Sort of a music blog
random trip report

1/18/2021

Paolo played the Bach D minor toccatta and fugue at yesterday's BAMC, and said that a) there's doubt that Bach wrote it, and b) it might have been written for solo violin rather than organ. The latter seemed absurd to me, but there is in fact a wonderful performance by Sergei Krylov that makes it seem entirely possible.

12/28/2020

I'm in like with Fugue in C HWV 610 by Handel. There are various recordings at all sorts of tempi; my favorite is this one but I think I can play it better.

12/25/2020

A great rendition of Bach's Fugue in A BWV 949.

12/10/2020

The Cafe Zimmermann in Leipzig hosted the premieres of many of Bach's works.

11/29/2020

Another global group improv, this one on Georgia.

11/15/2020

Chelsea Wong finally uploaded her excellent performance of the Bach Chaconne.

11/5/2020

Check out After Bach by Brad Mehldau.

Bach's Prelude in G# min, vol 2, performed by the Swingle Singers.

11/5/2020

I've been playing the Maple Leaf Rag recently. Here's a fancier version by Stephanie Trick. And also The Entertainer, and some 4-hands blues.

11/3/2020

Dave Weinberg points out a couple of items from the Sorabjiverse:

  • A "virtual performance" (via Sibelius) of mvt 3 from from Symphony no. 2 (Jâmî).
  • Jonathan Powell released a 7 CD 8 hour recording of Sorabji's Sequentia Cyclica in January of this year. Some of it is on YouTube.

Also, Rich Kraft points out pieces from the Harriet Cohen International Music Award:

10/3/2020

A guy plays the Moonlight Sonata but the bass is a bar late and the melody is two bars late. Sounds pretty good!

Another guy combines every recording of Gymnopedie 1. Also sounds pretty good.

A tribute to Lalo Schifrin: various people jamming on the Mission Impossible theme.

9/17/2020

Lily pointed out Nocturn no. 4 op 38 by Lowell Liebermann, a modern American composer. Also check out his Gargoyles.

8/23/2020

Zach pointed out that the Goldberg Variations have also been played on the accordion. I like this better than the harp.

And here it is for string trio.

8/16/2020

Some guy plays the Goldberg variations on harp. Pass.

8/1/2020

Karen Nelson recommended Christopher O'Brien plays Radiohead. Monica's fave Radiohead pianist is Brad Mehldau.

7/16/2020

Lily posted this video by Nahre Sol about a practice technique where you make little compositions out of the hard parts: (Note: Sol has a whole series of videos about practice techniques).

Rich Kraft wrote: "Yup, this is an idea I picked up from more than 1 teacher I had. The way one of them put it: "Czernification" -- create the exercise that Czerny might compose (and probably did, anyway :-) ) to drill the given technical challenge. Also, "go both under and above" -- 1) Simplify the problem (e.g. decrease a jump to a much smaller one) into one you've already mastered, then 2) gradually increase the difficulty, while keeping / replicating all the *physucal sensations* of the mastered version (emphasis on sensations and NOT necessarily something obvious like hand geometry / positioning, etc) ; until 3) you not only expand to the original objective, but even go *further* that the original. This makes the original objective feel "easy" and builds great confidence. I actually brought this up when I had that talk a while back :-) "

7/3/2020

Nikolai Kapustin has died; bummer. What a fountain of beauty and joy. If you haven't heard him, try this.

7/2/2020

Some composers mentioned by Maryse:

  • Albert Roussel, (1900s) e.g. Suite op 14
  • Alessandro Stradella (1600s) e.g. La Forza delle stelle
  • Jose Marin (1600s) e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIQZE6kB5o8

    7/1/2020

    Justin pointed out that Vikingur Olafson released a CD with music by Debussy and Rameau. Other stuff by him: Bach organ

    6/29/2020

    Pavane in F# minor by Louis Couperin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX2TI8nzBvI This is a great performance largely because of the ornamentation.

    6/20/2020

    Monica played an amazing piece, The Battle of Manassas, by Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins.

    6/4/2020

    I found this recording of Berio's "Wasserklavier" by Helene Grimaud. She uses the same "polyphonic time perturbation" technique as Chiara Bertoglio in Babylon (see below). With this, the piece becomes contrapuntal rather than chordal. Amazing.

    5/28/2020

    I stumbled on Six Encores by Luciano Berio. They're fantastic; I'm working on a couple of them. I found the score, which is here. Two people recently wrote Masters theses about the work: one from Mills College and one from Ohio State.

    5/27/2020

    This guy plays the Goldberg theme - heavily nuanced - and the computer inverts it. Do the inverted nuances have the same effect?

    5/26/2020

    Lily pointed out this recording of Beethoven's Tempest Sonata by Sokolov. We're used to hearing this sound like a horse race, So Sokolov's rendition is shocking: the tempo is slower, and there's all sorts of articulation. But I looked at the score, and Dang! that's exactly what Beethoven wrote. But it's hard to play this way - how do you finger the LH, 5/5 or 5/4 or what?

    In college I wrote a paper about how to play this piece, and my paper - I now realize - was all wrong. George Barth observed this at the time.

    Anyway, this reinforces my view that Sokolov is the GOAT.

    5/21/2020

    This articlesuggests that music is even more a social activity than you might think.

    5/17/2020

    Monica played a piece on clavichord, For Rico by Friedrich Gulda. It's completely wild, and sounds like a rock solo by the Doors at one point.

