Poisson D’Avril

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/apr/01/7

Have fun!

Suite française

Suite française, Irène Némirovsky, 2004

Cette description de l'exode est stupéfiante de vérité . Les récits de nos parents,grands parents et autres témoins de ces événements reviennent à la mémoire dans un style et un vocabulaire d'un autre temps qui est celui de cette époque.
Mais ce livre éclaire mieux sur les drames anciens,présents et à venir que beaucoup de manuels d'histoire.Il devrait être recommandé aux élèves et étudiants ainsi qu'à tous ceux qui parlent de racisme ou d'antisémitisme.
Une bonne leçon aussi pour les éternels insatisfaits de la vie et de la société actuelle.

For this weekend

Gluck opera discs are my picks for this week,


Magdaléna Kožená as Orphée, Patricia Petibon as L`Amour, Gardiner, 1999 performance at the Théâtre Musical de Paris.

Iphigenie en Aulide, Lyon Opera Orchestra/ Gardiner.
Gluck's first reform opera for Paris.
Gardiner presses the music forward eagerly and keeps the tension at a high level even in the dance music.

Iphigenie en Tauride, Boston Baroque/ Martin Peralman
Very vivid and dramatic playing.

Orfeo ed Euridice, Freiburg Baroque Opera/ Rene Jacobs
The best version of the Italian original. Jacobs draws the high energy, the sharply defined textures and dynamics.
However it's the singer of Orpheus, even more than the conductor, who gives character to a performance of this work. Bernarda Fink sings the role here very beautifully and quite unaffectedly.

Armide, Les Musiciend du Louvre/ Marc Minkowski.
Minkowski has a tendency towards quickish tempos, resulting in a very light and flexible performance with rhythmic spring.

Thoughts on the marketability of Vivaldi's Opera

I have frequently been asked to recommend good opera recordings of Vivaldi.
What I am surprised at is the suddenness of Vivaldi's operas acceptance and perceived marketability.

Absurdly, recordings of Vivaldi operas had been almost unheard of despite his contemporary's heavyweight reputation as a musical dramatist. (For example, the article on Vivaldi in the 1980 edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians does not even include the operas (over 60 of them) in the incomplete works list)
Yet in the past couple of years they have been coming thick and fast. Even the suddenness of their acceptance and perceived marketability have threatened to make the past two decade's rise of Handel operas seem slow.

There are some reason why Vivaldi's operas had been almost unheard.
The first, I think, is their big recitatives which require more of a listener's concentration. The important thing of Vivaldi's operas is that their big recitatives however are made necessary by the complexities of the plot and their conversational realism allows them to be more than just a functional advancement of the plot. Also the extreme virtuosity is demanded from every one of the singers. (For example, Listen to Bartoli's stunning virtuosity in Aria Agitata da due venti in Vivladi's Opera Griselda.)


Among rapidly increasing recordings of Vivaldi operas in market, operas from the Vivaldi edtion released by French Label Naive, the quixotic project conceived by musicologist Alberto Basso to record the music by Vivaldi found in manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin, strike me as the most likely recommendable recordings. Among them, Griselda from Spinosi, L'Olympiade from Alessandrini and Tito Manlio from Ottavio Dantone deserve to be appreciated. ( For detail on Vivaldi Edition, http://www.naive.fr/artiste_coll.php?id=250)

So far, to the best of my knowledge, the best achievement in increasing Vivaldi opera recordings is Bajazet from Fabio Biondi and his strong cast and imaginative playing. Also Bajazet provides clues on the circumstance of the contemporary Italy. Bajazet is partly a pasticcio, which is that it borrows and adapts arias from other operas, and in this case, while the arias for ‘conquered’ characters such as Bajazet and Asteria are by Vivaldi, those for the conquerors – Tamerlano, Andronico and Irene – are other men’s work. It means that the old Venetian culture succumbs to an Neapolitan new culture.

It would be too early to judge whether Vivaldi can match up to his contemporary’s heavyweight reputation as a musical dramatist – though in truth it seems unlikely – . But, hey, so what? Lovers of Vivaldi and Baroque opera like me will certainly not be complaining at the appearance on disc of so much ‘new’ music.

Viva! Vivaldi!

p.s: I'll post a Recording review on Griselda from Spinosi in English.

Bildung!

Terry Eagleton on Richard Dawkins
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html

Terry Eagleton on Marxism and Ethics
http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2007/05/23/terry-eagleton-on-marxism-and-ethics/

Bildung!

Good-Bye to Alfred Brendel

Brendel Plays Franz Schubert - Piano Sonata D. 960 part 1-1

Brendel's last recital in the United States was held on March 17th.
Brendel's last recital in Chicago was held on March 9th.
He will give his farewell performance in Vienna.

We gathered at CSO on March 9th to give tribute to an astounding career of sixty years at the piano.

Brendel, you are always committed to the elegant expression of every detail in the score.
At the end of concert, I told to my self,
"What can I do to change your mind about retiring?"

Good-Bye, Brendel.

Catherine Deneuve

Oh! Catherine Deneuve!!

http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,1577158,00.html

------
Q: How was it working with Francois Ozon on Eight Women?

CD: It was difficult because he was... I suppose he was afraid of giving more to one actress than to another, so he sort of treated us like the commander of a troop. And I was not too keen about that way of working. But he was very precise. The interesting thing is that he would do the camera himself, which is very rare. He knew exactly what he wanted and he showed us images from films. Our characters were a mixture of characters from English or American films and it was sort of like a pastiche, but we knew it would be like that. Once he had decided on the costumes and the style of it, he let us be quite free to work with that.
---------

GA: So you're not one of these Method style actors, who have to get very deeply into character and identify with it.

