Category Archives: Music

Music

The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Take Five (1959)

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There were two main sub-gen­res of jazz to emerge in post-war Amer­i­ca, mor­ph­ing out of the big band swing era that had dom­i­nat­ed in the 1930s and 1940s: they were bebop and cool jazz. Now, where­as bebop was “hot,” i.e. loud, excit­ing, and loose, cool jazz was “cool,” i.e. soft, more reserved, and con­trolled. In bebop, the empha­sis was on impro­vi­sa­tion; in cool jazz, the empha­sis was on arrange­ment. Bebop was East Coast, night­club-ori­ent­ed; cool jazz was West Coast and took jazz out to the col­lege cam­pus­es. For bebop, think Char­lie Park­er, Dizzy Gille­spie, and Thelo­nious Monk; for cool jazz, think ear­ly Miles Davis, Chet Bak­er and Dave Brubeck.

Dave Brubeck was one of the most active and pop­u­lar musi­cians in the jazz world from the late 1940s for­wards. Hav­ing served in Patton’s army in Europe dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, he enrolled at Mills Col­lege in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia to study com­po­si­tion with French com­pos­er, Dar­ius Mil­haud. It was Mil­haud who encour­aged him to pur­sue a career in jazz and to incor­po­rate jazz ele­ments into his com­po­si­tions, and this cross-genre exper­i­men­ta­tion with like-mind­ed Mills stu­dents led to the for­ma­tion of the Dave Brubeck Octet in 1947.

It was, how­ev­er, the small­er incar­na­tion formed in 1951 that would become the “clas­sic” Brubeck out­fit — the Dave Brubeck Quar­tet — fea­tur­ing Brubeck on the piano, the leg­endary Joe Morel­lo on drums, Eugene Wright on bass, and long-time Brubeck col­lab­o­ra­tor Paul Desmond on alto sax. In 1959 they released the album Time Out, fea­tur­ing the song that would become a jazz stan­dard and the biggest-sell­ing jazz sin­gle ever, Take Five. Writ­ten by Paul Desmond, Take Five rapid­ly became Brubeck’s best-known, and sig­na­ture, tune, famous for its dis­tinc­tive, catchy sax melody and use of the unusu­al 5/4 time from which its name is derived. It’s been used in count­less movies and tele­vi­sion sound­tracks, so if you think you don’t know it, I’m pret­ty sure you will!

Here’s a won­der­ful record­ing of the quar­tet play­ing Take Five live in Bel­gium in 1964. Enjoy these mas­ter musi­cians on top of their game…it’s cool, man!

Music

Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904)

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Last year my fam­i­ly and I went to see Puccini’s Madama But­ter­fly per­formed at the Roy­al Opera House. I should men­tion I sup­pose that it was the live stream­ing we attend­ed, at Leeds’s Cot­tage Road Cin­e­ma, rather than the actu­al event, lest you think your blog­ger can actu­al­ly afford to ponce about in the cap­i­tal, with fam­i­ly in tow, and attend operas at £175 a tick­et. Any­way, attend the live stream­ing we did, and a com­fort­able and rel­a­tive­ly uncost­ly affair it was.

Operas are not exact­ly unknown for their explo­ration of trag­ic themes, but you would be hard pressed to find a more per­fect exam­ple of tragedy as expressed in music than Puccini’s mas­ter­piece. Indeed, it was a per­son­al favourite of the com­pos­er him­self who described it as ‘the most felt and most expres­sive opera that I have con­ceived’. This pro­duc­tion was direct­ed by Anto­nio Pap­pano (who first appeared on my radar in 2015 when I caught his excel­lent TV series about opera singers, Clas­si­cal Voic­es) and fea­tured Alban­ian sopra­no Ermonela Jaho in the star­ring role.

Madama But­ter­fly is set in Japan at the start of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and tells the tale of the teenage geisha Cio-Cio San (“But­ter­fly”) and her doomed mar­riage to Pinker­ton, an Amer­i­can naval lieu­tenant. To Pinker­ton, the mar­riage is one of con­ve­nience and short­ly after the wed­ding he leaves Japan. Three years lat­er, But­ter­fly is still wait­ing for him, and despite her maid Suzu­ki endeav­our­ing to con­vince her that Pinker­ton is not com­ing back, But­ter­fly won’t listen…and just that dogged belief alone, against all ratio­nale, is enough to break your heart. We know only too well, as does Suzu­ki, that he’s not com­ing back.

Actu­al­ly Pinker­ton does come back, but not to But­ter­fly. Instead, he is – cru­el blow! — with his new Amer­i­can wife, and from this point on, Puc­ci­ni focus­es ever deep­er on the heartache that cul­mi­nates in But­ter­fly com­mit­ting sui­cide.

I have select­ed the elec­tri­fy­ing Un bel dì vedremo (One fine day we’ll see) to show­case Ermonela Jaho’s (and Puc­cini’s) for­mi­da­ble artis­tic skill. Jaho, as But­ter­fly, deliv­ers this rav­ish­ing and pathos-filled solo from a deep well of emo­tion. As she stead­fast­ly sings of her belief that Pinker­ton will return to her, we can hard­ly watch, know­ing that tragedy awaits! It’s a great per­for­mance…

Ermonela Jaho
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
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