dissonance
Feb. 27th, 2022 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yamamanama20 days until the vernal equinox
Somehow they stretched out less than a hour and a half of music to two and a half hours. The train took a lot longer than usual so, I dunno, maybe something's just wrong with time.
Andris Nelsons, who is Latvian, dedicated this concert to Ukraine, which Russia has invaded. I’m beginning to think Putin is more Mussolini than Hitler. I don’t know what he expected. To put it this way, we couldn’t control Afghanistan and Iraq, and Afghanistan and Iraq were (and are) pariah states.
Arvo Pärt - Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, written obviously after the death of Benjamin Britten and scored for strings and a single chime with pitch A, a descending scale that overlaps in different tempos.
Dmitri Shostakovich - 1st Violin Concerto
Unlike most concerti, this one goes slow, fast, slow, fast.
I think of him as the successor to Gustav Mahler. The first movement, a slow and contemplative nocturne. The second movement is a scherzo. Scherzo means joke and this is apt. Not ha ha funny but definitely “trapped in a labyrinth with Lord Chuckles and/or Kefka and/or The Joker.” The third movement is a stately passacaglia that introduces van Beethoven’s fate motif. The cadenza bridges the passacaglia with a burlesque (or Russian folk festival, as Oistrakh put it) (no, I happen to find burlesque more accurate).
Kaija Saariaho - Saarikoski-laulut
Five poems in Finnish set to music. A version of a song cycle for piano and soprano. I think it was meant to be premiered in 2020 but that unpleasantness happened. Despite the supreme court’s objections, they did ask to see our proof of vaccination.
Some music is meant to evoke the sounds of the natural world. In Saariaho’s world, the human world has taken over. The percussion in one of the movements evoked the sound of an air conditioner running.
Igor Stravinsky - Жар-птица (The Firebird) suite (1919)
I’m not really sure why this suite exists. The full version of The Firebird is only about 45 minutes long. Anyways, what we get is the introduction, the firebird’s dance and some variations, the princesses’ khovorod dance in which they play a game of catch with an enchanted golden apple, the infernal dance of King Koshchei the Deathless, the lullaby the firebird dances to put Koshchei’s minions to sleep, and the ending scene in which the stone knights turn back to flesh, the palace of Koshchei vanishes, and Ivan Tsarevich is coronated Tsar. I know I’ve heard The Firebird before but I’m not sure if it was the entire thing or just the suite. I mean, it was 2000, after all.
burning question: why did The Atlantic hire New York Times Pitchbot?
Somehow they stretched out less than a hour and a half of music to two and a half hours. The train took a lot longer than usual so, I dunno, maybe something's just wrong with time.
Andris Nelsons, who is Latvian, dedicated this concert to Ukraine, which Russia has invaded. I’m beginning to think Putin is more Mussolini than Hitler. I don’t know what he expected. To put it this way, we couldn’t control Afghanistan and Iraq, and Afghanistan and Iraq were (and are) pariah states.
Arvo Pärt - Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, written obviously after the death of Benjamin Britten and scored for strings and a single chime with pitch A, a descending scale that overlaps in different tempos.
Dmitri Shostakovich - 1st Violin Concerto
Unlike most concerti, this one goes slow, fast, slow, fast.
I think of him as the successor to Gustav Mahler. The first movement, a slow and contemplative nocturne. The second movement is a scherzo. Scherzo means joke and this is apt. Not ha ha funny but definitely “trapped in a labyrinth with Lord Chuckles and/or Kefka and/or The Joker.” The third movement is a stately passacaglia that introduces van Beethoven’s fate motif. The cadenza bridges the passacaglia with a burlesque (or Russian folk festival, as Oistrakh put it) (no, I happen to find burlesque more accurate).
Kaija Saariaho - Saarikoski-laulut
Five poems in Finnish set to music. A version of a song cycle for piano and soprano. I think it was meant to be premiered in 2020 but that unpleasantness happened. Despite the supreme court’s objections, they did ask to see our proof of vaccination.
Some music is meant to evoke the sounds of the natural world. In Saariaho’s world, the human world has taken over. The percussion in one of the movements evoked the sound of an air conditioner running.
Igor Stravinsky - Жар-птица (The Firebird) suite (1919)
I’m not really sure why this suite exists. The full version of The Firebird is only about 45 minutes long. Anyways, what we get is the introduction, the firebird’s dance and some variations, the princesses’ khovorod dance in which they play a game of catch with an enchanted golden apple, the infernal dance of King Koshchei the Deathless, the lullaby the firebird dances to put Koshchei’s minions to sleep, and the ending scene in which the stone knights turn back to flesh, the palace of Koshchei vanishes, and Ivan Tsarevich is coronated Tsar. I know I’ve heard The Firebird before but I’m not sure if it was the entire thing or just the suite. I mean, it was 2000, after all.
burning question: why did The Atlantic hire New York Times Pitchbot?
