A Scar­let Tanager

I love string quar­tets. Com­posers seem to put their hearts and minds into them in a way that they don’t reli­ably do for oth­er forms. Since they have lit­tle com­mer­cial val­ue, they are usu­al­ly com­posed with nobody look­ing over the composer’s shoul­der, and no box-office con­sid­er­a­tions. The stark sim­plic­i­ty of the com­bi­na­tion of two vio­lins, vio­la, and cel­lo, which nev­er­the­less allows for a full tonal range and the inter­play of indi­vid­ual and com­bined voic­es, attracts the com­pos­er who wants to put across seri­ous thoughts.

Antonín Dvořak wrote four­teen string quar­tets, but the twelfth, nick­named “Amer­i­can”, is by far the most pop­u­lar and mov­ing. It has a sweet­ness of melody and an inven­tive­ness, from moment to moment, that links it with his won­der­ful “New World” sym­pho­ny. It was, in fact, writ­ten at the same time, while Dvořak was vis­it­ing a small town in Iowa (set­tled by Bohemi­an and Mora­vian immi­grants). It’s easy to find the influ­ence of African-Amer­i­can spir­i­tu­als in it, while its Czech ele­ments are just as sol­id. The first vio­lin motif in the third move­ment echoes the song of the scar­let tan­ag­er, a bird he heard often in Iowa. Like the pop­u­lar ninth sym­pho­ny, it’s a pro­found­ly human­is­tic and opti­mistic work. This was the hap­pi­est time in Dvořak’s life, and he was by nature a gen­tle and com­pas­sion­ate man. Those ele­ments infuse the work, which was writ­ten, as I under­stand, most­ly out­doors, on the banks of a stream near an Iowa farm. This spot must have been, for him, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly the pio­neer-bro­ken prairies of a “new world”, and the left bank of the Vlta­va at Nela­hozeves. Com­fort­ing tra­di­tion and wild free­dom, age and youth, wis­dom and inno­cence all com­bined, with­out con­flict, with­out con­tra­dic­tion. When I feel that things are basi­cal­ly all right in the uni­verse, that the forces of dark­ness must in the long run be over­tak­en by the light, then this is the music for me.

19234. (Char­lie Haden) Lib­er­a­tion Music Orchestra
19235. Sun­danese Jaipong and Oth­er Pop­u­lar Music
19236. (Bud Pow­ell) Jazz Giant
19237. (We Are Stan­dard) We Are Standard
19238. (Thomas Tallis) Beati immaculati
19239. (Thomas Tallis) Introit — Puer natus est nobis
19240. (Thomas Tallis) Kyrie — Deus cre­ator 2
19241. (Juno Reac­tor) Shango Tour Tokyo, 2001
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Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op.53, known as the “Wald­stein”, is my favourite of the lot. It first came to my atten­tion when I read Edgar Pang­born’s neglect­ed sci­ence fic­tion mas­ter­piece, A Mir­ror For Observers. Pang­born, a com­pos­er and pianist him­self, used a per­for­mance of the piece as a key device in the plot. It remains one of the pieces I play most often.

It starts soft­ly, with a series of rhyth­mic chords devoid of melody, then plays around teas­ing­ly, until the sec­ond sub­ject, a warm E‑major melody comes in. From there, it goes through many odd mod­u­la­tions, twists, and mood changes, right up to the sparkling coda (it was writ­ten in 1804, right when Beethoven was busi­ly toss­ing the Clas­si­cal rules out the win­dow). The short, con­tem­pla­tive sec­ond move­ment explores every ambigu­ous and unclas­si­fi­able emo­tion you can feel.

The final move­ment is marked alle­gro mod­er­a­to, and poor pianists often spoil it by play­ing the begin­ning too fast. This spoils the effect of the prestis­si­mo finale. Andras Schiff does it right. That end­ing sneaks up on you like a cat, and pounces. In no oth­er sonata does the piano sound so much like an entire orches­tra: pas­sages mim­ic strings, horns, tympany.The arpe­gios aren’t cake dec­o­ra­tions: each one is essen­tial to the rea­son­ing of the piece. There is every Beethoven in it: the fist-shak­ing Beethoven, the sweet Beethoven, the con­tem­pla­tive Beethoven, the trick­ster Beethoven. Time and again there are moments of pro­found beau­ty, includ­ing every god­dam note of the coda.

I would count this sonata as one of the very great­est piano works of all time.

