Good tunes

[crfriend]

It turned out it was a holiday here in the USA today, although I managed to miss the fact and wandered off to work at my usual time. I got some good stuff done, which is usual for my early morning hours, but once it was (painfully) apparent that I didn't need to be at the office I opted to head home.

I got other stuff done during the day, and whilst working on other problems started to listen to musig from yesteryear, mainly Electric Light Orchestra, and it's amazing how far ahead of their time they were in the '70s and '80s. However, this one, "Save Me Now, stopped me dead in my tracks and brought tears to my eyes: done in 1990, it, too, was ahead of its time. And dead on the money.

Going to bed with tears still in my eyes.

[Kirbstone]

Nice tune in Bob Dillon-ish style and right on the money, as you say, Carl. Some music does move me to tears.....depends on the occasion & circumstances.

The successful 45-year-old son of close friends of ours committed suicide inexplicably very recently. He was father to three and at his packed funeral service they laid on some extraordinarily beautiful music and I did get a serious lump in my throat trying to sing to that.

T.

[Kirbstone]

We had an amazing evening's musical experience last Friday. At the suggestion of our harpist U3A music lecturer a party of us went up to the Nat. Concert Hall to hear this phenomenal young German 'cellist Alban Gerhardt play the Dvorak Concerto in B minor.
Before the performance we gathered for an interview with him in a smallish room and his take on 'cello playing and concert giving was riveting and very amusing as well. He did explain how he made the mistake of allowing his 'cello be mishandled by US baggage handlers, causing some damage to it and to his bow.

The concert was enthralling and he realised that his bow was giving out before the cadenza in the third movement. He left his podium, grabbed another bow from deep among the orchestra cellists, back up on the podium and launched into the most spellbinding of cello cadenzas imaginable. After the Dvorak before the interval he gave us all a solo Bach Partita overlaid with wonderful melodic pure Gerhards counterpoint and descants. Everybody stood to clap him off the podium.
What was most impressive was that almost unseen in the second half (Rachmaninov Third Symphony) he sat among the cellos beside the girl who lent him the bow and played the orchestra part with her/them like an ordinary member. I have never seen that before and it speaks volumes for the stature of the man.

T

[Kirbstone]

On an entirely different tack, recently a member of our local U3A gave a series of four lectures on the history, developement and various forms of music we can enjoy today. The last of these was on Irish Traditional music and he chose to illustrate his talk with live performances of the various types, being a very fine harpist/pianist/organist himself.
He roped me into this group and I have enjoyed playing whistles with his very competent musicians, one of which is a World class Whistle and Uilleann Pipes player, who has concentrated on building these pipes and has built some 500 sets to date, starting in 1973. It was an honour to play with him. I'm under the window at left. No kilts, I'm afraid.

We have two more concerts lined up, but that is another story.....

T.

[Sarongman]

Thanks for those pictures K. I am impressed and a little disappointed there isn't a sound byte to go with them. Were the harps wire strung, as I am led to believe is the proper Celtic harp stringing? Also impressed by a pipemaker with 500 sets to his credit. The Uilleann pipe iis a tuneful instrument that is MUCH more bearable indoors than that Scottish weapon.

[Kirbstone]

Hi Sarongman.
Yes, some people recorded us on various phones &c. That very day we were each presented with a mini-dvd of a byte from the Hornpipe 'The Boys of Bluehill' which I have been trying to download onto my laptop without success so far. I'd like to post it ASAP.

T.

[Kirbstone]

Sarongman,
Yes, you are right, Carolan and his contemporaries in the 'Baroque' period played on small easily-portable wire-strung harps. They have begun making them again recently, but in the meantime the larger multiple material strung harps have dominated the Celtic scene, and the modern 'Clarsach' has from the top down a progression of gut, carbon fiber and steel/copper wound strings, all of which have levers to sharpen or flatten the sound by a semitone, so the harps can be played in any key, and have a fine mellow sound with a strong sonorous base.

I went to a concert in an old mill in North Germany at which three Scottish ladies played very loud wire-strung harps. They spent at least half the evening tuning and retuning the instruments, so the evening was tiresome and not really enjoyable as it should have been.

The bagpipe is intended as a marching or parade instrument and should never be played indoors except by VERY proficient pipers at large banquets &c.
The Uilleann pipe was developed solely as a drawing/music room instrument, to be played seated and has a broader musical range than the other.

We were surprisingly entertained by a visiting Reverend recently who played us a couple of haunting tunes on his Uilleann pipes from the Chancel steps as an extra to his sermon! Delightful!

T.

[Big and Bashful]

Now this is the sort of organ music I DO like, find a good hifi to play it on and let it rip!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... hRa3REdozw#!

[Kirbstone]

What a wonderful clip. I looked that fugue up in my Bach preludes & fugues book but it must be in the 2nd 24 of his 'forty-eight'. I have 1 to 24 and can deliver about half a dozen of them to 'my' punters on odd Sundays when I play to them.

It is a real treat to see a proper master in action and that guy doesn't disappoint. He plays the entire piece like a pianist with both hands together on the middle console, but with the coupler on so he's driving the upper console as well, (Hard work at that pace). When half way through the feet take up the main opening theme against the counterpoint on the console it is pure genius at work.....first J.S. himself, then the organist interpreting it so fluently....and don't his feet fly! I also notice that while the notes are up there in front of him he has it all off by heart and doesn't look at the music at all.

Impressive also are the neighbouring clips on U-tube which it leads to.

Son two, music technologist & occasional deer slayer has provided me with a hook-up line into my Bose 5+1 system in our drawing/music room and tonight my MM is out playing bridge, so that clip got played like I was in the Marienkirke in Hamburg!!

T.

[Big and Bashful]

Glad you enjoyed it, one of the other Bach pieces played by the same man had a true hifi sound track, it sounded even better. didn't note which clip it was though. It was nice to give my Celestion Ditton SL662 speakers a proper workout!