I am very glad, indeed I finally return home
05 Mar 2010 4 Comments
in Cinema, Music, Strange Tags: 70s, awesome, cheesy, corny, lip syncing, Russian, singing, TV, USSR, youtube
I’m sure this will be the next big thing to rock the interwebs, so it’s my pleasure to share it with you, gentle readers. The only clue I have as to its origins is the barely noticeable “1976″ printed in the bottom left corner, and the Russian title, which, according to Babelfish, translates to “I am very glad, indeed I finally return home.”
My mother once said that nothing good came out of the seventies. The fashions, the hair styles, the color schemes, the architecture, the cinema… This video is the culmination of all of the bad aspects of the seventies. Yet, somehow when they are all put together something truly corny and wonderful is created, which is greater than the sum of its parts.
I vaguely recall seeing reruns of variety shows from the seventies where the musical flavor of the month would come on and “sing” their latest hit. By “sing” I mean move their lips to a prerecorded tape. Why should the USSR be any different? To me, the lip syncing makes this video all the more awesome.
Mozart: Adagio in b minor, K. 540
08 Jan 2010 1 Comment
in Cinema, Music, Technology Tags: Adagio in b minor, home movies, Mozart, piano, recital, Richard Goode, Roxio Easy VHS to DVD, youtube
Since acquiring the Roxio Easy VHS to DVD hookup, I’ve been kind of obsessed with transferring home movies to digital format. I’ve taken all the home movies from my parents’ house with the intention of preserving my childhood memories on the computer and eventually YouTube. I’ve even taken to raiding my friends’ houses for their home movies. I may be going a bit overboard.
Among the videos I unearthed was my senior piano recital from college, almost seven years ago. While I’m the first to admit that it was not one of my best overall performances (read: there were several very noticeable mistakes), I did manage to pull a couple flawless gems from the relative muck. One of those is Mozart’s Adagio in b minor, K. 540.
While not the most technically difficult piece I’ve ever played, the emotional investment in this piece was great. There is a melancholy longing that is felt through almost painfully exquisite exposed simplicity.
Incidentally, I was incredibly fortunate to have the honor of being coached on this piece during a master class earlier in the year by the legendary Richard Goode, who is well known for his interpretation of Beethoven. While everyone else in my studio was prepared with a Beethoven sonata, Mr. Goode seemed delighted at the opportunity to work with me on the Mozart. Definitely one of the highlights of my musical career.
Please excuse the quality of the video; it was transferred from a quickly deteriorating VHS tape, and the person running the camera (which was supposedly set up on a tripod) didn’t have the steadiest hand at times. That said, I’m impressed that the sound quality is as good as it is.
Current events
25 Jun 2009 4 Comments
in Blogging, Childlike, Cinema, Music, Strange Tags: brothers, celebrities, clapping games, dance, death, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Miss Susie, music video, NPR, Theology Girl, Thriller, youtube
Once upon a time, I regularly checked in on a blog that was maintained by the wife of a friend of my main squeeze. Her posts were witty and hilarious, covering everything from the mundane and ordinary to the spiritual and all that is Josh Groban. Over the course of some months I developed a feeling of oneness with this woman who, despite being friends on Facebook, I have never actually met.
Then one day the posts stopped. There was some lame excuse for not blogging. Something about a doctoral dissertation and birthing a small human being. Every once in a while (read: every four or five months) a new post would show up in my RSS reader, letting the world know that she had not in fact fallen off a cliff and perished a horrible, bloody death, and that someday soon the posts would return with their previous frequency.
It seems that someday soon has arrived. Theology Girl has been updating with alarming regularity over the past week. (You hear that, Adrienne? Now everyone on my blog knows about it, so you have to keep updating. How’s that for peer pressure?)
Although I had planned to take a short break from the internet, I hadn’t expected it to go on for quite as long as it has. I wish I could present a cute baby from my loins as proof that I’ve been busy with other things, but that would be a vicious lie. The truth is, I’m just plain lazy.
The good news is that almost two weeks away has given me plenty of blogging fodder. Here’s hoping I can maintain my resolve and follow through with posting the weird shit I saw last week.
I’m sure that my return to blogging after my brief hiatus, though, will be completely overshadowed by the big news that has just overloaded all the airwaves: the death of Michael Jackson.
Two of my favorite things
04 May 2009 3 Comments
in Cinema, Music Tags: Cowan, duet, elderly, impromptu recital, Mayo Clinic, Music, old people, piano, youtube
I am totally in love with this video. It has two of my favorite things: the piano and old people. It seems this lovely couple, Fran and Mario Cowan, who have been married for sixty-two years, decided to put on an impromptu recital in the atrium of the Mayo Clinic last year.
I adore their showmanship, as well as the fact that they are obviously having fun playing. I also love watching Mr. Cowan bounce up and down whilst playing. I can’t help but come away smiling.
I hope I have those two things when I am nearing ninety: an ongoing love of music and a partner with whom I can still have fun after sixty-two years.
I’m old.
19 Mar 2009 10 Comments
in Cinema, Music Tags: age, Cyndi Lauper, Frankie Valli, Full House, Men at Work, Nick at Nite, old, oldies radio, Roseanne
No, not really. I’m not that old. I’m old compared to most of the eleven year olds I see each week, but that doesn’t really count. I still have a couple years until I hit thirty. So, I’m not old.
