David Oistrakh, violinist/Claude Debussy - "Clair de lune"

Saw this clip from the "Classic Arts Showcase" program which features rare and otherwise unavailable short films of great past performances like this one, shown on Public Broadcasting stations:


Link: http://www.classicartsshowcase.org/

"David Oistrakh plays, beautifuly, Claire de lune. Recorded in Paris, 1962, with Frida Bauer in piano.

From Wikipedia: David Oistrakh (1908-1974) collaborated with major orchestras and musicians from many parts of the world, including the Soviet Union, Europe, and the United States, and was the dedicatee of numerous violin works, including both of Dmitri Shostakovich's violin concerti, and the violin concerto by Aram Khachaturian. He is considered one of the preeminent violinists of the 20th century."
For whoever is wondering, you may have heard this music on:

Frankie and Johnny
The Game
Ocean's Eleven
Ocean's Thirteen
Seven Years in Tibet
Twilight
... and many other movies"

Aaron Copland - The Promise of Living (1954)

A haunting and romantic composition by one of America's greatest 20th Century composers.

from Wikipedia:

Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American classical composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers".[1] He is best known to the public for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 40s in a deliberately more accessible style than his earlier pieces, including the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Rodeo and his Fanfare for the Common Man. The open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are archetypical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Copland

Cézanne and Debussy

The Post-Impressionist works of "The Father of Modern Art", Paul Cezanne (1839--1906) who inspired Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, et al, are shown here with the music of master of Impressionism in an unique sense of emotion captured in tone, Claude Debussy (1862-1918).

Conflict in Concert: Leonard Bernstein & Glenn Gould: "Bach Piano Concerto in D Minor"

Two great musicians. Gould plays and Bernstein conducts from the first movement of J S Bach "Concerto for Keyboard in D Minor."

from the CBC Archives: "On April 25, 1962 there is a highly publicized incident between Glenn Gould and conductor Leonard Bernstein at Carnegie Hall in New York. In later years, this night would be cited as one of the reasons the very private Gould would stop giving public performances.
In this clip, Bernstein disassociates himself and the New York Philharmonic from Gould's unorthodox interpretation of Brahms's First Piano Concert in D minor.

"Bernstein prefaces the concert with the famous phrase, "Don't be frightened, Mr. Gould is here..." Bernstein tells the audience that while he respects Gould, he strongly disagrees with his interpretation of Brahms piece. Following the introduction, Gould plays the first and last movement of the concerto at an extraordinarily slow tempo."

This tape I gather is from an earlier broadcast that same month for the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

Katherine Jenkins - "I Vow To Thee My Country" (Gustav Holtz/Sir Cecil Spring-Rice )

A British anthem taken from a portion of Gustav Holst's "Jupiter--Bringer of Jollity", from "The Planets, Op. 32."

Holst, born in 1874 in Cheltenham, England--that's his statue (above) in the city park--composed this section of his five planets symphony during the First World War. The synphony was first presented in London in 1918 with Adrian Boult as conductor.

The lyrics came from a poem by British ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, who was posted in the United States during the Administration of Woodrow Wilson. Spring-Rice's lyrics were incorporatd to the music in 1921.

Here are the first and third verses, as sung in the video:

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
I heard my country calling, away across the sea,
Across the waste of waters she calls and calls to me.

And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

(A second, more militant verse, is usually omitted in present day.)

Rimsky-Korsakov-"Sheherazade" (1888) -Gergiev-Kirov orchestra

St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Sergey Levitin as conductor (2003).




Rimsky-Korsakov's soaring composition was inspired by a Tales from the Arabian Nights, specifically a tale of the wicked Sultan Schariar who began marrying,bedding and beheading brides after he became convinced all women were faithless. Sheherazade volunteered to marry the king ,against all logic, but, with one major difference from her unfortunate predessors:


"[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred."--Translated from "The Tales" by Sir Richard F. Burton


Only after studying many stories, sciences and histories could she tell spellbinding stories to the sultan and keep him entranced night after night, waiting to hear more.

Finally, the Sultan's heart melted and he fell in love with this enchanting story-teller, ending the reign of terror.



This is the Sixth and final movement of the symphony, one of the most beautiful romantic pieces of its time, and a favorite of mine from the first time I heard it a long time ago. It harkens to me of a beautiful technicolor Arabia of the imagination.

Vaughn Williams: "Prelude: 49th Parallel" (1941)

This is the Prelude to 1941 Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger wartime drama, "The 49th Parallel', here performed by the Shepton High School Full Orchestra of Plano, Texas. The film was not released in the USA until 1942 (under the title, 'The Invaders"). It won an Academy Award for Pressburger for
Best Screenplay.
This prelude was composed by Ralph Vaughn Williams. The film follows a group of desperate German navy officers and men who, after their submarine is disabled after an attack in Hudson Bay, try to cross hundreds of kilometers to reach the Canadian border with the United States, hoping to be interned into a then-neutral United States. The film served as a propaganda drama about the contribution of Canadians to the war effort, and a none-too-subtle remainder to the Americans that the war in Europe was coming closer every day.

