Music for Life: 100 Works to Carry You Through

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This Ethiopian nun (b.1923), once a singer to Haile Selassie, imprisoned when her country was under Italian rule, has acquired cult status; once on the margins of classical music but now moving into mainstream consciousness. The Song of the Sea merges gentle arpeggios with a wash of rising chords and a plaintive song waving and weaving through all. 18 January Giustino: Act 1: Vedrò con mio diletto Antonio Vivaldi Shrove Tuesday is on the horizon. Stravinsky’s ballet about the loves and losses of three puppets was written for large, spectacular orchestra but the recommendation here is the two-piano version. Imagine a carnival bustle of sideshows, ferris wheel, food stalls and a carousel. The festive energy is irrepressible. This is your warm-up for the greatest work of the 20th century: Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. 31 January Vespers for a New Dark Age: VIII, Postlude Missy Mazzoli

Fiona Maddocks | Faber Fiona Maddocks | Faber

Choices have been shaped, in part, by the cold, dank days and long nights of January. A summer regime would have been altogether more airy. Away from live encounters in the concert hall, my preference tends to be contemplative and often quiet: a measure of what level of noise I want coming in through my headphones and invading rather than enhancing my day’s activities. You may have a different appetite for musical jolts and thumps and pulsating rhythms. All the composers here can provide that option too, easy to find with a bit of YouTube-ing or Googling. The boundaries of classical music are ever more porous and open, spilling into other forms and all to the good. Give up prejudice or fear or indifference. Open your ears. Get listening. Happy new year! 1 January Sleepily Born Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov in 1873 into a musical-military family, the fourth of six children, in Novgorod, Russia. Escaped an anticipated army career when his dissolute father lost his fortune, sold the family estate and abandoned his wife, who took the children to live in a small flat in St Petersburg. Musically gifted from an early age, Rachmaninov went to the Moscow Conservatory to study with the great guru, Nikolai Zverev and caught the attention of Tchaikovsky. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.Three piano concertos, two symphonies, 83 songs, The Isle of the Dead(1909), The Bells(1913), All-Night Vigil(1915).

Music for Life | Faber Music for Life | Faber

To help narrow the field, I laid down a few guidelines: no operas, as they have their own narrative already (though one or two overtures have crept in). No song cycles for the same reason, though they too slipped in surreptitiously. Naturally the more rules I made, the more I broke, even concerning the title itself (why stop at 100? There are more if you count. The short round-ups discussing, or confessing, what I left out add a few hundred more). Tom died shortly after my return from Berlin. He tried to read the last version of my book but could not. His illness had given him double vision. He was fond of a quote by Henry James: “We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” I have thought about this often. In his last days, covering one eye in an attempt to see straight, Tom worked on, making art. After the disastrous premiere of his Symphony No 1 in 1897, Rachmaninov suffered depression and a breakdown. He attributed his recovery to the hypnotherapy treatments of Dr Nikolai Dahl, to whom he dedicated his Piano Concerto No 2 (1901). A diet implies restriction as well as consumption, nourishment, reward. Omissions first: opera and big symphonic and choral works (with a few breakout moments) are excluded. They are worlds of their own: other diets for other times. They also tend to be long. All the choices here are under 10 minutes, and often under five. I could have selected only works by Bach or Beethoven – and where are Haydn or Brahms or Janáček, among my own favourite composers? – but we are learning to widen the fold, to scan the horizon for new or forgotten names, pushed aside by prejudice or fashion. Don’t assume you are alone in not knowing all the composers that follow. Some of these pieces are new to me too. Lccn 2018379471 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.8827 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000516 Openlibrary_editionFortunately, I had no intention of becoming a professional violinist, for reasons of aptitude, application and self-consciousness at performing. I can’t entirely blame that teacher, but the experience closed off options. I learned less than I might have done. Yet those Saturdays were part of my identity and, in a combative way, the passport to wider horizons I so wanted. Though my playing had stalled, I loved the other lessons: the theory and orchestra and music history. Without realising, I was equipping myself for the job I would eventually have: writing about music. Playground Equipment for Ala Moana Park, Hawaii by Isamu Noguchi, 1939. Photograph: Isamu Noguchi Foundation So like most people whose work did not oblige them to be present, I stayed home. Days were spent in a small garden office (what crimes might I have committed without that hut). The sense of expulsion from a known existence hit everyone. To call it exile would be an affront to those millions experiencing enforced ejection from their country. The alienation, however, was real. When the days of ever more absurd exercise classes online and infuriating Duolingo language courses became too bizarre, I realised I needed to retrieve my writing self. I proposed a book to my publisher, Faber. Some friends winced when I mentioned what I was writing about. (‘Really? Is he your sort of thing?’) For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.

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

In 1940 Sergei Rachmaninoff, living in exile in America, broke his creative silence and composed a swan song to his Russian homeland. What happened in those final haunted years and how did he come to write his farewell masterpiece, the Symphonic Dances? He was in demand as a conductor and pianist, as well as a composer. While still in Russia he wrote the bulk of his music (see below). Strozzi moved in intellectual circles in baroque Venice, a celebrated virtuoso musician, but womanhood, her own illegitimacy and that of her children, plus her reputation as a courtesan, all conspired against her. This lament, with rapturous lute accompaniment, asks what can be done, what said, in the face of disaster. The question tugs, over and over, at the heart. 24 January Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K448: Allegro Wolfgang Amadeus MozartMarais was a viol player at the court of Versailles who wrote music of descriptive strangeness. We’ll keep his The Bladder-Stone Operation for a different dietary occasion. His name came to the fore after he featured in the film Tous les matins du monde (1991), when he was played by Gérard Depardieu. Marais’s music – intimate, deep, pensive – goes round in your head for days. 15 January Ave verum corpus William Byrd You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Taking its name from the Japanese port city, this piece – mallets on wood – is an aural palate cleanser. Reich, a pioneer American minimalist of restless invention, says this 1994 version is similar to pieces he wrote decades earlier but with a difference: this is far harder and needs two virtuoso players. Patterns repeat and slip out of phase in Reich’s mesmerising universe of sound. 6 January Clair de lune 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.