    5/17/2020

    The Ligeti link I sent around a while back is from an opera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS5-A61Ow4s ... which is by turns tedious, irritating, and hilarious; I left at intermission. But Peter Sellars really likes it: https://lso.co.uk/more/blog/598-interview-peter-sellars.html

    5/8/2020

    We've been discussing pieces that can be played over high-latency connections. Monica mentioned:

    John Cage, Winter Music for 1-20 pianos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Z4VyKxGsA
    A Luciano Chessa piece for 5 pianos (all on the same part, attached, no recording)
    Morton Feldman, 5 pianos(!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIkdjbySmKg
    Rzewski, Les Moutons de Panurge - "If you get lost, stay lost!" http://ks4.imslp.net/files/imglnks/usimg/a/a9/IMSLP115525-WIMA.72ab-Les-Moutons-de-Panurge.pdf
    Long Night by Kyle Gann https://www.kylegann.com/LongNight.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzq8wYDUm0k

    Ron Kuivila mentioned:

    Morton Feldman wrote a whole series of asychronous pieces:

    Piece for 4 Pianos (1957)
    Durations 1, for alto flute, piano, violin, and cello (1960)
    Durations 2, for cello and piano (1960)
    Durations 3, for violin, tuba, and piano (1961)
    Durations 4, for vibraphone, violin, and cello (1961)
    Durations 5, for horn, vibraphone, harp, piano or celesta, violin, and cello (1961)

    5/8/2020

    I heard on the radio "Nardis", a wild piece by Miles Davis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiKej1JwQ6M

    5/2/2020

    György Kurtáis billed as the greatest living Hungarian composer. I don't know about that, but he transcribed Bach organ music so that piqued my interest.

    Here he's playing with his wife on a weird piano with a hyper-soft pedal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8lTh58jhA8

    Here's a kind of weird piece (which I'd enjoy playing with any of you): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCtlw-mJUhg

    Here's the original for organ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArSi4jrKcCo ... which initially struck me as boring, but actually is not.

    4/27/2020

    Pictures at an Exhibition on guitar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwmljH41B1Q

    I'm inspired by the fearlessness and ferocity of his performance, as well as the dedication and skill evident in the transcription, which he did at the age of 19.

    4/27/2020

    Aaron Andrew Hunt wrote 24 preludes and fugues: https://zwillinge.zentral.zone/katalog.php Monica knows him and has played many of these.

    4/1/2020

    A wonderful and often hilarious interview with Poulenc in which he talks about Ricardo Vines among others.

    3/20/2020

    A friend told me that a pianist named David Korevaar had discovered a previously unknown set of piano pieces (25 Preludes) by Liugi Perrachio, and recorded them.

    I looked for these on YouTube and didn't find them (I now have the CD). But I did find some Bach organ transcriptions by Perrachio. Allein Gott... (old recording, amazing) and An Wasserflussen Babylon (great performance by Chiara Bertoglio).

    These scores weren't on IMSLP. So I found Bertoglio's email address and wrote her. To my delight she replied and sent me a PDF of the score! I learned Babylon and later performed it at the music group.

    Her performance of Babylon fascinates me. Nothing is simultaneous. Everything is "rolled", but not necessarily bottom to top. The times of notes are perturbed in a way that helps separate the voices. Is there a name for this technique? How about "polyphonic time perturbation"?

    Anyway, this got me thinking about increasing the separation of contrapuntal voices, and I had some ideas about spatialization.

    3/12/2020

    Rich Kraft turned me on to Reynaldo Hahn, yet another obscure composer of the Ravel/Debussy era. The following are interesting:

    Le ruban dénoué --- The Untied Ribbon, 12 Waltzes for 2 Pianos and a Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ncPqQpwWRc

    One of a set of 53 Poems in his collection Le rossignol éperdu (The Bewildered Nightingale) ...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcoSLJ7i5Iw

    3/12/2020

    Mysteries of the Macabre, by Ligeti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFFpzip-SZk

    This is the wildly entertaining!! I'm not sure what the score says about staging. Here's another performance, in which the singer doesn't conduct, but does wield a vacuum cleaner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMGyn5vcUlM

    And another one, with some kind of schoolgirl outfit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCS5uLX_ecM

    1/6/2020

    I went to Chelsea Wong's Groupmuse at Lukas' house in SF.

    The first half was Chelsea, playing
    - the Schubert Impromptu op 90 #1 (the martial-sounding one).
    - Ravel, Tombeau (first 4 mvts)
    - 2 of the Crumb Macrocosmos

    These were all very good, though Chelsea struggled a bit with the piano, a Bechstein with a lot of character and resonance, but non-uniform. Adjacent notes had different characters. It was a cast of 88. The soft pedal made it more uniform; Chelsea used that in the Ravel quite a bit.

    The 2nd half was Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time", for which she had recruited Evan Kahn on cello and two other excellent players.

    I heard this piece for the first time last year at Old First Church, with biblical texts projected on a screen behind the players, and that left me cold. But this performance, and the environment, were much different, and I found it very enjoyable and moving, especially the piano/cello duet and the final piano/violin duet. It's long (50 min) - as Chelsea said, it stretches time so as to suggest the cessation of time - but I was so engrossed that it didn't seem long at all.

    12/29/2019

    I've been obsessing about this obscure piece (in particular the Prelude) which Bach wrote for lute, or harpsichord, or a lute/harpsichord hybrid:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lautenwerck

    Everyone plays it differently; a sampling:

    Guitar:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD86gLp_Nwg
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNtrZoJNA2c (some botches, but I like it)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGMzFay1a20 (Bream, lute; a bit too fast?)

    Piano:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOp09_SqP5w (tarted-up arrangement by Egon Petri)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwbgzYx8Jxc (too fast)

    Lautenwerck:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCRsoM55BGA (ornaments galore!) Flute and keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6laPJl7bmA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFZ2ErsI1uk (mechanical)

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