As I mature I'm appreciating classical music a lot more

[paradiddle]

I get to hear a lot of classical on a daily basis as I clean the maison symphonique's concert hall (in montreal) after every concert since the opening. Pretty impressive to hear orchestras play live in this awesome hall.

There's also a new organ that they've installed and I got to listen to the organist from the cathedral notre-dame de paris just pretty much improvise and test the organ. Never heard anybody play like that. It was really mind blowing.

The repertoire is really varied from opera to really dissonant abstract stuff. I'm not really fond of opera though but these singers can really move some air. I can imagine their kids getting yelled at. hahaha

[aMUSEd]

Salome is amazing, I love Richard Strauss, his 4 last songs are amongst my favourite vocal works by any composer.

[spaceman]

Salome is amazing, I love Richard Strauss, his 4 last songs are amongst my favourite vocal works by any composer.

Did some great piano stuff as well.

[Mr Arkadin]

Four Last Songs. Have a great version with Jessye Norman (you know, that singer that sounds like all other opera singers ).

Anyway, one of my favourite opera moments:

Glass' Rome Section from Robert Wilson's the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVqMQ4BbHw

[aMUSEd]

Four Last Songs. Have a great version with Jessye Norman (you know, that singer that sounds like all other opera singers ).

Yes I think her version is the best, also she does a great Isolde (somewhat ironically considering Wagner's racism)

[fmr]

Four Last Songs. Have a great version with Jessye Norman (you know, that singer that sounds like all other opera singers ).

Yes I think her version is the best, also she does a great Isolde (somewhat ironically considering Wagner's racism)

Wagner is a paradigm of someone whom we have to separate the artist from the man. As a composer he was one of the greatest of all time. As a man, he was... unclassifiable - with an ego that surpassed everything. But the man is death now, and the music remains, and that's all that matters. There are many examples of great artists that had big flaws in terms of character.

BTW - Richard Strauss was one of the two last late romantics, together with Rachmaninoff (Scriabin was contemporary and in the same path, but he died much earlier). Two anacronisms, considering they lived in the 20th century, but both were so right in what they did. Harmonies, melodies, and, especially with Strauss, orchestrations. Sumptuary

[fmr]

Around here they believe Jesus wants you to get happy and drop your burden for a minute.

Around here too Catholicism teaches that Jesus died for us to have the chance to live happily in communion with God.

The difference is that, around here, people don't feel that, to be happy, we have to transform a church into a circus

[fmr]

Four Last Songs. Have a great version with Jessye Norman (you know, that singer that sounds like all other opera singers ).

[aMUSEd]

Four Last Songs. Have a great version with Jessye Norman (you know, that singer that sounds like all other opera singers ).

Yes I think her version is the best, also she does a great Isolde (somewhat ironically considering Wagner's racism)

Wagner is a paradigm of someone whom we have to separate the artist from the man. As a composer he was one of the greatest of all time. As a man, he was... unclassifiable - with an ego that surpassed everything. But the man is death now, and the music remains, and that's all that matters. There are many examples of great artists that had big flaws in terms of character.

Oh yes I agree - he is not the only composer to have had character weaknesses, Richard Strauss and Carl Orff, both of whose music I count amongst my favourites, did not exactly acquit themselves well during the Nazi period (even though they may not have entirely agreed with it ideologically in the same way Wagner may have had he been alive at the time). Composers are human, their flaws are there and we can't ignore them, in fact they probably played a role in their creativity too, contradiction and complexity are often the drivers of creativity. But if I was to only choose artists I admire as people I would be left with a very short list of musical and artistic influences.

[ariston]

Four Last Songs. Have a great version with Jessye Norman (you know, that singer that sounds like all other opera singers ).

Yes I think her version is the best, also she does a great Isolde (somewhat ironically considering Wagner's racism)

I much prefer both Kiri Te Kenawa and Kirsten Flagstad here.

[aMUSEd]

Four Last Songs. Have a great version with Jessye Norman (you know, that singer that sounds like all other opera singers ).

Yes I think her version is the best, also she does a great Isolde (somewhat ironically considering Wagner's racism)

I much prefer both Kiri Te Kenawa and Kirsten Flagstad here.

Not Kiri for Strauss or Wagner - her voice is lovely for Puccini etc but too delicate for the Germanic stuff. Flagstad is OK but Jessye is more subtle imho.