Category Archives: Music

Music

Jimi Hendrix performs the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock (1969)

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In August of next year we will reach the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock Festival, that three-day concert (which rolled into a fourth day) involving lots of sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll and mud, and which became an icon of the 1960s hippie counterculture. Held at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York State, the Woodstock Festival, billed as “three days of peace and music”, featured a roll-call of big acts of the day: Joan Baez, Santana, Canned Heat, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, the Who, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and Jimi Hendrix (it’s interesting to read the roll-call of cancelled acts and declined invitations too, but that’s another story).

When Hendrix stepped onto the stage, it was 9 o’clock on the morning of the fourth day – technical and weather delays had caused the festival to stretch into Monday morning. The organisers had given Hendrix the opportunity to go on at midnight, but he opted to be the closing act (by 1969 he had earned the traditional headliner’s position). The morning light made for excellent filming conditions, which may be part of the reason this particular Hendrix performance is so well known. In any event, Hendrix embarked upon an uninterrupted set lasting nearly two hours, one of the longest performances of his career. It concluded with a long medley that included the solo performance of The Star-Spangled Banner that would become emblematic not only of Woodstock, but of the 1960s themselves.

When most people think of Hendrix and Woodstock, it is this performance of the national anthem that comes to mind. It was not the first time Hendrix had performed it (in fact, there are nearly 50 live recordings of Hendrix playing it, 28 made before Woodstock) but no other version is so iconic. The idea of incorporating the sounds of bombs and jets and cries of human anguish into his country’s national anthem was brilliant. As a protest against the Vietnam War it was unambiguous and powerful: raw, jarring, soaring, and discomforting in equal measure (though in fact performed in front of a relatively small crowd since so many people had left Woodstock to return to work or college that Monday morning!). So 49 years on, and from the comfort of your mud-free armchair, here is Hendrix’s guitar-torturing rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. It’s not comfortable to listen to, frankly, but its cultural impact is clearly understandable. It’s followed by an interesting snippet of Hendrix discussing the performance on the Dick Cavett chat show a year later.

Jimi Hendrix, Woodstock
Music

Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 (1845)

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As musical geniuses go, you don’t get much more genius than Felix Mendelssohn. Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Hamburg in 1809, Felix was deeply involved in music from an early age; by the time he was fourteen, he had written twelve string symphonies. In 1821 his piano teacher, Carl Zelter, introduced the eleven year old Felix to the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was then in his seventies. Goethe was greatly impressed by him, leading to a memorable conversation between Goethe and Zelter comparing Felix with the young Mozart, whom Goethe had also witnessed, many years before:

“Musical prodigies…are probably no longer so rare; but what this little man can do in extemporising and playing at sight, borders the miraculous, and I could not have believed it possible at so early an age.”

“And yet you heard Mozart in his seventh year at Frankfurt?” said Zelter.

“Yes“, answered Goethe, “…but what your pupil already accomplishes, bears the same relation to the Mozart of that time that the cultivated talk of a grown-up person bears to the prattle of a child.”

The grown-up Mendelssohn had a good friend and collaborator in violin virtuoso and composer, Ferdinand David. The two had met as late teenagers in the late 1820s in Berlin where Felix was already an accomplished composer and Ferdinand was a violinist in the orchestra at the Königsstädtisches Theatre. In a remarkable coincidence, it was discovered that the two had been born in the exact same house in Hamburg, a year apart!

A few years later, in the summer of 1838, Mendelssohn wrote to his friend: “I should like to write a violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor runs through my head, the beginning of which gives me no peace.” In the end, it took him another six years to complete it, regularly consulting David about violin technique. Ever the perfectionist, Mendelssohn continually made minor adjustments to the concerto, right up to its premiere in Leipzig on March 13, 1845. The concerto became an instant classic and remains one of the cornerstones of the repertoire, being the most frequently performed violin concertos in history.

So I give you Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, performed by Ray Chen and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and if you can free up the twenty nine minutes required to wallow in its total glory, you will find it a worthwhile experience, believe me.

 

Felix Mendelssohn
Music

Nina Simone sings I Want a Little Sugar in my Bowl (1967)

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Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born in Tryon, North Carolina, in 1933, and was recognised early on as a child prodigy at the piano. Supporters in her home town started a fund to help her become the first female black concert pianist in the US, but when she applied for a scholarship at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, she was rejected, which she suspected was due to racial discrimination (and considering this was Fifties America, it’s no great stretch to go along with that).

