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What are you listening to? Part III
- Thread starter S.B.G
- Start date
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A couple of CDs arrived in the post but I'm made too lazy by this late June burst of summer heat to unwrap them. They're two albums I listened to for quite awhile on Apple Music (along with a couple other artists' performances of the same works) before deciding which ones to buy as CDs. These are the keepers, but it will take a cool rainy day for them to land in the rack system. Both albums feature performances by German cellist Leonard Elschenbroich. On one are the Beethoven cello & piano sonatas, the other some Prokofiev and Kabalevsky works.
In the meantime the heat and humidity suggest I just go with the flow, sync up my musical ear accordingly and so let Apple Music supply someswamp pop zydeco... 
In the meantime the heat and humidity suggest I just go with the flow, sync up my musical ear accordingly and so let Apple Music supply some
A couple of CDs arrived in the post but I'm made too lazy by this late June burst of summer heat to unwrap them. They're two albums I listened to for quite awhile on Apple Music (along with a couple other artists' performances of the same works) before deciding which ones to buy as CDs. These are the keepers, but it will take a cool rainy day for them to land in the rack system. Both albums feature performances by German cellist Leonard Elschenbroich. On one are the Beethoven cello & piano sonatas, the other some Prokofiev and Kabalevsky works.
In the meantime the heat and humidity suggest I just go with the flow, sync up my musical ear accordingly and so let Apple Music supply someswamp popzydeco...
While Beethoven cello & piano sonatas sound lovely (and I am of the opinion that Beethoven is more of a winter composer than a summer one - i.e. I prefer listening to him in winter), the one I would really be interested in learning more about is the Prokofiev (and I love Prokofiev) and Kabelevsky (not a composer whose works you hear all that often) CD.
Sounds fascinating.
Let us know how you get on with it.
That could be part of my almost-yawn when the CDs arrived. I pulled some candidates for a refreshed take on those works back in winter... my previous pick on the cello and piano sonatas was the set with performances by Maisky and Argerich; I remain fond of them but just wanted to see what next generation artists are up to with those works.
This is the other album with the Kabalevsky and Prokofiev.
Prokofiev Cello Sonata C Major Op.119
Kabalevsky arr. from Op.27 pieces for children: Novelette (#25)
Prokofiev from ballet The Stone flower: Valse (arr.by the pianist, Peter Limonov)
Prokofiev from opera The Love for Three Oranges: March Op.33 (arr. Limonov)
Prokofiev from ballet Cinderella, Op 87: Adagio (an arrangement by the legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich)
Kabalevsky Cello Concerto 2 C minor Op.77
Kabalevsky arr. from Op.27 pieces for children: Novelette (#25)
Prokofiev from ballet The Stone flower: Valse (arr.by the pianist, Peter Limonov)
Prokofiev from opera The Love for Three Oranges: March Op.33 (arr. Limonov)
Prokofiev from ballet Cinderella, Op 87: Adagio (an arrangement by the legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich)
Kabalevsky Cello Concerto 2 C minor Op.77
The Prokofiev sonata was written in a time when the composer was taking some heat from Stalin's enforcers. Unlike the less fortunate Gavriil Popov, both Kabalevsky and Prokoviev for the most part managed to thread the needle in the interests of career and self preservation.
The works of Kabalevsky, Prokofiev and those of Dmitri Shostakovich that are still in major performers' repertoire today are occasionally reflective of Stalin's pressure to produce for the proletariat. However, the fact that Kabalevksy in particular and his proteges had enough politically-wired musical connections in government --at least to avoid professional disaster via the dread charge of western-influenced "formalism"-- does shine through in most of their works that we still hear performed in the 21st century.
Gavriil Popov ended up writing mostly forgettable works after a symphony he composed was banned exactly one day after its premier performance in 1935. Curiously enough, the work had won some prizes in the USSR before the writing was even finished, but things were going well south for artistic freedom under Soviet control by the mid 1930s when it premiered.
