My apologies for the week of
silence (hey, Tennyson took ten years people!).
My excuse is far less morose, thankfully. It is just I rolled an album with a full
eighty minutes of music on it right over the Easter holiday, so it was a bit of
a slog to find uninterrupted listening time.
I gave it a full listen eventually,
but it admittedly wore me out. Today I even put it away early and walked to work
listening to Nightwish instead. Later in the car I switched to Motorhead. Not exactly a
ringing endorsement of interest.
Disc 499 is… Piano Concertos Nos. 23 & 24
Artist: Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart
Year of Release: recorded in 1965-68
with the excellent London Symphony Orchestra, but the music is originally from
1782 to 1786.
What’s up with the Cover? When you’re this big in the music scene, you get a
statue. What is Mozart’s statue idly
pointing at, though? Giving directions
to some Vienna tourists? Telling someone
to move along? The answer is lost in the
mists of time.
How I Came To Know It: Everyone knows Mozart. This was just me trying to flesh out my classical
music collection a bit, which remains woefully inadequate.
How It Stacks Up: I only have two Mozart albums; this one and the
Coronation Mass. I prefer this one.
Rating: 4 stars.
I guess
with titles like “Piano Concerto No. 23”
you should expect a fair bit of piano, but whoa, little did I realize just how
much would be involved when I got into this stuff.
Both Concerto No. 23 and No. 24 start off
pretty promising, with great flourishes of string sections. I love the sound of a fiddle even when it is
played as the more sedate violin, so the opening movements of both Concertos
appealed to me.
However,
it isn’t too long before the opening bars are being repeated by piano, and the
violins are kicked to the musical curb so somebody can noodle his way up and
down the keys. A violin sets the stage,
and a piano repeats and then runs off with it.
It reminded me of when Jimmy Page and Robert Plant would riff off of one
another on a Zeppelin song.
Like
with Zeppelin, I found myself admiring the virtuosity of the experience but
falling in and out of the mood because of the excess noodling. Usually this was because the piano solos go
on a little too long. It’s like the
composer is deliberately focused on the piano for some reason…
Anyway,
a quick word on Mozart, who is self-evidently brilliant and a huge influence
not only on later classical artists but a lot of modern music. I think it no accident that when I grew tired
of repeats of these concertos my first instinct was to play Nightwish, which is
symphonic metal. Obviously it isn’t as
complicated, but the intricate relationships between the instruments (in
Nightwish’s case, vocal, guitar power chords and double bass) take a lot of
their inspiration from classical music.
Both Piano Concerto No. 23 (in A Major) and No. 24 (in C Minor) were written in 1786
and they have a lot in common. Both have
three movements, the first and third of which are more up tempo and bright and
the second more thoughtful and introspective.
These large shifts is what keeps a piece of classical music like this
interesting over the long haul (the two ‘songs’ are twenty-five and twenty-nine
minutes long respectively). That said, the middle frames have sections that are
a bit too “fifties Disney” sounding.
Maybe I first heard them in fifties Disney movies and that’s why I think
that, but I couldn’t shake it, and it lessened the experience a bit.
Although
not advertised in the title of the CD, this disc also had two Rondos (both written in 1782); “Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in D Major”
and that Rondo I’m sure you were hoping I’d mention, “Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in A Major.” O, Rondo
in A Major, you sly minx, you.
I wasn’t
sure what a rondo was, but to my ear they sound like a little musical
call-and-answer session between two themes.
They fit well on this album, as they tend to establish the theme first
with strings, then answer with piano, and then spend a third section blending
them together, as though Mozart wants to say “behold how cleverly my two themes
blend together into one! Huzzah!” Presumably he would say this while wearing
some outrageous outfit and a curled wig; puffing his chest out and making exaggerated
flourishes with his hands. Such were the
times.
Anyway,
the musical progression takes four or five minutes and then repeats with a slight
variation, so the two rondos are eleven and eight minutes long respectively,
and both are lively and enjoyable. One
person I talked with about them thought they were used for dance music in the
day, and I could totally see that. On
balance I prefer a girl who can do the hustle to a girl who wears a bustle but I
could make it work. You know what they
say - when in Vienna…
As with
all classical music, it is best when you take the time to relax and let it soak
over you; even playing it right now on headphones while writing this review I
am enjoying it more than I did on my walks to and from work, principally
because there is less visual distraction.
Classical music is not background music, and if you play it that way you
are missing out on the experience.
Overall
I liked these tracks, but I didn’t love them.
I think the answer is next time to go with a violin concerto and put the
focal point on the instrument that makes my ear the happiest.
Best tracks: I think I like the rondos more than the concertos
overall, but maybe that’s just the modern rock music guy in me looking for my music
in more digestible bites.
No comments:
Post a Comment