Bedroom Community

I would like to see this tour. But hey, I live in California.






Bedroom Community releases have gotten some backlash around the internet. I don't care, these are the best musicians on the planet as far as I'm concerned.

Alfred Schnittke - Violin Concertos No. 3 & 4 (1991)

The second set of Violin Concertos from 20th century composer Alfred Schnittke! Look, two posts in two days and about 12 hours! Got the liners on this, so I might as well...

Concerto No. 3 for Violin and Chamber Orchestra (1978)
This work was originally intended to form part of a programme in which Hindemith's Piano Concerto and the Chamber Concerto of Alban Berg were to be played. This determined the orchestral forces of my piece, which sum up those of the other two pieces but which also influenced the sound concept of my concerto: thirteen wind instruments and only four strings produce an inequality of weight. I found a solution to this problem in saving the strings for the third movement, where they enter for the first time and replace the wind sound towards the end of the composition.

The title original planned, Canticum canticorcum, which I eventually renounced since I am against programmatic explicitness, found a certain reflection in the concerto's musical language (for example, in the soloist's initial cadenza). But there are also quite different influences at work - those of Russion Orthodox church music (in the final chorale of the first and third movements) and German Romanticism (the forest music at the beginning of the third movement which, despite the horn fifths and fluctuations between major and minor, is not a quotation from Schubert or Mahler). And the atonal idiom also leads naturally on occasion to twelve-note themes, but never to twelve-tone rows. the combination of these tonal spheres is not subject to any constructional principle: I merely followed my ear's commands.

I have long been preoccupied by the opposition of the tonal and the atonal. In this work I tried to construct a unified system of intonations linking the two soundworlds organically - that is, not only through the contrasting effects of night and day but also by means of the morning and evening transitions and the ever-present play of shadows and colour modulation. Atonality can be reached from any point in tonality (and vice versa).

The Violin Concerto's three movements follow the scheme of double contrasts (slow-fast-slow) and are played without a break. The solo part makes no virtuoso demands on the soloist and is predominantly melodically conceived. The first performance took place January 1979 in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.
-Alfred Schnittke

The meeting and co-existence of a variety of forms of musical material, a variety of worlds of style and imagery - these probelms are central in Alfred Schnittke's Third Violin Concerto. The orchestral forces are similar to those used in Alban Berg's Chamber Concerto for violin, piano and thirteen wind players (1925). Additionally there are four string players, whose entry marks the beginning of the finale, of the illumination and alleviation of the general atmosphere.

The three movements of Schnittke's concerto are there different stages or aspects of one idea. The first movement, emerging from the soloist's tense trills, presents the 'prehistory', as it were. Here one may discern the most important spheres of imagery in the concerto: firstly the intensively expressive, tauntingly enraged, dissonant structure of intervals which serves as the point of departure for the rebelliously unbalanced second movement; secondly the light and conciliatory major/minor flickering of triad runs, which finally becomes decisive in the finale; and finally the strict chorale, the most important of the elements, which concludes the flow of events like an epitaph.

The second and third movements merely develop the 'theses' of the first; they unfold a temporally calculated concept. The strongest contrast arises before the beginning of the finale: a storm-wave of contradictions and passions crashes down in an aleatory culmination; the musical material shatters into the tiniest fragments. And here, amidst the catastrophe, like an illusion of ghostly harmony, horn fifths suddenly appear - in the music of past centuries the frequently-occurring symbol of problems happily resolved. The sound here is devoid of the unambiguity acquired through the centuries; doubt shines through the major/minor play of light and shadow...The tide of music finds no rest; it hurries on into the depths of centuries, eventually finding its hold in a universal, eternal symbol: the chorale.
-Alexander Ivashkin

Concerto No. 4 for Violin and Orchestra (1984)
My Fourth Violin Concerto, a commission from the Berlin Festival, is dedicated to my dear friend Gidon Kremer, as a sign of my great admiration and most heartfelt thanks. Gidon has contributed decisively to the spread of my works, both through countless performances and also by inspiring and stimulating other musicians. For this reason the musical material on this four-movement concerto is taken from monograms of Gidon Gremer and of myself - and in the last movement also of three other kindred souls, Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Arvo Part. It is not, however, a constructed Babel (except for the perpetuum mobile passacaglia in the second movement); rather it is an attempt to create a melodic tension both between one note and another and also between notes and rests, with free application of techniques both 'new' and 'old'. Two beautiful plush melodies (the first running through the entire piece as a fatum banale, the second appearing as a false relief in the third movement) are merely two 'corpses decorated with make-up'. On a few occasions (for example the 'cadenza visuale', second movement) a peep is ventured behind the curtain into the soundless, hypnotic music Hereafter - into the world of silent sound (otherwise called 'rest'). But these are only moments, brief attempts to fly; the foundering descent back into the world of sound is inevitable. Or is it?
-Alfred Schnittke

The Fourth Violin Concerto dates from 1984. The concerto is unquestionably one of Schnittke's preferred musical forms. The previous violin concertos had demonstrated quite different compositional methods on Schnittke's part. This piece confirms his path towards greater simplicity, towards love for tonal, extremely straightforward musical figures. A large romantic orchestra is required, reinforced by instruments of striking sonic character such as the saxophone, the felaxatone (usually confined to lighter music) and most especially by an unconventional battery of chord instruments: xylophone, glockenspiel, marimba, vibraphone, bells, celesta, harpsichord and piano. Schnittke employs these last-named instruments principally for the support and coloration of static textures. The idea of a colossal Basso continuo, the chordal accompaniment of baroque music, must have been determining significance in this respect.

The Fourth Concerto has four movements. The sequence Andante-Vivo-Adagio-Lento makes it plain that a measured and well audible tone takes precedence over virtuoso passages. Right at the beginning of the first movement, important structural elements are presented. After a reverberating bell motif we hear a peculiarly plain, warm theme in A flat major, its instrumentation rather gentle and peaceful (woodwind and horn). With its tonic/dominant exchange it is intentionally trivial, like an exponent of another, lost musical language. The solo violin tries to attune itself to this, but upon its entry the veil of comfort is torn aside. A dissonant chord, including all twelve notes of the tonal system, is rudely inserted; the violin continues the melodic development with a harsh friction of semitones and broken chords. The mood only brightens when the violin takes up the opening bell motif. The plain theme then occurs once more, this time in C sharp minor, and - richer, as it were, in experience - shot through with distracting notes. The first movement concludes with the return of the bell motif, this time over a dissonant, static string structure.

This movement has not only seen the exposition of the musical material but also the erection of the compositional principle: the zones of insecurity lurk behind apparently tranquil beauty. The entire concerto is to be understood in this light. The lively second movement is basically one large cadenza over intricate broken chords from the soloist. At the movement's climax, with ever more rugged breakings, the tone of the soloist becomes more and more 'faded out' - Schnittke calls this a 'cadenza visuale', with the utmost passion but almost devoid of the means to express it. Only after a grandiose entry by the previously silent strings on the note G (the lowest note on the violin) does the soloist regain his tone - but at this point the movement breaks off. The remaining two movements advance other attitudes, stated at their respective outsets, onto a higher plane. In the third, the destabilization of an emphatically beautifully conceived melody is driven forwards; the fourth returns to the serene peace of the bell motif from the beginning of the work.
-Dr. Reinhard Schulz

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Alfred Schnittke - Violin Concertos No. 1 & 2 (1990)

As with lots of my classical posts, I will type up a portion of the liner notes, because they describe the music better than I can. I like this a lot. That's about as good as I get.

Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra
Schnittke' s Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra (1957, revised 1963) is rich in ideas and explores a wide range of emotions. Great inventiveness is shown in the treatment of the solo instrument, but the composer's attention is centered not on the virtuoso aspect but on violin cantilena. The wealth and unique beauty of its melodies are among the most attractive qualities of the concerto.

The principal subject of the first movement (in sonata form) begins with a flowing melody from the solo violin. The unusually complicated melodic outlines of the principal theme in combination with the complex rhythmic pattern suggest concentrated searchings, painful deliberation. The initial motives from this theme become interwoven with almost all the themes in the other movements, playing røle of leading motives. The subsidiary subject of the first movement, with a characteristic augmented second, also acquires an important place in the dramatic development.

The second movement is a rushing scherzo based on the alternation and development of three themes, all of which are related to one other. They are unified by a poignant nervous rhythm, angular melodic contours and "sharp" bowing. The concerto's leading motive is easily distinguished in the melody of the first theme.

The third movement opens with a tranquil and songful themes, also containing the leading motive. The middle section, wholly based on thematic material from the first movement, comes as a startling contrast to the calm and lucid song. After the statement of an agitated - yet flowing - theme by the solo instrument (this theme is close to the subsidiary theme for the first movement), contrapuntal development begins in the orchestra. This episode, where the evenly-paced counter-subject recalls the outlines of the leading motive, leads to a tensely dramatic climax.

The leading motive undergoes transformation in the resolute and resilient principal subject on the fourth movement (in sonata form); its melodic outlines become simpler and more definite, its rhythm clear-cut and precise. The Finale's playful and whimsical second theme resembles the subsidiary theme of the first movement. The closeness of the two themes becomes still more apparent when, after the statement of this second theme, the subsidiary subject from the first movement itself makes and appearance. A brief development section is followed by a recapitulation and an extended concluding section which presents, one after another, the two themes from the first movement and the themes of the Finale in reverse order.

The concerto was first performed over the air on 26th November 1963 by Mark Lubotsky and the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Gennady Rozhdestvensky.
-M. Yakubov

In autumn 1956, while still a student at the Moscow Conservatory, I began this violin concerto. I called it my Opus 1 - the last opus number I have hitherto assigned. The concerto was not reworked until 1963, and then to an apparent continuation with the quite different Violin Sonata No. 1 - but everything written until then was wrong, and has remained so.

Above all, I see a desperate striving to find myself in the work of this concerto. This quest as very rarely successful, indeed only on occasions - the unison theme at the beginning, the climax in the third movement, the final coda. It was a sound world of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, overshadowed by Shostakovich and adorned with the orchestral conventions of the day. But there was also a tiny breath of everything that was to come later, and for this reason it should remain, with all the faults of a first violin concerto...
-Alfred Schnittke

Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Chamber Orchestra
The solo violin begins with a broad rhythmically expressive cadenza in which a central function, akin to that of a pedal point, is assigned to the note G.

At the sound of a bell a string cluster joins in, and immediately afterwards brief sound structures from the wind, piano or percussion interrupt the separate solo violin episodes. The solo violin starts a new espressivo, and like shadows the accompanying violins follow (with different bowing techniques); gradually they resolve themselves towards ever stronger independence. The thickening string sonority is ordered and driven on y impulses from the percussion (bongos and tom-tom). Then, however, the strings, which had been splayed out into total dodecaphony, unite with the soloist for a unison passage overlaid by the percussion. A double bass solo (against piano glissandi and comments from the percussion) leads to a long improvisation from all the accompanying instruments. This is followed by a very delicate sequence of non vibrato chords from the strings, with which the virtuosic soloist joins in. A further improvisatorial section from the orchestra is followed by a surprising change of scene: a brief solo cadenza introduces an episode rather like a slow foxtrot, played by the soloist accompanies by piano and percussion.

Once more the solo violin reaches the fundamental note G; as if in a reprise we hear the wind entries from the opening. A bell marks the soloist's last interlude, followed by a percussion intermezzo; then string clusters lead to the final phase of the piece. In steady rhythm, the solo instrument reaches out from his "note of departure" to fixed intervals. From individual glissando and pizzicato comments from the strings there gradually proceeds an orchestral climax of which the timpani take over the soloist's hammering motif. After this outburts, the soloist continues this motivic work - which is inexorable with its motoric drive - until, above gentle clusters from the strings and wind, the ostinato note G slips away into its opposite pole, F sharp, which had been expected throughout the piece.
-Jurgen Kochel

The Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Chamber Orchestra was written in 1966 at the behest of Mark Lubotsky, who also gave the first performanec on the occasion of the Jyvaskyla Festival in Finaland that year, conducted by Friedrich Cerha.

The concept which lies behind the work comes from a certain drama of tone colours: the soloist and the strings are treated in a linear, thematic manner whilst the wind and percussion are aggressively punctual and aleatoric. The double bass has the special role of a caricatured "anti-soloist". The sequence of several contrasting episodes shows clear signs of traditional formal structures: solo cadenza at the outset, exposition of the two sound spheres, Adagio episode, development climax, recapitulation, coda-finale.

A chromatic twelve-tone row serves as the thematic foundation, but there is nevertheless a center of melodic gravity, the constantly returning note G, which sometimes leads to an illusion of tonality, especially at the beginning and the end of the work.
-Alfred Schnittke.

Enjoy!

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Steve Reich - Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint (1989)

Two Steve Reich compositions on this disc. The first three tracks belong to "Different Trains" and are performed by the Kronos Quartet, whereas the latter 3 constitute "Electric Counterpoint" and is primarily performed by jazz guitarist Pat Metheny.

Different Trains
(1988) For string quartet and tape begins a new way of composing that has its roots in my early taped speech pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). The basic idea is that speech recordings generate the musical material for musical instruments.

The concept for the piece comes from my childhood. When I was one year old, my parents separated. My mother moved to Los Angeles and my father stayed in New York. Since they arranged divine custody, I traveled back and forth by train frequently between New York and Los Angeles from 1939 to 1945 accompanied by my governess. While these trips were exciting and romantic at the time, I now look back and think that, if I had been in Europe durin this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride very different trains. With this in mind I wanted to make a piece that would accurately reflect the whole situation. In order to prepare the tape, I had to do the following:
1 - Record my governess Virginia, now in her seventies, reminiscing about our train trips together.
2 - Record a retired Pullman porter, Lawrence Davis, now in his eighties, who used to ride lines between New York and Los Angeles, reminiscing about his life.
3 - Collect recordings of Holocaust survivors Rachella, Paul and Rachel - all about my age and now living in America - speaking of their experiences.
4 - Collected recorded American and European train sounds of the 1930s and 40s.

In order to combine the taped speech with the string instruments I selected small speech samples that are more or less clearly pitched and then notated them as accurately as possible in musical notation.

The strings then literally imitate that speech melody. The speech samples as well as the train sounds were transferred to tape with the use of sampling keyboards and a computer. Kronos then made four separate string quartet recordings which were combined with the speech and train sounds to create the finished work.

Different Trains is in three movements, though that term is stretched here since tempos change frequently in each movement. They are: America-Before the war, Europe-During the war, After the war.

The piece thus presents both a documentary and a musical reality, and begins a new musical direction. It is a direction that I expect will lead to a new kind of documentary music video theater in the not too distant future.
-Steve Reich, August 1988.

