There are quite a few of these types of videos making the rounds. This is one of the better ones, I think. The kid knows the music, that’s for sure. And I’ve never seen a conductor pick his nose before.
Hat tip to Joan.
Mutter-Bashmet-Harrell Trio exhume early Beethoven
Review: The all-star ensemble visits Costa Mesa with a program of neglected repertoire written by the composer in his 20s. Click here to read my review. There’s a nice little slide show too.
Great moments in film music: ‘Being There’
I see that they’ve taken down all the videos on my old blog, so I think from time to time I’ll bring back some of my favorites here.
This one comes from Hal Ashby’s 1979 film “Being There,” based on a novel by Jerzy Kosinski. Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers) is a simpleton who has spent his entire life in a Washington D.C. house in the service of an old man. The old man dies and Chance has to leave, emerging into the real world for the first time. His knowledge of it comes entirely from watching television (thus his use of the remote control in this excerpt). The perfect music for the occasion is a once famous funked-up version of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (the theme from “2001″), which manages to express both the dawning of a new day for Chance, and the gritty urban world of that dawn. Keep watching: near the end comes what is, for me at least, an indelible melding of image and music, as Chance, in a long shot, walks up the middle of a busy street.
Vinyl offer
Do you yearn for the good old days when you could read the liner notes on your recordings without a magnifying glass? Do you long to gaze at life-size portraits of the performers therein? Do you struggle to open cellophane-wrapped jewel boxes with a knife, putting your life, and those of your children, in danger? Do you abhor the clean, precise sound of digital recordings scanned with the cold and calculated accuracy of laser beams?
Well, frustrated listeners, you’re in luck!
The San Francisco Symphony is releasing a special limited edition 22-LP (that’s vinyl, my friends) box set of its Mahler symphonic cycle with Michael Tilson Thomas for the unbelievably low price of $749 including shipping. Each LP is pressed in 180g audiophile virgin vinyl and comes with its own luxuriously designed jacket. This set can be yours for just two easy payments of $75 (pre-order) and $674.
But wait, there’s more!
The first 250 customers will receive specially autographed editions signed by music director Michael Tilson Thomas. In addition, all purchasers of this limited edition set — numbered 1 through 1,000 — will get a bonus 45 rpm recording of Susan Graham singing Mahler songs accompanied on the piano by Tilson Thomas at no extra cost.
Don’t wait, click now!
(Your pre-order of $75 secures your copy. Release date expected in April, 2011. California residents are charged 9.5 percent sales tax when second payment is processed. If, in the event, pre-orders fail to reach 600 by Dec. 31, 2010, your $75 pre-order will be refunded in full. Offer not available in Delaware.)
Still can’t get enough vinyl?
Preservation Hall Recordings is releasing a special limited edition 78 rpm recording featuring Tom Waits and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Proceeds will benefit the Preservation Hall Junior Jazz & Heritage Brass. The first 100 records at the $200 level of donation will be accompanied by a custom designed 78 rpm record player. The remaining 404 78s come at the special low price of $50 and you’ll have to figure out how to play them on your own. Good luck!
(Available Nov. 19 at Preservation Hall and Nov. 20 for online purchase. No C.O.D’s please.)
Disclaimer: We love vinyl. Offer available in Delaware.
Kremer and the Kremerites
I happen to enjoy concerts where the music being performed is unfamiliar to me, where my ears are asked to assess the quality of the pieces themselves and not only the performances of them, where I might hear something new that I like rather than another rehashing of a bona fide masterpiece that I already know I like. But that’s just me.
The unfamiliar names on the Segerstrom Concert Hall program last night – scary-looking monikers such as Raminta Šernšnyte, Steven Kovacs Tickmayer, Arvo Pärt and Lera Auerbach, which, if you looked closely enough, belonged to persons still among the living – were enough to keep Orange County away in droves. There was plenty of elbow room. That despite the celebrated performers onstage – Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra. But then name recognition doesn’t get you very far in classical music these days.
Perhaps this type of concert, featuring new music prominently, will never be box office gold, but it seems to me that Kremer and his ensemble are the opposite of an elitist operation. They seek to connect with audiences, to expand the repertoire into non-classical regions, to meet listeners at least half way, and sometimes even more. Yes, they want to move you and even challenge you occasionally, but they also want to entertain you. They care if you listen.
Gidon Kremer for $20
The Philharmonic Society of Orange County is offering $20 rush tickets for the performance by Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica Monday eve at Segerstrom Concert Hall. These rush tickets are open to everyone and all (you need not be a student or senior). All you have to do to get them is show up at the concert hall ticket office on Monday (starting at 6:30 p.m.) with $20 cash in hand. Yes, the offer is cash only.
Concert starts at 8 p.m. Kremer and krew perform music by Serksnyte, Schubert, Part, Tickmayer, Auerbach and Beethoven.
More info at 949-553-2422 or www.philharmonicsociety.org
The preceding has been a public service announcement.
Dull as Dresden
Review: Conductor Daniel Harding, pianist Rudolf Buchbinder and the Dresden Staatskapelle open the Philharmonic Society of Orange County’s 57th season. The Orange County Register, Oct. 28, 2010. click here to read my review
Where on earth is Gustavo Dudamel?
The Dude abides. Not for long, though.
After spending a fortnight with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, opening the season with his usual aplomb, Gustavo Dudamel is in Milan this week to begin a nine-performance run of Bizet’s “Carmen” at La Scala. After that he’ll be in Gothenburg, Sweden, conducting his other orchestra in three concerts in late November, then, according to his web site at least, take a few weeks off before end of the year performances with the Berlin Philharmonic.
Over the summer, he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic at the Lucerne Festival, then, just before the L.A. Philharmonic opener, took the Viennese to the U.S. for high profile performances in Kentucky and at Carnegie Hall.
He records for Deutsche Grammophon with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, his old and current mates. Their latest recording, released in June, features “The Rite of Spring” and “La noche de los mayas” by Revueltas.
In other words, Dudamel is in demand the world over. He visits us when he can.
Great moments in film music: ‘Gun Crazy’
OK, I admit that I’m sharing this clip just because I like it. The scene unfolds in one long take — that is, without any edits and shot with a single camera. Our two heroes (played by Peggy Cummins and John Dall) are on their way to rob a bank. That’s all you need to know. Notice that when Cummins gets out of the car (a natural place for a cut), the camera merely follows her out the door.
But great moments in film music are also made by the absence of music, as in the famous biplane scene in “North by Northwest.” There is no music in this “Gun Crazy” scene until the bank’s alarm goes off, which adds to the reality of the sequence.
From the department of ‘Things we thought we’d never be saying’
I wind up my sixth week as a celebrity journalist today.
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