Playlist

Recorded

February 19, 2011
Suite in d BWV 812 - JS Bach - Blandine Verlet

Entrances burst in. The phraseology is not based on classically balanced thesis - antithesis, but on an image of flowering cumulus. Ms Verlet plays with an elegant inegalite, especially in the Sarabande.

Sonata in f-sharp op. 11 - Schumann - Peter Frankl

A study in quickly doubled modulation, coupled with Schumann's signature fragmentation through repetition.

3 Little Orchestra Pieces - Schoenberg - CBC SO/Robert Craft

Why is it so difficult to find recordings of these fabulous little pieces on-line? Has anybody recorded these since Craft did?

St. Louis Blues - W. C. Handy - Bessie Smith/Louis Armstrong


February 21, 2011
Symphony in g op. 42 - Albert Roussel - Orchestre National de France/Charles Dutoit

Throughout, a whiff of danse macabre.

When Johnny Comes Marching Home - Roy Harris - Seattle SO/Gerard Schwarz

February 22, 2011
The Incredible Flutist Suite - Walter Piston - Seattle SO/Gerard Schwarz

February 23, 2011
Metamorphosen - Strauss - New Philharmonia Orchestra/Otto Klemperer

Live

February 20, 2011
1977 Theme Night at The Comet - Seattle

The Downstrokes
The Blue Ribbon Boys
High Class Wreckage
Hollywood 77

The first three bands are local, the fourth visits from Hollywood. Bands 1, 2, and 4 more than ably hook into the New York sound legacy of The Ramones, offering non-stop doublefast doubleloud dance music, The Downstrokes showing their hometown roots with an occasional dollop of a lick from the Ventures. I've been a Ramones fan since Neal turned me on to them in, of all places, a music theory class at the UW back in 1981 or so. It was good to hear this music played so well, and to hear all these young people having so much fun with it.

But the reason Karen & I went to the show was to hear High Class Wreckage provide the local-historical context for punk and to make a case for its present and future. The relevant root music for HCW, a trio of bass, guitar, & drums, isn't The Ramones of 1977, but the legendary 1960s Puget Sound band The Sonics, who could lay a pretty valid claim for having invented punk rock. HCW has that louder faster Seattle beat and then some, playing with an abandon that catapults them off the stage. This is music for which the moshpit is the band's safety cushion, keeping them near, if not on the stage, finding mis-flung microphones, and generally looking out for the general safety. This music wasn't a Big Apple import. It's from here. And it's still here, very much alive in all its livid brilliance.