Electric Counterpoint
The soloist pre-records as many as ten guitars and two electric bass parts and then plays the 11th guitar part live against the tape. I would like to thank Pat Metheny for showing me how to improve the piece by making it more idiomatic for the guitar.

Electric Counterpoint is in three movements - fast, slow, fast - played one after the other without pause. The first movement, after and introductory pulsing section where the harmonies of the movement are stated uses a theme derived fro Central African horn music that I became aware of through ethnomusicologist Simha Arom. That theme builds to an eight-voice canon; while the remaining two guitars and bass play pulsing harmonies, the soloist plays melodic patterns that result from the contrapuntal interlocking of those eight pre-recorded guitars.

The second movement cuts the tempo in half, changes key and introduces a new thee which is then slowly built up to nine guitars in canon. Once again, two other guitars and bass supply harmony while the soloist brings out melodic patterns that result from the overall contrapuntal web.

The third movement returns to the original tempo and key and introduces a new pattern in triple meter. After the establishment of a four-guitar canon, two bass guitars enter suddenly to further stress the triple meter. The soloist then introduces a new series of strummed chords that are then built up in three-guitar canon. When these are complete, the soloist returns to melodic patterns that result from the overall counterpoint. Suddenly the bases begin to change both key and meter back and forth between E minor and C minor and between 3/2 and 12/8 so that one hears the first three groups of four eighth-notes and then four groups of three eighth-notes. These rhythmic and tonal changes occur more and more rapidly until, at the end, the basses slowly fade out and the ambiguities are finally resolved in 12/8 and E minor.
-Steve Reich, September 1987

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Valentin Silvestrov - Symphony No. 6 (2007)

I don't know if anyone actually downloaded the Silvestrov I posted a few days ago, but if not, here's another. This one is a bit more traditional, yet still totally original and wholly beautiful. It's a symphony piece, so no baritone singing, just great mood music. I don't know much about it and don't have the cd to type the liner notes, but I'll post a BBC review for those interested. It's really nice. Dark, but done in a really great way. Just wonderful modern classical music, I suppose. Whatever.

If you haven’t yet encountered the music of Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, then it’s time you did; he seems to have been writing his ‘postludes’ for symphonic musical history for a good twenty years. Silvestrov calls his orchestral works ‘symphonic poetry’, or sometimes ‘metasymphonies’ where time flows in a wholly different way. He’s not alone in this, of course: other contemporary composers such as Pärt, Gorecki, Tavener, Vasks and Rautavaara are capable of warping the passage of time, yet Silvestrov has his own fully-saturated musical language, plus a post-Mahlerian sense of scale and all-encompassing humanity.

Silvestrov’s Fifth Symphony has already been recorded several times, becoming something of a cult hit in the East thanks to a now-deleted Melodiya recording. There was a fourteen year gap before the Sixth Symphony was finished in 2000: a five movement work described in the notes as ‘a living tissue of sounds, charged with deep dynamic forces, [which] sparkles and breathes as if bathed in sunlight or caressed by gusts of wind.’ I like that…except that it gives you no real idea of the yawning chasm from which the work seems to drag itself, shuddering and groaning towards that light.

So…is the Sixth Symphony about anything? The composer talked in an interview about its ‘atmosphere of imminent disaster’, and with hindsight that seems prescient: Silvestrov’s musicologist wife Larissa died unexpectedly just after he’d finished the first draft in 1996, and he included a coded cipher of his wife’s name in the final bars.
The notes refer to the opening of the symphony as ‘primordial chaos’…churning, bass-heavy chords that rumble ominously as piano notes and vibrato-less strings pierce the gloom like shards of shattered glass. Threads begin to appear, strands of melodic DNA being pulled from the slime to shimmer on the surface of this dark pool…until droplets of pizzicato at the start of the second movement send ripples to rouse the grumbling monster in the depths. The brass becomes dominant, until a dense string chord insists on silence, and the melodic material emerges on the violins, intact for the first time. The multi-stranded layers of constantly shifting sound dwindle to a roll of timpani and a single, hushed cello.

Then comes the massive middle movement, 25 minutes long, dwarfing those around it, evoking (and quoting) the famous Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Silvestrov constructs a breathtakingly beautiful centrepiece for his symphony, extrapolating on the sighing strings and the sense of timelessness that were already there in Mahler’s original, with a cascading string sound that would have Mantovani doffing his hat in respect. Then there’s stillness; an Intermezzo that’s all shimmering surface, glistening with harp, piano, celesta, and harmonics from the upper strings…a ghostly vision, slowly fading as tendrils of mist envelope the concluding chord. But all the time we’ve been making a slow, delicate descent…and when the brass growls and woodwind shrieks assail us at the start of the finale, the music is overpowered by a sense of horror, and desperate loss. We end where we began, with the last melodic remnants dissolving into infinite blackness.

Given Silvestrov’s personal history, his Sixth Symphony could feel as though it’s all about him, yet he transcends the autobiographical in a work that encompasses us all. The playing is superb, capturing the most delicate hues and gentlest whispers of the score, and the immaculate recording provides the inky blackness from which the music emerges and into which, at the end, it decays. Like so much Silverstov, you don’t have to know how or why it works to be deeply affected by it. It feels simple, yet it obviously isn’t; it’s profoundly beautiful, timeless, and unforgettable.

-Andrew McGregor, BBC Radio 3 Review

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Valentin Silvestrov - Silent Songs (2004)

I don't know much about Valentin Silvestrov, the 20th century composer. But based on this incredible collection and his Symphony No. 6, he is really something else. I'm horrible at writing about classical music, you know that. I'll try. What is presented here is 2 discs of music that took place in 1985. Spanning the 2 discs is primarily his four-part song cycle "Silent Songs" in which he composes beautiful music from the texts of famous poets (Keats, Pushkin, etc.). 24 songs in 4 parts for baritone and piano. It's haunting music. The last 4 songs on disc 2 is another single for the same setup. The music drifts, the singer Sergey Yakovenko has this really ethereal voice. It's singing, but not like any singing I've heard. AMG calls it the "closest thing to ambient vocal music there is" and I would have to agree. It's a very interesting concept. Best part of classical cds are the liner notes and explanations that are included, and ECM's New Series is part of this greatness, so I'll just type those out to help explain.

Ilya Scheps (Piano) Writes:
In Moscow on March 9, 1985, a special concert took place. Together with Sergey Yakovenko, the outstanding singer and musician, I gave the premiere of Valentin Silvestrov's Silent Songs. Some fragments from the cycle had been presented previously in concerts, but the complete version received its first hearing only on that day.

When performing this cycle, the singer and pianist face a challenge that has perhaps never existed on the concert stage. For two hours of very quiet music, without any outward effects or easy "fodder" for the listeners or performers, they not only have to capture the attention of the audience, but to lend expression to the incredible tension of the music, the electrifying contrasts between the very delicate and inwardly trembling and the eruptively explosive episodes of this invariably quiet work.

The music itself comes to our aid, allowing the listener to experience the world of the poems as if by magic. I have often read the poems of Silent Songs without the music and discovered, to my astonishment, that for each line of verse the composer has found the only "right" melodic phrase and inflection to express the meaning and mod of the words. As a result, a new substance, a new fuel, infuses the entire piece. The artist's task is to learn to work with this energy, to try to do justice to the music both technically and artistically.

The time spent preparing for this recital, the months of intensive and exhausting labour, as well as the concert itself, remains in my memory as one of the happy moments of my artistic life.

