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Category: violin

2012

Tuesday, 1/10/12

What you want, sometimes, is to lose yourself, even if only briefly, in beauty.

Leo Janacek (1854-1928), String Quartet No. 1, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” excerpt (arr. Tognetti), Australian Chamber Orchestra

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lagniappe

random thoughts

When you’re young you want to find yourself; when you’re old you want to lose yourself.

*****

reading table

Variations for Two Pianos

for Thomas Higgins, pianist

by Donald Justice

There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.

Movers dismantled the instruments, away
Sped the vans. The first detour untuned the strings.

There is no music now in all of Arkansas.

Up Main Street, past the cold shopfronts of Conway,
The brash, self-important brick of the college,

Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.

Warm evenings, the windows open, he would play
Something of Mozart’s for his pupils, the birds.

There is no music now in all of Arkansas.

How shall the mockingbird mend her trill, the jay
His eccentric attack, lacking a teacher?

Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.

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2011

Saturday, 12/17/11

Happy (Belated) 103rd Birthday, Elliott!

Elliott Carter, composer, December 11, 1908-

The other night I put this on, thinking I’d do something else while it played; but, as it turned out, “something else” had to wait.

String Quartet No. 2 (1959), Composers Quartet

More? Here. And here.

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lagniappe

Juilliard String Quartet with Elliott Carter, 2008
Rehearsing String Quartet No. 5

*****

musical thoughts

Mr. Carter has written 15 new works since his 100th birthday.

—Allan Kozinn, New York Times, 12/13/11

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Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Webern, Bartok, Shostakovich, Carter, et al.: you could spend the rest of your life listening to nothing but string quartets without ever feeling deprived.

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2011

Thursday, 12/15/11

mysterious, adj. exciting wonder, curiosity, or surprise, while baffling efforts to comprehend or identify. E.g., the string quartet music of Anton Webern.

Anton Webern (1883-1945), Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5
Penderecki String Quartet, live
Falls Village, Connecticut (Music Mountain), 2010

Part 1

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Part 2

More? Here.

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Ignorance has a big upside: the more music you’ve never heard, the more there is to discover.

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2011

Saturday, 12/3/11

three takes

“N’teri”

Habib Koité, live, c. 2007

*****

Regina Carter (violin), Yacouba Sissoko (kora), Will Holshouser (accordion)
Live, radio broadcast (KPLU-FM), 2011

Kora, violin, accordion—even the names of these instruments sound good together. You have, in succession, words of two, three, and four syllables. Consonants repeat (k/c, r, n), as do vowels (o, a). The last word (“accordion”) echoes both syllables of the first (“kora”), reversing them, as well as the end of the second (“violin”). What does any of this mean? Nothing—it’s simply, for me, a small source of additional pleasure.

*****

Habib Koité, recording, 2007

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2011

Saturday, 10/29/11

Some music isn’t made for summer: it wants more night.

Bela Bartok, String Quartet No. 5, excerpt (3rd movement)
Calder Quartet, live, 2008, Los Angeles

More Bartok? Here.

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lagniappe

reading table

This road—
no one goes down it,
autumn evening.

—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), trans. Robert Hass

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2011

Tuesday, 10/18/11

clear, adj. bright, luminous, transparent. E.g., Wadada Leo Smith’s trumpet playing.

Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet), live, London (Cafe Oto), 9/5/11

A performance like this opens up, I’ve found, once you quit trying to find
a foothold.

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2011

Saturday, 10/1/11

serendipity

The other night, as I listened to the radio,* this (“Patient Observation”) floated out of the speakers.

Falling From Trees, Neon Productions, music by Peter Broderick
Premiered at The Place, London, 1/09

Excerpt, Part 2, “Patient Observation”

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Full Length

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Falling From Trees is a 30-minute production set in a psychiatric hospital that delves into the mind of a resident patient. The piece explores how a neurological disease can alter your sense of self and relationship to the world and people around you. Peter Broderick’s score has been created solely on piano and strings; it is also the first time Broderick has created music specifically for dance.

—Neon Productions

*Mudd Up! with DJ/Rupture, WFMU-FM, Monday, 8 p.m. (EST), archived shows here

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2011

Sunday, 9/11/11

Steve Reich, WTC 9/11 (2010), excerpts
Kronos Quartet, with prerecorded tape

1st Movement 

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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3rd Movement

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

reading table

They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.

There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.

They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.

I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.

—Wislawa Szymborska, “Photograph from September 11” (trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak)

*****

Barbarism is not the prehistory of humanity but the faithful shadow that accompanies its every step.

—Alain Finkielkraut, Le mécontemporain, (epigraph, Clive James, As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002 [2003]) 

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2011

Saturday, 9/10/11

lucid, adj. suffused with light, luminous. E.g., Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet.

Morton Feldman, Piano and String Quartet (1985)
Kronos Quartet with Aki Takahashi (piano)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

In a world that keeps getting faster and noisier, Feldman offers a refuge.
Here time slows. Quietly.

More? Here. And here. And here. And here. And here.

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2011

Saturday, 7/30/11

The four familial instruments seem to whisper directly into our ears, communing with us about our personal sadnesses and anxieties.

—Wendy Lesser, Music For Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets (2011)

Dmitri Shostakovich, String Quartet No. 14 in F-Sharp Major (1972-73)
Fitzwilliam String Quartet

1st Movement (Allegretto)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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2nd Movement (Adagio)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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3rd Movement (Allegretto)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

More? Here.

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

I think he [President Obama] needs to listen to some jazz. Maybe the entire capital needs it to calm down.

—Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, 7/28/11

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