Music I love

[SANDRO43]

Galántai Táncok (Dances of Galánta)
A 1933 orchestral work by Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967)

I am not too fond of Kodály's music since it contains too many dissonances for my taste, more than in his fellow Hungarian composer Béla Bartók's (1881–1945).

However, some years ago I was pleasantly surprised, at a concert given by a Hungarian orchestra in an abbey south of Milan, of hearing for the first time this beautiful 15' piece, full of echoes of Jewish and gypsy music.

The piece was composed on commission for the 80th anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic Society. It is based on folk music of Galanta (now part of Slovakia, where Kodály lived for several years.) The composer remarked: "At that time there existed a famous gypsy band...This was the first 'orchestral' sonority that came to the ears of the child...About 1800 some books of Hungarian dances were published in Vienna, one of which contained music 'after several Gypsies from Galánta'...The piece recalls the two-part slow-fast structure of the traditional verbunkos music: it opens with a slow introduction moving to a clarinet cadenza and andante maestoso section, followed by four fast dance sections. The faster sections adopt a characteristic syncopated rhythm..

I hastened to purchase the full orchestral score and made a MIDI of it, which I put on the Concert Hall page of my website (http://www.floriani.it/hall-eng.htm).

Merry Xmas to all.

[SANDRO43]

Other Gypsy Melodies in Classical Music

Another Hungarian composer availing himself of his country's folk music was Franz Liszt ((1811–1886), who wrote several Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano solo, e.g. No.2:

A non-Hungarian composer also fascinated by gypsy music was German Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), who wrote no less than 21 Ungarische Tänze (Hungarian dances) for piano/orchestra. Below the complete set (48'-long ):

Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was also interested in music from his native Romania, another country with a rich gypsy heritage:

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The Concerto Grosso

A form of Baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists (the concertino) and full orchestra (the ripieno or concerto grosso), in contrast to the solo concerto (a single solo instrument accompanied by the orchestra), and the later symphony (orchestra only).

Alessandro Stradella (1639–1682) seems to have written the first music in which two groups of different sizes are combined in that characteristic way.

The name was first used by Giovanni Lorenzo Gregori (1663-1745) in a set of 10 compositions published in 1698.

The first major composer to use the term concerto grosso was Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713), who arranged 12 for publication in 1714. Corelli's concertino consisted of two violins and a cello, with a string section as ripieno. Both were accompanied by a basso continuo with some combination of harpsichord, organ, lute or theorbo (a type of lute).

He was followed by Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759), who also wrote 12.

Later Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) wrote his 6 Brandenburg Concertos:

The basso continuo provided by keyboards like harpsichord or organ served to provide a solid harmonic base from fixed-pitch instruments to the other, variable-pitch instruments (the strings).

Nowadays an orchestra pitch is usually set at 440 Hz by an A4 played by the oboe.

[SANDRO43]

Almost a year ago on June 12, 9, 2016 the Filarmonica della Scala directed by Maestro Riccardo Chailly, also Musical Director of our Teatro alla Scala, performed in Milan's central Piazza Duomo, before an enthusiatic audience of more then 40,000 people a free concert featuring well-known music like Paul Duka's L'apprenti sorcier, Igor Strawinski's L'oiseu de feu, Meurice Ravel's Piano concerto in G with Martha Argerich and his famous Bolero:

I am particularly appreciative of Meurice Ravel's work, I consider him one of the ablest musical orchestrators of all time. Who else could have written a 14-minute piece of music consisting of a phrase of just 2 bars and and equally long sub-phrase, alternating single solo instruments, then 2, then more,  then the whole orchestra, without boring the audience ?

The most involved instrument is the snare drum, having to play the alternating 2-beat base Bolero rhythm throughout.

Obviously, listening to it in the company of Bo Derek as in 10 is an altogether different experience .

[Boethius]

Well, Bo Derek did introduce a lot of people to finer music.


Rufus Wainwright agrees with you about Ravel.  Here is his homage to Ravel.

[tfcrew]

         Chuck Berry died today at age 90     



       





     

[JayH]

         Chuck Berry died today at age 90     
   

RIP 
One of the greatest influences of  music that followed for over 60 years .
Not just a great performer but writer extraordinaire !
This is not the greatest recording as such-- but just a great show !

[msmob]

Strongly agree with JayH ( frame it!)

SC called me at 2am from Thailand ( I had foolishly asked for such an alarm call !)