Eunice had to get a job, and she used her skills at the piano keyboard to get a residency at the Midtown Bar & Grill, Atlantic City. To ensure her Methodist minister mother wouldn’t find out she was playing “the devil’s music”, she adopted a stage name: Nina Simone. The bar owner said she had to sing as well as play if she wanted to keep her job and thus Simone’s deliciously dolorous voice was bestowed upon the world. And what a voice! She quickly built up a repertoire and a steady following, and was snapped up by Bethlehem Records, with whom she released her first album, Little Girl Blue.

There is much that could be written about Nina Simone: her disinclination towards the recording industry and refusal to be pigeonholed; her involvement in the civil rights movement (listen to the impassioned and provocative social commentary in her song Mississippi Goddam); her itinerant life, living in Barbados, Liberia, Switzerland, the Netherlands and France; her fiery temperament and regrettable legacy of abuse towards her daughter, Lisa.

However, it’s the fusion of that silky voice with her virtuoso piano playing that we’re interested in here. I have selected this clip from French TV show Tilt Magazine in 1967, in which Simone performs I Want a Little Sugar in my Bowl. She is beguiling to watch as well as to listen to. Incidentally, in 2003, just days before her death, the Curtis Institute of Music bestowed on her a belated honorary degree.

 

Nina Simone
Music

Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne in E-Flat Major (1830)

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A nocturne is a musical composition intended to be evocative of the night and thus quite wistful and dreamy in nature. Although the term goes back a long way in musical history, its genesis as a distinct musical genre didn’t come about until the 19th century when Irish composer John Field wrote several pieces under this specific title of “nocturne”. He in turn heavily influenced one Frédéric Chopin who wrote a perfect set of 21 nocturnes that became the romantic period’s best-known exemplar of the form (to the detriment of Field’s legacy, since Field’s piano work is practically unheard these days when compared to Chopin’s piano repertoire).

Arguably Chopin’s most famous piece is the subject of today’s blog, his Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, written around 1830 when Chopin was in his early twenties and his creative juices were in full flow. It has been a permanent fixture of the Classic FM Hall of Fame ever since it started in 1996. Its beguiling melody haunts from start to finish. As the song progresses, the main melody is repeated three times, and each time includes more and more ornamentation, a classic Chopin technique. It’s played in andante and espress dolce, meaning moderately slow and expressively sweet.

Pianists live and die today by their ability to tackle Chopin’s repertoire of hardy perennials, and the Nocturnes are no exception – the list of great pianists that have committed their interpretations to record is extensive and includes Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Alfred Cortot, and Maurizio Pollini. I have chosen a recording by Polish pianist Arthur Rubinstein, regarded by many as the greatest Chopin interpreter of his time. He played in public for eight decades so you can be sure we’re in safe hands. Listen to this masterpiece; it’s pure tenderness.

Frédéric Chopin
Music

The Glenn Miller Orchestra plays In The Mood (1939)

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In this blog, I have written about both Elvis Presley and the Beatles, but before them, in an extraordinary four year period between 1938 and 1942, there was a man who scored 23 number-one hits in the US: bandleader and icon of the swing era, Glenn Miller. Miller was perhaps an unlikely star and certainly a reluctant one, as he shied away from the spotlight and hated personal appearances, but he nonetheless had such an ear for melody and such keen arranging skills that most of his output became classics of the age – think Moonlight Serenade, Pennsylvania 6-5000, Tuxedo Junction, Chattanooga Choo Choo, and of course In the Mood, one of the best dance songs to emerge from the period and the one big band song that gave the swing era its defining moment.

Miller had cut his teeth as a freelance trombonist in a variety of bands in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and worked as a composer and arranger for the Dorsey brothers. He had put an orchestra together for British bandleader Ray Noble in 1935, and in 1937 formed his first band, but this proved short-lived after failing to distinguish itself from the plethora of rival bands. Miller knew that he needed a unique sound and in 1938 he put together an arrangement with the clarinet playing a melodic line with a tenor saxophone holding the same note, while three other saxophones harmonised within a single octave. It soon became the basis of the “Miller sound”, the template for what big band music would sound like.

In the Mood is based on an old jazz riff that had been passed around in various incarnations for many a year. It was a fellow named Joe Garland who created a new arrangement for the riff with the title of “In the Mood”, but it was Miller who pared the tune down to its bare essentials. Released in September 1939, the tune went on to top the charts in the US for thirteen straight weeks. With its famous introduction featuring the saxophones in unison, the catchy riff anchoring the tune, the two solos (a “tenor fight” between saxophonists Tex Beneke and Al Klink, and a 16-bar trumpet solo by Clyde Hurley), and the suspense-building ending, it has all the Miller specialities. A true model of suspense and dynamics. Here it is as featured in the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade.

