Tintinnabulous triads, a pre-Yom Kippur pause for reflection.
Continue reading...Classical
280: Charles Ives, ‘The Unanswered Question’
Founder of a successful insurance company. on weekends he composed modernist music that lay unheard for 50 years and “responded to negligence with contempt”.
My new role model.
278: The Danish String Quartet, ‘Sønderho Bridal Trilogy – Part II’/Dreamers’ Circus, ‘Kitchen Stories’
Some of the most exciting music I’ve heard in years. Oh, do give it a listen.
Continue reading...113: J.S. Bach, ‘Prelude to Suite #2 for Unaccompanied Cello’ (Casals)
Yom Kippur is when we Jews face up to the way we lead our lives. The cantor uses the liturgy to break open our hearts and try to pry open God’s. But if there were going to be a secular soundtrack, it would have to be Bach’s Cello Suites.
Continue reading...301: Erik Bosio (& jeff meshel), ‘Galia’
If I’m a wave, then she’s a shoreline
Watching the tide rise
Waiting to break me.
Galia.
086: ‘Different Trains’, Steve Reich (Kronos Quartet)
Minimalism and “the only adequate musical response—one of the few adequate artistic responses in any medium—to the Holocaust.”
Continue reading...097: Mstislav Rostropovich, ‘Cello Concerto Opus 43, Adagio’ (Mieczyslaw Weinberg)
On Holocaust Day we remember the incomprehensible persecution suffered by Moldovan/Polish/Russian Jewish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919–1996) at the hands of both the Nazis and the Soviets.
Continue reading...084: Dmitri Shostakovich, Prelude & Fugue No 16 in B-flat Minor (Tatiana Nikolaeva)
As our hearts weep with the innocent Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression, our thoughts turn to Dmitri Shostakovich, a courageous human being and a great composer who lived and worked under the shadow of Soviet oppression.
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