet, live, Scotland (outside Edinburgh), 1998
fasten your seatbelt
Here’s another take on a piece we listened to the other day.
Alfred Schnittke (1934-98), Concerto Grosso No. 1 (excerpt); A Far Cry with guests Nelson Lee (violin), Meg Freivogel (violin), and Andrus Masden (harpsichord, prepared piano); live, Boston, 2009
(This entire performance can be heard here.)
Alfred Schnittke (1934-98), Concerto Grosso No. 1, live, Russia, 2004
Kremerata Baltica (Gidon Kremer & Tatiana Grindenko, violins)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
What do we want from music—a mirror or a window?
riveting
Anton Bruckner (1824-96), Symphony No. 5 in B flat major; Berlin Philharmonic (Wilhelm Furtwangler, cond.), live, Berlin, 1942
(Yeah, I realize this performance took place in Nazi Germany during World War II and, no, I don’t have anything profound, or even interesting, to say about how such beauty and such horror could coexist.)
music clip of the day 