I don’t know much about the French pianist Marcelle Meyer, but have recently been investigating her playing on YouTube and very much like what I hear. There’s a fabulous looking box set of her recordings that I have my eye on — I especially like the repertoire she played.
Anyway, I thought I’d share the above because I enjoyed it and I thought you might too.
An interesting post by Alex Ross, regarding conductor Carlos Kleiber’s voracious reading habits, reminded me of an interview I had a few years ago with the singer Bobby McFerrin, who, of course, is also a gifted conductor.
Kleiber, apparently, was also a mensch. Here’s a transcript of that part of my conversation with McFerrin that applies:
McFerrin: “Kleiber’s just my favorite conductor period. Yeah, he was just brilliant in just about every way. I haven’t heard it on recording but I have a DVD of him conducting Beethoven’s 7th symphony. … It’s unbelievable. He’s like sublime, he was like on a planet all by himself.
“And I’ve got to tell you this story. When I first started conducting I was greeted with a lot of sort of, you know, ambivalence, because I just had this hit, right, ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy.’ And so what do I have to say about Beethoven? A lot of people weren’t aware that I loved classical music and I grew up that way. So I was working with an orchestra in Germany. I’d only been conducting at this point maybe maybe 4 years. I think 3. I had no idea of what I was doing. None. …”
Story: The Society will present the Chicago Symphony conducted by Riccardo Muti and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert, among others. The Orange County Register, Jan. 27, 2011. Click here to read my article
photo: todd rosenberg, courtesy of the chicago symphony
Review: The second pianist in two days with the initials L.L. performs in O.C. The Orange County Register, January 26, 2011. Click here to read my review
Review: The French Canadian pianist astonishes with a complete performance of the composer’s ‘Annees de Pelerinage.’ The Orange County Register, January 24, 2011. Click here to read my review.
From time to time, I’ll rescue some of the videos from my deceased blog. Here’s one.
Here are the opening credits and first scene from “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951), music by Bernard Herrmann. Dig the theremins, notice the tuba. After that, the videologist has removed the dialogue from the first scene to reveal the composer’s snazzy/sinister underpinning. The vibraphone is a particularly nice touch.
I’ve been gone for a few days on business and though I intended to do some blogging, I was unable to manage it. But I’m back now.
While I was gone I missed Pinchas Zukerman conducting the Pacific Symphony and Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic (in Mahler’s 9th).
Anyone hear either of those concerts and care to share his or her thoughts? I’d like to hear them.
I hope to be back to regular blogging soon. Thanks for visiting in the meantime.
Top 10 lists are big these days in the sophisticated world of the internet and its readership. Even the august New York Times (in January) got into the act recently by naming (or taking a deep breath and beginning to try to start to name) the 10 greatest composers of, like, forever. But never before has the world seen a list like the one we attempt today: The Top Ten Greatest Notes of All Time.
A word on our methods. First, we ate dinner. Then we started to think about doing the dishes but decided to do them later. They can wait. The food won’t stick, not with the dishwasher we have. (We paid a little extra.) Secondly, or thirdly, it’s hard to keep track, we got a committee of the world’s leading musicians together at a retreat in the mountains of Nevada, fed them lavishly and then corralled them all into a small meeting room without heat or air-conditioning and told them not to come out until they had settled on a list of the ten best notes ever. We took the resulting list and compared it to our own and decided to use ours. Theirs was totally wrong, a product of “group thinking” and “political correctness.”
We won’t claim that our list will be approved of by all. We’ve made some controversial choices, for sure, but, in sum, we stand by them. At the very least, we hope that our list of the Top Ten Greatest Notes of All Time will serve as a teachable moment, the start of a further and fruitful discussion, nationally and globally, on this most important topic. Without further ado, then …
The Top Ten Greatest Notes of All Time
It starts at 2 p.m. this afternoon. Here’s my review of the program they will perform. Go here and type in your zip code to find a theater near you. Listed below are the Orange County theaters which will show the concert.
Aliso Viejo 20
26701 ALISO CREEK RD
ALISO VIEJO, CA 92656
949-425-3861
Irvine Spectrum 20 plus IMAX
65 FORTUNE DR
IRVINE, CA 92618
949-450-4920
AMC Tustin Legacy 14
2457 PARK AVE
TUSTIN, CA 92782
714-258-7036
Read more…
Review: Gustavo Dudamel leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program of Adams, Bernstein and Beethoven destined for movie theaters on Sunday and a European tour later this month. The Orange County Register, January 7, 2011. Click here to read my review
photo: miguel vasconcellos, the orange county register