But I feel old.
Why? Because, gentle readers, I just heard Cyndi Lauper on the radio. On an oldies station. An oldies station!
This is just as bad as when Full House and Roseanne began airing on Nick at Nite.
To me, an “oldie” is the stuff my parents grew up with and earlier: I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Beatles, Buddy Holly, Frankie Valli and the like. Oldies radio stations used to play songs from the 50s and 60s. Now they play the 70s and 80s. When did the music and television I grew up with become “oldies?” I’m sorry, but Men at Work and The Police are not oldies.
I didn’t expect to feel this way until I had kids of my own, when they reached teendom and claimed my music was out of touch. Somehow I got a head start on that part of my life. How depressing.
Before I Die…
23 Jan 2009 2 Comments
in Cinema, Music Tags: André Watts, etude, Franz Liszt, funny face, La Campanella, New Year's resolutions, Niccolò Paganini, piano, youtube
I didn’t make many resolutions at the beginning of this year, because I knew it would be more of the same: keep a journal faithfully, exercise regularly, blah, blah, blah. I’m tired of not fulfilling the same resolutions I’ve made year after year and feeling guilty about it. So, that was the first resolution I did make this year: to be happy and content with who I am and not to work myself into a tizzy if I don’t meet my own lofty goals.
Besides my standing resolutions of “Go Five Places To Which You Have Never Been” and “Eat Five Foods You Have Never Eaten,” both of which I accomplished last year, one of my new resolutions this year is to make some sort of a dent in my “Before I Die” list. This is a list of pieces I want to learn well, and hopefully perform, before I die. Eventually, I’ll complete a draft of that list and post it here. Since I’m still relatively young, I figure that I have plenty of time to accomplish most of the list.
One of the pieces on the “Before I Die” list is La Campanella, from Franz Liszt’s Grandes Etudes de Paganini, S. 141. This piece is Liszt’s arrangement of the final movement of Niccolò Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in B minor. The etude is a study in speed, large leaps, uncomfortable trills and psychological stability, for it takes someone not quite right in the head to possess the will to master such a beast.
I began studying La Campanella for a time in grad school, but realized that I just didn’t have the chops for it at the time. If I were to have seriously pursued it, I would have had to ignore everything else on which I was working, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. However, I am proud to say that I was able to play the first three pages at about an eighth of the final tempo. That counts for something, right?
I love André Watts’ version of La Campanella. The tempo is just right (I have heard it much to quickly and much too slowly – he satisfies the musical Goldilocks in me), and his technical prowess is incredible to behold. There are a few moments when the camera captures him head-on, and one can only see him from the chest up; although there is so much happening below the viewer’s line of sight, he is completely still. But you know that he is working damned hard; if you look carefully at about 2:50, you can see beads of sweat beginning to form on his brow.
But I post this video of Watts not just because I want you, gentle readers, to behold the terror that Liszt released upon the world, but because Watts makes the funniest faces during his performance. Seriously. Listen carefully, because he is a fantastic pianist and the piece really is gorgeous, but keep your eyes trained on his face when you can. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
La cathédrale engloutie & La serenade inerrompue
08 Dec 2008 2 Comments
in Music Tags: audio, Claude Debussy, La cathédrale engloutie, La serenade inerrompue, mp3, piano, preludes, recital, The Interrupted Serenade, The Sunken Cathedral
On September 21, I shared a recital with a colleague, performing works for piano solo and piano duet by Robert Schumann and Claude Debussy. Overall, I’m fairly pleased with the result, considering that the recital was planned relatively last-minute. I just got the final recording, and thought I’d post some pieces I performed that I feel weren’t too shabby. The recording was live, so everything was captured, including shuffling, coughing, and my own unfortunate flubs. Do try to ignore those.
* * * * * * * * * *
The first book of Préludes by Claude Debussy (1862-1918 ) was completed in 1910. Each of the twelve pieces represent a mature compositional style that expresses a great diversity of emotional states. Interestingly, Debussy placed the titles at the end of each piece, perhaps in an attempt to indicate that the music itself was more important.
I had first performed these two préludes about six years ago, as part of my half recital during my junior year of college. It was a pleasure to refresh these pieces, which had become such an integral part of my being so long ago.
La cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral)
The legendary Cathedral of Ys was engulfed in the sea about 1,500 years ago as punishment for its impious inhabitants. It was allowed to rise from beneath the waves each morning as a reminder of their sins, only to return to the depths of the misty waters. With the open, medieval harmonies and constant dynamic increase, Debussy creates a sense of profound, eerie calm, emphasized by distant bells, which is followed by gentle ripples in the water and the rise of the submerged cathedral. Full chords proclaim the point in which the cathedral can be seen above the waves in its entirety.
(5:37)
La serenade inerrompue (The Interrupted Serenade)
This piece approximates “program music” more than any of the other préludes, and is remarkably “Spanish” in nature, considering Debussy never visited Spain. It tells the story of a poor Spanish guitarist who attempts to woo the woman he loves from the street below her window. Passersby and sleepy neighbors mock him, interrupting his serenade and wrecking his already shaky confidence. Amidst nervous chords and the occasional, frustrated curse, a fragmented love song emerges, only to end in a discouraged retreat.
(2:25)
say what?