Paul Griffiths Writes:
We may feel we have always known these songs, and in a sense we have. The first hearing will not seem the first, though we will remember it for that slow shock of familiarity, how it awakens memories-those we knew we had, and those we did not. This is part of these songs' silence, that they make no noise of intrusion.

We feel we have always known these songs, in part because their musical language is immediately recognizable. It is the language of major-minor harmony (mostly minor) and, more particularly, of the nineteenth-century song with piano. It is a language that belongs, indeed, to former times. Here is what sounds like a folksong arrangement (No. 5). Here are turns of phrase (in No. 8, for example) that Tchaikovsky might have been proud of. Here, in so many piano arpeggios ad even in direct harmonic correspondences, are recollections of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, trailing with them the whole history of the nocturne. Here, reappearing again and again, from the third song onwards, is the gently rocking 6/8 rhythm of the berceuse. We are being sung to as we have been sung to before. We are being offered music that will go with us into the darkening. We are being comforted with lullabies.

Russian speakers will feel they have always known these songs for the special reason that the poems are among the most familiar in the language. For all of us, what we have always known, beyond the songs, is this voice. Singing almost always at a pianissimo-the marking on each song is sotto voce, and only in the Chorale (No. 21) does the dynamic level rise above the occasional mp-it is a voice that is not declaiming to an audience but singing into our ear. It is the voice of a grandfather, passing on the songs of generations.

With it is the piano, its close companion, now slowing a little, now pressing forward, breathing with the voice. "The singing voice should not be at a remove from the piano," the composer notes, "but must proceed as it were from the depth of the piano sound, now emerging, now sinking. It is as if one were hearing singing that is inside itself."

And again: "All the songs must be sung very calmly, with a light, transparent, bright sound, restrained in expression, without psychological exaggeration." The singer is not an actor, projecting the balm of Baratynsky or Lermontov, a legend from Keats or Shelley, Pushkin's solitariness or Shevchenko's farewell, the bitterness of Mandelstam or the delight of Tyutchev, the troubled aftermath in Yesenin or the assurance of Zhukovsky. The singer is here not to display emotion but to remind us of these songs we have always known, and of how melancholy and consolation go hand in hand.

Yet though we may feel we have always known these songs, we have not. They are new-startlingly new for 1974-1977, when composers in the Soviet Union were stretching boundaries. Heard in the context of other music from this period of official constraint's exhaustion-Sofia Gubaidulina's Offertorium, Alfred Schnittke's First Concerto Grosso, Galina Ustvolskaya's Composition No. 3, Arvo Part's Fratres - these songs make no claims of innovation (another aspect of their silence), in which respect they are indeed innovatory. Just when the stylistic features of Russian Romanticism were no longer being forcibly imposed, here they were, redoubled - and not by a stalwart of state music but by a young avantgardist. Just when composers could at last make big personal statements in public, here was one letting the past express itself, in the private dimensions of whispered song.

If we feel we have always known these songs, that is because they speak so much from long ago, because the singer is imparting nothing new. In his quiet retrieval, though, he is making everything new, for what we hear is his remembering. All the songs are slow; they have the pace of reflection and reverberation. They also have the space, the sense of cavernous chamber, be it only the body of the piano, within which we hear as harmony and melody the upper resonances of the extreme bass that is almost always in play. Just as the singer is asked to perform each song sotto voce, so the pianist is requested to keep the una corda pedal down through nearly every number - the single exception being, once more, the Chorale - but the fluctuating use of the sustaining pedal, also marked, keeps the resonances clear and fresh. Each song is the echo of a song, the memory.

Do we still feel we have always known these songs? The sotto voce delivery not only gives them an aura of intimacy and inheriting, it also leaves the singer naked, without the support of his training. And with this naked voice he has to cover a range of two octaves - to venture, even if the centre is solidly in a baritone's middle register, into both lower and, in particular, high regions, where the sound is bound to be impure. The resulting hazardous, tenuous communication is there by design. This is fragile music, requiring the utmost delicacy and candour from its performers.

How can we then feel we have always known these songs? The singer is placed under strain - freely places himself under strain, to search. Only one melody is immediately found: that of the "Ukrainian folksong". No. 5, a regular tune in a straightforward tonality, D natural minor. (Twenty years later the composer adapted this piece to make the middle movement of his Requiem.) Otherwise melodies stray, and end without finding their way back to the keynote, leaving the piano to complete the return or, more likely, continue the straying, until the music is overtaken by deceleration. For a while the piano rarely provides more than the briefest possible introduction, almost always there is a postlude.

So it cannot be that we have always known these songs, for most of them are still emerging, through seemingly improvised delays and changes. Often there are subtle adjustments from verse to verse - and strophic form is the norm. Even No. 5 has this feeling of tentativeness despite certainty, trying different treatments of the same basic motifs. In the postludes such self-exploration is continued to the point of self-dissolve, out of which the next song can begin. And the cycle as a whole has its postlude in the five concluding songs, among which the Chorale - almost symmetrically balancing No. 5 - presents the essential harmonies in crystalline form. For, magically distinct as many of the melodies are, they share fundamental traits, almost as if all were versions of one song.

If we have always known these songs, this may be the reason, that we know their source. It is that one song, the song we thought had been lost.

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Tarun Bhattacharya - Kirvani (1996)

Picked this up during one of my many visits to the university library. Didn't really expect much based on the gaudy cover, but it's pretty fantastic. Obviously, I don't know much about the musicians or anything else, so I'll type up the liner notes, which give light to it. Bear with me.

The Santur
An Indian adaptation of a stringed instrument found in Iran, turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East, the santur resembles a western hammered dulcimer, and is known technically as a box zither. The instrument contains up to one hundred strings and was developed and popularized on the Indian concert stage single-handedly by the Kashmiri musician Shivkumar Sharma, who remains the senior practitioner today. The challenge of the fixed pitch santur is to capture, as far as possible, a musical style based on traditional vocal music. Continuing the tradition of adaptation, Tarun has made some modifications to his instrument in both structure and technique.

Musical Influences
Tarun's own music education illustrates a multidirectional flow of diverse influences. Surrounded as he was by music (both is parents played the sitar) he began by playing tabla, the predominant percussion instrument of North India. As his interest in santur developed, he studied with his father's teacher, Calcutta's Pandit Dulal Roy, knowna s a performer on santur and the rare jaltarang (a series of water-tuned china bowls). Finally, Tarun chose as his ultimate mentor the world renowned Pandit Ravi Shankar, the sitarist who in turn had studied with legendary Ustad Allaudin Khan (1862-1972). Allaudin Khan performed on the sarod, but he was an exceptionally versatile musician who taught more than a generation of India's senior masters on a variety of instruments.

This Recording
The performances on this CD include two South Indian (Carnatic) ragas played in North Indian style: Kirvani and Hamsa Dhwani. The Northern and Southern traditions share common historical and theoretical roots; both are based on ragas (melodic structures) and talas (rhythmic structures), but each is distinctly different in performance style, musical instruments, and ornamentation.

