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80 minutes of what Smorg's stereo has to put up with everydayFeb 09 '07 (Updated Jan 19 '09) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line I'm a confused dude... my cat says so (and my mom agrees, so that settles it). So if you're confused by the music here, well, so am I!
WHAT’S IN OLD SMORG’S STEREO? Part- I: Anything Goes! I mixed this 80 minutes long custom CD up one day in my typically confused taste. A look at it should give you a good idea of why my cat considers me a mental case. 1. QUEEN: Seven Seas of Rhye Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1j-6vRykFs I wanted to play this CD as my morning alarm clock... and so the first track must wake me up fast or I’ll miss too much music (beside the bus to get to work). Queen was the 4 man British rock band led by the irreplaceable Freddie Mercury, of course. This thing is a short fantasy number about an imaginary land filled with fantastic beasts. If you like Billy Joel in his mad piano-man mode, you’d love this song. The ending is a bit of an anti-climatic fading off with the 4 band mates chanting a pub anthem How would you like to be beside the seaside? How would you like to be beside the sea?..... Kind of make you wonder if you really heard what you heard or if you had just day-dreamed about it. 2. KORNGOLD: Die tote Stadt: Glück das mir verblieb (Marietta’s Lied) (Renée Fleming) Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y_OihAJSyA(Renée Fleming) I know, I know, it is fashionable to dislike Renée Fleming, though I can’t seem to grasp why. She is professional, has a most beautiful spinto soprano voice and is one of the best singing technicians out there, having the ability to handle a wide ranging repertoire... Maybe a bit too wide, granted, but then I admire artists who dare exploring outside of their comfort zone (though this song is well within her ideal repertoire, it seems). Anyhow, this is an intensely moving song of yearning that Marietta the dancer sings to Paul, a widower who has mistaken her for his dead wife (it really is a weird opera about a man who is haunted by the death of his first love). And when it is sung with a voice like Fleming’s, you’re liable to stay rooted where you are, stop whatever you’re doing and just listen... which is pretty much what Korngold wanted, I think. 3. Bulgarian Folk Song: Svatba (The Wedding) From the CD ‘Le mystere des voix Bulgare’ by the Bulgarian State Television & Radio Female Choir. This is a short song of celebration sung at weddings in Bulgaria. It has 4 parts with 1 carrying the melody while the other 3 providing counter-points of many varieties. Very upbeat, though there is an underlining disconnection to it as well. The Bulgarian mezzo Vesselina Kasarova said in an interview back in 2004 that there’s a Bulgarian trait of loving people and having others around, while at the same time keeping a private space as well. That’s the same sense I get from the song... Like a singing invitation for all to come enjoy the wedding party, but at the same time there’s an unwritten rule that the privacy of the wedding couple is to be respected. 4. MOZART: Cosi fan tutti : È amore un londrocello (Love is a flighty thief) (Teresa Berganza) Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNkI3wk-ylU (Susan Graham) Sung by the Spanish coloratura mezzo Teresa Berganza. This is a fickle song Dorabella sings to her sister Fiordiligi to excuse herself for abandoning her fiance for a new suitor so soon after his departure. Really, only Mozart could have written this thing. It even starts off like a mini concerto between the bassoons, clarinets, flutes, and French horns... all looking for love. And then the soprano (or mezzo) voice joins in with the strings and the oboes. And they pretty much go on to prove Don Alfonso’s contention that the girl is indeed too fickle to be trusted romantically. I have another recording of this track with Frederica von Stade, but I prefer Sra Berganza’s version because her voice is more assertive (fitting of Dorabella’s batty trait) and her coloratura runs cleaner. 5. QUEEN: Love of My Life Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtqADo-D3mQ This is a hit ballad from their ‘A Night at the Opera’ album. The studio version features the piano, but this track on my CD comes from the ‘Live at Wembley Stadium’ album which instead features Brian May’s excellent electric guitar. If you’ve heard Brian May plays his electric guitar, then you know that the sound is unique. Nobody plays it like he does... and nobody sings like Freddie Mercury either. It is a really mellow song in a very psychedelic album (ever heard Bohemian Rhapsody and Seaside Rendezvous?, they’re from the same album!). 