Big long musical ramble. Flee! Flee!
Following yesterday's ridiculous lazing about post-winter-shopping, this morning has been refreshingly productive. Work has gotten done, writing is percolating, products are flowing and the lounge room is looking sparkly, baby. Mister Zander must still be slightly bribed in order to eat a healthy breakfast early in the day (a twelfth of a cookie next to the cereal-bowl does the trick), but he's been a contented little boy since, and it turns out that he loves listening to Varèse's crazy-cool percussion works.
This is kind of astounding: usually his tastes run more towards Debussy and Britney. Yes, Britney Spears. Yes, I am shuddering as I write that.
Anyway... this is mostly K's fault for mentioning tuba-students, see? Because comparitively, Varèse's Ionisation is probably the loudest piece I've ever been involved with. And I was so surprised to find more than one performance of it on youtube that Zander and I have been watching them all morning. The only reason I mention this here (other than pimping the piece: seriously, it changed the face of music forever, it's absolutely amazing, it's got chicks hitting pipes with hammers) is that two of the videos really demonstrate how a conductor's sensitivities can completely transform the performance of a piece. So if you've got a quarter hour to spare:
This is Pierre Boulez conducting, and the man is inarguably brilliant; it's a very well-regarded performance, and I enjoyed it immensely. It's also almost stunningly restrained: this is Ionisation as creation, rather than conflagration, subtle almost to the point of aural minimalism.
This is...
Well, I don't even know who's conducting, let alone who's performing. And I'll add immediately that it's a flawed performance: there are mistakes of timing all over the place, and one choice of instrument was bizarre and enormously inappropriate. But there is an incredible energy to this: they've injected the piece with nitro, they've flung it out the door and set it on fire to see it run, and oh, it does that. It's a stompy, end-of-the-world Ionisation, and despite its flaws, it's my preferred performance.
If nothing else, fast-forward that second one to 3.17 or so: at around 3.24 you'll see a beautiful close-up of the kind of hasty scramble that is pretty typical of a performance like this, and in fact pretty much characterised by entire third year of college. I'll put it this way: we performed on a polished stage, and I always wore socks so that I could slide the length of it very quickly. *g*
This is kind of astounding: usually his tastes run more towards Debussy and Britney. Yes, Britney Spears. Yes, I am shuddering as I write that.
Anyway... this is mostly K's fault for mentioning tuba-students, see? Because comparitively, Varèse's Ionisation is probably the loudest piece I've ever been involved with. And I was so surprised to find more than one performance of it on youtube that Zander and I have been watching them all morning. The only reason I mention this here (other than pimping the piece: seriously, it changed the face of music forever, it's absolutely amazing, it's got chicks hitting pipes with hammers) is that two of the videos really demonstrate how a conductor's sensitivities can completely transform the performance of a piece. So if you've got a quarter hour to spare:
Click to viewThis is Pierre Boulez conducting, and the man is inarguably brilliant; it's a very well-regarded performance, and I enjoyed it immensely. It's also almost stunningly restrained: this is Ionisation as creation, rather than conflagration, subtle almost to the point of aural minimalism.
This is...
Well, I don't even know who's conducting, let alone who's performing. And I'll add immediately that it's a flawed performance: there are mistakes of timing all over the place, and one choice of instrument was bizarre and enormously inappropriate. But there is an incredible energy to this: they've injected the piece with nitro, they've flung it out the door and set it on fire to see it run, and oh, it does that. It's a stompy, end-of-the-world Ionisation, and despite its flaws, it's my preferred performance.
If nothing else, fast-forward that second one to 3.17 or so: at around 3.24 you'll see a beautiful close-up of the kind of hasty scramble that is pretty typical of a performance like this, and in fact pretty much characterised by entire third year of college. I'll put it this way: we performed on a polished stage, and I always wore socks so that I could slide the length of it very quickly. *g*