Study Music 9 October

Apologies for not posting for a couple of months, I'm sure you've all missed me :)

Today I decided I wanted to listen to Ferde Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite. I didn't realise how many recordings there are of it but I went for the one I know and own the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra's 1999 album under the baton of William Stromberg. This album also includes the Mississippi and Niagra Falls suites.

Grofe's suites are a collection of orchestral pictures or musical postcards from each place. The music is highly evocative and uses unusual instrumentation to capture the listener's imagination. There are butterflies dancing to the rising sun in the first movement of the Grand Canyon suite. The third movement is my favourite, On the Trail, and you can clearly hear and see the donkey clomping along, taking its own sweet time and generally enjoying life.

Perhaps the most dramatic image is, understandably, The Power of Niagra, which brings that suite and this album to a close. The music is powerful and loud, featuring almost discordant alarm sirens. The beauty of nature brings a force to bear we must be wary of or we'll be swept away.

I followed this with Grofe's Piano Concerto, which I'd never heard before, performed by Jesus Maria Sanroma and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Grofe himself. In parts it is a typical early 20th century Romantic piano concerto with the sweeping sweetness of Rachmaninoff's second, but against that it has the competing melodies Grofe employs. I found these distracting and I'm a bit over the polished grandeur of late Romantic concertos, so while I found it nice, it's not a piece I'll be returning to.

Study Music April 11, 2019

Today I'm trying a new composer, for me, Sir Hamilton Harty, an Irish composer from the early 20th century. The album opens with his tone poem 'With the Wild Geese' which has you soaring, diving and swimming with occasional fights against the elements. It turns out, the work is prefaced by two poems by Emily Lawless, one about an Irish regiment fighting the French in the 18th century and one about the ghosts of fallen soldiers, so the moods evoked by my images of geese over bonnie Ireland were not what Harty was going for. Either way, the music is beautiful.

The short fantasy 'In Ireland' comes next and is a happy ditty that also soars, with far fewer dives.

The main piece on the album is Harty's 'Irish Symphony' and it certainly lives up to the name. Its four distinct movements take us once again soaring and diving, but in a pleasurable flight over Ireland, both its geography and its iconography. The beauty of land, the dances of its people, the richness of its culture. Its all there in what is a remarkable and delightful symphony.

Following this discovery I turned to one of my favourite composers, the tragically undervalued Ippolitov-Ivanov, and his first symphony. I hadn't heard his symphony before so it was exciting to find it. It is brilliant, especially the sorrowful third movement and the cathartic joy of the fourth, but it feels a bit more formal than his other works. It's as if here he forced himself to conform to more classical notions and lost some of the ethereal beauty and evocative phrases I love in his shorter works. Not entirely, the very structure is a break from the "classical" symphony, and it is a beautiful work, just not as good, in my mind, as his sketches and fragments.

The recording, a 2015 album by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hoey Choo, follows the symphony with one such set of shorter pieces, the Turkish Fragments. There are four fragments: A Caravan; At Rest; The Night; and At the Festival, and each is highly evocative. I prefer an older recording by the USSR Symphony Orchestra which captured the mood that much more - you can hear the winds around the caravan - but this was still a good piece of work. The album closes out with Turkish March, which usually follows the fragments. Ippolitov-Ivanov wrote some good marches, so if you like marches look them up. There's also the Jubilee March and the Georgian March which is the last piece in the second set of Caucasian Sketches.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Today is Paul Dukas's 150th birthday, which seems as good an excuse as any to get back in to my long delayed listening project - Pieces to Hear Once a Year. And, of course, I mean The Sorcerer's Apprentice (sorry Mr Dukas).

This is one of those pieces buried in my consciousness to the point of just being a part of my makeup. From the opening swirls I know I'm being carried into a magical world which rapidly escalates into dramatic misadventure. The music sweeps as irrevocably as the enchanted broomstick and carries us along the story in such a catchy way we can't escape it. It moves from climax to almost silence in a heartbeat and we listen all the more attentively as we just have to know what's happening, then again begins the build.

The appeal of this piece is broad because it's accessible, fun and dramatic without being overbearing or heavy. Yes, it has become tied very closely to a particular mouse, but the music called to the animators and gave them such a vivid story to tell. And they told it beautifully.

Since it is his birthday, I will say, Dukas did write more than just The Sorcerer's Apprentice and his other works deserve exploring. I particularly enjoy his symphony which is similarly rolling and accessible with a charm to it. Right now I'm listening to Polyeucte, based on a Greek myth, and it's suitably tragic but again it doesn't overwhelm you with its drama or mood and is actually rich and beautiful.

Why these other pieces aren't better known I'll never understand. Give them a go.

My Halloween Playlist - 2013

Just a small selection of tunes for Halloween.

Dvorak's The Water Goblin

Mussorgsky's Night on Bare Mountain (via Rimsky-Korsakov)

Grieg's March of the Trolls

Schubert's The Erl King

Berlioz's March to the Scaffold

Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre

There are many, many more of course. This is just a taste! Enjoy and explore!