Friday, October 27, 2023

Friday Miscellanea

Quote of the week: "Zen enriches no-one."

-- Thomas Merton

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It often surprises me, which item in the Friday Miscellanea sparks the most comments. But I suspect that this week, it will be this one: The connections between Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez and fascism. Here is the argument presented by Rafael Andia:


It will help a lot to recall the context of the 1930s, that very unsettled time in European history, with the Spanish Civil War, the spread of communist ideals through many European capitals, especially among artists, and the rise of Fascism in Italy and the Nazi party in Germany. At the time, no-one had any idea of how history would play out with the occupation of France and much of the rest of Europe, the subsequent destruction of Germany, the defeat of Italy, and the entirely new post-war reality with the triumph of Anglo-Saxon democracy and capitalism. None of this was evident in the 1930s. Stravinsky was also an admirer of Fascism in the person of Benito Mussolini, as was Ezra Pound. Rodrigo, it seems, was caught on the horns of a dilemma.

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The New York Times reviews the farewell concert of the Emerson Quartet: The Great Emerson String Quartet Takes Its Final Bow
It did not take the Emerson long to set the formidable technical standards that we take for granted among chamber musicians today. “After five minutes of playing,” the critic Bernard Holland wrote of that Bartok concert in 1981, “one began to assume perfection. There were no disappointments.” There are none to be heard, either, in the Emerson’s recorded legacy, which, with all its vitality and its security, Deutsche Grammophon ensured defined the sound of a quartet in the digital age. Hearing them now is to be confronted with persistent excellence, an enduring commitment to quality that any musician would be proud of.

Emerson made their bones with performances of all six Bartók quartets in a single concert. But for me what made them a great quartet was their live recording of the Shostakovich quartets:


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From another musician, I learned that my experience was not unique. This trusted colleague speculated I might suffer from musician’s focal dystonia. I was embarrassed that I had never heard of it. I soon discovered that I might have a disorder that has plagued some of the world’s most famous musicians. The 19th-century German composer and pianist Robert Schumann was thought to have dystonia, based on his letters to friends, and used a weighted contraption to strengthen a rogue finger. In his diaries, Glenn Gould, known for contorted body postures at the keyboard, described symptoms in his left hand and arm as if writing the definitive dystonia textbook. And Leon Fleisher, after years of misdiagnosis and a right hand frozen into a claw (he played the piano with one hand), brought worldwide attention to dystonia in musicians as never before.

Thank god I don't have this problem. I'm just lazy and don't practice enough.

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 Some sad news from Slipped Disc: FIRST WOMAN PHD IN CLASSICAL GUITAR DIES AT 63

The classical guitar world is in mourning for Lily Ashfar, an Iranian student of Andres Segovia at USC who was the first woman to breach a closely guarded macho instrument. Lily was 63 and had been ill for some time.

She received her doctorate from Florida State University in the midst of an international career. Her Hemispheres album has iconic status.

Lily is being buried in northern Iran.

The correct spelling is Lily Afshar. 

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 Daniel Barenboim: In our orchestra, Israelis and Palestinians found common ground. Our hearts are broken by this conflict. You may have to register to read the article. The project, co-founded by Barenboim and Edward Said, of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra united players from many countries in the Middle East including both Jewish and Arab musicians. The ideals were laudable and if music alone could bridge these kinds of gaps, I'm sure that it would have been successful. But while it has been a genuine success in the musical world, in the wider context, sadly, it has not been.

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And finally, Car drivers torture NZ city with Celine Dion songs

Car drivers armed with a playlist of Celine Dion songs have been plaguing residents of a small New Zealand city for months on end with loud, late-night "siren battles".

The beloved Canadian singer's melodies lose their charm when blared at high volume as late as 2 am, say the sleepless residents of Porirua, north of Wellington and home to 60,000 people.

"It's a headache," Porirua Mayor Anita Baker told AFP on Thursday.

Siren battles have erupted in parts of New Zealand for at least seven years.

Local media have reported on contestants -- often people with family links to Pacific Island nations -- using large siren-type speakers on cars and even bicycles to drown each other out with their powerful systems.

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The first, obvious choice of envoi is the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo. Here in a performance by Pepe Romero:


Next, Emerson with the String Quartet No. 8 by Shostakovich:


Lily Afshar playing Albéniz:


Finally, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra:



17 comments:

  1. I had the privilege to hear the Emerson String Quartet a number of times in concert, and I always appreciated them. One concert, in particular, in which they played Shostakovich's last quartet, I count as one of the great musical experiences of my life. It's sad to think that I'll not be able to hear them again.

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  2. Rafael Andia, certainly (so I can see from looking about on the Internet) a fine guitarist etc, is just as certainly a committed partisan of the Republicans' worldview and so I'm prepared to take whatever he has to say or write about the Marques de los Jardines de Aranjuez cum grano salis. But I suspect I'm not going to spend half an hour listening to him. Unless the comments here become really fiery. :-)

    Will someone please confirm my understanding that we cannot assign Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704, I think) to the "second half of the Baroque period"? A writer did yesterday at the NYT and while the moment's irritation passed I've wondered if I actually had no cause for it, not that such things are engraved on the frieze of the Muses' temple, I guess.