Track 1: Rag Kirvani
Rag Kirvani is the first selection, and its scale is the same as the western harmonic minor scale - seven notes, with flatted third and sixth. The first sounds we hear are a series of two-note chords innovatively plucked with the fingernails. These are followed by a downward cascading strumming on the full scale which introduces a brief alap, or non-rhythmic introduction. Following the crispness of his plucked notes, Tarun's continuous light hammering on the strings draws out the melody of the alap almost in a whisper. In developing the lower octave, Tarun demonstrates his innovative use of variable pitch: he has added a lower string to the instrument which he presses down and releases with one hand to create glides and sliding sounds otherwise impossible on the santur. In the continua-alap, Tarun explores the harmonic characteristic of Kirvani, often skipping notes in a type of arpeggio structure which recurs throughout the performance.
After an alap of approximately nine minutes which ascends all the way up to the top of the third octave, Tarun introduces a composition (gat) in a medium japtal rhythmic cycle (10 beats counted as 3-2-3-2). Bikram Ghosh (son of the renowned tabla master Shankar Ghosh) introduces the tala with a subtle and delightful improvisation which emphasizes the fluidity of the variably-pitched left hand drum, or bayan. The two performers, Tarun in the lead, then proceed to blend aspects of the raga with the assymetry of the tala in a sensitive and dramatic interaction. Tarun sometimes tempers bright tones by damping (lightly touching the strings) with the free hand. Both musicians, in their respective and joint improvisations, reveal their exceptional virtuosity and youthful energy.
Beginning at around nineteen and a half minutes, the performers begin the conclusion of the raga with a fast gat in tintal (sixteen beats), and a vigorous dialogue in the techniques known as sath sangat (playing the same complex rhythmic patterns together) and saval-javab (question and answer), in which one performer echoes the improvisations of the other. Once again, Tarun fully explores the tonal colors of the santur with a combination of open, muted, delicate and vigorous sounds, striking with the santur's delicate twin hammers. One of the final stages of the performance is the climactic section known as jhala, in which a sort of floating melody line is alternated with a rapid repeated striking of the tonic/drone strings.
A final saval-javab brings Rag Kirvani to its final jhala, and concludes with a thundering chakardar tihai, a cadential rhythmic pattern of three subdivisions which is repeated three times in closure.

As is customary in North Indian music after an extended performance of a serious raga, the musicians conclude with light classical pieces:

Track 2: Misra Anandi
The second piece is Misra Anandi, equivalent to the western major scale with a romantic ornamentation of a full range of accidental notes. A brief alap introduces a lyrical composition in the eight-beat tala known as kaharva. A final alap-like structure recounts the basic melodic structure of the raga.

Track 3: Folk Tune From Assam
The third piece is a beautiful Assamese folk tune, played in a scale parallel to a western major scale and with a light-hearted six-beat rhythm (tala) known as dadra.

Track 4: Rag Hamsa Dhwani
The recording concludes with a brief rendition of Rag Hamsa Dhwani, a pentatonic Carnatic raga. The scale does not use the fourth and sixth notes, and the remaining notes are played in the western major scale. After a brief alap, the musicians share a composition in medium fast ektal, a twelve-beat cycle. The variations here are simple and more traditional than those in the opening raga, and after a simple tihai, Tarun concludes this recording with a refined, sweet and gentle ending.

Awesome. Enjoy.

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Erik Friedlander - Volac: Book of Angels Vol. 8 (2007)

All these Book of Angels posts are probably getting old, but according to Mediafire stats, people are downloading them, so lets finish off the series.

It's actually funny I didn't get this album last year when I was obsessing over cellist Erik Friedlander's other 2007 album "Block Ice & Propane" (#17 on my top 50 of 2007). Being as that was my first solo Friedlander album, his inventive and warm cello playing definitely made me look into some of his other solo work. My excursion into the Book of Angels series led me to this one, which on a biased note, may also be among my favorites (how many times have I said that so far?).

Let's just be honest for a quick second: the cello is one of the most moving and beautiful instruments there is. Plus, my girlfriend is an awesome cello player. Friedlander brings out emotion in his pieces. Block Ice & Propane told his history of family vacations, cinematic in it's beauty and simplicity, bringing to mind striking images of a forgotten America. "Volac" like all the other volumes in this series, is based on Jewish music (though of course written by Zorn, so not necessarily traditional). Though I can't sympathize and bring up my own personal memories with this release that I could with BI&P, that doesn't prevent the release from being just as cinematic and vivid. It still tells a story through music, it's your job as the listener to put it together.

It is a wonderful, wonderful set of music and incredible edition to a nearly flawless series (Book of Angels) as well as a welcome addition to an amazing catalogue of one of my recent favorite musicians: Erik Friedlander.

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Uri Caine - Moloch: Book Of Angels Vol. 6 (2006)

Sorry it's been awhile. Just lost motivation and have been busy and I went to Arizona for a week as well somewhere in there. Anyway I figured I might as well finish the Book of Angels series for you, now that I have 2 followers of the blog! Anyway this one is fun. Uri Caine, if you don't know, is a pretty amazing and inventive pianist. He's actually coming up here to Humboldt in January, so I'm stoked for that. This album is just him, solo piano and it's pretty interesting and invigorating. Anyway as always, I'm too lazy to write a real review so here's one for ya:

Since multi-instrumentalist/composer John Zorn added three hundred new compositions to his Masada songbook in 2004, his label has released seven volumes of Masada Book Two with players including keyboardist Jamie Saft, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, guitarist Marc Ribot and multi-instrumentalist Koby Israelite all rendering their own interpretations.

Moloch, which translates to king, was a deity to whom ancient Middle Eastern worshipers sacrificed their first born. Thankfully, pianist Uri Caine’s album isn’t as brutal as one might suspect from something named for a god who is often depicted as a man with the head of a bull.

Not to say that it isn’t forceful. At times it’s quite aerobic. Grumbling into a tenacious opening, Caine’s playing is direct and pointed on the first track “Rimmon,” and the energetic “Cassiel”. But it also yields to graceful flirtations like on “Lomiel,” where his left hand skirts gleefully around the heavy rhythm played on the lower keys. “Harshiel” is delicate as Caine plucks out a whimsical melody dusted with Sephardic implications.

Not only does Caine have a foundation in classical music, he has released several albums where he improvises the work of a single composer. He’s tackled Mozart, Mahler, Beethoven and Bach, but never the French composer Erik Satie or Hungarian composer Bela Bartók, thoughts of whom arise as Caine scurries over the keys mingling Jewish folk fragments with classical hues.

A founder of ethnomusicology, Bartók researched the music of regional ethnic groups and incorporated it into his own compositions. What Caine provides, missing from the music of Satie and Bartók, is the element of improvisation. On tracks like “Zophiel,” which begins with a gentle flow and traipses into festive jazz realms, Caine puts his signature straight through. Moloch: Book of Angels Vol. 6 is an album that commemorates a diaspora, pledging devotion to a legacy rife with substance and belief, while presenting a vitalized palette of comfort and renewal.

-Celeste Sunderland, Allaboutjazz.com

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Mark Feldman & Sylvie Sylvie Courvoisier - Malphas: Book of Angels Vol. 3 (2006)

Perhaps my favorite of the Book of Angels series. There are certainly still some elements of Zorn's jazz side here, but this is more like of a classical record than anything. If you got the Masada String Trio album I posted with Mark Feldman's amazing violin playing, he is all over this one too. And Sylvie Courvoisier plays pretty inventive piano notes. It's beautiful and again very Jewish in sound. A few of the pieces are a little more "avant-garde" but overall, a very pretty effort from this duo.

