Patrick Stewart's Macbeth

Now this is an interesting take...

"Macbush Comes to Brooklyn" by Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)

Running for their lives

Terrifying and poignant

Kenya, runners, ethnic violence | Salon News

The Tripoli 6

The story of the Tripoli 6 is profoundly depressing, yet another extreme case of the seemingly infinite capacity of human beings to rationalize cruelty. Stirling Newberry has an important post at TPM Cafe.

This is a story?

Don't they have, like, you know, editors at the Associated Press to keep things like this from happening?

Viren/Prefontaine 1972 Olympics 5k

Start

Conclusion

I can watch this over and over and over and never get tired of it. Brilliant courageous running from Prefontaine, and otherworldly and tactically superb racing by Viren. But why did Pre let Viren out of the box he set on the backstraight of the last lap? (Not that it would have made any difference.)

A Masterpiece

Without question one of the finest new compositons of the year.

YouTube - Kitten Composer

Kayhan Kalhor

On Friday, October 13, I'll be going to a performance of "Persian and Turkish Improvisations" by the extraordinary Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor and the Turkish baglama player Erdal Erzincan. Kalhor is one of the supreme virtuosos on the ancient Persian instrument the kamancheh, which is an ancestor to the western violin. His flights of improvisational fantasy with the sitarist Shujaat Khan in the fusion group Ghazal is some of the most astonishing music I've heard in the last 10 years. The new CD by Kalhor and Erzincan on ECM, The Wind , is just out, and I highly recommend it.

Sibelius and Guerrero

Well, what should be waiting for me at my friendly local CD shop this morning but two fine new releases, Sibelius's vast Symphony/Cantata hybrid Kullervo on LSOLive, conducted by Sir Colin Davis, and the new Tallis Scholars recording of Guerrero's Missa Surge Propera. Davis's Kullervo is such an improvement over his previous recording on RCA from the mid 90s that it's hard to believe the readings are by the same conductors, and not only because the new one is over 10 minutes shorter than the old one. The general flabbiness of the first recording has been replaced by tautness, focus, and a real sense of inevitability. The recording quality is problematical in the usual Barbican way—a bit stiff and unresonant, but with lots of detail. This wonderful piece, which for some reason Sibelius disowned, withdrawing it after its first performance, demands to be heard. There is no lack of good performances around, but Davis's new one goes to the top of the stack along with Berglund's first recording.

The new Tallis Scholars CD is likewise a triumph. Guerrero was the major figure in Spanish music between Morales and Victoria, and if, as some argue, that Palestrina developed his style from Morales, then Guerrero was a very powerful proponent of that Italian master's polyphony. Add to that the peculiar passionate characteristic of Iberian music of this time, and you get riveting art, and of course powerful advocacy from Peter Phillips and his singers. This now makes two fine Guerrero recordings I've acquired recently. A nice trend.

The NSA and the rule of law

Jack Balkin has a wonderful entry on Posner and his New Republic piece on how he would approach the legality of the NSA surveillance program. Read it all.

This concluding paragraph is worth memorizing and shouting from the rooftops:


Balkinization

The rule of law, as I have said before, is a political value as well as a legal value. It is a political value of restraint that we take upon ourselves so that we can demand the same restraint from others when the power of the state rests in their hands. The rule of law can be, and has been, used to perpetrate or apologize for many injustices in human history. But it has one saving grace-- that it offers us a place to stand when we object to the aggrandizement of power by those who are utterly convinced that they come to us as saviors. For many years conservatives warned us about would-be saviors of the left, who would sweep away legal restraints to pursue their vision of a just society. It is time to stand up to the would-be saviors of the right, who seek to concentrate unaccountable power in order to pursue their vision of national security.

