The Swan

Nathan Chan, 11 years old cellist plays The Swan by Camille Saint Saens.
Now listen to Nathan's intelligent and thoughtful words on classical music at the age of 17...
And he played Bach at the age of 16!

To the memory of my mother

To the memory of my mother...

A view from my window

"A view from my window in Spring" photo by Sergio Dow.

Last night with RAVEL and Shostakovich

Last night I had a transcendental experience at Civic Orchestra of Chicago, listening to Rapsodie Espagnole by Maurice Ravel and Symphony No.5 in D Minor, Op.47 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Under the principal conductor Cliff Colnot and young musicians. The concert hall was filled with middle aged women and fewer men! Where were young men and women?

Rapsodie Espagnole is Ravel's earliest piece he wrote in 1895 after he left Paris conservatory. This piece is his best known evocations of the Spain he so seldom visited, yet seemed to know so well. I was enormously  mesmerized by the poetry of the environment, the passionate soul of music and sensual experience which made our night uniquely memorable.
 

Shostakovich’s piece gave me a different feeling. Phillip Huscher writes: “Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony is perhaps the best known work of art born from the marriage of politics and music.” He later explains: “Shostakovich claimed he wrote the Largo at White heat in three days-information that is hard to digest once one hears this calm and controlled music, moving slowly over vast, wide-open space. The lucid, thin textures occasionally turn Spartans-a solo oboe melody against a single sustained violin note, a flute duet accompanied by a quiet harp-but every phrase carries meaning, every note is indispensable.”

After the classical concert I was light as a butterfly, dancing by the movements of the violins, harps, flutes and cellos. Thinking of a young cellist whose vibrant emotions made a deep connection between us….  

Listen to Feria from Rapsodie Espagnole a rich performance from Herbert von Karajan conducting L'Orchestre de Paris.
Listen to Allegro Non Troppo from  Symphony No.5, WDR Philharmonic Orchestra, Cologne 1995
conducted by Rudolf Barshai

Bewitching Russian Opera

Inna Naroditskaya's book "Bewitching Russian Opera" published by Oxford University Press.
" Delving into the densely intertextual world of Russian literature and opera saturated with veiled codes and allusions, Naroditskaya’s “masterpiece of intertextual hermeneutics” (Timothy Rice, ethnomusicologist, UCLA) illuminates uncharted links between eighteenth-century Russian tsarinas and their fairytale counterparts in nineteenth-century nationalist operas, between politics of cultural memory and generational anxiety, between theater in imperial court and court as a theater."

13 Bedar....

titled: "Sizdah Bedar for Barbed Wire" by Kaveh Adel

Adrienne Rich, Poetry and Modern life

Acclaimed poet and activist Adrienne Rich — who died on March 27, 2012 — talks with Bill Moyers  about poetry and modern life, and also reads from her work as part of “The Heart of Things,” a segment from Bill Moyers’ 1995 series, The Language of Life.