After the ban, Popov apparently lost his nerve and saved his life, although he gradually descended into alcoholism, unable to summon the free will and artistic impulse to save his reputation. It's too bad really; his 1927 Chamber Symphony (Septet C Maj Op 2) had a flair that hinted at greatness Popov would not reach once he felt intimidated by the reaction to his 1935 work. Even though he wrote truckloads of music thereafter, only a few of the works seemed to unleash a remembered creativity.
The ban on the first symphony of Popov was appealed, successfully, by a group of composers with better political connections than Popov had established. The work was eventually deemed to have been a creative influence on Shostakovich, whose own exploration of Western musical developments later got him into trouble with the authorities more than once: Stalin's Great Purge in 1937 removed among other notables a protector of Shostakovich from high in the government (Tukhachevsky, a former marshal of the USSR, highest rank of the military, who was eventually shot for treason).
Quite exemplary of the convoluted paths Soviet arts took in that era, the lift of the ban on the Popov first symphony was brief and somewhat ironic: Shostakovitch, who had helped appeal that Popov ban , was himself denounced for "formalism" in 1936. At that point Popov's first symphony was shelved until long after his death in 1972. Shostakovitch managed to restore enough support to revive his own career, but the Popov Symphony that had influenced Shostakovich's early exploration of things Western was not performed in Russia again until 1989. It premiered in New York in 2003.
After the ban, Popov apparently lost his nerve and saved his life, although he gradually descended into alcoholism, unable to summon the free will and artistic impulse to save his reputation. It's too bad really; his 1927 Chamber Symphony (Septet C Maj Op 2) had a flair that hinted at greatness Popov would not reach once he felt intimidated by the reaction to his 1935 work. Even though he wrote truckloads of music thereafter, only a few of the works seemed to unleash a remembered creativity.
The ban on the first symphony of Popov was appealed, successfully, by a group of composers with better political connections than Popov had established. The work was eventually deemed to have been a creative influence on Shostakovich, whose own exploration of Western musical developments later got him into trouble with the authorities more than once: Stalin's Great Purge in 1937 removed among other notables a protector of Shostakovich from high in the government (Tukhachevsky, a former marshal of the USSR, highest rank of the military, who was eventually shot for treason).
Quite exemplary of the convoluted paths Soviet arts took in that era, the lift of the ban on the Popov first symphony was brief and somewhat ironic: Shostakovitch, who had helped appeal that Popov ban , was himself denounced for "formalism" in 1936. At that point Popov's first symphony was shelved until long after his death in 1972. Shostakovitch managed to restore enough support to revive his own career, but the Popov Symphony that had influenced Shostakovich's early exploration of things Western was not performed in Russia again until 1989. It premiered in New York in 2003.
What a wonderful, informative, thoroughly enjoyable and most interesting post (and I taught Russian and Soviet history & politics in an earlier life, and tried to touch on some cultural stuff in the process).
Prokofiev had the misfortune to pass away on the same day as Stalin (whom he privately loathed, but - for obvious reasons - could not give voice to that sentiment in public), in March 1953.
Galina Vishnevskaya - a leading soprano in the Bolshoi, who was married to Mtislav Rostropovich - both were friends with Prokofiev, Shostakovich (who did indeed trim his political sails somewhat -, a lot more than had Prokofiev, in fact), and Solzhenitsyn - Solzhenitsyn and Shostakovich did not much care for one another, - the former despising the latter for what he considered unacceptable compromises with the authorities - wrote a fascinating autobiography.
In it, she described - in powerful yet understated prose - the tragedy of Prokofiev's funeral, (one was only supposed to grieve for the dreadful dictator, other funerals occurring at that unfortunate time almost risked incurring suspicion), but how, because of the death of Stalin, Moscow had run out of flowers, as all flowers were reserved for the funeral of and the obsequies for the deceased dictator.
