Thursday, 22 April 2010
Franz Liszt: Nuages Gris / Sonata in B minor / Bagatelle sans tonalité / Malédiction
Krystian Zimerman (performing) - to listen please crank up the volume
Krystian Zimerman (performing in this and the following two parts)
Alfred Brendel (performing)
Alfred Brendel & Vienna Symphony Orchestra (performing) - in this and the following video clip
Liszt is one of my favourite authors** and within the body of work comprizing that which is his oeuvre his latest pieces are truly of special significance to me.
Goodnight.
( ** - for piano, and for mirroring a time of musical "change")
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I was unaware at the time but, this was posted exactly 6 monthes prior to his 199th birthday.
ReplyDeleteAs duly noted by a friend, yesterday on the 22nd (Oct. 2011) came the day that marked 200 years since his birth.
ReplyDelete- I leave here as a comment the address to an amazing Liszt performance I love by one of his latest pupils, a man very dear to some of his countrymen although ignored for the most part by the state, as all great creative minds and/or performers of the land.
Can you imagine a Germanic nation ignoring the existance of a BACH, BEETHOVEN, WAGNER, or MOZART?? I can.. unfortunately, and for a long time.
That is has happened systematically in a nation where even a Nobel Prize winner is ignored by most of the state (the nation's President having said he was on holidays and hadn't known the author personally.. A prime example of [in]competence in state affairs) and at ignored times on the whole, having had no state recognition upon his demise.
Without further adieu here is the the web address to the timeless above mentioned recording
http://youtu.be/OWdcrAxl58c
I now leave web links from another Blog (in Portuguese)
Further samples of mesmerizing Liszt performances - http://ideias-soltas.net/2010/04/10/czifra-lipatti-e-richter-danca-dos-gnomos-de-liszt
(link in Portuguese regarding the mentioned shameful attitude of cultural obliteration - posted in 2003)
http://ideias-soltas.net/2003/11/11/divulgacao-dos-compositores-portugueses-regresso
(one more link from the same blog regarding the subject of the said self-mutilating of one's cultural past that I had recently listened to and read, along with ilustrative comments therein, in this case containg music of Mussorgsky)
I'll also leave a quote with respect to how people such as Vianna da Motta or Nobel winner Saramago are officially treated by the state (and through said omissions obliterated.. This is a country in which for the most part "self-hates" and mutilates its own past I'm sad to say)
One who ignores or hides one's past, has and feels they deserve no future.
- As I'm using a critical view, as all that is witten in such a harsh tone here in this blog, I need to make clear that in such cases they are written by
- Margarida Costa
(aka: Guida Almeida / Guida Costa / Maria MFA Costa)
I now leave a quote that comes from
ReplyDeletehttp://www.enotes.com/topic/José_Saramago
« José de Sousa Saramago, (16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom has described Saramago as "a permanent part of the Western canon".
..
Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. More than two million copies of his books have been sold and translated into 25 languages.
He founded the National Front for the Defence of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhães and others. In 1992, the Portuguese government, under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva, ordered the removal of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ from the European Literary Prize's shortlist..
... Portugal's conservative government would not allow Saramago's work to compete for the European Literary Prize, arguing that it offended the Catholic community. As a result, Saramago and his wife moved to Lanzarote, an island in the Spanish Canaries.
...
Saramago's funeral was held in Lisbon on 20 June 2010, in the presence of more than 20,000 people, many of whom had travelled hundreds of kilometres, but also notably in the absence of right-wing President of Portugal Aníbal Cavaco Silva who holidayed in Azores as the ceremony took place. Silva, the Prime Minister when Saramago's name was removed from the shortlist of the European Literary Prize, said he did not attend Saramago's funeral because he "had never had the privilege to know him". Mourners, who questioned Silva's absence in the presence of reporters, held copies of the red carnation, symbolic of Portugal's democratic revolution. Saramago's cremation took place in Lisbon...»
need I way more..
.
.
.
I also don't care if I'm hounded for saying what I say
ReplyDeletePlease accept my apologies for having misspelt "ado"
ReplyDelete- a remnant, no doubt, of my
"Anglo-Francophone" academic upbringing.
The sentence should thus read:
"Without further ado here is the web address to the timeless above mentioned recording"
Happy 200 years of Liszt to us all, and I'm sarcastically/ironically thankful that he wasn't born in this country..
- A good week to all.