busy day


sorabji.com: What are you listening to?: busy day
THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016).
By Sorabji on Saturday, January 17, 1998 - 10:55 pm:
    differences here, in that i practiced some music while merely listening to other music. it is one thing to practice as i did for many hours today, and quite another thing to sit on the couch and listen to CDs.

    PRACTICED:
    Roger Sessions Sonata. Read through it again thinking that Bob would be pleased if I actually did this piece. Sessions was so sensitive to rhythm, but the only recording i have by Christopher O'Riley makes it all sound like water.

    Bob Helps, that is.

    Bach/Busoni Prelude & Fugue in D. God that is Rock and Roll, I once drove all over the outer reaches of suburban Tampa in my mother's car just blasting E. Power Biggs' recording of this thing. Few pieces of classical music make me feel like I am at a rock concert... this is one of them.

    Schubert (almost said Schobert, whole different guy) "Wanderer" Fantasy. A stock piece for me, but always fun as hell. Did this at St. Bart's a few years ago, might do it there again this year now that the concert series is under a new regime. Really need to practice the 3rd movement, that thing is really hard.


    LISTENED TO:
    John Adams Phrygian Gates. After years of giving Adams the benefit of the doubt I come back to him and find that he is nothing. This stuff has no merit, but it probably scored him a few dollars. I only need think of that asinine line from "Nixon in China" where someone asks someone else "How was your flight?" and the answer is "The ride was smoooo-oooo-ooooth, smooo-ooo-ooooth, smoooo-ooooo-ooooth." So stoooo-oooo-pid.

    Sorabji, He Was Laughing in the Tower, Donna Amato pianist. She holds nothing overthat other pianist whose name escapes me right now (not Madge), but she did OK with this and some other stuff when I saw her play at the Citicorp Center a few years ago. Why any musician would commit the necessary time and energy to be able to perform this mediocre music is beyond me, but then again Josef Hofmann blew his whole youth learning music (not exercises) of Czerny and he did OK all around. Except for all the booze.

    Whatever.

    Beethoven, 4th Piano Concerto, Murray Periah. i somehow feel I'm spelling the pianist's name wrong. Any time I think of Murray any more I am forced to wonder just what he was doing at the Horowitz household on the day that greatest of all pianists (aside from Liszt) died. Very suspicious, maybe he should come to this message board and speak for himself.

    I actually listened to that Beethoven recording via RealAudio. Very nifty, as always, though I suspect that the couch potato crowd would complain about the fidelity (which I found to be quite satisfactory). I still can not get over how awesome it is that audio on demand is a reality right now.

    Habermann. Michael Habermann. That's the guy over whom Donna Amato has no chance. Last I heard Habermann was still using an Amiga.









By R.C. on Sunday, January 18, 1998 - 03:42 am:
    Sorabji, you & Jicotea oughta get together & write a book -- a Guide To Great & Obscure Piano Music. But a book like this place -- with weird asides/& snide remarks about composers & pianists you disdain/& lots of back-&-forth banter. And funny photos of the 2 of you drinking beer & arguing. It would sell like crazy! No one's done that kind of hip-survey-for
    -the-untutored type of book before. (Like Siskel & Ebert/but for classical piano.) Then when you get a book deal/take that big fat advance check & buy yourself a dope keyboard for the crib (Ebonics for "a 1st-rate piano for your home"). And J can sink his advance into remodeling The Money Pit -- or buy a bigger Money Pit. :) But what to call such a book...?

By Jicotea on Sunday, January 18, 1998 - 11:30 pm:
    Except that Mark is Hip and I am so square I have to watch myself in crowds to keep from gouging innocent bystanders. Except when I feel like gouging them...

    He is channelled into the performing end of music, plus a lot of necessarily laborious exploration. I'm a non-performer and a skimmer, as lazy as they come, with a freak tonal memory.
    In person, we'd hate each other. Come to think of it, I'm not sure we get along very well when I come calling on the web.

    And then there's the generation gap, and a grand canyon it is, to be sure. I'm soooo relieved to hear one member of ze ozzer camp admit that John Adams is shizit. If I issued all my opinions here, he'd have to clean up the entire site and start over.

By Jicotea on Sunday, January 18, 1998 - 11:34 pm:
    O yes. Bach organ music and rock 'n' roll in the same phrase. THAT I find offensive. As far as I'm concerned, it all flows the other way. But if you want to hear it that way, as an assault, try Simon Preston's Toccata & Fugue in F, S.540.
    Bach is full. Rock is empty.

By R.C. on Sunday, January 18, 1998 - 11:51 pm:
    But J -- Mark's youth & performer's perspective compliment your tonal memory & old-school sensibilities perfectly! That's precisely what wd make the book work. (And you're already doing it here for free.) Mark is an iconoclast & you're a classicist. But neither one of you are in the big-bucks classical music mainstream (yet). What better pairing could any publishing house hope for?


By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Monday, January 19, 1998 - 10:03 am:
    But Jicotea, what about Virgil Fox's "Bach Live at the Fillmore"? ;)

By Sorabji on Monday, January 19, 1998 - 03:35 pm:
    The Rock & Roll thing reminds me of an argument someone got me into once. I had practiced this really difficult passage from the Wanderer Fantasy all afternoon and finally got it right. I told a friend "I nailed it." He got really upset, saying "Music is not something you 'nail.'"

    Always makes me laugh to think about pianists who say they "nailed it." Michael Ponti comes to mind.

    I don't say "I nailed it" any more, though I don't think it was an entirely inappropriate way to describe success with that particular passage.

By Jicotea on Monday, January 19, 1998 - 10:36 pm:
    JSH: So what about it? A meaningless occasion, like every Fillmore presentation.
    Warning! Bigot incoming!

    R.C. I'll deal with you later. Find a new subject meanwhile, PLEASE.

    Sorabji: Somebody was coming on with the correction. I know, I do it all the time...........
    I say "he/she/they nail it" or "nailed it" all the time, even in print. I see nothing wrong with it. As for Michael Ponti, all he ever nailed were notes. I never heard a Ponti recording which showed much comprehension of the musical text.

    Don't let _anyone_ shove you off base!

    Wanderer Fantasy, last movement particularly, is definitely something which has to be nailed.......

By Sorabji on Monday, January 19, 1998 - 11:41 pm:
    i have Ponti's autograph.

    one of a kind, to be sure.


By
Autunno musicale a Como on Tuesday, March 6, 2001 - 05:29 am:

    Please We would like to keep in touch with mrs Donna Amato. Can you help us?

    Contact: CAMT/AM - Centro Attivitą Musicali e Teatrali Autunno Musicale, via cantoni 1 22100 Como Italy
    e-mail: autunnomusicale@camtam.it
    tel :0039.031.57.11.50
    fax: 0039.031.57.05.40

    Thank you

    Bagnaschi Caterina




By P. valdulaitis on Thursday, March 29, 2001 - 03:37 am:

    It transpired that Mr Michael Ponti has suffered from something (a stroke??) which will keep him away from the keyboard forever -- a tragedy, even though it may be a blessing also -- in other words: life the way it is.


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