The Mozart year

Jack Balkin blogs on his favorite Mozart recordings. Go have a look. I note with pleasure that he includes many recordings by Colin Davis, who I think is the finest Mozart conductor of his generation. His readings may seem old-fashioned in this day of period performance practice, but Davis could be counted on to get many things just right, including finding just the right tempo to articulate the melody and rhythm in such a way to make Mozart's phrases come to life. Just one example: In the C minor Mass, at the end of the first statement of the Hosanna, Davis doesn't slow down at the end of the "Excelsis". This has the effect of making the silence afterwards, before the Benedictus, full of possibilities instead of just another silence at the end of a final cadence. Many of Davis's early Mozart recordings are not available on CD, and it would be nice to have them. I mention only a few:

Oboe Concerto (Leon Goossens) (RCA);
Symphonies 29 and 39 (RCA)
Symphonies 28 and 38 (L'oisseau Lyre)
Symphonies 39 and 40 with the LSO (Philips)
Symphonies 38 and 41 with the LSO (Philips)

His beautiful recording of the Solemn Vespers of the Confessor, K339, with Kiri Te Kanawa is set to be released at budget price this month. Don't miss it.

Oh, one last thing. As good as Davis is with the Mozart operas, Jacobs has done what 9/11 was supposed to have done: changed everything.

Jack Balkin's Mozart list

Deaths, indirect and preventable

Hmm. I was following this thread in the Posner/Becker blog:

The Becker-Posner Blog

I mainly asked in my two postings: if capital punishment were known to reduce significantly the number of murders, can someone opposed to the government taking lives remain opposed? I argued no. I was pleased to receive this week from my colleague Cass Sunstein an article that he and Adrian Vermuele will publish shortly. They argue in much greater detail than I did that a government that refuses to use capital punishment when it would significantly reduce the number of murders is indirectly taking the lives of those persons who would not be murdered had such punishment been used.

and then saw this bit in the Times:

Pentagon Study Links Fatalities to Body Armor - New York Times

A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials. The ceramic plates in vests now worn by the majority of troops in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds that were analyzed in the Pentagon study of marines from March 2003 through June 2005, bullets and shrapnel struck the marines' shoulders, sides or areas of the torso where the plates do not reach. Thirty-one of the deadly wounds struck the chest or back so close to the plates that simply enlarging the existing shields "would have had the potential to alter the fatal outcome," according to the study, which was obtained by The New York Times. For the first time, the study by the military's medical examiner shows the cost in lives from inadequate armor, even as the Pentagon continues to publicly defend its protection of the troops.

For now I just leave these two items hanging out there…

More goodies from the used CD bin

Everyone's heard the wonderful music of Giovanni Gabrieli; but his uncle, Andrea, was also a very fine composer; indeed, he contributed to what we now know as the antiphonal, polychoral sound associated with St Mark's in Venice. Timothy Roberts directs His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts in fine performances of his Missa Pater Peccavi, some organ works, and motets. Sadly, this does not appear to be in the Hyperion catalog at present; but it is certainly worth looking for.

Sublime Guerrero

OK, so this recording was on my list years ago but never made it to the top of the heap, but I found it in the used bin yesterday and snatched it up. It is one of the very finest albums of 16th-century Spanish polyphony I've ever heard. The Westminster Cathedral Choir sing magnificently under their then director James O'Donnell, and His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts add just the right dash of intrumental color. A special treat is the instrumental arrangement of Regina caeli laetare. And more good news: Berkshire Record Outlet has it! If you've never heard any of Guerrero's music..., well, you know what to do.

Life-affirming Bach on BBC Radio 3

From December 16 through Christmas Day, BBC Radio 3 did Bach lovers everywhere the huge favor of programming nothing but the Master's works. For me, coming at the end of a very long and frustrating year at work, it was, indeed, a life-affirming experience to be able to access the stream in my office. There were far too many highlights to point out more than a few; but the Proms performance of the Matthew Passion with Herreweghe and the same soloists as in his 1998 recording was certainly special; and the short interviews with the likes of Andrew Parrott and John Eliot Gardiner were just right.

I am disappointed, though, that the BBC has decided against doing a similar Mozart marathon (too many long operas!).

