Hans Christian Andersen V’s Blog

I finally set things in motion to get my Green Lake townhouse on the rental market, after it sat idle for a few more months than was really financially healthy.  Go me!  Unfortunately, the leasing agency was dangerously close to Silver Platters’ Northgate location, and I failed to resist the seductive lure of a stack of Schubert.  Hence the title of the blog.  Nevermind the fact that I already have a stack of mid-90’s Southern rock sitting on my desk that Angyl wants me to listen to.  While I don’t have any CD-listening targets this year, I do want to get back in the habit of blogging about every album I buy; I get more for my music dollar if I have to say something about the experience.  Best get started.

 

Cake / Fashion Nugget

 

“The Distance” was ubiquitous in high school, one of a handful of tracks that I heard an ungodly number of times.  This is noteworthy mostly for the fact that I did not listen to music at all in high school, so if I heard something more than once, it must have been truly, ridiculously overplayed.  It holds up reasonably well, actually.  The rest of the CD?  Couldn’t tell you much about it, because I was too busy listening to their cover of “I Will Survive” over and over again.  Brilliant cover, cleverly executed, no matter what the music snobs at Allmusic.com think about it.

 

Schubert / Symphony No. 9 ”Great”  in C Major, Wagner / Sigfried Idyll

 

Georg Solti, helming the Weimar Philharmonic.  I generally like Solti, and I adore Schubert’s Ninth, and apart from a spritely third movement I didn’t find much to like here.  There’s no trace of the spritelyness that Munch/BSO injects into the piece, nor the gravitas and sincerity that Bernstein/NYPhil evokes.  To make matters worse, Solti takes several repeats that those other recorded versions omit, and that last movement just drags on and on.  As for the Wagner piece, it felt like the slower, duller parts of the middle of Siegfried; the parts I nap through while waiting for the dragon to show up.

 

Schubert / Piano Sonata in D Major D850

 

I need more recordings by Vladimir Ashkenazy.  I have trouble listening to any Rachmaninov piano concertos featuring anyone else, I’m so spoiled by him; ditto the Variations on a Theme of Paganini.  I have some old used vinyl of him playing wonderful Mozart piano concertos.  This Schubert piece is the first recording I have of him playing solo, without the interplay with a full orchestra.  This surprised me; I thought I had picked up a piano concerto, not a sonata.  It wasn’t until about five minutes in that I noticed the lack of strings or brass.  He just doesn’t need an orchestra.  He has such a marvelous range of textures, from a mischievous bounce, to thundering slams, to effortless glides. There always feels like a gentleness, a playfulness underlying every note.

 

Fastball / All The Pain Money Can Buy

 

Okay, there’s some nice songcraft going on here.  Short, poppy songs, anchored by a couple of classic late-90’s hit (”The Way”, “Out Of My Head”).  Angyl pointed these guys out as being representative of Austin at the time, and I hear a lot that sounds like homage to country sounds, plus a heck of a lot of Beatles and early Who.  I’m not enamored of the mix; there’s a lot going on here - chunky basslines, shimmering country organ, rhythm guitars, unapologetic vocal harmony, and solid drumming - but the dynamics have been leeched out; chorus-verse-chorus-verse is robbed of its impact.  Even so, I’ve had “The Way” coursing through my head for days, and none of the other CDs here have managed to evict it.

 

Yo-Yo Ma & the Silk Road Ensemble / Silk Road Journeys

 

A mix of arrangements and newly-commissioned pieces of Mongolian, Chinese, Finnish, and Persian musical styles.  I’m unsure how much is traditional, and how much represent modern fusion elements - but the occasional wide dynamic swings within individual pieces seem like modern nods to cinematic tastes.  Quite possibly the most dynamically wide-ranging recording in my collection.  I haven’t listened to much “world music” of any variety - mostly when it’s embedded in a movie or game soundtrack.  Nerd confession: I even picked this up mostly because of the Mongolian and Chinese content, because of David’s kung-fu-themed Exalted game.

 

Gershwin / Rhapsody in Blue; Concerto in F; An American in Paris; Variations on “I Got Rhythm”; Cuban Overture

Arthur Fiedler, Boston Pops Orchestra.  Oops.  It seems I mistakenly lumped Gershwin in with Cole Porter in the list of American Popular Composers I Can’t Stand Listening To.  Not quite sure where that impression came from, but when I heard Rhapsody In Blue while watching Fantasia 2000 with Angyl, I realized I needed to give him a fresh listen.  And I like what I hear, with caveats.  The caveats are that much of the music shows its age; it practically screams “pre-war American”, just like Copland screams “post-war American” - except, of course, for the parts that sound extremely French.  Either way, not my favorite idioms.  I’m also not sure how I feel about many of the jazz influences; normally it doesn’t bother me when white musicians steal black innovations and do something mainstream with them; early Elvis, for example; but for whatever reason it bothers me a bit here.   On the plus side, I’m pretty sure that this CD covers the template for basically EVERY Looney Tunes score EVER, except the ones based on operas.

 

Schubert / Trout Quintet; Sonata in A Minor for Piano and Arpeggione, D.821; “Die Forelle” D. 550

A cheap CD for completist purposes; I called myself a Schubert fan, and yet the only recording I had of the Trout was an almost inaudible $1 used-vinyl-bin acquisition.

 

The Who / Live At Leeds

I’m coming into Who fandom all backwards, starting when Jason loaned me Quadropenia and Who’s Next; I only recently acquired Tommy, and now this.  It’s a powerful argument for relocating my subwoofer from the Media Shrine to my main office.  It’s a different side of the band; a much rawer sound.  Take the sheer crunch and howl of early Zeppelin, mix in the mental instability of the Doors, and then add some really good drugs to the mix.  Smash a guitar or three, and here’s the end result.

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