The second book of Masada tunes—300 compositions John Zorn penned in 2004—is only revelatory for the most diehard of fans. What’s more exciting over a decade into the Masada story is that new life has been breathed into the project. Following Book Two releases by Jamie Saft and the Masada String Trio, Malphas is a set of eleven of those compositions interpreted by pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and violinist Mark Feldman, a duo which has been one of the most exciting of the many performers of this music.

Where other groups focus on the jazz or the upbeat groove of the songbook, Courvoisier and Feldman bring a classicism to the project, closer to the Masada String Trio (Feldman with bassist Greg Cohen and cellist Erik Friedlander). Their delicate playing is gorgeous, even more so than on their Masada Recital from 2004. It’s an airy yet poignant record, catching the best of what Zorn creates in the compositions.

The packaging, likewise, is simple and attractive: a maroon digipack with a stylized Star of David cut from the front. Occasionally the pieces are referential, quoting Mozart or the six-note ballpark “charge” theme, an approach Zorn has long worked into his compositions. He quoted “Für Elise” in his pivotal 1993 work Kristallnacht and used cartoon sounds in the string-quartet-plus-turntable piece “Cat o’ Nine Tails.” There, however, the quotations referred to something about the context of the piece. Here they just seem to emphasize Zorn’s eclecticism and serve as a distraction. Those moments, however, are few on a warm and beautifully recorded album.

-Kurt Gottshalk, Allaboutjazz.com

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Masada String Trio - Azazel: Book Of Angels Vol. 2 (2005)

Volume 2 of Zorn's Book of Angels features the original Masada trio: Mark Feldman (violin), Greg Cohen (bass) and Erik Friendlander (cello). Again, it's jazz, though deefinitely leaning on the third stream or classical/chamber sound. But this set is definitely more in the jewish music setting as well. Like I also said before, if you have always been wary of getting into Zorn's works, Book of Angels is probably the easiest to get into (though not necessarily representative). Marvelous, beautiful stuff. Feldman's violin is especially prominent.

When saxophonist/composer John Zorn first introduced Masada in 1994, it’s unlikely that he could have anticipated it would become so successful. The first songbook was originally developed for his adventurous but clearly jazz-centric quartet featuring trumpeter Dave Douglas, bassist Greg Cohen, and drummer Joey Baron. Since then Zorn’s compositions—brief sketches meant to encourage exploration and interplay—have been interpreted by a wide variety of ensembles, ranging from the raucous Electric Masada to the elegant but still rhythmically propulsive Bar Kokhba Sextet and the chamber recital approach of Feldman and Courvoisier in duet. Special projects, including Masada Guitars and Voices in the Wilderness, have demonstrated the remarkable adaptability of Zorn’s songbook.

The Masada String Trio is Zorn’s most accessible ensemble, although it makes absolutely no compromises with the probing spirit that has rendered the Masada project his most endearing and enduring work. While the trio—violinist Mark Feldman, cellist Erik Friedlander, and bassist Greg Cohen—has been at the center of a number of Zorn projects including Filmworks VIII (Tzadik, 1998) and Filmworks XI (Tzadik, 2002), it’s been nearly a decade since they have recorded a studio album of new Masada material.

With over 300 tunes composed for his second Masada songbook, Zorn is in a different and more advantageous position. Whereas the bulk of the first book was first introduced by his flagship quartet, this time he can inaugurate the material using the wealth of musical contexts that have become part of the larger Masada universe. Astaroth: Book of Angels Volume 1 found long-time associate Jamie Saft approaching ten new pieces from a piano trio perspective. Azazel: Book of Angels Volume 2 reconvenes the Masada String Trio and, like Volume 1, demonstrates that there’s plenty of life left in the Masada project.

While there are brief moments of reckless abandon on the cue-driven “Mibi” and “Gurid,” the balance of the thirteen-song set manages to be approachable while at the same time filled with the kind of telepathic and complex interaction that renders it impossible to distinguish form from freedom. While some might expect that the trio’s inherent chamber aesthetic would be self-limiting, Feldman, Friedlander, and Cohen prove it’s possible to cover an expanse of emotions, from the exhilarating “Ahiel,” with Cohen’s powerful forward motion, to the darker title track, the Satie-like elegance of “Garzanal,” and the dervish-like frenzy of “Bethor.”

Like Astaroth, Azazel remains undeniably a Masada project, though it demonstrates a wider stylistic purview than the first songbook. Additionally, the trio has clearly evolved as a unit, with Feldman and Friedlander especially notable for shifting roles from support to lead so seamlessly that the changes are virtually invisible.

Azazel: Book of Angels Volume 2 is a strong argument against naysayers who accuse Zorn of milking the Masada project dry. With a large community of artists from which Zorn can now draw for Masada, there seems to be no end to its potential, and the Masada String Trio proves that it’s possible to create challenging and multifaceted improv-based chamber music that doesn’t sacrifice widespread appeal.

-John Kelman, Allaboutjazz.com

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Basil Poledouris - Conan The Barbarian Soundtrack (1982)

Yeah, yeah, ridiculous I know. But the soundtrack the legendarily awful (and one of my favorite!) films, is a good one. I mean this movie was hyped up to be a revolutionary fantasy epic, and the music matches that. Basil Poledouris is the writer and conductor of the music which is just epic in scope and a joy to listen to. Listen, get pumped for the battles and go and bash some heads.

The musical score to "Conan the Barbarian" is truly one of the great achievements in fantasy/adventure film music. Basil Poledouris, who composed and conducted the music, brings a tremendous amount of passion and skill to his task. Equally passionate are the performances by the Orchestra and Chorus of Santa Cecilia and the Radio Symphony of Rome. This is big, bold, richly colored music with a lusty, savage vibe.

The film follows the adventures of Conan, a well-muscled warrior played by Arnold Schwarzeneggar, as he battles his way through a mythic fantasy landscape. Poledouris brilliantly combines choral voices with a full orchestra to evoke Conan's world, with all of its beauty and danger. Particularly good is the percussion that spices many of the best tracks.

As you might expect, there is a lot of chest-pounding, martial-sounding music on this CD. But there are also passages of sweetness and delicacy. Every track is excellent, but my particular favorites include the relentlessly pounding "Anvil of Crom"; the tender, yet joyful "Theology/Civilization"; and the sensuous second part of "The Kitchen/The Orgy." "Conan the Barbarian" is a classic of the art of film scoring.

-Michael Mazza, Amazon.com

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Ustad Vilayat Khan & Ustad Bismillah Khan - A Rare Jugalbandi

Credit goes to Different Waters for uploading this first. Great blog if you like avant-garde and world music.

I don't really know much about the release and can't find info online (I must be searching wrong), but it's great Indian music again, this time for Sitar and Shenai. Really really great. I'm going to post his description too. Again, credit goes to original uploader/blogger over at DW.