19139. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Sonata for Vio­la da Gam­ba & Key­board #1 in G, bwv.1027
. . . . . [piano ver­sion; harp­si­chord ver­sion at 15867, cel­lo ver­sion 10512]
19140. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Sonata for Vio­la da Gam­ba & Key­board #2 in D, bwv.102
19141. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Sonata for Vio­la da Gam­ba & Key­board #3 in G Minor, 
. . . . . bwv.1029 [piano ver­sion; harp­si­chord ver­sion at 15869, cel­lo ver­sion 10514]
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Trip Hop is a slip­pery genre, the name being applied to a bizarre vari­ety of musi­cians, from Mas­sive attack to Björk. Start­ing as a reac­tion against the Amer­i­can dom­i­nance of Hip Hop, it has found voic­es right in the heart of the Imperi­um. Promi­nent among them is Philadel­phia based Daugh­ter Dar­ling, the col­lab­o­ra­tive effort of dj/producer broth­ers Travis and Steven Fogel­man with vocal­ist Natal­ie Walk­er. Walk­er’s vocals hark back to many indi­vid­u­al­is­tic female singer-song­writ­ers, but the resem­blance to both Sarah McLaugh­lan and Björk is pret­ty obvi­ous. I like her voice, and the way in artic­u­lates the lyrics, but I find some of the elec­tron­ic nest its embed­ded in occa­sion­al­ly annoy­ing. But most of the songs work well. The open­ing title track is fine, putting across a Leonard Cohen‑y world-weary lone­li­ness to good effect. So is the clever re-work­ing of Kansas’ “Dust In the Wind”. “Bro­ken Bridge”, with it’s well-placed piano accom­pa­ni­ment, and “Sad And Lone­ly”, where horns and snares are used with equal taste, can’t be fault­ed. “Let Me Speak” is prob­a­bly the strongest song. This album was wide­ly hyped when it came out, but I did­n’t hear it. Now I’m play­ing catch-up. My taste does­n’t focus on this kind of music, but if it’s well done, as this is, I’ll listen.

This is the only album I’ve heard by this tout­ed elec­tron­i­ca trio (Evgenii Shchukin, Evgenii Fomin, and Alek­san­dr Tochilkin) from Rus­si­a’s “sun­ny south”, the old Cos­sack city of Krasnodar. I don’t know if it’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive of their work but this album offers a dis­tinct­ly “old school” elec­tron­i­ca, with lots of beeps, zzzz’s and bleeps. I even sus­pect the influ­ence of the old Sovi­et-era elec­tron­ic exper­i­ments of Nemtin, Kre­ichi and Arte­myev. These quaint elec­ton­ic nois­es are well put togeth­er, how­ev­er, and sus­tain inter­est to the end.

This is the epony­mous debut album of a Hawai­ian band front­ed by Nicholas Thor­burn, a.k.a. Nick Dia­monds, for­mer­ly with the indie-pop bands Islands and The Uni­corns. The sound is a trip­py layed-back, mar­i­jua­na-cel­e­brat­ing trib­ute to the beach bum ethos. Most appeal­ing cuts: a delight­ful, and not the least sar­cas­tic, ren­di­tion of “Blue Moon”, and a loopy qua­si-reg­gae song (the term in vogue is “sub­aquat­ic”) called “May Baleen”.

It’s quite irra­tional, but I want­ed to lis­ten to some­thing spe­cial for the 20,000th entry in my “first time lis­ten­ing” list. I received some sug­ges­tions, includ­ing the only major Mozart opera I had nev­er heard, but chance brought a solu­tion. I’ve writ­ten else­where about my long-term love affair with the New Zealand-Aus­tralian band Crowd­ed House. The only impor­tant Crowd­ed House item miss­ing from my col­lec­tion was their farewell con­cert in Syd­ney Opera House. Thanks to a read­er (who wish­es to remain anony­mous) I final­ly acquired this won­der­ful record­ing. Read more »

This debut album was only released a few days ago, in the U.K., but I can safe­ly make the bet that it will be a big suc­cess. Close har­mo­ny vocals rem­i­nis­cent of Simon & Gar­fun­kle are com­bined with superb gui­tar play­ing and judi­cious­ly used bits of wood­wind (I think there’s a flugel­horn in there) and elec­tron­ics. The lyrics are real poet­ry. DCLC are list­ed as “exper­i­men­tal, folk, lounge”, which I sup­pose is fair enough, but is inad­e­quate to express the num­ber of nodes they con­nect to. Every song on the album, from the first, “Jeal­ous Ene­mies”, to the last, “Mir­a­cle Kick­er” shows an extra­or­di­nary crafts­man­ship, get­ting every lit­tle detail just right. “Robot Com­mand Cen­tre” and the pro­found­ly orig­i­nal “Spon­ta­neous Com­bus­tion Pact” in par­tic­u­lar had an emo­tion­al impact on me. This is intel­li­gent music.

Dark Cap­tain Light Cap­tain is a Lon­don-based band cur­rent­ly tour­ing the boonies in the U.K. —and I eager­ly antic­i­pate them break­ing out inter­na­tion­al­ly so they can show up here. I’ll be first in line for tick­ets when they play Toron­to. Dan Car­ney (gui­tar, voice), Giles Lit­tle­ford (gui­tar, voice), Neil Klein­er (elec­tron­ics, wood­wind, voice), Chin Of Britain (drums), Mike Cran­ny (bass, voice) Lau­ra Copsey (brass, voice), shown above, are the line-up.

19002. (North­ern Cree Singers) Stay Red: Pow-wow Songs Record­ed Live at Pullman
19003. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #24 in D
19004. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #25 in C
19005. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #27 in G
19006. (Mas­sive Attack) Blue Lines
19007. (Antonín Dvořak) String Quar­tet #3 in D, B.18
19008. (Antonín Dvořak) String Quar­tet #4 in E‑flat, B.19
19009. (North­ern Wind) Med­i­cine Dress [Round Dance songs hon­our­ing the Jin­gle Dress
. . . . . com­posed by Gabe Desrosiers]
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