mysteries of the heart
Apr. 30th, 2022 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yamamanamaThese three works were all composed within 17 months of each other, a thing they didn’t realize until after everything had all been picked out.
They didn’t pick Finlandia in response to Russia (in fact, this concert is at least two and a half years in the making) but it does fit, what with its themes about casting off Russian chains. It opens forcefully and turbulently and then becomes more lively. Later on, people added a chorus singing in Finnish, but that version is rarely performed.
It was apparently used as the anthem of Biafra (with modified lyrics, of course). I’m not sure if they’re still using it. I mean, if you can call Nnamdi Kanu’s fiefdom “Biafra.” Mono’s Finlandia is not the same thing.
In Finland, as in the rest of the Russian Empire, by the end of the 19th century, Alexander II’s liberalization policy had backslid under his own secret police chief Shuvalov, backslid even more and his successor Alexander III, and then was completely obliterated by Nicholas II. But that’s a story for Shostakovich symphonies. In Russian Finland, they had to perform the piece under different titles.
Amy Beach’s piano concerto breaks the rules: Usually a concerto has three movements: fast, slow, fast and usually slow to fast is a seamless transition. Amy Beach went more for a symphony format but then reversed the slow lyrical movement and the scherzo. The first and longest movement is a dramatic one that evokes Debussy’s chromatics and Chopin’s melodies, the second movement is a perpetuum mobile based on another work of her’s, the third is a “dark tragic lament” using a song depicting dusk deepening into darkness and life fading away to death, and it jumps straight into the fourth, a joyous rondo.
I’ve already talked about the Enigma variations. Just don’t think of them as variations on a musical theme. Think of them as musical caricatures of his friends.
Someone who was walking behind me said that he could definitely hear the bulldog’s misadventures.
It was strangely cold for the end of April.
Burning Question: Does anyone actually take Norman Lebrecht seriously?
They didn’t pick Finlandia in response to Russia (in fact, this concert is at least two and a half years in the making) but it does fit, what with its themes about casting off Russian chains. It opens forcefully and turbulently and then becomes more lively. Later on, people added a chorus singing in Finnish, but that version is rarely performed.
It was apparently used as the anthem of Biafra (with modified lyrics, of course). I’m not sure if they’re still using it. I mean, if you can call Nnamdi Kanu’s fiefdom “Biafra.” Mono’s Finlandia is not the same thing.
In Finland, as in the rest of the Russian Empire, by the end of the 19th century, Alexander II’s liberalization policy had backslid under his own secret police chief Shuvalov, backslid even more and his successor Alexander III, and then was completely obliterated by Nicholas II. But that’s a story for Shostakovich symphonies. In Russian Finland, they had to perform the piece under different titles.
Amy Beach’s piano concerto breaks the rules: Usually a concerto has three movements: fast, slow, fast and usually slow to fast is a seamless transition. Amy Beach went more for a symphony format but then reversed the slow lyrical movement and the scherzo. The first and longest movement is a dramatic one that evokes Debussy’s chromatics and Chopin’s melodies, the second movement is a perpetuum mobile based on another work of her’s, the third is a “dark tragic lament” using a song depicting dusk deepening into darkness and life fading away to death, and it jumps straight into the fourth, a joyous rondo.
I’ve already talked about the Enigma variations. Just don’t think of them as variations on a musical theme. Think of them as musical caricatures of his friends.
Someone who was walking behind me said that he could definitely hear the bulldog’s misadventures.
It was strangely cold for the end of April.
Burning Question: Does anyone actually take Norman Lebrecht seriously?
