Viva Verdi

Here.

Titus Andronicus on NPR (new record)

I never really got into The Monitor (2010) but this sounds very nice and raw. It seems the new album – Local Business – is coming out in the next few weeks or so. You can stream it on NPR here.

Concerto Vocale, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, René Jacobs, Choeur de la Staatsoper de Berlin : La représentation de l’âme et du corps d’Emilio de’ Cavalieri

I see that WordPress still does not do Flash videos. Go and see this amazing concert here.

VENDREDI 22 JUIN – 20H
Salle des concerts
Emilio de’ Cavalieri
Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo
[La Représentation de l’Âme et du Corps]

Livret : Agostino Manni
Réalisation musicale : René Jacobs, d’après l’édition établie par Murray Bradshow (American Institute of  Musicology, 2011)

New Years Day (three tunes)

Martin Kuchen, tenor sax and Raymond Strid on drums. At Sollentuna Music Fair, November 7, 2002.

New Book: Boulez, Music and Philosophy

This looks interesting:

Boulez, Music and Philosophy by Edward Campbell

Series: Music in the Twentieth Century

Cambridge University Press

While acknowledging that Pierre Boulez is not a philosopher, and that he is wary of the potential misuse of philosophy with regard to music, this study investigates a series of philosophically charged terms and concepts which he uses in discussion of his music. Campbell examines significant encounters which link Boulez to the work of a number of important philosophers and thinkers, including Adorno, Lévi-Strauss, Eco and Deleuze. Relating Boulez’s music and ideas to broader currents of thought, the book illuminates a number of affinities linking music and philosophy, and also literature and visual art. These connections facilitate enhanced understanding of post-war modernist music and Boulez’s distinctive approach to composition. Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished documentary sources and providing musical analysis of a number of key scores, the book traces the changing musical, philosophical and intellectual currents which inform Boulez’s work.

Contents

1. Preparing the ground; 2. Early influences and movements; 3. Dialectic, negation and binary oppositions; 4. Boulez, Adorno and serial critique; 5. Deduction and the scientific model; 6. Serialism and structuralism; 7. Post-structuralist encounters; 8. Boulez, difference and repetition; 9. Expanding the virtual; 10. Continuity and discontinuity of space and time; Conclusion; Bibliography.

Björk interviews Arvo Pärt

Also, BBC Proms–around 8 minutes and 30 seconds of the program–has a broadcast of Part’s Fourth symphony and an interview preceding the performance (hurry, it will disappear soon): here

Stefan Beyst On Luigi Nono’s Prometeo

I came across this essay by Stefan Beyst on Nono’s Prometeo – a revolutionary work, if there was ever one in this century (although calling it “revolutionary” is already lame since everyone who ever comes across it immediately does so). Nono worked on Prometeo for a long time in collaboration with an Italian philosopher (and all-around intellectual) Massimo Cacciari. The result was a performance at San Lorenzo in Venice in 1984 that was quite interesting – a new sort of stage production was constructed with electronic and spacial innovations. Some background info for the curios can be found here.

I thought this section of the essay was curious:

Random Tune: Jean Barraqué, le temps restitué

Jean Barraqué is/was an interesting character in contemporary music. All of his works fit on a nice 3CD set (like this CPO one). Aside from the famous Piano Sonata, I also like this piece (which I was reminded of while reading about Nono’s Il canto sospeso):

A Portrait of Eliane Radigue (2009)

Can’t embed flash on WordPress, so it’s just a link. A short video about Eliane Radigue.

A Portrait of Eliane Radigue (2009) from Maxime Guitton on Vimeo.

Holiday Music

I watched a great film – Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould – the other day and since I’ve been listening to Gould non-stop (I think my brains twist into a weird knot after several hours of things like French and English Suites). In any case, I found these clips of him playing Goldberg Variations (mannerisms are of course the best part) and I must share some of them: