WILT_2022-33

A playlist of songs that intrigued me from Sunday to Saturday. Week of 14 Aug 2022 to 20 Aug 2022.

1. Handel / Orch. Hale: Keyboard Suite No. 4 in D Minor, HWV 437: III. Sarabande – George Frideric Handel, Alexander Briger, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
2. Six Pieces, Op. 51 TH 143: VI. Valse sentimentale. Tempo di Valse – Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Daniel Lozakovich, Stanislav Soloviev
3. 3 Pieces for cello and piano: No. 1 Modere – Nadia Boulanger, Nicolas Altstaedt, José Gallardo
4. 6 Studies in English Folksong (Version for Cello & Piano): No. 3, Larghetto “Van Dieman’s Land” – Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Peregrine, Antony Ingham
5. 44 Duos for 2 Violins, BB 104, Vol. 1: Parosito (Teasing Song) – Béla Bartók, György Pauk, Kazuki Sawa

Hyperlink to Spotify playlist: WILT_2022-33

Notes

Prior to Handel / Orch. Hale: Keyboard Suite No. 4 in D Minor, HWV 437: III. Sarabande, composed by George Frideric Handel, conducted by Alexander Briger, and performed by Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, I was having a lull in music listening due to a middle ear infection that had plagued me since last Saturday. It is Thursday today, and while most of the pain is gone, the affliction is still upon me and I believe that my middle ear still contains liquid, which has made hearing muffled in my right ear.

I have also been on antibiotics for an extended period of time, and have not partook in alcohol for at least a month. What I am trying to say, is that for some of the vices that I still have access to (alcohol and music), this has been a sobering period of not relying on either vice too much. On the one hand, I do miss the dulling or celebration that inebriation provides, but on the other hand, because I have had time to physically rest, I have not needed to relieve my stresses with chemical methods.

As for the listening, I have not been able to listen out of my right ear, nor have I been able to partake in deep listening habits that I sometimes prefer with my in-ear earphones. As such, I had to readjust my musical explorations from a beat-focus, to a melody-focus.

I found my first stop with Spotify’s Dark Academia Classical playlist by exploring the Classical music genre.

Handel / Orch. Hale: Keyboard Suite No. 4 in D Minor, HWV 437: III. Sarabande, composed by George Frideric Handel, conducted by Alexander Briger, and performed by Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is a riveting performance with a wonderfully cascading crescendo. I also learned that a Sarabande is a dance in triple metre, or the music written for such a dance.

Six Pieces, Op. 51 TH 143: VI. Valse sentimentale. Tempo di Valse composed by Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and performed by Daniel Lozakovich and Stanislav Soloviev is a gorgeously melancholic duet between the violinist (Lozakovich) and pianist (Soloviev). The aching trills that punctuate the phrasings, call out as a longing into a heartless void, whereby the soft tender but confident piano keys guide you like a single note through the eternal darkness, not knowing where your next destination is.

(Logged on Thursday, 18 August 2022)

3 Pieches for cello and piano: No. 1. Modere composed by Nadia Boulanger, and performed by Nicholas Altstaedt (Cello) and José Gallardo (Piano) features a warm and melancholic cello arrangement accompanied by a listless piano performance that gently stirs with its arpeggios.

6 Studies in English Folksong (Version for Cello & Piano): No. 3, Larghetto “Van Dieman’s Land” composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams, and performed by Gerald Peregrine (Cello), and Anthony Ingham (Piano) starts with a yawning draw across the cello string, and something in me was captivated and subsequently emancipated in that one phrase. It all leads into a gentle, serene scene of contemplation and lightness of being, but the heaviness of heart. This passage is part of Williams’s 6 Studies in English Folksong (Version for Cello & Piano) which can be heard on Folk Tales (2019, performed by Gerald Peregrine and Antony Ingham). If you are curious, a Larghetto is a passage or movement marked to be performed in a fairly slow tempo.

44 Duos for 2 Violins, BB 104, Vol. 1: Parosito (Teasing Song) composed by Béla Bartók, and performed by György Pauk (violin), Kazuki Sawa (violin) gently transitions from the previous track with a stirring duet of violins that each languish in their own arrangements whilst pulling the listener into into a world of tones, shapes, colour, and breath. This passage is part of Bartók’s 44 Violin Duos, Sz. 98, and can be heard on Bartok: Violin Sonata, Sz. 117 / 44 Violin Duos, Sz. 98 (1994, performed by György Pauk and Kazuki Sawa).

I started being a bit more spirited with my logging of some technical notes because it was actually refreshing (to me at least), that classical music had a certain way of cataloging information and content. It brings me some comfort that through this cataloging and documentation of music, that a composition can exist as a document, or written language, yet it can be interpreted by any number of musicians into the future without some need of recorded medium, all the while being the same and different. Movements, passages, stanzas, solos, duos, orchestras, different tempos to mark different studies, etc.. On the one hand, there is a grand institution to one of humankind’s great cultural legacies, and then there is a realm of pop music, that has made the enjoyment of music accessible to the layperson (myself included). Popular music has different codified symbols to indicate an artist’s involvement in a project, but nonetheless, we create to prove we exist. If not for eternity, then at least for the moment.

I do encourage you to not listen to these pieces in isolation of this playlist, but to listen to them in the entirety of their compositions.