Bach

The amazing pianist I did not know: Vladimir Ashkenazy – With free giveaway!

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Ashkenazy 46 cd (plus book and 2 dvds) boxed set

Although classical music might be showing signs of an increase in popularity, the overall trend seems to be decreasing. This brings me to today’s paradox: Due to social media, “rock star” classical musicians are more popular than their counterparts of decades ago (with obvious exceptions: Callas, Pavarotti, Segovia, et al.). Nowadays, Joshua Bell, Gustavo Dudamel (dude had a TV series, Mozart in the Jungle, based on him!), Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, etc. (they each have around a million followers on Instagram!)

So the question would be: in equal circumstances (ceteris paribus) and access to YouTube, TikTok, Netflix, etc., how would a ranking of classical musicians look? And how would modern musicians stack up against pre-social media ones?

All this, because maybe (probably) I am an ignoramus and did not know Russian turned Icelandic pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy until recently. A dear colleague who just retired is a classical music connoisseur. He is also terribly generous and constantly regaled me with CDs that he was cleaning out.

One such gift was the boxed set (with book and DVDs) of Ashkenazy’s collected piano recordings. Obviously, it is not all the works ever written for piano, but it is 46 CDs including:

Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Schumann, Prokofiev, Beethoven, Scriabin, Previn, Chopin, Bartók, Glazunov, Franck

A couple of the works are repeated, albeit at different stages of Ashkenazy’s life, so if you have a fine ear, you can evaluate his evolution.

Listening to this whole body of work has taken me about 2 years, since I only have a CD player in my (old) car (see about minimalism here). And I replayed every CD multiple times!

This was a beautiful journey for me, learning about the magic of the piano, how different composers worked with the piano, etc. My favorite? The usual suspects: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms… My least favorite: Previn.

So now that I have enjoyed listening to this phenomenal collection, it is time for me to give it away. If you live in South Florida and you want to pick it up, we can arrange it. If you pay the shipping costs, I will be happy to ship it wherever you want me to. First-come first-served. This is very rare and is not available easily.

Budapest

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Budapest had long captivated me, and I have been fascinated by Hungary’s history, geography, culture, food, and people for many years. Well, I finally had the opportunity to go this summer for a few days. I loved every minute of my visit!

Celia and I stayed at the Alice Hotel, an old, restored palazzo on elegant Andrássy Avenue, a couple of blocks from City Park.

Yes, we visited all the obligatory sites: Parliament, Royal Palace, St. Stephen’s (and St. Stephen’s hand), St. Matthias, the Fisherman’s Bastion, the market, the funicular, the Synagogue, the cafés, Margaret Island, the baths, etc., etc. But more importantly, we explored further: the Cemetery, which is amazing, the different neighborhoods, walking and exploring both Buda and Pest, sneaking into university buildings, and having coffee with the locals at neighborhood cafés. This is where you get to know the country, its people, and its culture. And it is beautiful.

We ate with the Budapesti: Goulash, chicken paprikash, sausages, funnel cakes, palinka, all the pickled foods you can think of, including the tiny peppers that look like innocent baby tomatoes and then blow a hole in your skull because it is the spiciest thing you will ever eat, etc., etc.

We returned to the cathedral one evening for an awesome organ concert which featured Mozart, obviously Budapest’s treasured child, Liszt (who also lived in Madrid for a stint), and of course, Bach, including the Toccata and Fugue as the grand finale!!

We became great users of the subway / public transport system which includes the oldest subway in continental Europe (London was first).

Probably one of the most moving moments for me was walking along the Danube and tripping (metaphorically) with the “Shoe Memorial,” bronze sculptures of shoes lined up along the Danube in remmeberance of when the Nazis shot jews into the river —having ordered them to take off their valuables and shoes beforehand.

Overall, it was an amazing experience, and I highly recommend a visit.

Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach

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Memorial Hall will stay in my memory
Pierre Laurent Aimard
Concert night
Nice truck

My only music post on this blog was published in 2014 about Van Morrison. Well, it is time to add to that. Basically the only thing I listen to nowadays is Bach, as in Johann Sebastian Bach.

Of course we are all familiar more or less with his oeuvre, but I must confess that my first conscious contact with Bach was quite late. After college I got a job in Boston’s Financial District. I moved into an tiny attic apartment on Commonwealth Ave.  in the Back Bay. Walking around I found out that Emmanuel Church on Newbury st. performed the Bach Cantatas on Sundays’ mass, so I started going religiously (sorry, bad pun). I missed the Catholic ritual, but the music more than made up for it!

Fast forward to 2013 in North Carolina when I saw András Schiff  perform the Goldberg Variations and it all came flooding back, and I was hooked. As soon as I could I went to the used record store and got Glenn Gould’s original 1955 recording -yes, the one where you can hear Gould humming the tune in the background! I stuck it in my car’s CD player and it stayed there until the car was sold in 2018. That’s five years of listening to the record over and over. Call me obsessive if you want.

