Listening to the BBC Proms via WMHT Radio (almost no ads except those for the arts and totally listener sponsored). Beethoven's Ninth symphony at this year's BBC Proms conducted Vladimir Jurowski. Great detail but: rummaging through my boxes I found a cassette tape marked Klemperer- Beethoven 9 (it had a cassette soulmate: Furtwängler 9th- yet to be found...I remember his interpretation had Beethoven almost disintegrating at times in the slow movement-akin to the late sonatas/quartets). Don't remember which of Klemperer's half-dozen recordings it was (not this I think-but the same spirit is there). The symphony's 3rd movement in Klemperer is akin to skating on ice. Not thin ice but Olympic Medal ice. A somewhat elegiac yet rigorously disturbing rainbow. Very hard act for memory to follow. Then there was Sinopoli live with the Philharmonia at the Taormina Festival. Beethoven with Mount Etna as a backdrop- how good does it get? Sinopoli was one of the most enthusiastic musicians I ever met. For my money, he was like an Italian Leonard Bernstein. Having said that: there was no one like Bernstein.
The mind boggles if Sinopoli had written an Italian ‘West Side Story’: THAT would never have happened but in ‘never never land’….there was/is Abbado/Muti the famous duo. In the history of Italian music you think that there could not be 100 Italian Simon Rattles?! (No disrespect maestro Srr Simon RBoccanegRa;) as you well know) ..
Interestingly: what the Italians did create (and the Yanks won’t win a law suit in that case) is cinema. (OK that's CNN talking now;) There was Kuleshov, Eisenstein, DW Griffith, Powell/Pressburger). And music. THAT is a documentary in and of itself. Post-war Italian cinema is not and should never be relegated to a few barking dogs at an art house cinema. It was CNN when (as Larry Wilmore once spake it was NEWS) ! To see Anna Magnani…: enough said.
What IS it about Italy that is so self-defeating? Hey: valid question! Is it that you always get screwed when you finally get somewhere? You guys created music. Hello! Like you can’t do it again!
Opinions vary about Sinopoli's interpretations; there was something special about the 9th that evening. Not the slow movement's 60 metronome score marking (as Sir Roger Norrington adhered to). Wasn't it paired with Berio's Sinfonia?....long long time ago. Mind you last year seems to be as far as memory goes these days...tant pis...doesn't anybody still wear a French hat../I'll drink to that!
I have/had a cassette somewhere of Maestro Sinopoli enthussing to me about the island he would buy off the coast of Italy. The island that would become a haven/home for musical pusuit. Did I wipe that tape? You say crazy? No so. I totally see why the BBC wiped classic episodes of their seriels etc. NOT because they didn’t care. Because no-one (their bosses) cared about giving them more money to pursue excellence! Or rather preserve excellence. All totally makes sense to me now. For the BBC to wipe material is one thing. In my case cassette tapes weren't that expensive back then but you have to be somewhat self-obsessed and obsessive to think that by keeping that tape it makes history. In my case it was simply a matter of: I just didn't have time to buy another cassette for that interview. Crazy I know....Maybe.... somewhere.
WMHT airs NPR's weekly young talent programme From The Top. Special guest this week was film composer Danny Elfman (who's that 'yelLow jacket' tim burton;). Who was alec baldwin before Beetlejuice:) ! Shouldn't Mr Alec Baldwin get an award for best intonation of the word Philharmonic? ! The talent on From The Top, most still in their teens, is breathtaking. Imagine what a more wonderful world it would be if all money that is currently spent on …well you know…was spent on music education!
Not meaning to burst that balloon I launched: but how many From the Top caliber classical teen talent is there throughout the world?! Mucho.
As we all know. Mucho! There are dozens upon dozens upon…who can play the repertoire of choice-almost backwards. It’s not a crime to feel good about that achievement. But is it you? Is it the composer?
I knew a guy in high school- light years better a pianist than me. There was never any soul to his playing, though. I asked him one day and his response was so arrogantly depressing. He honestly considered that his interpretation was worthier than the music.
That being said: it is always the ‘you-ness’ that makes music speak. Classical or otherwise. Daring to be you and different doesn’t equate to arrogance. Music is a very strange thing. It can’t really ever speak unless there is always a void for the listener to enter in. Thence creating another void.
Funny story that I hadn’t heard before WMHT. Period violin instrumentalist Rachel Podger (who’d been in Jonathan Miller’s Bach St Matthew Passion orchestra) was so scared of the negative attitude towards period instrumentalists when studying (i.e. poor cousin to the ‘proper’ modern instrument that you can’t play) that she carried 2 violins to school. So when asked she could say, “just trying out another one”. How times have changed. Well: in some ways…
Apologies, I have to post in fits and starts as my non-Apple battery is screwed as is my non-Apple power adapter. And maybe my dinosaur Apple laptop too is screwed! (I actually saw that 'act' between 2 ?Wanderer? butterflies on my back porch yesterday- no, I ain't making it up. The female, I guess, with wings outstretched (oblivious to my presence) the male clinching his butterfly buttocks, I guess. ) David Attenborough is awesome but to have him on your doorstep...;)
My APPLE (big letters) laptop does at least what I tell it to do. Is there a metaphor within the grand scheme? I balanced a paint tin atop the adaptor and the thing seemed to work. Now it is balanced on its own like that car a cliff top about to fall into the abyss in that movie: what was that a comedy/tragedy? No: not the PBS special White House! Grrr....I ain’t sayin’ that if I’d bought Apple proprietary products that my life would have been better, just have had more of a chance in life;) (do I get free hardware Bill Gates, I mean Steve from the grave…) for the mention? Still haven’t got my free piano tuning from Young Chang. I need to work harder on my material….It is NOT easy Mr.President. You had Seinfeld bring you coffee and what did you do with THAT opportunity! No wonder half of America is voting for Trump. Yes..that crack.....I know...
[and in retrospect that quip isn't so funny because it ain't true. The President's Correspondents' Dinner speech was so full of comic timing I bet Seinfeld wish he'd never 'helped out';) Obama needs a job next year. It's America. Get real. Still: I'd settle for supporting act Jerry. Why do you need all those cars anyway?!:) I've been looking at all my art 'orphans'. They are in a garage too. Aren't they still 'orphans'. I didn't mean it that way. I meant to have them hanging in all their modest glory, a vision of all those orphans quietly singing/dancing meditating together. It’s a shame to see them still stuck in boxes. A name on a list. An accession number. Maybe they all get ‘happy’ like in a Night of the Museum dead of night. Far better behaved I am sure than Ben Stiller’s comrades. Dancing cars? ummm...they kind of did that in Cars. N'est pas?
All of that at the risk of being the ‘butt’ of a Larry Wilmore Hilary Clinton joke about being non-conversant with modern technology….-ah: like I would ever be in that picture- even if Wilmore had the Great Wall of China to laugh at! (well: maybe I could fit in somewhere in that crack just near…oops..as M. Sondheim once said, “don’t finish that sentence”.
Sorry-Grateful (Company-Stephen Sondheim)
All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.
Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.
To love truth means to endure the void and, as a result, to accept death. Truth is on the side of death.
We must continually suspend the work of the imagination in filling the void within ourselves.
If we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe?
Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace)
this post is unfinished....and in rehearsal...;)
