In a hurry?
Better go somewhere else.
Want to step outside of time?
You’ve come to the right place.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828), Piano Sonata No. 18 (G major, D. 894); Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997), live
Tried listening to this last night while working on a criminal appeal. Couldn’t. Work waited.
**********
lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
riveting
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Sonata No. 32; Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997), live, Moscow, 1975
**********
lagniappe
reading table
Everyone’s journey
through this world is the same,
so I won’t complain.
Here on the plains of Nasu,
I place my trust in the dew.—Sōgi (1421-1502), translated from Japanese by Sam Hamill
Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Preludes, Book 1, Nos. 1-7, 9-11; Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997), piano, live
***
I am not a complete idiot, but whether from weakness or laziness have no talent for thinking. I know only how to reflect: I am a mirror . . . Logic does not exist for me. I float on the waves of art and life and never really know how to distinguish what belongs to the one or the other or what is common to both. Life unfolds for me like a theatre presenting a sequence of somewhat unreal sentiments; while the things of art are real to me and go straight to my heart.
sounds from the other side of the moon
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), Piano Sonata No. 5; Dmitry Rachmanov, live, San Francisco, 2015
*****
Here’s another take.
Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997), live recording, Prague, 1972
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.
**********
lagniappe
Here’s another take on the last movement, with a younger Yuri Bashmet and Sviatoslav Richter.
#1
#2
Last Sunday I had one of the great musical afternoons—one of the great afternoons, period—of my life, listening, at Chicago’s Symphony Center (across from the Art Institute), to pianist Andras Schiff play Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, in its entirety (and entirely from memory), a performance that lasted nearly three hours and could’ve kept going, as far as I was concerned, for three days.
Johann Sebastian Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722 [Book I], 1742 [Book II])
Book II, Prelude and Fugue No. 16 in G minor, BMV 885
Sheng Cai (piano), live, Boston, 2010
*****
Books I and II, Sviatoslav Richter (piano), recording, 1970s
(For better sound quality on this and other YouTube clips, go to the “Settings” icon [lower right] and select the highest available [here 1080p].)
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is God. Without Bach, God would be a third-rate character.
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
more favorites from the past year
I sometimes feel as if I’m making my way, page by page, through a book titled The 10,000 Musical Performances You Must Hear Before You Die. Rarely does a week go by that I’m not astonished, at least once, by something I’ve never heard before. Yesterday it was this tiny gem.*
Sergei Prokofiev, Vision Fugitive No. 18, Con una dolce lentezza
Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997), piano
*S. Richter, Richter Rediscovered: Carnegie Hall Recital 1960 (RCA)
(Originally posted 5/5/11.)
*******
Classical music would be better off if folks quit calling it “classical music.”
Arnold Schoenberg, Op. 19, Six Little Piano Pieces
Michel Beroff, piano, live
(Originally posted 6/23/11.)
Joseph Haydn, Piano Sonata No. 24 in D major, excerpt (2nd Movement)
Sviatoslav Richter, live
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
Logic does not exist for me. I float on the waves of art and life and never really know how to distinguish what belongs to the one or the other or what is common to both. Life unfolds for me like a theatre presenting a sequence of somewhat unreal sentiments; while the things of art are real to me and go straight to my heart.
—Sviatoslav Richter
*****
reading table
After a black day, I play Haydn,
and feel a little warmth in my hands.The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.The sound says that freedom exists
and someone pays no taxes to Caesar.I shove my hands in my haydnpockets
and act like a man who is calm about it all.I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:
“We do not surrender. But want peace.”The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole.—Tomas Transtromer (winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature), “Allegro,” trans. from the Swedish by Robert Bly
*****
Time for just one?
I’d go with Alfred Cortot.
*****
favorites
(an occasional series)
Of beauty you cannot have too much.
Frederic Chopin, Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 (1835-36)
Take 1: Vladimir Horowitz, live, New York (Carnegie Hall)
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Take 2: Krystian Zimerman, live
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Take 3: Claudio Arrau
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Take 4: Alfred Cortot
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Take 5: Sviatoslav Richter, live (Kiev)
Vodpod videos no longer available.More Chopin? Here. And here. And here.
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
[T]he things we feel in life are not experienced in the form of ideas, and so their translation into literature, an intellectual process, may give an account of them, explain them, analyse them, but cannot recreate them as music does, its sounds seeming to take on the inflections of our being, to reproduce that inner, extreme point of sensation which is that thing that causes us the specific ecstasy we feel from time to time and which, when we say ‘What a beautiful day! What beautiful sunshine!’, is not conveyed at all to our neighbour, in whom the same sun and the same weather set off quite different vibrations.
—Marcel Proust, The Prisoner (1925), trans. Carol Clark
(Originally posted 12/27/10.)
music clip of the day 