 

Glenn Miller
Music

Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 21, Elvira Madigan (1785)

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In the course of lunch recently, my good friend and subscriber to this blog, Jason, suggested that I do a piece on one of his favourite pieces of music, Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 21, the “Elvira Madigan” concerto. “You’ll know it” he said, when I conceded that I couldn’t bring it to mind from its name. Upon listening to it later, I nodded…of course, yes, I know this alright, and yes, Jase, it certainly does qualify for an “occasional glimpse”!

The concerto is in three movements, but it is the second movement, the Andante in F major, that is the well-known part we’ll highlight here. Mozart wrote the concerto in 1785, in the middle of a prolific creative burst in Vienna in which he wrote no fewer than eleven masterpieces in a 24-month period. It was written for one of his so-called “subscription concerts”; he would hire a venue, engage some musicians, take all the proceeds from the concert and hopefully make a profit.

I was intrigued to learn how the concerto came by its nickname, “Elvira Madigan”. What a story it turned out to be! It is a relatively recent nickname, as it is named after the 1967 film Elvira Madigan made by Swedish director Bo Widerberg in which the andante was prominently featured. The film is based on the true and tragic love story of Danish tightrope walker, Elvira Madigan (the stage name of one Hedwig Jensen) and Swedish nobleman and cavalry officer, Lieutenant Sixten Sparre of the Scanian Dragoon Regiment.

While performing in Sweden with her stepfather’s circus in 1887, Elvira Madigan met Sixten Sparre and the two fell in love. However, since he was a married man and from a different, higher social class, their love was doomed. After two years of exchanging love letters, they absconded and holed up in a hotel in Svendborg in Denmark for a month. From there, 21-year old Elvira and 34-year old Sixten took the ferry to the nearby island of Tåsinge and stayed at a little pension in the fishing village of Troense. When Sixten’s family withheld financial help, the couple’s last hopes faded. They went out to the forest, had a last meal…and then committed suicide with Sixten’s service revolver.

They are buried together on Tåsinge and to this day their graves are still visited by tourists and romantics from all over the world. Mozart’s emotional and dreamlike melody fits their tragic story perfectly. Take a quiet time to experience the music, below, whilst perusing the accompanying images I found of Elvira, Sixten and the places in which they spent their last days. If you remain unmoved, you may want to just check your pulse…

 

Elvira and Sixten
Music

Elvis Presley appears on the Milton Berle Show (1956)

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The cultural impact of Elvis Presley is hard to overstate; when he exploded on the scene, the whole phenomenon of youth entertainment exploded with him. John Lennon said: “before Elvis, there was nothing”. Now, whilst this might be an over-egged point, given that even in the ‘40s Frank Sinatra was inspiring devotion from teenage “Bobby soxers”, nonetheless there’s no doubting the cultural paradigm shift that Elvis launched. His records, his look, his moves, his ducktail quiff, his clothing…these all became embodiments of the new rock ‘n’ roll style, and, with economic prosperity putting more money into American teenagers’ pockets, it spread like wildfire.

This sensation didn’t occur overnight, however. By the end of 1955, Elvis had already recorded two dozen singles, but these were only hits on the Country and Western charts, not the main Billboard charts. That changed with his debut single for his new label, RCA Victor – Heartbreak Hotel. This time, Elvis did shoot to the top of the pop charts and stayed there for seven weeks, turning him into the darling of radio and record stores up and down the country. It was, however, television that truly made him the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll”, and if any one appearance might be called his coronation, it was this appearance on the Milton Berle Show on 5th June 1956, when he set his guitar aside and put his whole being into a scorching and scandalous performance of Hound Dog.

Previous television appearances had featured Elvis either in close-up, singing a slow ballad, or of his full body but with his movements somewhat restricted by the acoustic guitar he was playing. But here, for the first time, the 21-year-old Elvis Presley was seen from head to toe, gyrating his soon-to-be-famous (or infamous) pelvis.

You can bet that the reaction to Elvis’ performance in the mainstream media was almost uniformly negative. The New York Daily News described Presley’s performance as marked by “the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos”. The Journal-American said that Elvis “can’t sing a lick and makes up for vocal shortcomings with the weirdest suggestive animation short of an aborigine’s mating dance”. The Catholic weekly periodical, America, got right to the point, meanwhile, with its headline: “Beware of Elvis Presley”.

The complaints and concerns of these reactionaries, however, was pretty much drowned out by the screams of young girls, and by the end of 1956, when the Wall Street Journal was already commenting that “Elvis Presley is today a business”, they had to accept that the times had changed.