We share news from where we are  and the death of Chuck Berry came up.  She had never heard of him.  Now she knows about how the likes of Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters influenced the likes of the Rolling Stones

A shared screen in Skype and this video put her straight:





There was a campaign to have this banned on UK TV/ Radio, which only made it more popular

Not his original work - but it brought his skills to my attention

[tfcrew]

Joni Sledge passed away Mar 10 at only age 60 


 

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CLASSICAL GUITAR MUSIC

This is mostly the domain of Spanish composers, like for instance Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909) who wrote one of its best known pieces, Recuerdos de la Alhambra, here played by Narciso Yepes on the 10-string guitar he invented:

However others like Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959), here playing his Prelúdio no. 1, loved the instrument:

Not many know that many famous Spanish guitarists were preceded by Mauro Giuliani  (1781-1829):

The guitar has limited dynamics thus few attempted to compose concertos for it and orchestra. One exception is Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) and his Concierto d'Aranjuez (1939), where you'll notice the guitar is mostly silent when other 'heavier' instruments play.

[SANDRO43]

Arturo Toscanini
(March 25, 1867–January 16, 1957)

Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and of the 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his eidetic memory. He was at various times the music director of La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Later in his career he was appointed the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937–54), and this led to his becoming a household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire...He conducted at the Salzburg Festival (1934–1937), as well as the 1936 inaugural concert of the Palestine Orchestra (later renamed the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) in Tel Aviv...The NBC Symphony Orchestra was created for him in 1937.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arturo_Toscanini

Celebrations were held today at La Scala in Milan, in Rome and other Italian cities of his 150 birth anniversary.

He was quite a strict character, rumoured to have hit a recalcitrant violinist on the head with his snatched instrument . I owe him my introduction to Beethoven's 9 symphonies on 33 1/2 rpm vinyls, purchased as a teenager with some sacrifice as a Reader's Digest album collection.

Some later critics maintained he was conducting Beethoven too fast, an unlikely accusation considering his strict musical philology and the fact that Beethoven was among the first to add metronome values to his scores in addition to the more "elastic" tempo designations of Allegro, Andante, etc. as you can see from the opening of his 7th symphony, one of Toscanini's favourites, where the initial Allegretto movement is marked as crotchet=76:

[GQBlues]

Date night for wifey and I last night. Fantastic evening. Had a wonderful dinner and went to see Jesus Christ Superstar at Thousand Oaks. My favorite Broadway performance of all time. Mrs. GQBlues looked her incredibly best AGAIN!!!

The only wrinkle in the evening was JC will never be JC unless you see it with the original 1973 cast of Ted Neely (JC), Carl Anderson (Judas) and Yvonne Elliman (Mary Magdalene). Here's Neely's 'Gethsamane' performance in NY 2006...

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR

Eat your heart out Michael Crawford!

[JohnDearGreen]

take me far away from the battle

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George Enescu
1881–1955

Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher, he is regarded by many as his country's most important musician.

[tfcrew]

Greg Allman died this weekend....

 

[Boethius]

Sandro, do you remember this?  We used to listen to Joe Dassin in school French lessons -

[SANDRO43]

Sandro, do you remember this?

No, never heard it before. We did not hear much French music after Edith Piaf, 'Existentialists' like Juliette Greco and Yves Montand and later Dalida, Charles Aznavour, Sylvie Vartan and such.

In 1993 this was a 'summer hit' here, too:

[tfcrew]

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The Procul Harum "borrowed" quite a bit from this:

[Boethius]

We listen to a great deal of Bach at home.  The better half's favourite composer.   I love Mozart, but he doesn't.


I ran across this and enjoyed it -

[Boethius]

Have always loved this underrated song -

[BdHvA]

And some complain about driving in Moscow or Kiev!

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A song from about 1839 , connected with my recent interests in things nautical:

I believe Irish Step dancing was the precursor of Tip-tap dancing:

[BdHvA]

My guess the Riverdance number is from the 80's ~ amazing! 

As for songs about sailing there is the following:





than again there is also



That should keep Commodore Sandro busy!

[SANDRO43]

My guess the Riverdance number is from the 80's ~ amazing! 

Actually it was somewhat later :

Riverdance was first performed during the seven-minute interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest at the Point Theatre in Dublin on 30 April 1994.

Later lead dancer Michael Flatley left Riverdance and created the Lord of the Dance and Feet of Flames shows:

In May 1989, Flatley set a Guinness Book world record for tapping speed at 28 taps per second, and subsequently broke his own record in 1998 with 35 taps per second .