Category Archives: C - LISTENING - Page 38

First-time listening for April, 2007

Posted by on April 30, 2007 No comments

17142. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in E‑flat for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, Op.12
17143. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in F for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, Op.22
17144. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in G for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, Op.65
17145. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in G for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, Op.35
17146. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in E for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, [incor­rect Op.36]
17147. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Trio in E‑flat for Piano, Vio­lin and Cel­lo, Op.83
17148. (Mary O’Hara) Mary O’Hara’s Ireland
17149. (Sandy Scofield) Ketwam
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(Wilcox 1956) Forbidden Planet

Posted by on April 28, 2007 No comments

07-04-28 VIEW (Wilcox 1956) Forbidden PlanetHow many times have I seen For­bid­den Plan­et? I’m not sure, but it is one of my ear­li­est child­hood mem­o­ries. Despite much that is quaint and embar­rass­ing, it still holds up as one the few films with the essen­tial “sense-of-won­der” com­po­nent cen­tral to lit­er­ary Sci­ence Fic­tion, but almost always absent from SF on film.

Some triv­ia about the won­der­ful, pio­neer­ing elec­tron­ic score by hus­band and wife team Louis and Bebe Bar­ron: The film’s pro­duc­ers orig­i­nal­ly want­ed Har­ry Partch to score the film. The Bar­rons were only sup­posed to make a few effects. But the first sam­ple they pro­duced con­vinced the pro­duc­ers to go with them for the entire film. Dur­ing the film’s pre­view, when the first elec­tron­ic “tonal­i­ties” came on, the audi­ence broke out in spon­ta­neous applause. Many peo­ple at the time found the quite ter­ri­fy­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the musi­cians union would not rec­og­nize what they were doing as “music”, and the Bar­rons nev­er did anoth­er film score.

Crowded House, Split Enz, Neil Finn, Tim Finn

Posted by on April 20, 2007 No comments

07-04-20 LISTN Crowded House, Split Enz, Neil Finn, Tim FinnCrowd­ed House has a tremen­dous per­sonal sig­nif­i­cance for me. I have not had many days of undi­luted hap­pi­ness, but per­haps the best of them end­ed with putting on Tem­ple of Low Men for the first time. For some strange rea­son, I had nev­er heard it, though I had been famil­iar with oth­er Crowd­ed House albums for years. So I can’t be objec­tive about the song “Into Temp­ta­tion”. But I think that even with­out the per­sonal asso­ci­a­tions, I would rec­og­nize it as a superbly craft­ed song. And that about sums up Neil Finn’s song­writ­ing: superb crafts­man­ship and intel­li­gence applied to intense­ly emo­tional sub­jects. I am not a sen­ti­men­tal per­son, and musi­cal treat­ments of the joys and dis­ap­point­ments of love don’t usu­ally tug at my heart. But noth­ing seems arti­fi­cial or child­ish when Neil Finn writes it.

For this Focus, I’m lis­ten­ing to the entire cor­pus of Crowd­ed House, and and much it’s pre­de­ces­sor Split Enz, as well as the solo work of broth­ers Tim and Neil Finn. My col­lec­tion is fair­ly com­plete. I have all of the orig­i­nal Crowd­ed House stu­dio albums [ Crowd­ed House (1986); Tem­ple of Low Men (1988); Wood­face (1990); Togeth­er Alone (1993)], as well as the post-breakup sin­gles col­lec­tion After­glow (1999) and the com­pi­la­tion album Recur­ring Dream (1996), which also includ­ed three unre­leased songs. In addi­tion, I have the Bonus Live album which had a lim­ited release as a pro­mo­tion for Recur­ring Dream . This con­tains some unusu­al live per­for­mances, some of which eclipse the stu­dio ver­sions. The ten minute rework­ing of “Hole in the Riv­er” is a com­plete meta­mor­pho­sis. In addi­tion, I have a per­sonal anthol­ogy of down­loads of mis­cel­la­neous live per­for­mances, includ­ing odd-ball col­lab­o­ra­tions with Sinead O’Connor and Cheryl Crow. The only thing I’m miss­ing is Farewell to the World (1996), their last live con­cert in Sid­ney. This is not even list­ed on Amazon.com, so I pre­sume it can be found only in Aus­tralia or New Zealand. Read more »

