Sym­pho­ny No. 1 in D major, Op 25 was des­ig­nat­ed “Clas­si­cal Sym­pho­ny” by Prokofiev when it pre­miered in 1918, in Pet­ro­grad. “Neo-clas­si­cal” would be more appro­pri­ate. Prokofiev said it was a sym­pho­ny “that Haydn would com­pose if he lived today”. There are no quo­ta­tions from Haydn in the work, how­ev­er, and the melodies are unmis­tak­ably Prokofiev, with his usu­al sar­don­ic humour. The work must be hard for a con­duc­tor to inter­pret, because the three record­ings I have all feel rather dif­fer­ent. I have two vinyls: one by Jean Mar­ti­non, which is per­formed at break­neck speed, and an old Sovi­et record­ing by Gen­nady Rozhdestven­sky which is done a lit­tle more respect­ful­ly. On CD, I have Neeme Järvi’s set of the com­plete sym­phonies, with the Roy­al Scot­tish Nation­al Orches­tra. I find this one the most sat­is­fy­ing. Read more »

It would be hard to name a musi­cal influ­ence that isn’t to be found in the first two albums by Catalun­yan musi­cian Pablo Díaz-Reixa, aka El Guin­cho. His myspace page describes his music as “pop/tropical/club”, but that hard­ly begins to list the eclec­tic sources that he puts togeth­er on his Roland SP-404 sam­pling work­sta­tion. There’s a resem­blance to Ani­mal Col­lec­tive’s work, but it would­n’t be mis­tak­en for it. Noth­ing comes across as pon­der­ous­ly seri­ous — every piece is clear­ly designed to be fun to lis­ten to. It’s more “par­ty music” than “arty music”, even though it is tech­ni­cal­ly elab­o­rate. The first album, Folías (2007) has some nice bits, but Ale­gran­za! (2008) has the out­stand­ing work. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the catchy, almost high-life “Fata Mor­gana”, “Kalise”, with its man­ic steel-band con­tin­uo, and most of all, the grand, many-lay­ered “Buenos Mat­ri­mo­nios Ahí Fuera”.

I’m play­ing, for the umpteenth time, my favourite among Touré’s albums. I’ve writ­ten else­where about this aston­ish­ing musi­cian [Think­ing of Tim­buk­tu; Ali Far­ka Touré, Toumani Dia­baté In Per­fect Sync; Ali Far­ka Touré and Ry Cood­er Talk­ing Tim­buk­tu]. This album is a trib­ute to his beloved Niger Riv­er roots, with song lyrics jump­ing casu­al­ly between Bam­bara, Temazhek and French. Tracks like “Cinquante Six” and “Yen­na” demon­strate his absolute mas­tery of the gui­tar, with the per­fect tim­ing that made him a leg­end. My favourite track is the song “Dofana”, in which he wist­ful­ly evokes a small vil­lage, “a par­adise on Earth, only twen­ty kilo­me­tres from here”, threat­ened only by the “idio­cy of politi­cians”. Touré, on becom­ing a suc­cess­ful record­ing artist, eschewed the migra­tion to Paris or Lon­don, and instead became the may­or of just such a vil­lage. Most of the mon­ey he made went into sup­ply­ing it with clean water and electricity.

19430. (Charles Ives) Sym­pho­ny #5 “Uni­verse Sym­pho­ny” [recon­struct­ed by Lar­ry Austin]
19431. (Scratch Per­verts) Fab­ri­cLive 22
19432. (Oasis) Def­i­nite­ly Maybe [Japan­ese release with two extra songs; orig­i­nal at 2447]
19433. (Char­lie Haden & the Lib­er­a­tion Music Orches­tra) Dream Keeper
19434. (Deer­hunter) Cryptograms
19435. (Jean Sibelius) “Svar­ta Rosor [Black Ros­es]”, Op.36 #1 [s. Anne Sofie von Otter]
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This album was record­ed dur­ing June-Novem­ber 2008, but it has­n’t been released yet. Gram­mat­ics is a British indie rock band from Leeds with a com­plex sound. Owen Brin­ley (guitar/vocals), Emil­ia Ergin (cel­lo), Dominic Ord (drums) and Rory O’Hara (bass) have an orches­tral approach to their rock, quite far off from the min­i­mal­ist style dom­i­nant in the British Indie scene. Emil­ia Ergin uses the cel­lo much like a lead gui­tar. The rhythm sec­tion is very strong: this is Rock, not mushy orches­trat­ed pop. There’s a wee bit of Queens Of The Stone Age and oth­er Amer­i­can indie bands per­cep­ti­ble in this mix, but on the whole, Gram­mat­ics is an orig­i­nal band, try­ing to do things on its own terms. Every song is dif­fer­ent, every song is inter­est­ing. I’ll be lis­ten­ing to any­thing I can get from this group.

Charles Ives on the Outside

and on the Inside

We’re an odd bunch, those of us who have the taste for the eccen­tric music of Charles Ives, the ama­teur com­pos­er and insur­ance sales­man who inde­pen­dent­ly devel­oped (ahead of every­one else) vir­tu­al­ly every musi­cal inno­va­tion of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Unrec­og­nized and unper­formed dur­ing most of his life­time, he com­posed bizarre con­coc­tions of polyry­thms, poly­tonal­i­ty, quar­ter tones, and tone clus­ters, includ­ing aleatoric ele­ments, long before any­one else dreamed of doing so. Read more »