Mysteries Abysmal

Levine/Barenboim to Chicago on May 24

I'll be taking the "L" down to the "Loop" on May 24 to Symphony Center. (Is my Chicago lingo improving?)

In celebration of Barenboim's last season at the CSO, he and James Levine (whom I always thought resembled Emanuel Ax) will be collaborating on an all Brahms concert; the D major symphony and the B-flat piano concerto (my two favorites of his from those two "genres"). My pianist buddy, Sean Mirate, from the Indiana school of music, has always maintained this piano concerto is one of the toughest to play. It should be interesting to hear Daniel Barenboim, a pianist I'm indifferent to, perform it. The determinant will be his reading of the andante, where the orchestra is reduced to what sounds like a quartet. More specifically, it might even come down to whether his make or break entrance in octave low B-flats fuses subtly enough with the strings. When done well, it's an experience; when not, the movement is ruined. The most essential recording of this concerto is Sir Colin Davis/Gerhard Oppitz.

See you there.

Through the 'hood

Grad school/work/play is taking up way more time than planned. Hardly after I came home from work today do I now have to go tutor. After that, 170 pgs are to be read before tomorrow's class. Posting will be less frequent but here are a couple hitters; Lynn Sislo from Reflections in d minor reminds us why classical music fans are reluctant to buy iPods or the like. Joshi might want to know Ian McEwan has a new book out reviewed by my fellow midwesterner Michael Dirda.

And permit me to let it be known my alma mater is in the Final Four. Go State.

Downtown Chicago 3/27/05

First grad class is tomorrow...

Happy Easter!

Two thanks to Alex Ross

My first thanks to Alex concerns his permanent inclusion of "Mysteries Abysmal" to his music blog links at The Rest is Noise, Thank you!)

Now, the only reason I started this blog was to share what I think have been meaningful listening experiences with you [the reader] in hopes you will do the same for me. I want to hear new recordings, I want to hear old passages with a new ear and I want to be exposed to stuff I didn't even know existed. You must remember, that is the first and foremost purpose of a classical music blogging community, and most certainly of "Mysteries Abysmal". Period.

The classical recording industry is slowly dying with downloaders and we need to buy new discs as often as possible. And when somebody suggests a disc they really jive to, go out and get it. Splurge from time to time, you can always make it up with a Ramen noodle diet. Of equal importance is attending live concerts with regularity. Anyways, I went to Tower today and forked over $15 because Alex Ross made me. His review of the Lupu Brahms record, and more specifically Op. 117 #1, is what it's all about:

"...but the middle section is in E-flat minor,  which is for many composers the key of death. It is the chord on which Tristan dies; it is the key of the funeral march of Tchaikovsky's Third Quartet; it is the chord on which Elektra falls lifeless in her eponymous opera; it is the key of every movement of Shostakovich's Fifteenth Quartet, that requiem for requiems. In Brahms, the most quietly shattering moment comes when a C sounds miles deep beneath an E-flat-minor chord in the middle range, approximating the harmony of Tristan's death (a Tristan chord with no exit). Somehow the music pulls itself back from that abyss, and the opening music sounds again, with gentle vines of slow sixteenth notes wrapped around it. What happens in the final bars is beyond description."

To those who know that set intimately, this is the most perfect and beautiful description of that passage, and certainly does justice from music to words, especially the "gentle vines of slow sixteenth notes" which he so beautifully describes of the final third of that intermezzo. And the closing bars which he feels he can not describe, can only be that gorgeous awakening of the 4, the A-flat arpeggiated chord in the bass, which gradually descends chromatically in the treble clef back home to its tonic. When I read that post of Alex's, I had to listen to it again and my appreciation of it renewed immediately.

Lastly, I own some lame recordings of the Scubert impromptus, so imagine my thrill when I saw Lupu had recorded them in 1982. I haven't listened to them yet, but a soft touch is required for these works, and if Ross's description of Lupu's Brahms is any indicator of his Schubert, I have much to look forward to.

So secondly, thank you Alex for the Lupu. I look forward to the day we'll share a drink together.

I thought this joke was top notch.

A young Jewish girl runs up to her father and says, "Daddy, Daddy, I need 40 dollars!!"
Her father looks back at her and says, "30 dollars?!? What do you need 20 dollars for???"

(no, I'm not an anti-semite or anti-anything. It's only a joke.)

3 Quotations

Some quotes ran through the brain today, two of which had previously been discussed a few months ago in blog space. However, "Mysteries Abysmal" had yet to exist, so they're here for you now. Whether you agree with them or not is up for discussion. And I do hope you'll participate.

"...classical music is music's very apotheosis; the one instantiation of music that alone is capable of subsuming and transfiguring all of music's other instantiations." - AC Douglas

"Knowledge enhances enjoyment." - Introduction to Aaron Copland's What to Listen for in Music

...and my personal favorite, even if he's wrong: "Eleanor Rigby" (one of my favorite pop tunes, BTW) being "no less sad than Mahler 10" is a measure of nothing vis-à-vis this matter. Bypassing that a comparison of "Eleanor Rigby" with, say, Schubert's "Death and The Maiden" (the song, not the nicknamed quartet) would have been far more appropriate, "Eleanor Rigby", sad as it is, is musically, poetically, and aesthetically simpleminded compared with Mahler #10 (or with "Death and The Maiden", for that matter), albeit far more complex than 99% of pop tunes. As I've elsewhere remarked, "[A hallmark of] genuine art, whatever its medium, [is that it] always possesses secrets, and gives them up slowly, little by little, only to the most searching and probing eye or ear, the greatest works seemingly having an almost limitless store which are never divulged entirely no matter how long and deep the searching and probing." Musically, poetically, and aesthetically, "Eleanor Rigby" harbors few secrets, and what secrets it does harbor are grasped almost at once, if not immediately. The same is by no stretch the case with Mahler #10 -- or with "Death and The Maiden" -- both of which, musically, poetically, and aesthetically, harbor tantalizing secrets whose depths may never be fully plumbed." - AC Douglas

I firmly agree with #2, but have a few qualms with ACD's. However, the third quote is written in beautiful prose and is worth reading if only for the sake of its meter.

Why have you left us, David?

American cinema needs you.

One Hundred and Four.

The large, attractively packaged black cube you see above contains all of Haydn's 104 symphonies. Over the course of 15 years, Adam Fischer laboured through the entire cycle with the Austrio-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, begetting, what I think, are crisp and energetic readings (I feel like a fraud offering any input on such a massive, labor intensive body of work). But anyhow, one Hunter D Kimble, my bud from Washington DC, gave me these for Christmas and they now seem to me mandatory discs to own. I thank you again, Hunter. Go check it out here.

What you now see above is what I had for dinner.

God help me.

A glimpse of my street