wake up!
Pierre Boulez (1925-2016), Notation II (1945-1980); Berlin Philharmonic (Pierre Boulez, cond.), live, Berlin, 2009
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Chicago
Tonight, at 1 a.m. (EST), one of the year’s great musical events begins: the annual Bach Festival—now in its 40th year—broadcast on WKCR-FM (Columbia University). All Bach, all the time, until midnight New Year’s Eve. Hope, beauty, inspiration: they aren’t luxuries; they’re necessities.
Johann Sebastian Bach, Mass in B minor (excerpt, “Dona nobis pacem”); Berlin Philharmonic (Ton Koopman, cond.) with RIAS Chamber Choir (Justin Doyle, chorus master), live, Berlin, 10/28/17
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Johann Sebastian Bach, Cello Suite No. 6 in D major; Mischa Maisky (cello), live
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.)
Charlie Parker & Igor Stravinsky
Walk into any record store and one would have been over here and the other over there. But that made no difference to the kinship they felt.
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Jazz musicians sat up in their seats when Stravinsky’s music started playing; he was speaking something close to their language. When Charlie Parker came to Paris in 1949, he marked the occasion by incorporating the first notes of the Rite into his solo on ‘Salt Peanuts’. Two years later, playing Birdland in New York, the bebop master spotted Stravinsky at one of the tables and immediately incorporated a motif from Firebird into ‘Koko’, causing the composer to spill his scotch in ecstasy.—Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007)
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Charlier Parker & Dizzy Gillespie, “Hot House,” live (TV broadcast), 1952
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), The Firebird (excerpt; 1910), Berlin Philharmonic (Simon Rattle conducting), live, 2005
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Want to try a little experiment?
Play the Parker clip for about, say, 10-20 seconds. Then go to the Stravinsky clip and do the same. Then back. And forth. And back. And forth.
music clip of the day 