Category: Music

…for something completely different. I give you the Trondheim Akkordian Ensemble and their rendition of Widor’s Toccata and Fugue. Deliciously bizarre, and while I can admire their musicianship, I do somewhat miss the sheer in-yer-face presence of the walking, growling bass line of the piece. The accordion just doesn’t have the same oomph of a thumping great organ (as it were).

 

 

 

(hat tip to Robert)

The wonderful Annie Lennox, and the video for "Lost". Not recommended for depression, but a reminder of the depths.

 

 

 

(hat tip to Gelert. Cheer up, my friend, it could be worse)

Bach’s Prelude for Cello from Suite No. 1 – beautifully played on acoustic guitar.

 

 

 

(hat tip to Kottke.org)

I don’t know whether to be amused or appalled at this. We do seem to be living in the Age of the Feuilleton, with trinkets like this on the market.

Apparently, George and Ira Gershwin penned a song: Dawn of a New Day to celebrate the opening of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. It’s rather ironic now in retrospect, given the year.

 

(hat tip to Paleo-Future for the info and the link to the song)

I see that Deutsche Grammophon has launched an online music store. It’s notable for a number of things:

 

The current catalogue contains 24,000 items, and the prices are reasonable. This is the first online music store that I’ve seen that I really feel tempted to buy from. Up until now, I’ve always resisted buying just bits (that is, MP3 files) – I really wanted the security of atoms in the form of a physical CD as well.

 

Update: Hmmm. Perhaps it’s because it’s the day of launch, but the web site is extraordinarily slow. It’s also very clumsily designed (IMHO) – new windows pop-up all over the place. I note that they also offer a promotion of one free track if you register before next February. Trouble is, they tell you to "enter your promotion code" when you check out the "free" track. It may be another teething problem – but I don’t seem to have got the promotion code… This experience is turning out to be frustrating and infuriating. Not a good sign for the success of DG’s venture…

 

Update 2: I was sent a message by one of the worker elves on the DG site, who provided me with a promotion code and encouraged me to try again. This time, I got as far as being told that the link to download my track had been sent in an email to me. Trouble was, it didn’t arrive. At least, not until 14 hours later. That seems to be rather a long delay for an online purchase experience. I hope that DG were just experiencing pressure from a large number of visitors. I’d hate to think that this is the norm. In any event, I do tip my hat to the person who took the trouble to try and help me out. That is good customer service and I appreciate it.

Call me old-fashioned, but I can’t stand shows where ritual humiliation seems to play a major part of the attraction. I confess that I do make an exception in the case of The Apprentice, but that’s another story. Recently I began to watch a series on BBC2: Classical Star, but I never made it through to the end of the first episode because it seemed to me to have been injected with cheap game show attitudes, including ritual humiliation of the contestants. And I confess that the lynchpin of the show, one Matthew Barley, strikes no chords with me whatsoever. His "charisma" leaves me stone cold and slightly appalled. 

 

I see that the conductor, Hilary Davan Wetton, has an article in today’s Guardian on the subject of Classical Star. I agree with every word that he writes.  

It arrived in today’s post. The latest CD from Annie Lennox: Songs of Mass Destruction. It’s playing as I write. Whoo-Hoo – Marvellous! Wonderful! More!

 

Simply magnificent.

And continuing on the music theme… I see that the wonderful Annie Lennox will have a new album out on October 1st: Songs of Mass Destruction. I shiver in anticipation (as Frankie says) already… 

I watched parts of last night’s Prom concert, which was broadcast on BBC Four. I can’t say that I cared much for what I heard of Thomas Adès’ music, even though he is apparently "enjoying spectacular success this year".

 

The real reason for watching came in the form of the closing work: a performance of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. I’ve always loved this work, ever since I discovered it back in 1964 through the medium of Ken Russell’s black and white film on Bartók, which was made for BBC TV. I’d never heard music like it before, which, when reinforced with Russell’s spectacular imagery, made an indelible impression on me. The moment of the opening of the fifth door in Bluebeard’s castle, with its huge orchestral chords, combined with the shock of the soprano’s high C, is something that always prickles my flesh. It has to be one of the greatest moments in all Opera.

 

Last night’s performance (sung in the original Hungarian) by Charlotte Hellekant as Judith was magnificent. Falk Struckmann as Bluebeard grew in power, it seemed to me, as the performance progressed, and the Philharmonia, conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi were terrific. All in all, a most satisfying performance. 

