mikeweil

This afternoon:

Words fail me ...

I have all the albums on individual CDs, so I will stay away from this. It does not include the Live CD from the Bottom Line, which is one of my favourites (there is the background story to this somewhere in the internet).

Saturday night we went to see the symphony orchestra of the Frankfurt Music Academy at the great concert hall of the local radio station. We had front row seats and bathed in the great sound of the orchestra, all students, but a professional conductor, Michael Sanderling. They started with Thomas Beecham's arrangement of Frederick Delius' The Walk To The Paradise Garden, a nice neo-romantic piece, all stings played with dampers. Next was the rarely played Romance for Viola and Strings by Max Bruch. Solist Jelena Antić played the solo part with the perfect balance of sensitivity and expressveness, without the over-exaggerated vibrato most conventional string players display (she is a master student of Tabea Zimmermann). She and the composer moved us to tears! They closed with parts from Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet Suite. Everybody was right on point. The audience was enthusiastic. This student orchestra is every bit as good as any of the big names. https://www.tabeazimmermann.de/lehrtaetigkeit/studierende-alumni/jelena-antic/

We visited two museums yesterday to take advantage of our Museumsufercard that a llow,s us free entry to 39 Frankfurt museums all year through. First it was Museum Giersch with impressions of different artists about housing, how we want to live, and the history of the buildind itself. As a side effect I regained interest in Fritz Klimsch, they have three lifesize bronzes of him in the park outside. My mother had porcelain reproductions of two sculptures he made. Next it was the Liebighaus nearby, a sculpture museum with some great stuff. They are heavily engaged in a research project reconstructing the color decoration of ancient Greek sculptures which is fascinating. https://www.liebieghaus.de/en/medusas-colors

Listened to this, the first in this series, earlier today. Had the LP but sold it when the CD with a bonus track was released. Only got around to buy the CD second hand last monday. Really an excellent band. There was a receipt dated june 15, 1991 in the booklet, the original buyer had paid ten Deutschmarks for it. It cost me three Euro plus the same for shipping.

Last night we witnessed the presentation of the baroque cello class at the Frankfurt Music High School. One half of the evening was three sets of songs by Henry Purcell with various modes of accompanikment, from long cello ostnatos to basso continuos to counterparts in dialogue fashion between voice and cello. Purcell was a pioneer of the use of cello in English chamber music. Four different soprano singers, all great, and a fine harpsichord player directing the groups (Leonhard Klimpke, a name to watch, if you ask me). The other half was music by Italian composers who migrated to England: Francesco Geminani, Giuseppe Sammartini, and Giacobo Cervetto. A virtuoso solo sonata with cello harpsichord, and duet and a trio with cellos - very entertaining music, fun to watch and, as it seemed, to play. These young players were much more enchanting as the russion virtuso we saw on Monday. The moderator encouraged the audience to make up their own opinion as if there was something like "English" music, considering the great French influence on Purcell and the Italian fashion in the 18th century. One of the string players just reported on facebook they just finished the recoding sessions of the pieces. Looking forward to their releae next year.

Very interesting. This one, too, has four tracks with harp:

As it turns out that Anastasia Kobekina is an already established artist studying baroque cello in period performanve practice on top of her standard education. That explains why the hall was packed to the last seat - her fans came although she did not announce the exams on her web or facebook pages. She has chops, but I was not really charmed by her playing, in part because of the extreme technical nature of the pieces chosen. She lacked playfulness and humour. I am always skeptical when classical players wnat to do both modern and historically informed performance practice - they underestmate the intricacies of period performance. https://www.kobekina.info

Last evening we witnessed the first part of the baroque cello concert exams of Anastasia Kobekina - pieces by Vandini, Barrière, Triemer, and Bach - technically extremely difficult pieces. She sure had the chops.

Discs 1-3

For a group of friends that are interested in early music.

Been listening to two dozen ciaconas and chaconnes from as many 17th century composers during the last few hours, to prepare a lecture on this type of "dance" .....

The weekend bottle: Cigalus Rouge Bio* 2019, Aude Hauterive, Indication Géographique Protégée

Same here, and I'm twenty years ahead!

2005 Mighty Quinn reissue CD. In such a rather modern context, Lionel Hampton sounded pretty much like Bags in many phrases, especiallly in blues changes. It show how much Bags came out of Lionel.