Music for Life: 100 Works to Carry You Through

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You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. 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. Three piano concertos, two symphonies, 83 songs, The Isle of the Dead(1909), The Bells(1913), All-Night Vigil(1915). Kate Molleson marks the 150 anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninov's birth. She visits his home in Switzerland - after years of renovation, the beautiful Villa Senar, on the banks of Lake Lucerne, is reopening to the public. This is the peaceful summer residence where Rachmaninov lived in in the 1930s and where he composed the Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini and the Third symphony.

Music for life : 100 works to carry you through : Maddocks

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_edition Rachmaninov proofing his Third Piano Concerto at his beloved Ivanovka estate in Russia, 1910. Alamy Chief Music Critic of The Observer, Fiona’s Hildegard of Bingen (2001) was a great critical success when published by Headline and Doubleday (US) and has now been re-issued by Faber. She was part of the team that set up Channel 4, was first music editor at The Independent and founding editor of BBC Music Magazine. She was educated at the Royal College of Music and at Cambridge. She wrote Conversations with Harrison Birtwistle for Faber, to coincide with his 80th birthday in 2014. Marais 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 Robert Nathaniel Dett. Alamy Photograph: Alamy 29 January In the Bottoms: IV. Barcarolle (Morning) Robert Nathaniel DettWith 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. In the US, the composer reinvented himself as a star virtuoso pianist, one of the most highly paid performers in the land. He was featured in fashionable magazines, moved in the same gilded society as Walt Disney and Charlie Chaplin (though neither was an intimate; Rachmaninov didn’t fall easily into friendships). Soon after his arrival in New York, in November 1918, amid armistice celebrations, he was mobbed, as one critic noted, by the flapper girls of Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn. They wanted to hear his famous C sharp minor Prelude, a youthful work that became ubiquitous in rag and jazz versions as well as his own solemn, solo piano original, the bells of holy Russia written into its chiming chords. 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).

Maddocks, Fiona Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile eBook : Maddocks, Fiona

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. 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.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-01-20 07:07:22 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA40332405 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier I had some non-fantasy dinner issues of my own to sort out. Tom thought a good night out was John Cage followed by more John Cage. After once going with me to hear Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 2, he adopted the Harry stance. “I don’t need to hear that symphony again as long as I live.” It happens to be a favourite of mine. Would I be able to convince him that the composer, and the music itself, were more interesting than he thought? I valued Tom’s incisive editorial input but had no time to waste proving the validity of my subject. urn:lcp:musicforlife100w0000madd:epub:57bc5507-e1ec-4d9c-92da-0a09da66ba81 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier musicforlife100w0000madd Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2ng73bqghv Invoice 1652 Isbn 0571329381 February 2021). "No Simon Rattle, and no new concert hall for London ... but we will survive". The Guardian.

I was writing a book about Rachmaninov in exile when my own

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

Fortunately, 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. Assuming “normality” day two will be harder than day one, today’s choice is Schubert. If this speaks to you, try the piano sonatas, especially the late ones, the symphonies, or any – yes, any – of the 600 songs. The song cycle Winterreise captures every aspect of hope and wintry sorrow. A universe of tenderness awaits. 5 January Nagoya Marimbas The popularity of Vivaldi – usually topping the “most played” classical lists thanks to The Four Seasons – risks obscuring the glory of his expansive genius. The Venetian priest-violinist wrote church music, more than 500 concertos and 50 operas. He died in poverty. Try the exuberant Gloria or the haunting Stabat Mater . But start with this ravishing love aria from his opera Giustino. 19 January Bagatelle Op 33, No 5 Ludwig van Beethoven If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. 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

Music for Life by Fiona Maddocks | Waterstones

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. For the first full moon of 2023, the orbed choice is Fauré’s Clair de lune, an ethereal setting of words by the poet Paul Verlaine from his collection Fêtes galantes (also set by Debussy). The voice creeps in long after the rippling piano. Think of the gardens and statues of Versailles, ghostly by moonlight. French song, or mélodie, comes no better. 7 January Hymn of the Cherubim 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 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. 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?’)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. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? 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.