The next step for me was the Cello suites. The progression was simple, although it involved a step back. A step back because I had been surrounded by these pieces when I worked at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts, eventually observing and participating in Über-conductor Benjamin Zander’s Master Classes at the school. Now I have Yo-Yo Ma’s 2015 Royal Albert Hall performance of the complete Cello Suites on a loop (see video below).

Occasionally, if I want to mix it up a bit I might listen to some of his organ music or, the Passions, or some of his other orchestral and chamber pieces (sonatas and partitas). There are many of these because back in the day (1685 – 1750) the only serious musicians worked for the king or the church. Bach falls in the latter, so he had to produce music basically for every Sunday! In case you had not noticed, I am not a musician -much to my regret- but this music has everything I need musically and spiritually speaking.

You are welcome.

Return to culture (at last)

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La Abadia theatre is in an old abbey!!
At the Fundación Juan March
At the Prado
Bicentenary
Mediterranean light is unique
Can you smell the pine trees?
Sorolla is one of my favorites!
A little Art Deco…
Museo del Romanticismo

One of the massive pluses of living in a major world capital is the amazing cultural offering one has access to. I really needed this cultural stimulation. The problem with the word culture is that it has been made to sound elitist, refined, distant from the people, the stuff Frazier and Niles Crane did, but in truth it is just beauty, beauty created by man – and woman of course! The least important bit is if we call it culture, art, or whatever.

I have been lucky to live in major cities where I became a cultural junkie: London (where it all started for me), Paris, Boston, New York, even Chapel Hill – a college town, but obviously with a thriving cultural scene. Unfortunately Naples only had a couple of cultural outlets (which I squeezed every last drop from), and in NJ I didn’t get a chance to explore although of course the heavy stuff was in NYC…

In the less than three months back in Madrid I have been lucky to experience:

  • A brilliant piano recital by local piano star Luis Fernández Pérez playing Händel, Scarlatti, Rameau, and Bach. For free at the Fundación Juan March.
  • A play/recital of Federico García Lorca’s poetry by stage icon Nuria Espert.
  • Jean-Paul Sartre’s eerily prescient play Nekrassov (1955) about the “fake news”.
  • A gorgeous version of The Nutcracker by the prestigious Compañía Nacional de Danza and the Teatro Real house orchestra!
  • Visits to the Sorolla museum, the Museo del Romanticismo, and a score of art exhibits including “Rediscovering the Mediterranean” at the Fundación Mapfre with paintings and sculptures from the XIX and early XX Centuries.
  • After fourteen years I again became a member of the Amigos del Prado, which allows me free entry to the Prado, avoiding the queues. I have, of course, already gone twice!
  • Seeing a couple of concerts in bars around town by chance.
  • Never mind being surrounded by amazing architecture.

Et cetera, et cetera, down to awesome street musicians and performers! And this is with limited time and money. The cultural menu is, in fact, overwhelming, but I am happy to nibble and enjoy!

Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.

Jawaharlal Nehru

 

My little pleasures

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Concert program
Concert program
Nice truck
Nice truck
The old Playmakers Theatre
The old Playmakers Theatre

One of the many things I love about living in Chapel Hill is the amazing cultural scene. One really has to pick and choose what events to go as there is always so much going on. Most events are free or $10 as a student. Since this is one of my few indulgences, I enjoy preparing my evening around the event, which always ends with a decompression session at Zog’s and debriefing with the amazing musician / composer  and rock star bartender James Brown. This semester I have enjoyed:

Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra performing Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1

The NC Symphony performing

Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto with an amazing Di Wu on the piano

A Bach evening

Brahms Violin concerto #77

The UNC Symphony’s

Beethoven Symphony No. 2

The Baroque ensemble with the amazing, charming and funny Prof. Wissick doing a mostly Germanic repertoire.

The UNC Opera doing Shakespeare inspired bits

The UNC Playmakers theatre did Into the Woods and A Midsummer night’s dream in back to back performances

The “amateur” theatre group did Dracula, which was brilliant and funny!

And of course no season is complete without The Nutcracker, the NC Ballet’s performance.

Since I choose to go to all these concerts I do not go to rock, pop, jazz, etc. concerts of which there are, of course, even more. I hear about them from my students that go to see groups like Corporate Herpes and so on. Hmm, not for me any more. Although I do feel bad that I have not yet partaken in the experience of going to some of the more popular venues for those kind of gigs. Who knows, I might let my hair down someday (joke) and go!!!

I am already excited for next term’s performances, which include UNC Opera doing Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, The Mariinsky Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, Britten’s War Requiem, Martha Graham, Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, and who knows what else, I can’t wait…