First-time listening for March, 2007

Posted by on March 31, 2007 No comments

17059. (Lui­gi Boc­cheri­ni) Quin­tet for Gui­tar and Strings in E Minor [arr. of Piano Quin­tet G.407]
17060. (Lui­gi Boc­cheri­ni) Quin­tet for Gui­tar and Strings in C “La Riti­ra­da di Madrid”, G.453
. . . . . [arr. of Piano Quin­tet, G.409]
17061. (Vish­wa Mohan Bhatt) The Best of the Cord, Vol.2
17062. Game­lan Semar Peg­ulin­gan from the Vil­lage of Ketewel, Bali, Record­ed by Wayne Vitale
17063. (Alfred Schnit­tke) Con­cer­to Grosso #3 for Two Vio­lins and Cham­ber Orchestra
17064. (Alfred Schnit­tke) Con­cer­to Grosso #4 [aka Sym­pho­ny #5]
17065. (Lu Chun­ling) Eight Mas­ter­pieces of Jiang­nan Folk Music [Jiang nan si zhu ba da ming qu]
17066. (Franz Shrek­er) Over­ture to Men­non [Vor­spiel zu ein­er grossen Oper Mennon]
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Liu Xing

Posted by on March 16, 2007 No comments

A large reper­toire of “new age” music has come out of Chi­na in the last few years. There, the term seems to mean more or less what “elec­tron­ica” means in North Amer­i­can par­liance. Some of it is equiv­a­lent to the sooth­ing stuff called “new age” here, but much of it is quite dif­fer­ent. You can find dance and tech­no mixed with Chi­nese pop vocals, both Asian and Euro­pean clas­si­cal ele­ments, and the kind of spooky elec­tronic stuff that used to come out of aca­d­e­mic music labs. Liu Xing (not to be con­fused with the young go mas­ter of the same name) is one of the big shots in this genre, and I’ve got two of his albums: Inde­fin­able, and To Do Noth­ing, as well as three pieces on com­pi­la­tions. Inde­fin­able def­i­nitely fits into the “spooky exper­i­men­tal” cat­e­gory. To Do Noth­ing is essen­tially a show­case for Liu per­form­ing on the zhon­gruan, a tra­di­tional stringed instru­ment. He is famous for his pro­fi­ciency on this instru­ment, and com­posed a con­certo for it, which I have not yet had the plea­sure of hear­ing. In this album, this instru­ment comes across like a sort of mel­low span­ish gui­tar as if Joaquin Rodri­go had some­how picked up sheet ­mu­sic of tra­di­tional Chi­nese melodies while stoned, and gone with the flow. The album’s title cut “To Do Noth­ing” is a good exam­ple. I liked best “Chaishi Fes­ti­val” which has a sort of Vaugh­an Williams feel­ing to it, although “Late Autumn Rain” came a close sec­ond. Some of the stray pieces I have, like “Still Clouds and a Soli­tary Crane”, and “Fad­ing Vil­lage”, which can be found on the com­pi­la­tion “Chi­na Chill” are imme­di­ately appeal­ing pop­u­lar music, with strong melodies etched out against sharp pizzi­cati. Both would be extreme­ly evoca­tive music in an appro­pri­ate movie. Liu was born in north­ern Manchuria, stud­ied and first flour­ished in Shang­hai, and made his first impact with a con­certo sub­ti­tled “mem­o­ries of Yun­nan”, which gives him about as broad spir­i­tual roots in Chi­na as any­one could man­age. He was one of pio­neers who strug­gled to open Chi­nese music to cos­mopoli­tan music, and is now giv­ing back as good as he got.

Josef Bohuslav Foerster

Posted by on March 9, 2007 No comments

07-03-09 LISTN Josef Bohuslav FoersterFoer­ster (1859–1951), a con­tem­po­rary of Janáček, does not share his fame out­side of the Czech Repub­lic. His long life encom­passed every­thing from the pomp and waltzes of Franz Josef’s Rak­ousko-Uher­sko Empire to the begin­nings of the Com­mu­nist regime. He was a close friend of Mahler and of Tchaikovsky. His oeu­vre includes five sym­phonies and five operas, as well as litur­gi­cal and cham­ber music. You can hear some sam­ples of his work in a brief arti­cle on the Radio Prague web­site. Like his friend Mahler, Foerster’s life was haunt­ed by the deaths of friends, fam­ily, and a child. He sought solace in his Catholic faith, and was instru­men­tal in reviv­ing the old Slavon­ic mass.

All I have to rep­re­sent him, in my col­lec­tion, is his Fourth Sym­phony in C minor, Op.54, sub­ti­tled “East­er”. It cer­tainly shows a mas­tery of the orches­tra. His influ­ences are obvi­ous, and in a curi­ously chrono­log­i­cal sequence. The first move­ment sounds like Schu­bert, the two mid­dle ones are very Dvořák, and the last one dis­tinctly Mahleresque. But the sym­phony is no mere pas­tiche or imi­ta­tion. The rich poly­phonic tex­ture is etched out with a small orches­tra, each instru­ment giv­en a clear and dis­tinct role. It is deeply emo­tional music, drift­ing effort­lessly between lyri­cal nos­tal­gia and tragedy. All these qual­i­ties are hall­marks of Czech music, and it is remark­able to me that he remains obscure in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world.

