Sunday, 16 November 2008
Sunday Night is..Shostakovich
His Chamber Symphony 110a. It was one of the pieces played on Thursday by the Apollo Chamber Orchestra, conducted by David Chernaik at St John's Church. The other pieces were: Barber's Adagio, and, in the second half, Takemitsu's Requiem and Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen. In this recording it is Dan Rapoport and the Quadrivium Ensemble.
As to the Shostakovich, the equivalent of Sir Alex Ferguson's "Football! Bloody hell!"
Music! Bloody hell!
It gets a bit turbulent out there sometimes. Then it suddenly stops. Life, eh...
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3 comments:
Well, I've sat through worse. But not much worse. And in similar darkly religious scenery. Into these cold and creepy concerts are often interjected polite smatterings of applause if only to keep the bronchial audience warm; to keep their blood circulating. Good winter fare. Give them all a Glühwein.
I thought it was wonderful, with or without glühwein. But then Shostakovich lived through Stalin, the purges and the sieges. Womderful and magnificent and somnolent and mourning and defiant.
The home-movie style video reminds me that's that time of year again; the Christmas concerts I will be forced to attend in the next month or so which are all too often held in gloomy ice-cold baroque places of so-called worship with smell of stale candlewax and gloomy darkwood paintings, bare damp patched walls with cloud shaped stains, and all the echoing emphysema and bronchitis that I need to hear for the next 12 months as the dutiful audience persists in sounding sos messages with bacteria ridden phlegamiticism. Nothing against old Shosto. I can appreciate him with a glass of scotch at going-to-bed-time; apropos I read your poem about walking dogs in Geneva last night. No dreams remembered.
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