6. QUEEN: Is this the World We Created? Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM0g-7sZeSo From ‘The Works’ album, this is a heck of a short album “filler”, I think. It’s Freddie Mercury accompanied by Brian May on that electric guitar singing about poverty and how we are responsible for preserving this planet. A perfect piece to supplement Al Gore’s film on Climate Change, really. 7. - 10. HÄNDEL: Alcina : Mi lusinga il dolce affetto (Vesselina Kasarova - Bonn 2004) Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jDqw-p5JHY (Vesselina Kasarova) Ooops.. The track in my CD is from an off-the-air captured CD from a concert by the Bulgarian mezzo Vesselina Kasarova at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, Germany in 2004. The song is sung by Ruggiero, the knight who has been liberated from a love enchantment spell of the sorceress Alcina via a magical ring given by his former mentor and now is able to recognize his fiancee Bradamante for who she is again. He is repulsed by his own infidelity and expresses his remorse in this hauntingly melancholy song. 11. SCHUBERT: Fischerweise (Vesselina Kasarova) Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYzPqx63LKs (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) From ‘Vesselina Kasarova sings Schubert, Brahms, Schumann Lieder’ CD. This is a fun song of a fisherman telling of the joy of out-witting his catch. The enthusiastic singer is accompanied on the piano by the equally enthusiastic Friedrich Haider so that I can almost feel the splash made by the trout they’re trying to catch make in its struggle to get away just listening to their tall tale. 12. OFFENBACH: Orphée aux enfers: Ah! Quel triste destinée (O! What sad destiny!) (Natalie Dessay - Lyon 1996) Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyvTIPveHpA (Natalie Dessay) ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’ is a satiric comic opera by Jacques Offenbach, retelling the story of Orpheus’s invasion of Hades to rescue his wife Eurydice. In this work, the two had an unhappy marriage where Orpheus is an incurable womanizer, while Euridice is a morally relative woman who runs off to have an affair with the god of Hades. Everyone is happy except for the allegorical figure, Public Opinion, who nags Orpheus into going to Hades as a politically correct gesture at rescuing his wife. In this charming little ariette Eurydice is left by herself for a bit by Pluto, and is finding the 'abandonment' sufficiently distressing to justify belting out this temperamental fit. If you like coloratura show pieces that venture up into the unearthly notes beyond the high C (like the Queen of the Night’s rage aria), then you’ll love this. 13. SARASATE: Introduction & Tarantella Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=A92Usyyq9eY (Itzak Perlman & Samuel Sanders) This is a virtuoso salon piece for a violin and a piano. I’m not a groupie of coloratura soprani, so I do need some instrumental break after all those high notes. It starts moderately slow with the violin carrying a rather mellow melody accompanied by chordal piano. The pace soon pick up and becomes a virtuoso showpiece allegro vivo tarantella with some really rowdy and cool combo of pizzicato (violin plucking) passages to an equally rowdy piano. It’s like hearing a condensed vision of a traditional evening serenade ending ...er... so successfully that even the deaf neighbor 3 houses down the lane was kept awake by the ...rowdiness of it all. 14. BILLY JOEL: Scenes from an Italian Restaurant Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGqgZgdkzoc This is a rather long classical sounding piece with great jazz and rock elements in the middle (in ABA formation, where the first motif of piano ballad returning to close the song). The lyric seems to be a narration of the relationship between Brenda and Eddie where the singer has been hanging at this neighborhood Italian restaurant all these years and seen this relationship and many like it developed. 15. PAUL SIMON: Something So Right Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvl7PpwGgC0 O, you know who Paul Simon is! This is a laid back piece by a romantically unsuccessful guy who is feeling a bit sorry for himself and his ...er.. inability to recognize the seriousness of each of the events leading up to his break up with the girl he now longs for. It is an easy going sentimental jazzy number. 