Jonathan O'Neill > Recent Status Updates

Saw Winterreise performed tonight at Melbourne Recital Centre by the British tenor, Allan Clayton, and Australian pianist, Kate Golla. I really don't think it could've been performed any better. Clayton was right in the zone conveying the emotion of the piece and Golla's accompaniment brought out the nuances between vocalist and Pianist very clearly. I only wish i'd read a bit more of this beforehand!

"Never have I heard of this place called Gallipoli... A place where young men must kill or die for king and country. But Gallipoli is now a name I shall never forget."

I do not believe that a single composition of Wagner will survive him.

- Moritz Hauptmann

The Rite of Spring

Who wrote this fiendish Rite of Spring,
What right had he to write the thing,
Against our helpless ears to fling
It's crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing?

And then to call it Rite of Spring,
The season when on joyous wing
The birds melodious carols sing
And harmony's in everything!

He who could write the Rite of Spring,
If I be right, by right should swing!

It is not every family which has double fugues for breakfast, but this Strauss family is a peculiar one. If sinfonia domestica were a true autobiographical sketch, we fancy that the wife would be portrayed on trombones and tubas while the husband would be pictured on the second violin.

Wow! Try saying that about Will Smith's wife, buddy! 😬

20 pages of Schoenberg related invective feels like an awfully toxic thing to read before bed but, alas, that's what I've done. With regard to dedicated pages he gets over the line, by a tight margin, against the likes of Debussy and Strauss and is "defeated" only by the man we all love to hate, Herr Richard Wagner!

While noting that the mystery created by narrative loose ends is part of what offers this song cycle its power, Bostridge suggests, with plausible reasoning, that we could imagine, for 1.Gute Nacht, a scenario like the one in Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse in which emotional complications ensue due to a young house tutor, of lower economic status, becoming entangled with a virtuous young woman of status

... Lieder is a niche product, even within the niche that is classical music; but 'Winter's Journey' is incontestably a great work of art which should be as much a part of our common experience as the poetry of Shakespeare and Dante, the paintings of Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, the novels of the Brontë sisters or Marcel Proust.

[Rachmaninoff] writes pieces full of the old astounding musical dislocation...
There was a day, perhaps, when such work served. But another day has succeeded to it. And so, Rachmaninoff comes amongst us like a very charming and amiable ghost.
- Paul Rosenfield on the 2nd piano concerto

You can't win with these critics. You're either too ahead of your time or you're a dusty old fossil. No in-between.

Liking the graphic novel medium for language learning. The extra visual context is helpful and this one's pretty text heavy so it's perfect.

"...may you taste only the sweets and none of the bitterness of authorship... may the public pelt you with roses, and never with sand; and may the printer's ink never draw black lines upon your soul"
- Felix to Fanny

Finally, after he had discouraged her from publishing throughout their entire lives, Fanny went and did it anyway and asking one last time for his blessing, Felix comes around.

[Felix] has a glorious dark eye, and Byron's expression of a 'dome of thought' could never be more appropriately applied than to his lofty and intellectual forehead...
...Dark, lustrous, unfathomable eyes... They were black, but without the usual opaqueness of black eyes, shining, not with a surface light, but with a pure, serene, planetary flame.
- J.Bayard Taylor

[Wagner played] the seductive Venusberg theme from Tannhauser, on which he was then at work. When Felix asked, "What is that?" Wagner replied, "Do you think I am going to reveal it to you?" whereupon Felix at once reproduced it himself at the piano.

I'm thankful that, while this is very much a Felix bio, the author gives Fanny a notable amount of page time as well, following her progress as a composer and illuminating derivatives between her and her brother's works where applicable.
Her 'Das Jahr' is well worth your time. A cycle of piano character pieces on the 12 months. Some beauties in there, for sure!

Proud to announce that Felix was my Top Artist on Spotify this year with 15217 minutes listened! :D
I'm not sure that tops my Beethoven listening from several years ago but it still puts me in the top 0.001% of global fans.... Let's be honest, no one on Earth listened to more Mendelssohn than me this year! :D

Kant definía la Ilustración como el escape de la humanidad de su autoinfligida inmadurez; y definía la inmadurez como la inhabilidad de hacer uso del propio entendimiento sin la guía de otro.

An 11-yr-old Ludwig was read Kant by his mother and I think he took this particular message (¡Ten el coraje de usar tu propio entendimiento!) and ran with it!

At one musical matinée given by Felix, Liszt appeared in Hungarian uniform and played a series of pyrotechnical variations on a Hungarian folk melody. Then, insisting his host reciprocate, Liszt watched incredulously as Felix replicated the Hungarian melody, executed one variation after another, and managed to imitate Liszt's "movements and raptures" without offending him.

"Hold my beer."
- Mendelssohn

Para que haya música, primero tiene que haber silencio. Si el silencio fuera un paño blanco, la música sería el bordado. ¿Donde íbamos a poner nuestra música si no fuera en el silencio?

Schumann and Mendelssohn were largely responsible for the 19th-century Schubert revival. Schumann discovered several unpublished symphonies and Felix took the decision, and the time, to resuscitate the "Great" symphony (no.9) and "effectively transformed Schubert from a respected "ballad" composer to a symphonist of stature".

Just finished listening to Bach's 7 Toccatas (BWV 910-916) on harpsichord and, I must say, it really makes you appreciate 2 things.
1.The virtuosity of the harpsichordist, Pieter-Jan Belder, and
2. The invention of the piano-forte! 😁