never enough
Is any form of music-making more intimate?
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), String Quartet No. 15, excerpt (1st movt.); Danish String Quartet, live (BBC studio), London, 2013
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (lunch hour)
René Magritte (1898-1967), The Lovers (1928) (Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, closes Monday)
Three-word review: Don’t miss this.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), String Quartet in F major (1903); Hagen Quartet, live, Austria (Salzburg), 2000
1st movt.
2nd movt.
3rd movt.
4th movt.
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lagniappe
reading table
Can I get used to it day after day
a little at a time while the tide keeps
coming in faster the waves get bigger
building on each other breaking records
this is not the world that I remember
then comes the day when I open the box
that I remember packing with such care
and there is the face that I had known well
in little pieces staring up at me
it is not mentioned on the front pages
but somewhere far back near the real estate
among the things that happen every day
to someone who now happens to be me
and what can I do and who can tell me
then there is what the doctor comes to say
endless patience will never be enough
the only hope is to be the daylight—W. S. Merwin, “Living With the News” (New Yorker, 7/28/14)
Why not begin the week with something beautiful?
Claude Debussy (1862-1918), String Quartet in G minor (1893); New England Conservatory Student Quartet (Minchae Kim & Harry Chang, violins; Heejin Chang, viola; Hsiao-Hsuan Huang, cello), live, Boston, 2014
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A big birthday shout-out to my son Alex (now twenty-seven), who’s enriched my life, musically and otherwise, more than he could ever know.
Let’s return to New York for another take on piano and string quartet.
Vijay Iyer (piano) and the Brentano String Quartet, from “Time, Place, Action” (V. Iyer), live, New York, 2014
*****
Happy (88th) birthday to my mother, who’s been dead almost two decades. When it comes to longevity, my genes are lousy. But, always, there’s today.
two takes
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), String Quartet No. 10, 3rd movt.
Fabian Almazan Trio with String Quartet, live, New York, 2012
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Borodin Quartet, recording
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lagniappe
random thoughts
If life weren’t so sad, it wouldn’t be life.
Why not listen to something new?
Iva Bittova (voice, violin), Don Byron (clarinet), Hamid Drake (drums), live, Paris, 2008
This piece had its world premiere in 1941; the venue wasn’t fancy—a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp.
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time), live, ChamberFest Cleveland (Franklin Cohen, clarinet; Yura Lee, violin; Gabriel Cabezas, cello; Orion Weiss, piano), 2013
beyond category
John Zorn, Book of Angels (excerpts); Uri Caine, piano; Masada String Trio (Mark Feldman, violin; Erik Friedlander, cello;* Greg Cohen, bass); live, France (Marciac), 2008
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lagniappe
reading table
There’s a line in Tarkovsky’s Solaris: we never know when we’re going to die and because of that we are, at any given moment, immortal.
—Geoff Dyer, “Diary,” London Review of Books, 4/3/14
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*It’s all related: Erik’s the son of photographer Lee Friedlander, whose work is often featured here.
sounds of Surry County, North Carolina
Tommy Jarrell (fiddle, vocals), Chester McMillan (guitar), Frank Bodie (guitar), Ray Chatfield (banjo), “Let Me Fall,” live, Mt. Airy, North Carolina, 1983