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I have not read that Vishnevskaya work. I will like to get a copy, and thank you so much for mentioning it. Those guys were all pretty much under the gun in Stalin's time. That shows now when we look back at the uneven quality of some of their music that is still performed. The stylistic shifts can seem puzzling now to people born much later, as can be the harsh public stances taken on each other's works at different times, not to mention some regrettable denunciations of novelists, poets and other writers. It must have been a terrifying time to be in the creative arts then in any of the countries of the USSR.
I'm listening to an Armenian cellist this evening, Narek Hakhnazaryan, in a live performance of Giovanni Sollima's Lamentatio. He vocalizes as he plays in some parts of the piece, one may find that unusual. but it was evidently an indicated part of Sollima's composition, as I have never heard it performed without the cellist providing a personalized vocalization. The bow work, pizzicato and pitch in this performance are astounding. The video is from performance at Halle aux Grains, Toulouse, on 4 June 2014.
I'm a fan of Sollima so I'll take some liberty here and go on about him for a bit. He is a postminimalist composer and cellist in his own right, an interesting guy who has written in several genres including jazz and rock. The Lamentatio is profoundly mournful, catching something far into that mix of rage, sorrow and remembered joy that perhaps one must connect with whenever finally having to acknowledge a loss. For a different take on the same piece, I recommend Abel Selaocoe's own arrangement and performance of it:
Lamentatio is technically demanding but doesn't really suggest Sollima's minimalist foundations; for more hints of that, try his concerto L.B. Files per violoncello, archi e sampler. Below is a linked video of a live performance with the Solisti Aquilini at the Quirinale in Rome, on 1 June 2017. Yep, the "L.B." is a reference to Luigi Boccherini, and the central movement of Sollima's piece references Boccherini's guitar quintet that was actually titled Fandango, and which itself was somewhat suggestive of the "repetitive" component of what would later become the minimalist style.
That concerto is among the featured works of Sollima's album We Were Trees. (Patti Smith also did a track for that album -- "Yet I Can Hear." ) The L.B. files' third movement is that amazing fandango, led into around the 12 minute mark on the linked video... at 14 minutes you want to be dancing and the cellist/composer is practically there himself although still playing. Percussion is provided by not only pizzicato but use of string players' bows and hands on the sides of the instruments. So it's not the minimalism of Philip Glass, exactly... it's off that springboard but on that date at the Quirinale, somewhere up around the ceiling. I wouldn't call the videography or editing great but they got the job done and one could see very well that Sollima's entirely capable of doing what he demands of other cellists.
Sollima's We Were Trees album includes a wonderful group titled "When We Were Trees" with instrumental references back to the elements: the resonance of the wood in stringed instruments and a nifty track "The Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination"... which has a little surprise at the ending, and a track called The Family Tree (Vivaldi) with overt references to Sollima's compatriot's Four Seasons work. The We Were Trees album is probably not for everyone but there are times I've listened to that When We Were Trees group in it a few times over in succession.
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Brilliant post.
Three years ago, I spent a few months in Russia (observing elections) in the Orenburg region (close to the border with Kazakhstan).
This was sufficiently far east for the Germans never to have made it to there, (and destroyed everything), thus, the Russian Imperial (Tsarist) equivalent of New York Brownstone from the 19th century survived intact, which meant some surprisingly attractive Tsarist 19th century town centres (administrative and military urban centres - the epitome, in some ways, of Chekhov's dreary rural administrative small urban outposts, where military officers and civil servants and doctors and other public servants were bitterly exiled for a few years of necessity before their careers - perhaps on promotion - could hope to return them to the civilised and cultured centres of St Petersburg and Moscow).
More to the point, there were a few surprising (and quite unexpected, this was steppe country after all) and fascinating cultural vignettes; Pushkin paid a visit to the city. One of his sulking exiles.
And Yuri Gagarin did his pilot training in the city (although the flat where he stayed - supposedly a museum - remained solidly shut for the months of my deployment in the city and region. And I visited the place a few times, driver and translator in bored tow).
