Category Archives: CI - Listening 2013

First-time listening for December 2013

22640. (Mag­nus Þór Sig­munds­son) Íslandsklukkur 
22641. (Giuseppe Ver­di) Alzi­ra [com­plete opera; d. Luisi; Mescheri­ako­va, Var­gas, Gavanelli]
22642. (Wil­helm Friede­mann Bach) Harp­si­chord Con­cer­to in F, F.44/BR.C13
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First-time listening for November, 2013

22593. (Giuseppe Ver­di) I Lom­bar­di alla pri­ma cro­ci­a­ta [com­plete opera; d. Levine; An-derson,
. . . . . Pavarot­ti, Ramey]
22594. (Boards of Cana­da) The Camp­fire Headphase
22595. (Peter Maxwell Davies) St. Thomas Wake: Fox­trot for Orchestra
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First-time listening for October, 2013

24044. (Gioacchi­no Rossi­ni) Demetrio e Poli­bio [com­plete opera; d. Car­raro; Gon­za­les, Surjan]
24045. (Gia­co­mo Puc­ci­ni) Manon Lescaut [com­plete opera; d. Rah­bari; Gau­ci, Kuladov, Saudinero]
24046. (Social Dis­tor­tion) Mommy’s Lit­tle Monster
24047. (El Ten Eleven) Every Direc­tion Is North
24048. (Giuseppe Ver­di) La travi­a­ta [com­plete opera; d. Toscani­ni; Albanese, Peerce, Mer­rill] Read more »

First-time listening for September, 2013

(Hes­pèri­on XX) El Can­cionero de Pala­cio, 1474–1516 — Músi­ca en la corte de los Reyes 
. . Católicos:
. . . . 22419. (Fran­cis­co de la Torre) Dan­za Alta [instru­men­tal]
. . . . 22420. (Gabriel Mena) Aque­l­la Mora Garrida
. . . . 22421. (Fran­cis­co de Peñalosa) Por las sier­ras de Madrid
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Dvořák’s First Quartet

String Quar­tet No. 1 in A major, Op. 2 was Dvořák’s sec­ond cham­ber work. He was only 21 when he com­plet­ed it, in 1862. It was not per­formed, how­ev­er, until he revised it in 1888. The revi­sions seem to have been con­fined to some cuts to make it “lean­er”, so it is prob­a­bly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of his musi­cal think­ing and abil­i­ties at that ear­ly stage. If that’s the case, then his genius shines out. It isn’t a great work, espe­cial­ly when com­pared to the divine quar­tets of his matu­ri­ty, but it shows many of his sig­na­ture qual­i­ties: the play­ful­ness, effort­less melod­ic inven­tion, and the abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate beau­ty and even sweet­ness with­out cloy­ing. The first of the four move­ments has a catchy melody, but devel­ops it very con­ven­tion­al­ly. It’s in the third move­ment, Alle­gro scherzan­do, that the future Dvořák is most evi­dent. Its trio sec­tion could have been com­posed by no one else. The ani­ma­to of the final move­ment is vig­or­ous and con­fi­dent. This first quar­tet can be played strict­ly for the plea­sure it affords, not just for its pre­sen­ti­ments of great­ness. My best copy is bril­liant­ly per­formed by the Kvarte­to měs­ta Prahy.

Naxi Music from Lijiang

Dayan Ancient Music Association performing

Dayan Ancient Music Asso­ci­a­tion performing

Of all the provinces of Chi­na, it is Yun­nan that has fas­ci­nat­ed me most. Remote and moun­tain­ous, and for­got­ten by the world in the last few cen­turies, it once played a crit­i­cal role in world his­to­ry by being the first region to trans­mit major cul­tur­al and tech­no­log­i­cal influ­ences between East Asia and South Asia. The old­est known hominid fos­sils of East Asia were found there. Before the famed Silk Road was estab­lished in the north, trade and ideas wormed their way through the pre­cip­i­tous moun­tain pass­es of Yun­nan, across north­ern Bur­ma, then over the Naga hills to the val­ley of the Brahma­pu­tra in India. Rice cul­ti­va­tion prob­a­bly entered India by this route in pre­his­toric times, and pos­si­bly the tech­nol­o­gy of cast­ing bronze. Some mag­nif­i­cent bronze art sur­vives from the 3rd Cen­tu­ry BCE. From that time to the Yuan era, though some­times con­trolled by Tibetan or Han Chi­nese empires, Yun­nan was most often the cen­ter of its own king­doms, such as Dian [滇國], Nangzhao [南诏], and Dali [大理国]. A melt­ing pot of peo­ples spoke var­i­ous Tibeto-Bur­man, Tai-Kadai, and Miao-Yao lan­guages. The his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant Bai language’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion is dis­put­ed. These abo­rig­i­nal lan­guages sur­vive and thrive despite the influx of Chi­nese speak­ers to the region, as do many ancient tra­di­tions. Shaman­ism, Tao­ism, Bud­dhism, Chris­tian­i­ty, and even Islam have been influ­ences on local beliefs. A syn­chretis­tic reli­gion called Dong­ba, relat­ed in some way to the shaman­is­tic Bön faith that pre­ced­ed Bud­dhism in Tibet, is still prac­ticed. It focus­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly on the sacred­ness of trees, and once pro­vid­ed the spir­i­tu­al basis for care­ful (and sus­tain­able) prac­tices in log­ging. The Com­mu­nist Par­ty attempt­ed to crush the faith, not only for ide­o­log­i­cal rea­sons, but to facil­i­tate clear-cut­ting and destruc­tive exploita­tion of the forests. The reli­gion, how­ev­er, sur­vives. Read more »