16. MOZART: Mitridate: Già dagli occhi il velo e tolto (Vesselina Kasarova - Salzburg 1997) Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlVOKSKQiew Mozart wrote this opera when he was 14 yrs old... and 14 year old kids aren’t known for being ‘considerate’ for good reasons. This song of repentance sung by opera’s nasty prodigal son Farnace is 7 minutes of long lung-busting phrases with heavy doses of coloratura cadenza (virtuoso ornamentation of the melodic line), coming near the end of the long opera. It is one of my all time favorite opera aria, though a great version of it is rather hard to come by. The live track in my CD is from the Orfeo Label CD of the opera from the 1997 Salzburg Festival, conducted by Sir Roger Norrington. The best rendition I’ve ever heard. The tempi are brisk and the singing totally involved and spectacular without being showy. There is another great rendition on Vesselina Kasarova’s ‘Mozart Arias’ CD with slower tempi under the direction of Sir Colin Davis. Another great version is by the counter-tenor David Daniels in his ‘Senti amor’ CD. 17. MOZART: Ch’io mi scordi di te?/ non temer amato bene (Christa Ludwig - Salzburg 1963) Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwFUd8NcSBA (Véronique Gens) Written as a parting gift for one of his favorite singers Nancy Storace, this is one of Mozart’s most inspired concert/insertion arias. It also gives hint of what the music of the character Idamante in his opera ‘Idomeneo’ could have been had Mozart been able to cast a greater singer for that role than the infamously mediocre Vincenzo dal Prato. This aria is designed to be inserted at the beginning of Act II with Idamante voicing his frustration at his father Idomeneo’s indifference toward him (he doesn’t know that Idomeneo is just horrified because he had promised Neptune the blood sacrifice of the 1st person he sees ashore in returning for calming the storm that was threatening his fleet.... and Idamante was the victim to be!). Anyhow, this is a gorgeous duet between the voice and the piano. Nancy Storace was rumored to be Mozart’s mistress, and with a song like this with the fact that Mozart both dedicated the piece to himself and Mme Storace and played the piano part himself at the premiere, the rumor is hard to dismiss even though there isn’t any hard evidence for it. 18. VERDI: Rigoletto: La donna è mobile (The Lady Moves!) (Ramon Vargas) Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr8hJJlez54 This is such a popular commercial piece that you’ve got to be born and raised in a jungle to not have heard it. It’s a waltzy song the Duke of Mantua sings after being rejected for the umpteenth time, claiming that women are fickle and untrustworthy (anything to avoid admitting his own inability to handle them, that is). My track is taken from the Mexican tenor Ramon Vargas’ fantastic solo CD ‘L’Amour, L’Amour.’ 19. von WEBER: Oberon: Uber die blauen Wogen Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXpzs7BMFys Sung by Peter Seiffert, Bo Skovhus, Vesselina Kasarova, & Inga Nielsen from the RCA Victor CD of the opera. This is a scene from the 2nd Act where Huon, Sherasmin, Fatime, and Reiza are escaping their captor by sailing off over the blue sea. It is a fantastic quartet that starts off lyrically to the calm ocean and ends in pretty fantastic coloratura (vituoso modification of the melodic line) runs by all parties as the calm sea is being stirred up by Puck under the order of the god Oberon. 20. Bulgarian Folk Song: Ya kazhi mi, oblache le byalo (Tell Me, Little White Cloud) Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZTGPA8cHHw From Vesselina Kasarova’s ‘Bulgarian Soul’ CD, this song of yearning for one’s homeland is sung accompanied only by a piano. If you have ever spent a long time alone far away from your homeland (especially if you are from a close knit family), then you’ll have no trouble relating to this song even if you don’t understand the lyrics. The singer is in a foreign land and is wistfully asking the passing white cloud for news of her family, asking it to tell her parents if it passes their way not to worry about her. It is a very poignant song that is full of melancholy without being depressing.... A good thing, since by the time the CD is finished I’m just about ready to head out to work and depression isn’t a kind of state I’d like to go out the door with. Well, there’s almost 80 minutes of Smorg’s idea of cool music... Considering that ‘nerds’ are in fashion these days, I’d submit that you can do worse (even though doing better is a more likely possibility). If you haven't been listening to opera music before, I think you'd be surprised by how modern some of the arias sound and how well they mix with the modern music, too. After all, that classical music refuses to die after all these centuries after they were written should give a good testimony to their timeless relatability, ay? Ciao! And hope the stereo is working well you way!! *27 Apr 2008: Updated to fix a few sample clips that got removed from Youtube  |
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