Friday, January 30th
string quartet festival (day five)
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), String Quartet in F major (1903); Hagen Quartet, live, Austria (Salzburg), 2000
1st movt.
2nd movt.
3rd movt.
4th movt.
string quartet festival (day five)
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), String Quartet in F major (1903); Hagen Quartet, live, Austria (Salzburg), 2000
1st movt.
2nd movt.
3rd movt.
4th movt.
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.
**********
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)
Some folks are intimidated by this stuff. Part of the problem is the label: “classical” music. That sounds like something for graduate students. Nonsense. You don’t need to know anything—anything at all—to connect with this. All you need are two ears, a mind, and a heart.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), String Quartet in F major (1903), first movement; Chiara String Quartet, live, University of Nebraska, 2013
otherworldly
Maurice Ravel, Jeux d’eau (1901)
Martha Argerich, live (1977)
*****
Alfred Cortot, recording (1920)
**********
lagniappe
radio
After finishing, at midnight, their 24-hour Coleman Hawkins birthday celebration, the indefatigable folks at WKCR-FM didn’t rest for even a minute. Instead they embarked on a 4-day, 96-hour celebration of pianist Teddy Wilson’s centennial.
*****
Happy Thanksgiving!
MCOTD gives thanks for
Lester Bowie and
Blossom Dearie and
The Dirtbombs;
for Mingus, Miles, Monk,
Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, Bartok;
for WKCR-FM and WFMU-FM;
for Morton Feldman and
Elliott Carter and
Alfred Schnittke and
Tristan Murail;
for Hound Dog Taylor, Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson, Magic Sam;
for The Ex, The Heptones, The Swan Silvertones, The Impressions, The Art Ensemble of Chicago;
for Von Freeman and Art Pepper and Vernard Johnson;
for Friedrich Gulda and Martha Argerich, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Ursula Oppens;
for Ed Blackwell and
for Phillip Wilson;
for Julius Hemphill and
Henry Threadgill and
D’Angelo and
Dorothy Love Coates;
and for all the others—singers, musicians, composers, painters, photographers, printmakers, novelists, poets—who have graced this site;
and for you, who have found your way here, somehow, from Mongolia and Slovenia and Jamaica and Saudi Arabia; from Myanmar and Syria; from Angola, India, Ethiopia; from Finland, Thailand, Ireland, Iceland, and over 100 other countries.
You don’t need to be asleep to be lost in a dream.
Maurice Ravel, Piano Concerto in G Major (1929-31); Martha Argerich, piano; Orchestre National de France (Charles Dutoit, cond.); live, Germany (Frankfurt), 1990
The keyboard is the stage on which the fingers dance.
Sviatoslav Richter, piano
TV performance (CBC, Toronto),* 1964
**********
lagniappe
reading table
even grass and vines
don’t part willingly . . .
lantern for the dead—Kobayashi Issa, 1822 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
*****
*Johannes Brahms, Intermezzo in E Minor, Op. 116, No. 5
Sergei Prokofiev, Sonata No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 14
Maurice Ravel, Jeux d’eau, Alborada del gracioso