Adden­dum, added June 14, 2007: While in Prague, I picked up a vinyl of two piano trios by Foer­ster, one in F Minor, Op.8, and one in B, Op.38. They are fine pieces, and con­firm my impres­sion that he deserves more seri­ous lis­ten­ing out­side of his home­land. Both of the trios have very del­i­cate feel­ings, and fine melodies, though the lat­er one is notice­ably more melan­choly. Has any com­pose ever got­ten more cheer­ful with age? Per­haps Ralph Vaugh­an Williams.

First-time listening for February, 2007

Posted by on February 28, 2007 No comments

17026. (Yothu Yin­di) Freedom
17027. (John Adams) Vio­lin Concerto
17028. (John Adams) Shak­er Loops
17029. (Hot Hot Heat) Elevator
17030. (Johannes Brahms) Hun­gar­i­an Dance #1 in G Minor for Piano Four-hands
17031. (Johannes Brahms) Hun­gar­i­an Dance #2 in D Minor for Piano Four-hands Read more »

el hadj N’diaye — XEL

Posted by on February 23, 2007 No comments

07-02-23 LISTN el hadj N’diaye - XELEven with­in the fab­u­lous cor­nu­copia of West African music, el hadj N’diaye’s Xel (2001) is a excep­tional trea­sure. N’diaye takes a jour­ney beyond the famil­iar mbal­ax beat of Senegal’s pop­u­lar music to explore more var­ied ter­ri­tory. Some of the rhythms and gui­tar work could have come out of a Clap­ton album. But they are blend­ed per­fectly with African drums and balo­fon. The balo­fon solo on the song “Casa di mansa” is par­tic­u­larly beau­ti­ful. This is a trag­ic song about the ill-fat­ed seces­sion­ist move­ment in south­ern Sene­gal, sung in French and Eng­lish. Most of the songs on the album are sung in Wolof, Senegal’s pri­mary lan­guage. But the emo­tions in them are so pow­er­ful that you have the odd feel­ing that you under­stand every word. “Yoon wil”, “Xale bi” and “Yu sew yii” moved me in par­tic­u­lar. This entire album com­bines a refine­ment and pre­ci­sion of per­for­mance with intense emo­tions: bit­ter­ness, sad­ness, yearn­ing, remorse. I will play this album over and over again, and I’ll do my best to find more of N’diaye’s work.

Wax [K‑Pop]

Posted by on February 11, 2007 No comments

07-02-11 LISTN Wax [K-pop]For quite some time, Cool and Wax dom­i­nated Kore­an pop music. Wax is the stage name for a tal­ented female vocal­ist with a very expres­sive, and some­times beau­ti­ful voice. Her arrange­ments range from cheesy syn­the­sizer pop to fair­ly raunchy rhythm and blues. In some cas­es, gen­res are bizarrely mixed, such as when a cho­rus of grunt­ing male met­al voic­es inex­plic­a­bly fill in the spaces between vers­es of a Brit­ney Spears-ish love song. This may all sound pret­ty trashy to a North Amer­i­can lis­tener, but there’s no law against musi­cal syn­chretism, and in any case, East Asian pop plays by its own rules. I’m told that a lot of her suc­cess comes from the per­spi­cac­ity of her song­writ­ers, Choi Joon Young and Kim Gee Hoonong. It can’t all be in the lyrics: Wax’s pop­u­lar­ity extends far beyond the K‑pop scene, to the much broad­er East Asian pop scene cov­er­ing Chi­na, HK, Tai­wan, Viet­nam, Sin­ga­pore and Japan. My expo­sure is through the dou­ble com­pi­la­tion album Best Day & Best Night and the third album from 2002, Wax 3.

First-time listening for January, 2007

Posted by on January 31, 2007 No comments

16911. (Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart) Thamos, König in Ägypten, K.345 [336a] [d. Harnoncourt;
. . . . . w. Thomaschke, Per­ry, Müh­le, Alte­na, van der Kamp]
16912. (Martha Wain­wright) Martha Wainwright
Mojo Chess North­ern Soul:
. . . . 16913. (Mar­lena Shaw) “Let’s Wade in the Water”
. . . . 16914. (Mamie Galore) “It Ain’t Nec­es­sar­i­ly So”
. . . . 16915. (Radi­ants) “Hold On”
. . . . 16916. (Dells) “Wear It On Our Face”
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