 

I no longer have my old LPs of the performance conducted by Pierre Boulez (the first version with Tatiana Troyanos as Judith), so I’m now motivated to replace the gap in my music library with a CD version. I’m not sure which one to go for, it may be the Haitink version, or perhaps the new one conducted by Iván Fischer.

Here’s something that brings back memories to me – a mix of all the various versions of the Doctor Who theme tune. In the forty-odd years of the series, it’s interesting to hear how the versions reflect some of the musical fashions of the time; the "Telstar" influence is very prominent in one version. I’m not so sure about the slowed-down version of the theme; it sounds very bombastic and Nuremberg Rallyish to me.

 

I hadn’t appreciated, until I saw the credits on this, that Delia Derbyshire was responsible for the orchestration and production of the very first version, which remains as startling today as it was all those years ago. She was a terrific composer and champion of electronic music. Her theme for another BBC series, about Tutankhamun’s Egypt, continues to haunt me*.

 

 

* Unfortunately, at the time of writing, that music clip no longer seems to be available. Even though it is listed on this page, whoever is responsible for the page has put in the wrong hyperlink, so what you hear when you click on the "Tutankhamun’s Egypt" link is, in fact, Derbyshire’s "Music of the Spheres" piece.

A musical Tesla coil that produces musical lightning.

 

This seems somewhat appropriate as there’s a thunderstorm going on outside. Presumably, over at Glastonbury, the rather less musical natural version will put in an appearance at some point over the weekend.

The reactable is a new electronic instrument that is controlled by objects placed on a table surface. Take a look at some of the videos here to see and hear it in action.

 

I have to say that it strikes me as too clever for its own good. I don’t think it will catch on. Bring back the ondes Martenot, I say.

Alexis Petridis has a rather amusing review of Rufus Wainwright’s latest album: Release The Stars. He thinks it is great stuff, but probably too rich for commercial success. Well, I think I’ll probably buy it, but I don’t think that will help tip the balance.

Joel Hruska has an article over at Ars Technica about a new venture by the Who’s Pete Townshend. The Lifehouse Method is supposed to produce a musical portrait of a person by using a variety of sound and image inputs. I can’t say that the results that I’ve heard strike me as being very interesting. As Hrsuka says, the portraits sound to me as having similar compositional skills to those of Nora, the piano-playing cat. Over to you, Nora…

 

 

Rufus Wainwright has a new song out: Going To A Town. I can’t say I’m particularly won over by the music video, it strikes me as being trite, but the song itself has some interesting musical ideas going on in it. I don’t know enough about musical theory to be able to analyse it, but I know someone who does: Robert Zimmerman, over at his Re:Harmonized blog. From him I learn, amongst other things, that the song contains a Neapolitan Sixth. Who’da thunk it?

 

 

Someone is thinking… I just hope that, indeed, 2000 years from now someone will be making fun of us… Then it will have been all worth while…

… is the refrain of the Complaints Choir of Helsinki. They celebrate those little things in life whose capacity to irritate is in inverse proportion to their size.

 

(hat tip to Andrew Brown in today’s Guardian)

Diamond Geezer reminds us that it’s 25 years ago this month that Laurie Anderson’s O Superman became an unlikely hit. It’s a work of art.

So I sat down in front of the telly, and, being a science-minded sort of chap, thought I would give BBC2’s new programme Battle of the Geeks a go. Dear lord, was that ever a mistake.

 

Within sixty seconds, it came across as the bastard offspring of Top Gear mated with Rough Science. While I have a soft spot for the latter, I utterly, utterly, loathe the former. Battle of the Geeks is another perfect illustration of how to dumb down science to the lowest possible common denominator and remove every vestige of what is worthwhile. A detestable programme, I thought, as I lunged for the remote control.

 

However, every cloud has a silver lining. Frantically pressing buttons on the remote brought me into the warm embrace of BBC Four. And there was Glenn Gould Hereafter, a simply magnificent programme about Glenn Gould. I knew the name, of course, and I will have heard his recordings. But now, seeing this biographical film makes me want to start really listening to his work.

 

If you get a chance to see Hereafter, do so. You won’t be disappointed. The final moments reminded me of Ken Russell’s early work of film biographies of famous composers for the BBC’s Monitor and Omnibus programmes, back in the 1960s, and I do mean that as a compliment.