Music for Life: 100 Works to Carry You Through

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urn:lcp:musicforlife100w0000madd:epub:57bc5507-e1ec-4d9c-92da-0a09da66ba81 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier musicforlife100w0000madd Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2ng73bqghv Invoice 1652 Isbn 0571329381 After I’d stopped lessons and the drudge of exams, everything changed – too late, yet just in time. I went on exciting music courses and spent every spare moment playing in student ensembles. No one shouted at me. There was, even, laughter. Music came alive, it became life. I began to play in string quartets (that is, usually, two violins, viola and cello) with friends and sometimes strangers. There’s an unrivalled pleasure in playing chamber music: a joint venture in which merely getting through can be harder, and more rewarding, than you’d ever think. New worlds opened. To forge the link between myself and the violin – by now in my first job as a journalist – I commissioned a new instrument, not a common procedure, for amateurs or professionals. I was introduced to a violin-maker, Juliet Barker, who was just establishing an important English violin-making school in Cambridge. I saved my meagre earnings each month to pay for it, and watched as, over two or more years, seasoned white wood turned to varnished gold and became an instrument. No one else has ever played that violin. It’s far superior to any I could otherwise have afforded, old Italian instruments being preeminent. It remains my prized possession. I began to play in string quartets with friends. There’s an unrivalled pleasure in playing chamber music. Published: 30 Sep 2023 The week in classical: Picture a day like this; Peter Grimes; Carol Williams: Mad Rush – review

Music for Life: 100 Classical Works to Carry You Through

Condition: Very Good. Main. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects. With one joyous explosion after another, each dazzling and bright as a sequence of detonating fireworks, this double-choir motet launches as it means to go on: “Sing to the Lord a new song,” the psalmist demands, and “sing, sing, sing” rings out from different voices in effervescent, uplifting harmony and darting, virtuosic counterpoint. The texts are from Psalms 149 and 150, and invoke praise through dance, through timbrel, through harp. Bach wrote the motet as part of the Lutheran liturgy for New Year’s Day 1724, his first at the Thomaskirche, Leipzig. Years later, in 1789, it left an indelible impression on Mozart. He heard it in Bach’s church and was overwhelmed. According to a witness: “Hardly had the choir sung a few bars when Mozart sat up startled; a few measures more and he called out: ‘What is this?’… As it finished he cried out, full of joy, ‘Now there is something one can learn from!’” The conductor John Eliot Gardiner has described the final section, Lobet den Herrn in seinen Taten, as sounding as though, with voices alone, Bach had “dragooned all the Temple instruments of the Old Testament – the harps, psalteries and cymbals – into the service of praising the Lord, like some latter-day cuadro flamenco or big-band leader”. Bring it on.For Observer readers, January’s cultural diet is now a habit: first literature, in 2020, then last year’s sequel, short films. The best way to engage with those, surely, was sitting down with a box of chocolates and a hot-water bottle. Here’s a diet where you can listen and walk the dog, lift dumbbells, practise hula or, with care, reverse running. Whatever fitness trend you may have signed up to in a fit of optimism can also, in theory, be done with headphones on. Published: 26 Aug 2023 The week in classical: Oslo Philharmonic/Mäkelä; Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou – review Cling on to this last day of holiday before the general return to work. Time to act on those resolutions. Running maybe? Or maybe just rolling off the sofa. This blithe, galloping piece from a dance suite by Norwegian composer Grieg conjures open landscapes and a spirit of adventure. Too feelgood? The next choice is for you… 3 January Nautilus

Fiona Maddocks - Felicity Bryan Associates Fiona Maddocks - Felicity Bryan Associates

Pictures of Rachmaninov from this period show a tall, handsome man, suavely dressed, usually unsmiling, often with a cigarette between the beautiful long fingers of his famously large hands. This film-star image was only the outer garb of another existence entirely: of tireless, dogged hard work, rigorous hours of practice with associated painful hands, anxiety and chronic health issues. Despite his success and celebrity, he felt divorced from the act of composition that had for so long been his core activity. February 2021). "No Simon Rattle, and no new concert hall for London ... but we will survive". The Guardian. Darwent, Charles (29 November 2022). "Tom Phillips obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 6 June 2023.Brahms suffered many blows to his lonely heart, never finding redemption through love. His lifelong devotion to Clara Schumann, several years his senior and married to the composer Robert Schumann, never came to fruition even after she was widowed. For a time, Brahms turned his attentions instead to Robert and Clara’s daughter Julie, though not so that anyone would notice. News, in the summer of 1869, that Julie was to be married appears to have surprised him. Clara noted, “Johannes is quite altered, he seldom comes to the house and speaks only in monosyllables when he does come… Did he really love her? But he has never thought of marrying, and Julie has never had any inclination towards him.” Typically, Brahms spoke his feelings in the only way he could: through music. He called the Alto Rhapsody, for alto, male chorus and orchestra, his “bridal song”. Who but Brahms could have made a wedding gift in such autumnal hues? The melancholy text, from Goethe’s Harzreise im Winter (Winter Journey in the Harz Mountains), tells of a young man out of love with life. Its three parts conclude with a heavenly male chorus seeking consolation as a thirsty man yearns for water in the desert. “It is long since I remember being so moved by a depth of pain in words and music,” Clara wrote, as if full realisation had just dawned. “If only he would for once speak so tenderly.” He does, and now for ever, through the emotion of this Rhapsody. Pause