22259. (Bade Ghulam Ali Khan) The Greatest
22260. (Built to Spill) Keep it Like a Secret
22261. (Dodos) Time to Die Read more »
Category Archives: C - LISTENING - Page 24
First-time listening for June, 2010
Posted by Phil Paine
on June 30, 2010
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Bade Ghulam Ali Khan
Posted by Phil Paine
on June 3, 2010
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This master of both the sarangi and vocals died in 1968. His voice had enormous range and sweetness, with which he interpreted the romantic thumri in a style fusing many different regional traditions. The album I own offers two long ragas and four short thumri, of which I preferred the latter, especially “Yaad Piya Ki Aaye”.
First-time listening for May, 2010
Posted by Phil Paine
on May 31, 2010
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22160. (Jacques Lu Cont [aka Stuart Price] ) FabricLive.09, April 2003
22161. (Killers) Hot Fuss
22162. (Dutchess & the Duke) Sunset / Sunrise Read more »
Paul Abraham’s operettas
Posted by Phil Paine
on May 5, 2010
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It’s pretty obvious that the American musical comedies, on stage and film, owed a lot to the Austro-Hungarian operettas. But the influence also moved in the other direction. I have an old vinyl with highlights of two operettas by Paul Abraham, Viktoria und ihr Husar (1930) and Die Blume von Hawaii (1931), and they display a strong influence from Jazz and Broadway. They were very popular in their day, but are now rather obscure. The second even has an American setting (Hawaii) and features songs sung in German with a comically intended American accent, and has English phrases scattered about in the lyrics. Abraham, a Jew, fled Europe shortly after these successes, only to wind up in a New York mental hospital in 1946. He recovered, and lived until 1960. Both are pleasant listening, with the added interest of demonstrating the cross-fertilization of popular music between Europe and America between the two wars.
First-time listening for April, 2010
Posted by Phil Paine
on April 30, 2010
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22083. (Johann Sebastian Bach) Cantata #20 “O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort (I)”, bwv.20
22084. (Johann Sebastian Bach) Cantata #21 “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis”, bwv.21
22085. (A Sunny Day In Glasgow) Ashes Grammar Read more »
Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #1
Posted by Phil Paine
on April 19, 2010
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Beethoven in 1803
None of Beethoven’s piano concertos have carved out any special place in my affections. I’m not sure why. They just don’t seem to move me like the symphonies, sonatas, or quartets do. Number One in C, Op.15 was actually composed in 1796–7, long after Number Two (1789). It has a few nice bits, but most of the time it sounds like warmed-over Hayden. Glen Gould composed cadenzas for it that brighten it up a bit.
A painting of Beethoven in 1803, seven years after composing the first piano concerto, shows him nothing like his later snarling, scowling image. In 1796, its probable date of composition, he would have still looked almost a teenager.
LISTENING — MARCH 2010
Posted by Phil Paine
on March 31, 2010
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22006. (Johann Sebastian Bach) Cantata #13 “Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen”, bwv.13
22007. (Johann Sebastian Bach) Cantata #14 “Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit”, bwv.14
22008. (Johann Sebastian Bach) Cantata #16 “Herr Gott, dich loben wir”, bwv.16 Read more »
The Beggar’s Opera
Posted by Phil Paine
on March 7, 2010
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The Beggar’s Opera is a pointed example of unpretentious popular art long outliving the “serious” works of its day. In 1728, a rather unsuccessful English poet, John Gay, penned a satire of the upper class’s taste for Italian Opera, as well as the establishment politics of the day (then personified in First Lord of the Treasury, Robert Walpole). Using a kleptomaniac collection of Scottish and French folk-tunes, Gay conceived a fast-moving, tight-knit plot involving, instead of the usual operatic cast of Classical heroes and deities, the whores and thieves of the London slums. Read more »
First-time listening for February, 2010
Posted by Phil Paine
on February 28, 2010
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21514. (Gabriel Fauré) Piano Quartet #1 in C Minor, Op.15
21515. (Gabriel Fauré) Piano Quartet #2 in G Minor, Op.45
21516. (U2) Boy
21517. (Johann Sebastian Bach) Cantata #10 “Meine Seel erhebt den Herren”, bwv.10 Read more »
William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
Posted by Phil Paine
on February 15, 2010
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Musicians have long been attracted to William Blake’s interconnected poems known as the Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Allen Ginsberg has asserted that a study of the rhyme and meter of the poems reveals that Blake intended them to be sung. They certainly have the feeling of English tavern ballads strangely mutated into moral and metaphysical meditations. This mixture of serious purpose and popular form is exactly the stuff that best suits American composer William Bolcom. Read more »