Bismillah Khan (shehnai) with Vilayat Khan (sitar) (and unknown tabla player) recorded in the early 70s for RCA, but was never released in the west. the friend in Singapore who gave it to me says it is the most famous jugalbandi in indian history. my friend goes on a bit about Vilayat (i was actually hoping to hear stories about Bismillah):

"Vilayat Khan was drunk beyond drunk during this session. he was a notorious drunk until 1981. when he quit drinking his music changed also, settled down. he said he couldn't play at that level if he could think, so he had to get shitfaced just to play that fast. a huge majority of indian musicians have hardcore drug/alcohol problems. when ali akbar khan was 12 he was already considered best in the world, but he later destroyed his playing from substance abuse.

vilayat khan was notroious though for giving shit to people. he cursed ravi shankar in public countless times. once threated to kill allah rakha. if rakha played a tabla solo during a session, he would say "you aren't playing for george harrison".

this concert in the recording, by the end of the night he doesn't give a fuck. he's playing all over everyone. bismillah will start a line and vilayat will just play over him. and play this dark, scarey ugly angry shit too. vilayat was as angry and insane as he played. also had the most incredible melodic style. never sloppy. his nephew is best sitarist alive today - shahid parvez, really graceful and clear.

i've got some vilayat khan from the sixties too where he's trying to kill the tabla player by playing at insane speeds, fastest i've ever heard a human play. to where it actually becomes a drone as you can't even hear the notes anymore. the only shit you can buy of his is all from the early 90's, ten to twenty years after his peak. it's still really good but no comparison to the earlier"

01 Bhairavi
02 Dhun
03 Nandkalyan

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A Rare Jugalbandi

Imrat Khan - Rag Madhur Ranjani

Just a change of pace. Imrat Khan is part of the illustrious Khan family from India in which just about everyone totally rips everything they do on record. Dude plays sitar on this recording and is insane on it. This album is comprised of 2 30-minute pieces and both are extremely beautiful. One is "Solo Sitar" which is just that. The second is "Sitar & Tabla" which features Imrat's son on the tabla, and he is great too. I'll type up the liner notes:

The Artists

Imrat Khan is one of the most well known Indian musicians of our time. He traces his lineage back through a family of musicians to the court of the great Moghul Emperor Akbar of the sixteenth century. He trained on the surbahar with his uncle Usta Waheed Khan, and studied sitar with his older brother, the celebrated Ustad Vilayat Khan.
Gayecki Ang [a vocal style of playing stringed instruments] has become a trademark of the gharana (musical "house") of Imrat and Vilayat Khan. Gayecki Ang involves an extensive use of a technique called meend wherein a player pulls sideways across the frets and allows for an entire musical phrase to be produced with a single stroke of the plectrum.
Imrat Khan is renowned throughout the world, and maintains a busy travel and touring schedule. He performs regularly in the major cultural centers of Europe and the Americas, as well as in India, where he makes his home.

Shafaatullah Khan accompanies his father on tabla with a sensitivity that is characteristic of the entire Khan family. Shafaatullah first began his training in sitar and surbahar, and later studied tabla in order to provide accompaniment for his father and his brothers, all of whom are string players. He performs regularly with them in international circuits, as well as with other well known musicians. He currently resides in the United States.

Indian Classical music is one of the most developed forms of music to have emanated from our world. In many ways, especially as regards scale and rhythmic structures, it is far more complex than Western Classical music. Its improvisational aspects require and encourage performers to inject their own personalities into the music, without ever straying very far from the set melody and rhythm. In this way, a classical raga written hundreds of years ago may be rendered somewhat differently by any number of musicians over the years. These characteristics afford Indian Classical music a certain timelessness, and allow for a wide range of interpretations of a given composition.
It has always been a sensitive issue as to when a musician should feel comfortable enough to compose his own rag. A musician might attempt this only after a long period of his life, after a thorough knowledge of perhaps hundreds of rags has been attained. A musician of such stature might then present his own composition. It does not suffice however, to merely compose a rag because in order to be thoroughly absorbed into the musical system, a piece must be played regularly and passed on through the generations until it achieves recognized status.
Rag Madhur Ranjani is a rag of Imrat Khan's own design, but is based on two well known traditional rags, Madhuvanti and Shivranjani. Set in a minor key, Rag Madhur Ranjani echoes the pathos of Shivranjani, but also expresses fulfillment, as of finding one's beloved after a long period of absence. Rag Madhur Ranjani is performed on this recording in alap, villambit, madhyalaya and drut. The scale, in ascending and descending forms is as follows:

Sa Re Gab Ma# Pa Dha Sa

Although Imrat Khan is very well known for his surbahar playing, it was specifically requested that he render a performance on sitar for this recording. This request was graciously obliged, but it was not known until the day of the recording exactly which rag he would play. In Western music, it would be very difficult (if not impossible) for a producer to embark on a recording session without knowing which songs were to be performed. However, in the Indian tradition, many factors such as time of day, season, climactic conditions, personal feelings of the performer etc. regularly help to determine which piece will be most appropriate for a given performance. Madhur Ranjani was the perfect choice for this recording and it is rendered here with great passion and dexterity. The relatively diminished role of the tamboura, played sensitively by Irshad Khan, is used only as filler at crucial points in the rag, rather than throughout the entire performance. In this way, the silence that exists in between individual notes can be utilized to its greatest extent in order to create a tension and balance which are integral to the final effect of the piece.

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Rag Madhur Ranjani

Grofé: Grand Canyon Suite (Vinyl Rip)

Hey look at this. Another vinyl rip of a famous classical recording that I found in a dollar bin somewhere. Anyway, most people probably know "On The Trail" from this piece, but whatever. I'm posting this because I'm fresh back from visiting my lovely girlfriend in Arizona and we went to the Grand Canyon for first time and it was marvelous. Some fidelity issues due to me filtering out some scratches and other hiccups, but overall sounds pretty good with a decent set of speakers. More classical music for the spring/summer months. As with the others, I'll type of the liner notes here:

The music of Ferde Grofé is alive with vivid impressions of the American scene as he saw it - from the sidewalks of his native New York to the wide open spaces of the Far West. Always alert to the rhythms, melodies and harmonies of his country's life, Grofé turned to subjcets like Metropolis, Mississippi Suite, Three Shades Of Blue, Tabloid Suite. Most of all, and most memorably, he turned to a natural phenomenon called the Grand Canyon.

Here is Grofé's musical evocation of the Canyon - the elements, the sights and sounds, the wild life, the panoramic splendor.

The first of the five movements is SUNRISE. Dawn appears over the desert, heralded by a soft roll on the kettledrums, followed by a series of chords played by the woodwinds. The main theme - initiated by the English horn and taken up by the other instruments - depicts the full brilliance of the breaking day.

Next, vast and mysterious: PAINTED DESERT. The movement opens with a strange, evocative theme played by bass clarinet and viola. Woodwinds and piano emerge in weird harmony, then - as the bright rays of the sun flood across the sands - we hear a contrasting melody of lyric quality.

ON THE TRAIL - the most popular movement of the Suite - introduces a traveler and his burro. The bray of the burro is heard, then the graceful rhythmic melody of his hoofbeats. Against this background emerges the contrapuntal melody of the cowboy's song. The traveler sights a lone cabin (the celeste plays a suggestion of an old music box), stops there briefly, then travels on.

As evening overtakes the day, there is SUNSET. Now animal calls are heard from the distant rim of the canyon. The horns open the movement, introducing the main theme played on bells and violins. The theme is developed in turn by oboes and violins, by woodwinds and violins, by cellos and horns, by horns and flutes. Finally a fading repetition of the opening calls of the horns echoes into the now-fallen night.

CLOUDBURST is the final and most pictorial movement of the Suite, encompassing the whole range of a violent storm: the ominous approach, lightning, thunder, torrential rain - then a sudden calm and the emergence of the moon from behind the clouds. Grofé uses all the resources of the orchestra to portray the battle of the elements - then after the storm is over, builds a final, gradual crescendo that forms the climax of the entire suite.