Music

Luciano Pavarotti sings Nessun Dorma (1994)

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To opera buffs, Nessun Dorma has always been one of the great arias, but my, how the song’s profile was raised by its use as the theme song to the 1990 World Cup. That new audience, numbering in the scores of millions, associated the piece inextricably with the one voice, that of Italian tenor, Luciano Pavarotti. Many artists have recorded their own versions of the song – before and since – but it’s Pavarotti who is generally credited with performing the ultimate version of this song. The performance I embed below, from a show in Paris in 1994, shows exactly why it’s a justified claim. Pavarotti delivers an emotionally charged and hauntingly beautiful piece of musical theatre. Check out the emotion on his face at around the 2.40 to 2.50 mark.

Incidentally, for me, Nessun Dorma does not benefit from an English translation or an understanding of the song’s contextual meaning in Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot (though it concerns a prince, Calaf, and his attempts to win the hand of Princess Turandot), so I prefer to preserve its enigmatic majesty by ignoring its meaning and just letting it be. It’s truly powerful on its own.

Back in 2009, a few days after my mum’s funeral, my family and I, after a visit up to Blyth and on our way back, called into Durham Cathedral, significant for my mum’s stonemason dad having worked on this fine building. It turned out that it happened to be the day before Bobby Robson’s memorial service, and they were rehearsing for it as we arrived. Unsurprisingly, Nessun Dorma had been chosen to be a part of the memorial service (performed I believe, by vocal trio, Tenors Unlimited). Thus, in one of the world’s great cathedrals, and still raw from my bereavement, I heard the resounding strains of Nessun Dorma. An unforgettable moment.

Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma!
Tu pure, oh Principessa
Nella tua fredda stanza
Guardi le stelle che tremano
D’amore e di speranza

Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me
Il nome mio nessun saprà
No, no, sulla tua bocca lo dirò
Quando la luce splenderà
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà
Il silenzio che ti fa mia

(ll nome suo nessun saprà
E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir)

Dilegua, oh notte!
Tramontate, stelle!
Tramontate, stelle!
All’alba vincerò!
Vincerà!
Vincerò!

Luciano Pavarotti 2000
Dance, Music

Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Swan (1886)

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Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris in 1835 and raised by his widowed mother and his great-aunt, who introduced the young Camille to the piano and gave him his first lessons. The boy was a real prodigy, demonstrating perfect pitch at the age of two and giving his first public concert at five. Over the course of his long life Saint-Saëns was incredibly prolific: after writing his first symphony at 16 he went on to write four more, along with five piano concertos, three violin concertos, two cello concertos and some 20 concertante works.

Nor were his talents limited to music. He was profoundly knowledgeable about geology, botany, lepidopterology, and maths, and his celebrity allowed him to enjoy discussions with Europe’s finest scientists.

Of all Saint-Saëns’ astonishing output, though, the most famous is undoubtedly The Carnival of the Animals, composed in 1886. He hadn’t considered it a serious piece at all and in fact worried that it might damage his reputation. He needn’t have worried. The 13th and penultimate movement of The Carnival of the Animals, The Swan (Le Cygne), became acclaimed worldwide as The Dying Swan after 1905 when it was choreographed for legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova, who performed it about 4,000 times.

The legend of the “swan song” grew from the popular belief among the ancient Greeks that the mute swan is silent until its final moments of life, at which point it sings the most beautiful of all birdsongs. Saint-Saëns captures this idea in the music…and here we see ballerina Uliana Lopatkina effortlessly evoking in dance the gracefulness of the animal (almost entirely en pointe) and the heartbreak of its demise. Beautiful.

 

Music

Andrea Bocelli sings Con Te Partirò at Sanremo Music Festival (1995)

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Most people are familiar with the 1996 collaboration between Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman, Time to Say Goodbye, since it was a worldwide smash, selling over 12 million copies and making it one of the best-selling singles of all time. However, it was the year before, in 1995, that Andrea Bocelli first performed this sumptuous neo-classical song in its original Italian form, as a solo piece: Con Te Partirò.

The song was written specially for Bocelli by Francesco Sartori and Lucio Quarantotto, and appeared on his second album. Bocelli had already had his big break a few years earlier in 1992 when Luciano Pavarotti heard a demo tape of Bocelli singing Miserere, a song intended for Pavarotti (and co-written by U2’s Bono of all people). Pavarotti was impressed and in the end, he and Bocelli recorded it together. That song became a worldwide hit and catapulted Bocelli into the limelight. At Italy’s Sanremo Music Festival in 1994 he won honours in the newcomers’ category, and success was cemented.

In the following year, Bocelli appeared at Sanremo again. Watch him here, performing his signature piece, Con Te Partirò. His honeyed voice and distinctive timbre, together with the beautiful melody and rich orchestration, produced a masterpiece of emotional strength. Stupendous.

Andrea Bocelli