February 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Double Violin Concerto
• Prelude and Fugue for Organ in E Flat, BWV 552
• Four Duets (for organ, but played on piano)

Barber - Canzone for flute and piano
Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 1 to 4 (2 recordings of No.4)
Beethoven - Cello Sonatas 1 & 2 (2 recordings)
Brahms - Piano Quartet No.1
Butterworth - Bredon Hill and Other Songs
Chopin

• Rondo in C minor, Op. 1
• Mazurkas, Opp. 7 and 33
• Two Nocturnes, Op. 32

Handel - Keyboard Suites, HWV 447 and 452
Mozart

• Piano Sonata No.13
• Symphony No.36, 'Linz'
• String Quartet No.17, 3rd movement

Poulenc - Theme varie
Rachmaninov - Russian Rhapsody for 2 pianos
Ravel - String Quartet
Ravel - Piano Concerto in G
Ruggieri, Giovanni Maria - Gloria
Schubert - Winterreise
Vivaldi - Ostro picta

Right. Finally did it.  Got to the end of all that classical music I bought in... September I believe it was. Was it? Yes. September.

*Exhales.*

*Rubs hands.*

Right.... now what?

Truth be told, at the time of writing this (bit of a cheat preview of March here), I'm waiting for my next purchase to arrive. Which I didn't directly plan as such, but I'd been keeping my eye out on eBay for several months for something difficult to obtain, and it turned up so I grabbed it.  Vague plans to look at the rest of my long-term shopping list were put on hold as a result.

I intend to go back over some of the September purchase again in a different way.  In particular with the Vivaldi works, I intend to listen to different kinds of groupings.  Choral works that arguably have connections to each other sometimes appeared split across different discs.  Also, I'd like to do things like listen to the various Vivaldi cello concertos I have, from several different sources, as a group.  Not least so that I can then remember if there are specific ones that I particularly like!

Meanwhile, in February I started an exercise of listening to Beethoven chronologically, or at least in order of opus number which isn't always quite the same thing.  I started doing this while not having finished my Mozart chronology (Mozart was stopping over in Linz in 1783 this month), or my Haydn loose chronology, or my Holmboe chronology.  I prefer having a few on the go anyway, as I'm liable to start finding it a genuine chore if I make myself listen to just one composer in that fashion.  With multiple lists on the go, I can switch between them.  Although occasionally I find I've imposed a rule that means I 'cannot' listen to a piece I'd like to.

And you know what? 'Early' Beethoven is pretty exciting and attractive stuff and I keep finding myself keen to listen to it.  It's not that early because he appears to have made a conscious decision to get serious with publishing and start using opus numbers in his mid-20s.  He's already begun to establish his career in Vienna and get attention.  And it's attention-getting music, with lots of little jolts and shocks scattered through it (and sometimes some quite big ones).  It's dynamic. It's got propulsion.  And it made him into one of the most famous names in Western culture.

Hmm. I also finally finally got aroud to listening to Winterreise in full.  Arguably the greatest song cycle by anyone.  Also as miserable and bleak as anyone could want.  To be honest, I find some songs in it a bit more compelling than others, partly because of the similarity in tone of many of them.  A song has to stand out in some way.

Mind you, some of the compelling ones are very compelling. I actually tend to think the success of the cycle might be in no small way indebted to the last song, 'Der Leiermann', which is incredibly haunting.  It doesn't matter how tired I am after listening to 70 minutes worth of music beforehand, I hear that final song and I can feel how it affects me.  So people file out of a performance of the whole cycle with that resonating inside their head.

February 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Little Earthquakes
• Boys for Pele
• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• Scarlet's Walk

Jimmy Barnes - Flesh and Wood
Kate Bush - 50 Words for Snow
Marc Cohn - The Rainy Season
The Dissociatives - The Dissociatives
Peter Gabriel - So
Genesis - We Can't Dance
Gomez - In Our Gun
Radiohead - Kid A
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
Sting - ...Nothing Like the Sun
Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring
Tears for Fears - The Seeds of Love

Hmm, living in the 80s a fair bit...These lists really can surprise me sometimes.  For instance, I have this sense at the time of writing that I haven't listened to any Tori Amos for several weeks. And in fact I'm right, but I listened to several albums in the first half of February.

It's also interesting that Choirgirl is the last one I listened to, and I've listened to it at least once in each of the last 3 months after not having played it for almost half a year before that.  That's in no way because I started disliking it, but simply because it can be such a visceral and exhausting album to listen to. I'm most often drawn to it when in a dark, angsty mood and ready to let fly at the world.

I still rank it as Tori's most astonishing album, because of the way it rewrote the rules of what she was capable of.  No longer was her career 'merely' the story of a woman pouring her heart out at the keyboard. She was now in charge of much larger forces.

I listened to The Rainy Season a great deal during the month. I've said before that it's one of my favourite albums of all time, but I don't believe I've said why.  And it's because it's one of the most perfect small-scale albums I know.

Which might seem like a putdown, but it isn't.  Not everything should be grand and epic.  The Rainy Season is a collection of songs that resonates with small, intimate moments and domestic relationships. It's warm and affectionate, and a little sad as well. It feels like it belongs in a log cabin with a wood fire. And for me there isn't a false step anywhere.  Which is why, when a car chewed up my original cassette copy, I immediately went hunting for a CD version. I didn't want to be without it in my collection.