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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 »

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.

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 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.