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  3. Yes, a singer friend of mine told me that hearing the Emerson Quartet play the Quartet no. 15 of Shostakovich was one of her most memorable experiences as well.

    Rafael Andia is certainly of the progressive, modernist school, which is fine. But, as you say, one should take his argument with a grain of salt. The Spanish civil war was, like all civil wars, both nasty and tragic. Pablo Casals, a supporter of the Republicans, had to live in exile when they lost. Rodrigo became a supporter of the Nationalist regime. Segovia spent the war in Latin America but reached some kind of accommodation with Franco and returned to Spain. There is probably a good book there!

    Taruskin, rebelling against the "Renaissance-Baroque-Classical-Romantic" template refuses to title his volumes with those words, instead just referring to the century. But traditionally, one would say that the Baroque began around 1600 with the first operas and the development of monody and the use of continuo. And it extended to the death of Bach in 1750. So Biber would fall in the middle, favoring the first half. But it might be best just to call him a 17th century composer.

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  4. I looked in Taruskin in fact and Biber Noster isn't even there, not in the index, anyway (haven't myself yet gotten beyond his pre-16th c volume and then the 19th and 20th century ones).

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  5. Oh, bummer. I guess Biber is one of those composers he just left out. So you can just take what I said as authorative. (heh!)

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  6. When I write to NYT to pick a bone with what's his name, whoever wrote yesterday's nonsense (it was a brief album notice, not by the critic in chief, Zachary Woolfe being the only name I can think of at the moment), I will make sure to point out that I can enthusiastically recommend his successor if he elects not to shape up.

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  7. Oh no! Will I have to move to New York?

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  8. To review albums? I think not. If I can hear e.g. Isabel Faust's Solo the day of its release here in the Oregon wilderness, the Times can hook you up with a subscription to Presto or Spotify etc.

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  9. I was actually offered a job reviewing classical CDs years ago before streaming came along. But it wasn't going to work because it was too expensive for them to ship all those CDs to me in Mexico. Nowadays not a problem.

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  10. Wonder if reviewers get the physical CD these days or if they content themselves with the streamed version? I suppose this varies depending on the newspaper.

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  11. Marc, in my limited experience reviewing for a couple of places CDs still get sent out to publications, and then also downloads get sent in lossless files along with booklet pdf. I was told that in the past CDs would also get sent directly to specific reviewers -- in the days of nationalised telecommunication when nearly everyone could be looked up in the phone book (I don't know if there was something similar in the US?)

    Also: hope you're well Marc, been a long time!

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  12. Hi, Steven, yes it does seem to have been a long while. All's more or less well here, as I hope it is with you. Thanks for the information! I forgot about 'lossless files'. My sense is that with the advent of mobile telephones in every pocket, the old 'directory assistance' that served landline telephones has vanished but I don't know: the last time I tried to use it was probably in '06 or '07. One looks online for unknown numbers these days. We don't get phone books here any longer, not for residential landline customers; rarely, a marketing company distributes a directory of businesses, government offices etc.

    One of my current peeves is record companies that sell albums in CD and FLAC etc formats but don't include a pdf of the booklet with the FLAC files. Tsk. I guess it's possible for a CD to be sold without one.

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  13. Yes I know that can be irritating. Sometimes one can get the pdf through the Naxos Music Library, if you have access (many public library memberships in the UK give access, for instance).

    Re phone books, that sounds about right. Though it did have an afterlife as an online service, which I definitely used as a teenager (it was that curious historical period -- between about 2006 and 2009? -- when the internet had taken over but the smartphone had yet to usurp the brick and the flip-phone, and we still used landlines most of the time).

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  14. Wouldn't have read this in the Times probably but I was 'Google alerted' because of one of the signatories etc: Freedom in the Arts, proposing to assist artists who've been discriminated against ('cancelled') because of this or that (which in better times would have been characterised as 'free speech').

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  15. I have noticed a turning of the tide recently, but I wonder just who they would be assisting? Artists of any opinion who have been cancelled, or only those of the "correct" opinions?

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  16. Whoever wrote The Times article concerned herself with artists who've been given grief by the 'trans activists' and their lot; there were other examples, too, all from that 'side', as it were. What FITA will do, other than hold hands in commiseration, I don't know.

    It will offer support to artists who find their work has been cancelled, and “champion artistic freedom”, as well as holding arts institutions to account to ensure they “welcome a diversity of thought and belief”.

    Artists will be put in touch with a network of others who have had similar experiences, to help them through the “stressful experience”, said Kay. They will also be directed to legal advice if they wish to sue for discrimination.

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  17. This sounds like it has a bit more teeth:

    https://nationalpost.com/news/york-university-lawsuit-antisemtic-incidents

    A class-action lawsuit against a Canadian university for allowing anti-semitic incidents over a number of years against Jewish students.

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