Welcome to the ACO Blog. We trust you you enjoyed Vivacious - Vivaldi's Four Seasons directed by Alina Ibragimova. Tell us what you thought. Feel free to submit your feedback here as a Blog Comment or by using the online form on our website.
Visit Alina Ibragimova's website: www.alinaibragimova.com
KURTAG Signs, Games and Messages
Gyorgy Kurtág's epigrammatic and mysterious works can be explored further on several releases on the brilliant ECM Label.
Signs, Games and Messages ECM 1730 (more). The complete set of string pieces.
Játékok (Games) ECM 1619 (more). A collection of solo and duo piano works performed by the composer and his wife. Includes his luminous Bach transcriptions. 'Perpetuum mobile' from Játékok, performed by the composer on YouTube.
Kafka Fragments for Soprano and Violin ECM 1965 (more). Perhaps Kurtág's best-known work, Kafka Fragments is a dream-like, bitterly humourous exploration of the jottings of Franz Kafka, who, like Kurtág, favoured the elliptical, the compressed, and the subconscious in his works.
Further Reading:
Franz Kafka, Collected Stories, Everyman Hardcover Edition.
BACH The Art of Fugue
Glenn Gould, one of the greatest Bach exponents of the 20th century was one of the greatest explainers of Bach. Thanks to YouTube we can enjoy some of his observations.
Gould performs Contrapunctus I (on YouTube).
Gould talks about the fugue
So You Want to Write a Fugue? is Glenn Gould's witty essay in Bachian fugue writing.
The Emerson Quartet performs Contrapunctus IX
Musica Antique Koln performs Contrapunctus XIV (unfinished)
Further Listening:
The Art of Fugue Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piano, Deutsche Grammophon 477 7345
The Art of Fugue (arr. Simpson for string quartet) Delme Quartet, Hyperion CDA67138
Further Reading:
Douglas Hofstadter Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (Basic Books)
A meditation on consciousness, artificial intelligence and language (and a whole lot more), intertwining the life and works of the mathematician, the artist and the musician. Hard to explain in a single sentence but quite simply astonishing. (Amazon.com)
Christoph Wolff Bach: The Learned Musician (WW Norton & Co.)
Life and works. Aimed at the educated layperson but with a fair bit of analysis that could be on the dry side for the casual music-lover.
VIVALDI The Four Seasons
Further Listening:
Classical music recording website Arkivmusic.com lists some 225 versions of The Four Seasons. If you're like us, you probably already have a recording or two. Some favourites include:
Simon Standage, Trevor Pinnock, The English Concert (DG/Arkiv 474616)
Arranged for flute by James Galway with I solisti di Zagreb (RCA Victor Gold Seal 60748)
Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica (with Piazzolla's Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) (Nonesuch 79568) The moody Piazzolla seasons contrast nicely with the Vivaldi. Stylish performance.
Isaac Stern, Schlomo Mintz, Pinchas Zuckermann, Itzhak Perlman and the Israel Philharmonic (DG 419214) The lavish cast has a lot of fun playing one each of the concertos.
What's your facvourite recording? Drop us a note and let us know.
Further Reading:
Read the sonnets in the original Italian at Wikipedia, here.
HC Robbins Landon Vivaldi: Voice of the Baroque (University of Chicago Press)
Short but solid life and works.
We haven't read it, but there's a historical novel about Vivaldi's time at the Pieta rather racily entitled Vivaldi's Virgins by Barbara Quick (Harper Paperbacks). Vivaldi is the first-person narrator. If you've read it, share a quick review?
BERG Lyric Suite
Explore expressionism, yearning, decadence and the unconscious with these key works of Viennese (and German) art.
Further Listening:
Alban Berg Alban Berg Collection, Various Artists, DG (Violin Concerto, Songs, Operas etc)
Richard Strauss Elektra and Salome
Further Reading:
Arthur Schnitzler Reigen (AKA La Ronde) (Methuen)
Sigmund Freud The Interpretation of Dreams (Oxford University Press)
Thomas Mann Doctor Faustus and The Magic Mountain (Penguin)
Music and madness in Mann's allegory of a country's slide into Nazi complicity. The Magic Mountain examines pre-World War I Europe throught the microcosm of an alpine sanatorium.
