Playlist

Recorded

November 4, 2012
3 Liebesträume - Liszt - Michael Rudy

Exuberant metrical flexibility

careful registral husbandry

Tarantella from Venezia e Napoli - Liszt - Stephen Hough
Lieder und Gesänge op. 32 - Brahms - Thomas Quasthoff, Justus Zeyen
Liturgy - Pavel Tchesnokov - [from Rassegna Internazionale di Capelle Musicali Loreto 15-19 Aprile 1998]
Piano Concerto #4 in C minor - Saint-Saëns - Philharmonia Orchestra, Charles Dutoit, Pascal Roge

As though it never starts, just picks up in the middle. There is something almost Brucknerian in the dynamic between the square phrasing and the never knowing where a thing will get to.

Burleske - Strauss - Staatskapelle Dresden, Rudolf Kempe, Malcolm Frager

The parts slide off from each other as though lubricated, and tipped.

November 6, 2012
The Corcorans Cadet March - Sousa - Philip Jones Ensemble, Elgar Howarth
El Capitan - Sousa - Philip Jones Ensemble, Elgar Howarth

Several decades ago I came up with a system of choosing what to listen to out of my collection. Without going into great detail, and certainly without revisiting the Object PAL code that does the choosing, selections are made in chronological order of composition or production, in 5 year increments, i.e. something from 1800, then from 1805, then 1810, etc. Recently my uncle Jim Meyer gave me a bunch of his CDs, which is why this blog is suddenly awash in older music again.

All this to assert that it was entirely by happy chance that Sousa marches came up on election night.

November 8, 2012
King Cotton - Sousa - Philip Jones Ensemble, Elgar Howarth
Etincelles op. 36#6 - Moritz Moszkowski - Vladimir Horowitz
Hail to the Spirit of Liberty - Sousa - Philip Jones Ensemble, Elgar Howarth
Eugenia - Joplin - William Albright

J.S.

S.J.

Another happy chance placed Sousa and Joplin side by side. Each is a cartoon, a well-drawn caricature, one of self-satisfied triumphalism, the other of aspiration to sophistication. Between them is an American friction, poles of a national identity. Structurally, a typical Sousa march and a typical Joplin Rag could be peas in a pod, throwing their disparate personalities into greater relief.

La Mer - Debussy - BRT Philharmonic Orchestra, Brussels, Alexander Rahbari

In Session at The Tintinabulary

November 5, 2012
Banned Rehearsal 824 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer