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Sunday, October 15, 2017

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Enjoy Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor - First Movement, performed by the incomparable violinist Julia Fischer:

8 comments:

  1. That got the blood moving! Didn't need that second cup of coffee, :)

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  2. I like the Oscar Meyer Wiener song by Felix Frankfurter better.

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  3. Always a delight, but why not post the whole concerto? There are lots of wonderful performances available on YouTube,

    I had never heard of Julia Fischer before. I'll have to add her to the ever-growing list of superb performers of classical music.

    I've written to suggest a weekly RECITAL series featuring pianists, vioinists, lieder singers and chamber music groups to PBS for YEARS, but get no response.

    PBS does present an opera once in a while, and sometimes a symphony concert, but NEVER a solo recital or a chamber usic concert.

    Those last would be the easiest, most economical productions to mount by far, because there are lterally HUNDREDS of gifted, beautifully trained young performers who deserve public attention out there, but it never happens.

    That amounts to CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE if you ask me.

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    Replies
    1. FT,
      why not post the whole concerto?

      I had to hunt for the other movements of this concerto and ran out of time.

      I never found the entire concerto in one video -- performed by Ms. Fischer.

      Delete
  4. Gee, FT, I thought that was why we had PBS. (: Totally agree, and lovely piece AOW.

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    Replies
    1. PBS long go succumbed to pressure to become more "relevant" to a wider audience, Baysider. The result has been a steady degeneration of quality in their programming.

      Back in the days when, I was poor and strugglng to make ends meet, PBS was a wonderful REFUGE from the tedium, boorish vulgarity and general hideousness of Pop Culture.

      In those days I always managed to scrape together enough to make a substantial contribution –– one-hundred-twenty-five dollars to be exact –– a big sacrifice for me at the time.

      Today, despite the few fine things they still present on occasion, I wouldn't give them enough, to buy the powder to blow them to hell.

      Their naked political bias in favor of "Marxian, Statist, Socialist, Progressivism" is as appalling as it is irritating. Most of the dramas, though still brilliantky acted, are heavily larded with Feminist, Multiculturalist, anti-Christian, anti-Conservative, anti-White Male claptrap, and divisive themes dwellng in Class Warfare.

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    2. FreeThinke, it may help if you understand that classical music (opera excepted) is not a visual form.
      It is adequately served by radio which is reasonably healthy in my part of the world. WCRB and WHRB broadcast a variety of classical content. There is also ample internet streaming.
      I don't believe a string quartet TV broadcast would draw much of an audience and it would probably just scavenge the NPR audience.

      As for Marxian programming. Why not give examples?

      Delete
  5. Since you brought up the horrors of popular forms, FreeThinke, I wonder what you would have thought of yesterday's concert at the Gardner.

    It featured Charlie Albright who you have praised in the past in an all improvised program. The program notes went into the history of improvisation in the classical form and they were interesting but I found the performance very disappointing.
    He seemed to be constantly quoting Liszt and was very repetitive with monotonous dynamics. It was a failure in my opinion, interesting but still a failure.

    On the way home I listened to Bill Evans Sunday at the Village Vanguard and reminded myself that classical music has limitations.

    That's what it comes down to. It's a big world with room for a lot of forms and classical musicians have things to learn from jazz.

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