Rostropovich was sent to the city of Orenburg for a few years during WW2 - (unlike Vishnevskaya, who was younger, whom he met later, and who survived the horrifying siege of what was then Leningrad - her autobiography was given to me as a gift by the sister of a university friend of mine; the sister - they were a diplomatic family - but she was one of the first westerners who had studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Rozhdestvensky) - a way for the state to ensure that they could keep cultural artefacts alive; there was a small, charming, underfunded museum - the lovely wooden house where he had lived during those years - in Orenburg.
My driver and translator were stupefied that I wished to visit the place - they had no interest whatsoever in such things. They remained outside, the translator bestirring herself at my request to assist with translation.
The elderly lady who looked after the museum was so thrilled to see me - some of Rostropovich's personal effects (including a copy, in English, of his wife's powerful autobiography) were there, his desk, the stove, his coat complete with coattails from an early (but famous) concert, sheet music, photographs, letters - I was the only visitor that day (or week), and she was so happy that I was visiting and knew a little about these people.
In a way, it reminded me of when I had visited the tiny Chagall museum in Vitebsk in Belarus (again, I was there for months on election duty) some years earlier.
I have ordered We Were Trees.
Are there any other CDs of Sollima's that you would especially recommend?
On which CD does Lamentatio make an appearance?
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What a fascinating post... it's so strange to think that artists now so revered around the world have ended up with tiny tucked-away museums in what was once their homeland. I wonder if those sites are promoted in any way other than by word of mouth among aficionados or professionals who have somehow become aware of the existence of such memorials.
And it's weird that in Orenburg they had Gagarin's flat/museum shut down the whole time you were there during your work with the elections. I wonder why, or rather if there was any connection to the presence of election observers. It wouldn't seem there was a related reason, but what do we know of the ways of the movers and shakers really.
I only have that one CD of Sollima's works. The rest that I'm familiar with I've only heard on AM or else looked up in videos, most but not all on YouTube. Sollima does have a lot of his compositions out on CD and some do include his own playing. I've not looked through the track lists of them all to find out if he has issued a personal recording of Lamentatio. That piece I believe has also been arranged for other solo instruments and may have been performed on some, although I've not heard any of them. I've enjoyed a little documentary he sat for in a very old Italian teattro (and played in there under the dome on a cello from the 1600s). The film was produced around ten or fifteen years ago. There are English subtitles, although they are annoyingly difficult to read if one pauses and resumes the play, but he has some interesting things to say about both beauty and music. On beauty he said something like "there's always this problem of beauty, to be worthy of it, even to look at it..." On the subject of music in that interview, there were glimpses of a mathematical mind underwriting some of his comment: at one point he noted that in musical systems we have certain fixed notations and they do mean something specific and yet they offer us so many other things. There seemed more than a hint there of the attractions (to some of us anyway) of minimalism in musical composition, the complexities beneath the repetitive simplicities of some of the themes.
Tonight I'm moving on to some Dylan from the early years, back when everything still seemed entirely possible even if already getting complicated. Heh, Dylan's never been one for minimalism really. He has pretty much just put it out there, not proposing that we have to look past what might seem simple to find the complexities. He just says like yeah here it all is right here right now ain't that somethin'...
Some R.E.M. for me this afternoon, starting off with Leaving New York. The city can still tug at my heartstrings for so many reasons, even if subway commutes in summer would not be among them. I do love the essential lightheartedness of summer in the city, the whole ambience is different compared to winter when people just try to get from point A to B without getting frostbitten by those infernal winds off the rivers. In summer's languor it's more about hanging out, savoring, deciding on a whim to sample a treat at a vendor's cart or a lunchtime concert in one of the little parks. "Catch the Flava" indeed...
First time hearing this one. Never thought there'd be a song which captured that feeling of leaving *the* city, so well. Cheers for the recommendation!
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-7) - Pink Floyd.