First-time listening for August, 2013

22333. (School of Eccle­si­as­tic Music, Mt. Lebanon) The Divine Byzan­tine Litur­gy of the
. . . . . Anti­ochi­an Holy Church
22334. (Hec­tor Berlioz) Te Deum, Op.22
22335. (tUnE-yArDs) BiRd-BrAiNs
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First-time listening for July, 2013

Lul­la­by For the Moon — Japan­ese Music for Koto and Shakuhachi:
. . . . 22292. (Hozan Yamamo­to & Utazu­mi Kun­ishige) Vari­a­tions on Komo­ri­u­ta Lullaby
. . . . 22293. (Tozan Hara & Tozan Tan­no) Toge-Hachi-Ri [8 Miles through a Moun­tain Pass]
. . . . 22294. (Hozan Yamamo­to & Utazu­mi Kun­ishige) Kuon No Hikari [Eter­nal Lights]
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Tame Impala

13-07-31 LISTENING Tame ImpalaI like this band from Perth, West­ern Aus­tralia, which pro­duces a clever update of six­ties psy­che­delia. I pos­sess their first EP, and first two stu­dio albums, Inner­s­peak­er (2010) and Loner­ism (2011). The psy­che­del­ic sound is now much mis­un­der­stood — lis­ten­ers today con­fuse it with glam-rock, ear­ly heavy met­al, and oth­er trends which were dis­tinct back in the six­ties and sev­en­ties. They even look like psy­che­del­ic bands actu­al­ly did, rather than the car­toon hip­pies imag­ined by the media. I think this band comes much clos­er to the intro­spec­tive, dream­like qual­i­ty that musi­cians back then achieved after drop­ping acid while camp­ing in the desert, or some such inspi­ra­tion. It’s a lit­tle more cal­cu­lat­ed and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly hip, but it’s at least in the same ball­park. There are plen­ty of mem­o­rable songs, with dis­tinct mood and char­ac­ter, in their cor­pus, so far: “Skele­ton Tiger” and “Half Full of Glass” on the EP; “Soli­tude Is Bliss”, “Lucid­i­ty”, “Expec­ta­tion” and “Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind?” on Inner­s­peak­er; “Ele­phant” and “Feels Like We Only Go Back­wards” on Loner­ism. All three records are good, but Inner­s­peak­er appeals to me most. I can’t lis­ten to it with­out feel­ing like I’m wak­ing up on an emp­ty West­ern Aus­tralia surf­ing beach, after a night of hard par­ty­ing, with a philo­soph­i­cal twin­kle in my eye. Loner­ism is gloomi­er, with Aussie inno­cence shift­ing into Euro­pean artfulness.

Umekichi — The Voice of the Geisha

13-07-06 LISTENING UmekichiI lis­tened to this album while watch­ing one of Yasu­jirō Ozu’s silent films, Pass­ing Fan­cy [出来ごころ; Dekigoko­ro] (1933), after a mas­sive sushi lunch. Ume­kichi is the per­form­ing name of Okaya­ma Kurashi­ki, a pop/folk musi­cian who sings and plays shamisen. It seems that she pokes fun at both Japan’s ephemer­al pop music and the clas­si­cal tra­di­tion by effort­less­ly blend­ing the two. This, appar­ent­ly, has not been tak­en well by Japan­ese folk­lorists, for whom every dit­ty about cher­ry blos­soms is sanc­ti­fied. The play­ful sar­casm comes across to me in her voice, though of course I can’t under­stand a word of it. For me, it’s just one more ten­ta­tive lit­tle for­ay into Japan’s immense­ly com­plex and thor­ough­ly con­fus­ing pop­u­lar culture.