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Friday Classical Music: Ceres by Mark-Anthony Turnage
This is perhaps the only piece of music inspired by the horrific destruction of humanity by an enormous piece of rock. I saw this performed live last weekend, along with two related pieces he composer wrote later, and so I quote from the program notes for that performance:
I was inspired to write Ceres after reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. Ceres was one of the first asteroids to be discovered. I took the idea of asteroids being rocky objects, all of which are capable . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Here ya go–the first movement of the symphony that got the Romantic age of music started.
Ahh, one of Shostakovich’s late quartets. If you like it, you like it, if you don’t, it goes on for another 18 minutes.
Toward the end of this excerpt you can hear the start of the so-called jazz portion of this quartet. (It lasts about 3 minutes, and it does sound somewhat like jazz.)
Karlheinz Stockhausen died a couple months ago. If you’re not acquainted with the extreme oddity that was this man, then have a look at the above video. He revolutionized compositional music, he thought he was from the star Sirius, and The Beatles liked him so much that they put him on the cover of their album. His music is definitely an acquired taste, but if you’re inclined to the strange . . .
I’m a little late to this story, but this is the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, a group of undergrate musicians, doing a great performance Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, of one of recent classical music’s most difficult pieces. This group’s performance has won wide priase (including ending up on Alex Ross’s year-end list of favorite 2007 recordings).
For a little background read this in the NYT.
I wanted to put up Magma, the fourth symphony by the Estonian composer Erik-Sven Tuur, but I can’t find a performance in the public domain, so I’ll give you this piece of his. Tuur’s music is a bit different, but give it a chance. He’s one of m favorite composers at the moment.
I´m going to have to put Friday Classical Music on leave for a bit. Hope to return it soon.
Here’s a link to the audio. (If Windows doesn’t default to Windows Media Player, then be aware that you can play this on Windows Media Player, or whatever else supports mp3s.)
This is a fun piece. It begins with a beautiful violin cadenza that lasts a few minutes. Then the orchestra joins in and things get crazy. At times it seems like Ravel is just trying out idea after idea–they all sound incredible.
As to recordings, I’ve heard that Maxim Vengerov’s is to die for, but I think they stopped producing that disc about a decade ago. Good luck.
There’s something about strings that just seems to bring out the badass in Shostakovich. Some of my favorite passages from Shostakovich are played on either a cello or violin–they’re complex, emotional, fast, wicked, like riding on a roller coaster. The cadenza to Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto (with which the above clip opens) is a perfect example. It’s simply amazing, raw and beautiful at once.
This clip plays through to the end of the concerto, and the rest is not hard to find on YouTube.
As for recordings, I have to turn to the playing of the awesome . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Well, virtually anyone who knows anoything about classical music has heard of Claude Debussy. Still quite famous, but lesser-known is the Spaniard Manuel de Falla. As this piece shows, stylistically, de Falla and Debussy had some things in common. Both wrote during the period between World Wars I and II, and both wrote what has been called "impressionistic" music. De Falla, being a native of Spain, however, infused his pieces with many kinds of sound that are not to be found in Debussy. Nights in the Gardens of Spain and El Amor Brujo (Love the Magician) are two . . . continue reading, and add your comments
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Recommended Books DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
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The Novels of Kim Young-ha
Graphs, Maps, Trees
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
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