Latest Thread Images

Popular Classical Music
May 7, 2018 at 5:40 AM Post #1,415 of 8,714
And another recent Friday concert from the NCH Dublin, no video available (27 April 2018)

https://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=b16_10868124_8861_27-04-2018_

RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra
Carlos Kalmar conductor
Storm Large singer

Male vocal quartet
Stuart Kinsella, tenor
Alan Leech, tenor
Eoghan Desmond, baritone
Jeffrey Ledwidge, bass

Narong Prangcharoen Phenomenon / 9'
Weill The Seven Deadly Sins / 39'
Schubert Symphony in B minor 'Unfinished' / 25'
Ravel La valse / 12'

Music for the head and the heart with the sensational Pink Martini solo artist and vocal superstar Storm Large and conductor Carlos Kalmar – ‘one of those rare podium leaders who never seems to have an off night’ (The Classical Review).

Get set for a remarkable modern voice, a compelling caustic commentary on the divided self, a tantalising symphonic ‘What if?’ and a waltz of glamour and grandeur that satirises the very thing it celebrates.

The music of Thai composer Narong Prangcharoen has been called ‘absolutely captivating’ (Chicago Sun Times) and his award-winning 2004 work Phenomenon testifies to the validity of that claim. Inspired by ‘mysterious and unexplainable natural phenomena’, it is brilliant orchestral display of chiaroscuro contrasts in timbre and dynamics.

With works like The Threepenny Opera and Lady in the Dark, Kurt Weill helped shape the modern musical. There is certainly a sense of the theatrical about his last collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, the bitingly satirical The Seven Deadly Sins. Strikingly it presents a portrait on a woman split into two characters – Anna I (a singer) and Anna II (a dancer) – to convey, Brecht, claimed, ‘the ambivalence inherent in the “sinner”’. Weill’s music is deliciously spicy and dangerously spiky.

Whether you regard it as Schubert’s Seventh or Eighth Symphony (the latest research favours the earlier numbering) the work he began in early 1822 and left incomplete and forgotten for nearly 40 years is more familiarly known as the Unfinished Symphony. Mystery surrounds its abandonment after the completion of just two movements and a few bars of a third. Was it declining health brought about by syphilis? Or creative paralysis in the face of Beethoven’s dominance of the symphony? It hardly matters in light of what we do have: two glorious movements whose melody-filled sense of drama and poetry calls to mind the lyrical splendour of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.

Although commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev, the choreographer refused to stage Ravel’s La valse, claiming ‘this is not a ballet; it is a portrait of a ballet, it is a painting of a ballet’. Conceived in 1906 as a tribute to Johann Strauss II, Ravel intended to create ‘a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, with which is mingled in my mind the idea of a fantastic whirl of destiny’. Destiny, in the shape of the First World War and the lethal flu epidemic that swept through Europe in its aftermath, certainly played its part. By the time it was completed in 1920, the work’s tone had acquired a less romantic, more sardonic tone vividly illustrated by brilliant orchestration and tonal richness.
 
May 7, 2018 at 2:24 PM Post #1,417 of 8,714
Concerning my lifelong love of Classical Music, enter now down below, within a Video, my Original Gateway Drug...."The Man"... who was in his 80's when he recorded this amazing album.
You will be listening to 80 + yr old magical flying fingers.
Amazing..
And truly, there are a lot of fine classical piano players who can play this piece, but, they can't speak it.
Horowitz spoke this peace as if the piano is his voice and his fingers are his words.
And who is now the fire of Horowitz?.....That would be Yuja Wang.
And who would be his heart?....That would be Alice Sara Ott.

Vladmir Horowitz

Song : Schumann - Kreisleriana (1)

Album : Horowitz - The Studio Recordings - NYC- 1985 (DG)

-
-
-

 
Last edited:
May 7, 2018 at 2:51 PM Post #1,418 of 8,714
From the Soundtrack... "House Of Flying Daggers"

Song : "Lovers"

This is one of my favorite movies., and if you have a hi-rz really big screen with a good home theater attached, you might check it out on Blu-ray.
Its Asian, Its dubbed, and its amazing to SEE.

Noone ever created in the history of TIME performs Female Chinese Martial Arts onscreen like .......Zhang Ziyi

"House of Flying Daggers".

-
-
-
 
Last edited:
May 7, 2018 at 9:03 PM Post #1,423 of 8,714
Glen Gould

For those of you who are new to the Glen Gould experience....

Glen Gould, became to classical music, in 1955, ( immediately after he recorded the Goldberg Variations} , like the Beatles eventually became to Pop, or Boston became to Rock after their debut album, or Queen after they recorded Bohemian Rhapsody.
Glen recorded this one selection by Bach (of more or less forgotten music), that he had been playing since he was about 8, and he's instant stardom was so swift to appear and so long lasting, that to this day, there is nothing quite as amazing to compare it to within the classical world.
Its possible that the recent Starbust of the remarkable and deserving Yuja Wang could the the one example that is fair to compare to Glen.
Otherwise, and regarding the performing Classical Artist, perhaps only Paganini, Maria Callas, and Vladimir Horowitz, understood and dwelt within the same level of Fishbowl Fame, within the Classical Music Universe since time immemorial.

Here are 3 of Glen's fireworks from the Goldberg, as (mono) recorded by Glen in 1955.
#2....#5.....#15

-
-
-

 
Last edited:
May 8, 2018 at 9:19 AM Post #1,424 of 8,714
Quite an interesting interpretation of Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Bibo no Azora" from ensemble Russian Renaissance who play "World music with a Russian soul".

Screenshot-2018-5-8 English.png

 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 6 (members: 0, guests: 6)
Back
Top