Messages

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Yesterday, a series of the chamber works by the current spanish conductor Fernando V. Arias were posted on Youtube  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w0_RN7rE7Y&list=UU5drN-sNm1iyeb4yrXcZWpQ.  Boy, light romantic in spades and diamonds!

See what you think!

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Orff's Weihnachtsgespiel I suppose is a cantata.

The sound of nobility!  Something we may never hear again in opera.  Rosenthal's Children is more the style this century.

Vorobjev / Vorobyev / Vorobiev Gennadij / Gennadi / Gennady / etc.

Symphony in c-moll, worked on until his death at age 20.

Listen to the whole, standard four movement work at:

http://classical-music-online.net/en/production/34538


Sounds to me like a cross between Kalinnikov and Dvorak.

Impossible to believe it was written 1937 - 1939.

For me, the 2nd movement of Bloch's Symphony in C# minor is an emotional tear-jerker. Gets me everytime. Of course, the all-time biggest emotional moments come from the Elgar 2nd -- near the end of the second movement, and the coda of the last. Puts a lump in the throat if the conductor knows what he's doing.

I drive one of my terribly ill cats to be euthanized to the Elgar, and cried like a child.

Actually, I think he was looking for "a new sound" when he came to Hollywood.  Heliane is about as far as you can go in thickness of orchestration, and Kathrin sounds like he was looking for something. 

I still say we should also look for other composers whose works in passing could have inspired the "Hollywood sound" as well.

i'm new here, so please forgive me if i post foolishly. there are so many subjects here and i don't know how to find answers to questions i have. i hope you will be tolerant of me.
i've a radio program, and plan on doing a show including korngold, but a question i can't seem to answer satisfactorily for myself: does his later work sound like movie soundtracks, or do movie soundtracks sound like him?
i ask because i don't trust most of what i've read on him, as it's mostly patronizing, and i know he was considered something really new when he arrived in hollywood and began scoring. his work is so stunning and assured that i assume he must have influenced rafts of people, but it's an assumption because i've read no evidence of it.
i also want to know because i reckon if i want to know, then my listeners will want to also.
thank you in advance for your patience.

The letters his own father wrote to him (after he had rescued his father at age 75 from central europe and brought him to Hollywood too) berating his son's film scores might be interesting to examine.

You may also wish to address when "the Hollywood Sound" first appears.  I hear it in the opening to Janacek's Osud ("Destiny"), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A54LvgpJcQE, from 1906!

[Nichifor]

The magnificently awful Nichifor fourth symphony which appeared on an Olympia disc called Romanian Concert. It's somewhere in that awkward musical space between Bernstein and Stalling that didn't need to be filled.

I did like its coupling, the Four Tablatures for Lute by Toduta.

Part of the Nichifor 3 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42cKg031Rns
The entirety of the 5:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqqwG8CQm3k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qQoySPKVOQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkWzlqIVyRw

Wow.

'Awful' here just means 'terrible',' dreadful', i.e. 'very bad'. Thus Bungert's Mysterium couldn't possibly be enjoyed by anyone except a masochist; it tries so hard to be significant that it's magnificent in its awfulness.

I've listened to it a few times at the computer while doing work.  It's rather well-orchestrated at least.

FROM THE WRITINGS OF Nicolas slonimsky:

With the spread of musical education in the Soviet Union, the minority republics began to cultivate music of theirown, largely derived from folk songs. In order to stimulate artistic development in these republics, the Union of Soviet Composers assigned their members to write operas and symphonic works based on native folklore.

The Ukrainian composer, Boris Liatoshinsky,wrote an opera Shchors named after and based on the life of a Ukrainian revolutionary commander.

Glière wrote the opera Shakh-Senem on Caucasian themes;

Brusilovsky composed Kyz-Zhybek, derived from the folklore of Kazakhstan;

Shekhter wrote Yusup and Akhmet on Turkmenian motives;

Tchemberdzhi contributed the opera Karlugas on Bashkyrian folklore;

Kozlovsky wrote Ulugbek (Tamerlane's grandson) on Uzbek melodies;

Balasanian wrote a Tadzhik opera, The Song of Wrath;

Frolov composed aBuriat-Mongol opera, Enke Bular Bator;

Paliashvili is the composer of the Georgian opera Abessalom and Eteri.

The harmonic idiom of these operas is in the tradition of Russian orientalism, withextensive pedal points and chromatic leads in the inner voices. Native instruments areused in many of these productions. Visits of native artists in performances of nativemusic at festive occasions in Moscow have further enhanced cultural exchange betweenRussia proper and the peripheral republics.

Shostakovitch spoke of these developments in his address as a delegate at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace inNew York on March 27, 1949: Today, in the five capitals of the five Soviet Republics in Middle Asia, there are five first-rate theaters of opera and ballet...The national art works performed on the stages of these theaters are eloquent testimony to the fact...that new, peculiarly national branches of international musico- dramatic arts have been created. The Uzbek operas Buran and Leyli and Medjnun provide the greatest pleasure to a listener of any nationality..."

WHAT EXISTS OF ANY OF THIS NOW?

Also, re Bungert, will try to find out more but I do see his violin sonata mentioned in a review of a book about Bungert from 2005 - see here. Edition Silvertrust, I see, has a new edition of the piano quartet out... (it can also be downloaded at IMSLP.)
Torquato Tasso overture op.14 published about 1886 if not earlier. Variations and Fugue also @IMSLP (in B-flat minor, not D-flat major, for what that's worth!)

The Bungert Oratorio Mysterium really isn't that bad.  I wonder if that's what the operas sound like.

What about the splendidly named August Bungert. One
of his symphonies is about a Zeppelin,I believe?

The Zeppelin's Great Flight

It is mentioned in the same article from 1909 as "Gustav Mahler's latest symphony":

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2009/11/new-symphony-uses-car-horn.html

This site is incredibly important for the purpose of cultural memory.  How many creations (and creators) of culture have been and are consigned to the wastebin of history by contemporary popularity?  We provide an opportunity for the entire world to REMEMBER and reconsider.

You see what poetic flight of fancy the Larsson inspired in me....
Pretentious, moi? 

Pretentious, nu!

"Unsung": Ludolf Nielsen's Second Symphony...the "Symphony of Joy"
"Sung": The final bars of Janacek's "The Cunning Little Vixen" and his "Sinfonietta".
Strauss's "Sinfonia Domestica".
...and hundreds of others because I spend so much of my life listening to music precisely because I find so much of it uplifting.

The end of Cunning Little Vixen (always check spelling on this one) is a joy.

Will we ever hear any of his 60s music?  That's when you almost had to be a hero in the west to write listenable symphonies.