Genre listening: Portuguese Polyphony

Occasionally I'll devote an evening's listening to music by a composer in a specific genre (Schubert songs; Mozart piano concerti; Haydn quartets; Palestrina masses). Saturday afternoon I decided to try a variation on this idea—I listened to music by an extraordinary generation of Portuguese composers trained at Evora's cathedral school in the late 16th century. Magalhães, Cardoso, and Duarte Lôbo (not to be confused with Alonso Lobo, the composer of the beautiful and much-recorded setting of the funeral motet "Versa est in luctum") all wrote in the stile antico of Palestrina and their Iberian patron saint Victoria long after the rest of Europe (except England, of course) had followed Italy into the proto baroque. Cardoso was perhaps the most adventurous of the trio harmonically, while Lôbo was the most conservative. Much of the Portuguese music from this period was destroyed in the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Much, but not all.

Fortunately much Portuguese polyphony was recorded during what seems now to be a golden age of early music recording in the late 80s and 90s. I listened to a recording by The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers, of three motets by Cardoso along with his Mass "Regina caeli." Also on the CD are two lovely motets by Lôbo, "Audivi vocem" and "Pater peccavi" and one of his two (yes, two) requiem settings, this one for eight voices (the Tallis Scholars have recorded his six-voice Requiem). From there I moved on to Cardoso's great Requiem setting as performed by The Schola Cantorum of Oxford, conducted by Jeremy Summerly (on Naxos). Also on that recording is a performance of the Lôbo eight-voice Requiem. (I wonder how many music lovers have two recordings of that Lôbo piece in their collections?)

Staying with Naxos, I moved on to a wonderful recording called "Portuguese Polyphony" by Ars Nova, conducted by Bo Holten, of music from many periods of Portuguese music including the early 17th century. Represented in this period are all three of my composers of interest. A nice Magnificat and an effective setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Cardoso, the two beautiful Lôbo motets mentioned earlier, and an affecting mass setting, O soberanna luz, by Magalhães.

Anyone who is at all attracted to Renaissance polyphony who has not heard these pieces should run not walk to acquire them. Sadly, the Sixteen recording is no longer available, the label (Collins) having gone out of business. I don't know whether it has found new life on The Sixteen's own label, Coros. It's worth looking for.

Friday cat blogging

Our "middle" child, Tilly, in a contemplative mood.

Michael and yours truly

Michael takes a break from piano to coax me away from work (or worse).

Rep Murtha and Nietsche

Reading the latest pathetic Republican actions following Rep Murtha's call for a smooth withdrawl of American troops from the Iraqi disaster brings to mind Nietsche's aphorism "Beware those who have a strong impulse to punish." In TeX terms the macro would be

\def\Republicans{the Party with a strong impulse to punish}.

It would seem that the Republican's first response to a challenge is personal attack, not an engagement with the issues. It is said that you become what you hate. The GOP becomes each day, in its cronyism, its disengagement with reality, its desire to stifle dissent, like the Soviet Communist Party it hated for so long.

Dvorak's quartets

I'm spending some time reacquainting myself with Dvorak's string quartets. Except for the American, opus 96, I had no real memory of them, I'm embarassed to say; but I'm making up for that now. They are wonderful. I'm particularly taken with opus 51 right now, especially the first theme of the slow movement, which stays with you. More detailed comments to follow

The Four Temperaments

The new disc by Phantasm is a mixed bag of 16th century English viol music by Parsons, Ferrabosco, Tallis, and Byrd. The centerpiece is a beautiful performance of Byrd's 4-voice mass, one of the true masterpieces of the era. I became convinced that instrumental performances of Renaissance masses could be worthwhile after hearing the Calefax Reed Quintet's lovely readings of Ockeghem's "Fors Seulement" and Byrd's 5-voice mass. There is, of course, greater color variation with a reed group than with a viol consort, but Phantasm makes up for this with their exceptional ability to phrase—the words were clearly in their minds, informing the actions of the fingers.

Highest praise for this, then. Another wonderful disc from this marvelous group