Wednesday 8 February 2012
Back to Bomarzo
After my last blog post regarding lost rapidshare links to my flawed recording of Bomarzo I found a picture of the cover to the deluxe edition. There was (or is) a copy available on Amazon.com for less than 50 USD. This recording was also used as the soundtrack to an experimental film called BOMARZO 2007- a taster of which exists on YouTube (see link below)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWM2bShnC-8&list=FLgs93Q6yKIj2I1s-wvJsJ4A&index=4&feature=plpp_video
Wednesday 1 February 2012
Apologies to any readers looking to download from Rapidshare links. My account with Rapidshare has expired and thus the links have perished. Apropos of the Ginastera Bomarzo link- what I obtained was a flawed download and I was only able to get disk one to work properly. I know this set is available at a high price occasionally through eBay or vinyl dealers but also have seen that it was reissued on CD in a luxury edition by the Opera company that originally staged it for the recording.
Dr David Wright
Dr Wright has a website posting articles on classical composers as well as classical performers. I have found it quite fascinating reading because he brings to light a lot of unsavoury aspects of various composer's lives. For instance, Sir Edward Elgar gets a very bad press. Now, I happen to like a bit of Elgar- mostly the symphonies and Alassio (In The South) but find the Enigma Variations a bit tedious and have never yet got through the symphonic poem 'Falstaff'. As for 'Gerontius' I have tried many times to like it but have now (after reading David Wright's comments) feel justified in giving up on it.
The composer who gets the worst press of all is Benjamin Britten - the most odious man he had ever met. Now that one had me hopping from one foot to the other. There's a lot of Britten's music I like but Dr Wright's comments tend to make me see his output in a rather different light than before so there's a massive reassessment going on.
What I don't like about Dr Wright's writings is that he seems to be a little homophobic (though it's odd that he calls Bruckner a spiritual man and makes no mention of his homosexuality) and also rather repetitive. The phrase 'a real man' keeps cropping up in the biographies of heterosexual composers. And several times he reiterates that Walton thought that Shostakovich was the greatest composer of the last century (something I wouldn't try to deny).
Anyway, Dr Wright's writings are very interesting and persuasive if not a little contentious, but beware- they can really distort your perception on the music you love.
http://www.wrightmusic.net/
The composer who gets the worst press of all is Benjamin Britten - the most odious man he had ever met. Now that one had me hopping from one foot to the other. There's a lot of Britten's music I like but Dr Wright's comments tend to make me see his output in a rather different light than before so there's a massive reassessment going on.
What I don't like about Dr Wright's writings is that he seems to be a little homophobic (though it's odd that he calls Bruckner a spiritual man and makes no mention of his homosexuality) and also rather repetitive. The phrase 'a real man' keeps cropping up in the biographies of heterosexual composers. And several times he reiterates that Walton thought that Shostakovich was the greatest composer of the last century (something I wouldn't try to deny).
Anyway, Dr Wright's writings are very interesting and persuasive if not a little contentious, but beware- they can really distort your perception on the music you love.
http://www.wrightmusic.net/
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