Music from the heavens
23/10/08 12:40 Filed in: Music
I wrote over on Love’s Passage the other day about music being a gateway and mirror of the soul. I don’t know why, but then I put up a piece by Ludovico Einaudi there for a while. I like it, but it wasn’t something that stirred much inside me. It’s pleasant enough. I own the record and it might be the sort of thing I played on a long car journey.
I deleted the post quickly. I wanted to share some different sort of music, music that gave me goose bumps and shivers up my spine when I listen to it. I do like a lot of modern and rock music, but my favourite of all is classical and in particular the works of Mahler and Bach. Is this a surprise?
Mahler seems to be a minority taste but in my view, he has written some of the most powerful music ever composed. It touches the deepest parts of me. It stirs my heart, soul and spirit. It always has.
As part of my bizarre upbringing, I heard all the pieces here first when I was 13 years of age. I know! I was a precocious child! I fell in love with them then. I have loved them ever since.
Give them a listen. Relax and let the music wash over you. You may just hear the gates of heaven opening!
Claudio Abbado conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in the final movement of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no.2 - Resurrection
Klaus Tennstedt conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the breath-taking finale of Mahler’s 8th Symphony – The Symphony of 1,000
Ton Koopman conducting the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in an extract from Bach’s St Matthew Passion
I deleted the post quickly. I wanted to share some different sort of music, music that gave me goose bumps and shivers up my spine when I listen to it. I do like a lot of modern and rock music, but my favourite of all is classical and in particular the works of Mahler and Bach. Is this a surprise?
Mahler seems to be a minority taste but in my view, he has written some of the most powerful music ever composed. It touches the deepest parts of me. It stirs my heart, soul and spirit. It always has.
As part of my bizarre upbringing, I heard all the pieces here first when I was 13 years of age. I know! I was a precocious child! I fell in love with them then. I have loved them ever since.
Give them a listen. Relax and let the music wash over you. You may just hear the gates of heaven opening!
Claudio Abbado conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in the final movement of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no.2 - Resurrection
Klaus Tennstedt conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the breath-taking finale of Mahler’s 8th Symphony – The Symphony of 1,000
Ton Koopman conducting the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in an extract from Bach’s St Matthew Passion
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La Folle Journee, Nantes
07/05/08 07:05 Filed in: Classical Music
La Folle Journee (The foolish or crazy day) is the “Woodstock” of classical music - A long weekend with over 240 concerts in 15 venues. Attended by well over 150,000 people, it’s an amazing production.
It’s a brilliant idea, one designed to demystify the classical concert, to strip away the aura and pretensions that put off the more timid or dissuades the less well-off from splashing out. Each concert is short (around forty-five minutes of music with no interval); there is a reduced admission price, a wide variety of different performances and, finally, a truly enthusiastic audience.
There is no class distinction, no discrimination between professional and amateur musicians (with wind orchestras and steel bands giving performances in the central hall of the conference centre). One can see why the City of Nantes supports this unifying project that boosts social harmony and brings great music to everyone.
Over two days at this year’s festival at the end of January and beginning of February, I managed to fit in five concerts that included the Russian virtuoso pianist, Boris Berezovsky performing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto and a stunning performance of Schubert lieder.