The Grand Canyon Suite was first performed in 1931 by Paul Whiteman's orchestra. It received wide critical recognition as an outstanding achievement in American music, and it was enthusiastically greeted in Europe. Today it is an established favorite, performed by distinguished orchestras here and abroad. In this recording one of the most distinguished - The Oslo Philharmonic - gives a particularly rich and rewarding interpretation.

About the composer
Frede Grofé was born in New York in 1892. As a child he studied piano, violin, viola and harmony. At 17 he joined the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, and in 1920 he became pianist and arranger for Paul Whiteman's Orchestra. Grofé first attracted attention with his orchestration of Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, and he subsequently began to compose on his own. In the Grand Canyon Suite he produced one of the most popular and wide-recognized pieces of orchestral music ever written by an American composer.

About the orchestra
The Oslo Philharmonic, which made this recording stereophonically in June 1958, stands as one of Europe's important symphony orchestras. It was permanently established in 1919 after some fifty years of effort by Norwegian music lovers and musicians to found an independent orchestra. The original backer was none other than Edvard Grieg. Today an annual season includes about 120 concerts, many with the world's most prominent guest artists, and extensive tours. Øivin Fjeldstad, who conducts this performance of the Grand Canyon Suite, is chief conductor of the Norwegian State Broadcasting Service, and of the newly-established Norwegian State Opera.

- Notes By Karin Hartell (1959)

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Copland: Red Pony & Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem (Vinyl Rip!)

Most the LPs I own are from the dollar bins wherever I find em. Lots of stuff is bad, lots of it is in bad condition, and lots of it is stuff that is easy to find in any dollar bin or record store. This is something different. I mean, it doesn't sound great, and I can't remember where I got it (one of the thrift shops in the Portland area most likely), but I can't find a whole lot of information on this specific recording online, and I couldn't find the cover at all. Because of that, I scanned the cover, which only got about 2/3 of it, then i turned it over, scanned the other side, and then in photoshop put it back together. But it is two legendary classical works (one being the soundtrack to the great Steinbeck story), and the music is directed under the great Andre Previn. I decided to take my second stab at ripping vinyl and I think I did pretty well. It is good, epic stuff. And I like old classical LPs like this, because the liner notes are always so much fun, so I'll type those out now:

"This disc presents a double debut. In offering the first recording of Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem, it introduces to the repertoire of the phonograph an important early work of one of today's most acclaimed composers. Moreover, this release marks Andre Previn's first recording as a conductor of symphonic music.
Mr. Previn, still in his early thirties, is widely known as a composer and arranger of film scores, with two Academy Awards to his credit. Yet unlike many film composers whose musical horizons are wholly bounded by Hollywood, Andrew Previn has maintained his bonds with the greater traditions of classical music both as a concert pianist and as a composer. In recent years, he has also devoted increasing time to conducting and has appeared on the podium of virtually every major symphony orchestra in the United States. The present disc results from a guest engagement of Mr. Previn's in St. Louis, which drew such enthusiastic comment that Columbia Records decided to perpetuate the performance with this recording.
***
The two living composers represented on this record have one attribute in common. Each embodies the music essence of his country. To the ears of this generation, Copland signifies America's musical idiom while Britten's work is audibly rooted in the soil of Purcell, the Elizabethan madrigalists, and the English oratorio.
Both Britten and Copland, for philosophic reasons, might conceivably resent being labeled as "nationalist" composers. But today they are undeniably the musical representatives of their respective countries in much the same sense as Rimsky-Korksakoff and Borodin projected the musical character of Russia in the last century or Dvorak's and Smetana's music spoke explicitly of Bohemia. The flavor of the land is in there work.
***
The Red Pony is a suite drawn from the sound track Copland wrote in 1948 for a film version of John Steinbeck's story of the same name. The heroes of the tale are Jody, a ten-year old boy, and his colt, on a Western ranch. As in Copland's popular ballet scores, Rodeo and Billy The Kid, the music is a direct evocation of the rural West - a tone poem of prairie life. The suite is arranged in six movements:
1. Morning On The Ranch: A fanfare-like opening suggests daybreak in a land of vast, open horizons. The tempo quickens with the bustle of the morning chores. The fanfare theme returns as the sun stands high in the sky.
2. The Gift: A tender, dreamlike passage suggests Jody's hushed gratitude as his father tells him that the new pony is to be his own. For a while, Jody and the pony caper about jubilantly. Then the horse is quietly led back to its stable.
3. Dream March And Circus Music: Deep in daydreams, Jody imagines himself astride his steed, leading an army of knights. Yet in Jody's mind, the procession of the armored warriors sounds rather like a parade of cowboys. Next, Jody pictures himself as a circus-master, whip-cracking his pony around the ring. The circus band - like those Jody has heard in nearby towns - plays woefully off-tune.
4. Walk To The Bunkhouse: Billy Buck, an old cow-hand at the ranch, is Jody's special pal. They swap laconic comments as they amble over to the bunkhouse while the bassoon, bass fiddles and bass clarinet punctuates the lopsided rhythm of the cowboy's gait.
5. Grandfather's Story: Jody's grandfather reminisces about the old days when he led a wagon train "clear across the plains to the coast."
6. Happy Ending: The last movement of the suite is a sprightly reprise of the folk-like themes of the opening section. It logically serves as a musical finale but is unconnected with the plot of Steinbeck's story, in which Jody gains early maturity by learning to accept the death of his pony through illness.
The Red Pony typifies all the elements that are widely recognized as being distinctly American in Copland's style. Some of the thematic material derives from such homegrown forms of music as the hoedown and the hymns of various American sects. His rhythms sparkle with a syncopated vitality clearly influenced by jazz. There is a nostalgic, open-air feeling about Copland's harmonies, and even his lyric flights retain a cool sharpness through the glint of dissonance.
***
Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem has a strange history. In 1940, the composer received a rather mysterious inquiry from a high cultural official of the British government: Would he be willing to write a special symphony for a celebration in honor of a foreign ruler? Britten saw no objection as long as the work would not be expected to contain any jingoism or other forms of national blatancy. Eventually it turned out that the commission for this special music had come from Japan. The new symphony was to be part of the festivities marking the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of a present Japanese dynasty, which had been established in 660 B.C. by the emperor Jimmu Tenno.
In 1940, Japan was embroiled in a long and cruel war against China, and Britten, a lifelong pacifist, accepted the commission with the idea of finding some way of speaking his conscience through his music. In choosing three sections of the Requiem - the Mass for the Dead - as titles for the symphony's three movements, he hoped to evoke a sense of terror at the ghastliness of war. His outline, when first submitted to the Japanese authorities, was readily approved. But when the score was completed, it nearly resulted in an international incident. The Japanese sent a furious note to England through the Japanese embassy in London, protesting that the young English composer had insulted the Mikado by submitting a work based on Christian principles and liturgy.
With the help of his friend, the poet W.H. Auden, Britten drafted a suitable reply for dispatch to Japan. Yet there was no further word from the Japanese. Soon after, bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and all communications were severed. Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem, as an individual artist's plea for peace, thus casts a sad and ironic sidelight on the dark history of our war-ridden era.
The opening movement of the work - Lacrymosa - is heavy with grief and ominous with foreboding. It is followed by an agitated, acerbic movement - Dies Irae - depicting the desperate turmoil and anguish that is the wrath of God. The symphony closes on a quiet lament - Requiem Aeternam - imploring eternal rest for the dead. The three movements are played without interruption.

-Herbert Reid
(original liner notes)

That was a lot of typing, but it helps visualize the music. Enjoy the record.
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