CD: But I do get very involved with the character. But being a film actor is very different from, say, a theatre actor. You get involved with a character after spending a long time waiting, and this demands a lot of energy and concentration. So I am very involved with the character, but I have to leave it as soon as it's finished. And also, you always have to be at the right level when it's time to shoot, which is not always the best time for the actor. Sometimes, if you're shooting a complicated scene, you have to stay in a position and wait for the technician to do his job, and then you have to be where you're supposed to be, right on the spot. You don't rehearse all that much on films. If I think of the amount of time I spend on set compared with the time spent shooting, it's ridiculously short.

At last

Frank Martin (1890-1974), Maria-Triptchon/Polyptyque, German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Christoph Poppen, Juliane Banse(sop), Muriel Cantoreggi(violin).

The exceptional sacred work of Swiss composer Frank Martin is finally unveiled.
This work could not be more welcome to me who has been long and deeply interested in Frank Martin's Sacred Work since I was moved a lot by two outstanding recordings of Frank Martin’s beautiful Mass for Double Choir from Harry Christophers and The Sixteen and James O'Donnell and Westminster Cathedral Choir 10 years ago.
This recording deserves to be appreciated.

Mahler, Symphony No. 6 "Tragic" from Gergiev

Mahler, Symphony No. 6 "Tragic", LSO/Gergiev, LSO Live

http://lso.co.uk/detailedrecordinginfo&showdetailstype=recording&detailID=182

Maher's Symphony No.6 from Gergiev and his LSO in this video seems to start very urgently.
Even though I much admire Prokofiev Symphonies from Gergiev and LSO, I doubt his style to wildly urge strings (even from the begining to the end) with unrefined and furious brass (yes, it can be said to be typical Russian Style or Russian School) well suits to the work's intense sadness.

Nonetheless, I am curious about what Gergiev's fine ability to bring out the theatrical things deliver to me. I am willing to buy this work even though I will be disappointed.

Music for Holy week and Easter.

"Si autem Christus praedicatur quod suscitatus est a mortuis, quomodo quidam dicunt in vobis quoniam resurrectio mortuorum non est?
Si autem resurrectio mortuorum non est, neque Christus suscitatus est!
Si autem Christus non suscitatus est, inanis est ergo praedicatio nostra, inanis est et fides vestra;"
(Cor 1,15 12-14)


This coming week is Holy week, the last week before Easter.
Here is my choice for Holy week and Easter.

Le Christ est ressuscité!!

* Especially, the 27th Sunday after Trinity occurs in this year. To celebrate it...
Bach, "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", BWV 140

1. Byrd, Music for Holy Week and Easter, Cardinall's Musick/Andrew Carwood, ASV
This recording covers most of Byrd's Holy week and Easter music, from St John's Passion choruses for Good Friday to the Octave day of Easter, and including miniature Vespers at the end of the Easter Vigil, and the whole of the Proper of the Mass for Easter Day.
Throughout, Cardinall's Musick maintains a remarkable balance between drama and restraint.

2. Rimski-Korsakov, Russian Easter Festival Overture, Op. 36, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra/David Zinman.
Rimski-Korsakov's Russian Easter Festival Overture is a sophisticated feast of orchestral colour based on Russian Orthodox canticles and hymns. Espiecally, the opening solos cound not me more beautifully played.The solemn wood wind, the radiant strings, a cadenza for the leader, a melancholy solo cello, a ruminative flute and patriarchal trombones, before the flute again takes wing and accompanies a sinuous carinet.

3. Bach, Easter Cantata, Gardiner
Here is the work from Gardiner's lively reponses to the many instances of word-painting and his intuitive feeling for dance rhythms.

4. Handel, La resurrezione, Marc Minkowski.
Still one of Handel's most underrated, or at any rate most underperofrmed works, La Resurrezione explores the expressive power of colour in new ways with unexpected orchestration as the Dixit Dominus does.
With strong cast, Minkowski gives us a vital impression of a particularly fine sample of Handel’s youth.

Thomas Ades

For your listening and viewing pleasure,

Thomas Ades's Asyla from Berliner Philharmoniker under the direction of Simon Rattle who is the leading interpreter of Ades's works. Suntory Hall, Tokyo, Japan 2005


Thomas Ades (1971~ , Born in London), Violin Concerto, Anthony Marwood, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, 2007, EMI.
DOWNLOAD ONLY!

Here is the truly great work from Thomas Ades which I have waited 10 years for since his debut album, Living Toys.
From the urgent opening to the close where a gorgeous bluesy tune on the violin meets an implacable rhythm, it throws the spell of the tension over a listener, then, led to a composer's very dramatically musical world where the ghosts of Mahler, Stravinsky, Berg and Shostakovich seem to be floating around.

Technically Anthony Marwood, for whom this work was written, very well weaves high melodic lines with astonishing dexterity and passion. What's even more, he strikes me as the only one who is able to keep in tune those hellish high notes while I appreciate this work!

It's a superb performance. Oh and did I mention that this is, indeed, a coolly intelligent work?

Thanks my close friends, Suk, Jihyun Gahng, Allegri, Catherine and my beloved Jihyun Park for introducing this work and fortifying and modifying my sense of what I was appreciating.