The Narration after the prelude sets one of the themes of the film---how in a world engulfed in war, two large nations live in peace with one another:

"I see a long, straight line athwart a continent. No chain of forts, or deep flowing river, or mountain range, but a line drawn by men upon a map, nearly a century ago, accepted with a handshake, and kept ever since. A boundary which divides two nations, yet marks their friendly meeting ground. The 49th parallel: the only undefended frontier in the world. "

Ernest Gold, composer--"It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" (USA, 1963)

This comic movie--with a title appropriate for this sad anniversary for Americans and others of many nations-- was one of the first I remember seeing at a drive-in theater--and have enjoyed on television from time to time since. It was an overhyped extravaganza of a film, more popular with the general public than with most critics.

It affords not only a worthy and multitudinous cast of mainly American comedians in their prime, but also reaffirms that humanity's lust for money can make mild-mannered grown-ups into badly-behaved children.

The plot, from screenwriter William Rose ("The LadyKillers") is simple. A older hoodlum just one step ahead of the cops a serious accident with his car flying off the road on a desert highway. Before he literally "kicks the bucket", he tells eight good samaritans in four separate parties gathered around him that there is a cache of 350,000 bucks hidden "under a big W" in a near-by coastal California town---all they have to do is get there and dig it up!

The "samaritans" soon fall out and a two-and-a-half hour melee ensues for control of the treasure, all the while Police Captain Culpepper tracks the would-be criminals while his personal and professional world crashes and burns all around him. Will his own deep-seeded avarice get the better of him?

Stanley Kramer produced and directed, and Ernest Gold did the excellent score.
Cast:

Spencer Tracy ... Capt. C. G. Culpepper

Milton Berle ... J. Russell Finch

Sid Caesar ... Melville Crump

Buddy Hackett ... Benjy Benjamin
Ethel Merman ... Mrs. Marcus

Mickey Rooney ... Ding Bell
Dick Shawn ... Sylvester Marcus

Phil Silvers ... Otto Meyer
Terry-Thomas ... J. Algernon Hawthorne

Jonathan Winters ... Lennie Pike

Edie Adams ... Monica Crump

Dorothy Provine ... Emeline Marcus-Finch

Leonard Bernstein: "Mambo", from West Side Story-- Gustavo Dudamel, conductor

This is a 2010 performance by the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra from Venezuela. The music is from "West Side Story" by Leonard Bernstein. The orchestra is made up of poor kids from the streets of Caracas and other cities. They have impressed audiences throughout the world. Their orchestra leader, Gabriel Dudamel, has conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and several others in Europe. He is today all of 29 years old!

Here is some information on the El Sistema music education system that has been in place in Venezuela since 1975.

"The program is known for rescuing young people in extremely impoverished circumstances from the environment of drug abuse and crime into which they would likely otherwise be drawn. Participants of the program who have begun international careers include Gustavo Dudamel, Edicson Ruiz, Joen Vazquez, Pedro Eustache, L. Miguel Rojas, Edward Pulgar, Natalia Luis-Bassa, among others.
In September 2007, President Hugo Chávez announced on television a new government program, Misión Música, designed to provide tuition and music instruments to Venezuelan children...
On 6 June 2007, the Inter-American Development Bank announced the granting of a US$150 million loan for the construction of seven regional centers of El Sistema throughout Venezuela. Many bankers within the IDB originally objected to the loan on the grounds that classical music is for the elite. In fact, the bank has conducted studies on the more than two million young people who have been educated in El Sistema which link participation in the program to improvements in school attendance and declines in juvenile delinquency. Weighing such benefits as a falloff in school drop-out rates and a decline in crime, the bank calculated that every dollar invested in El Sistema was reaping about $1.68 in social dividends."

Crime and Romance, USA: Carl Orff - Gassenhauer/from the movie "Badlands" (1973)

Carl Orff - Musica Poetica-01 "Gassenhauer" (1895 — 1982).

This is a piece of classical music I've always found engaging. I came across it shortly before hearing it on the soundtrack for the movie "Badlands". It is a color film, but still has the essense of the post-war emergence of "film noir" movies inspired in part by the experiences millions faced in the Second World War and the rootlessness and urbanization that began to characterize American life after the dust began to settle on a more prosperous but anxiety-filled nation.

The violence and controversy of The Vietnam War, racial tensions and the rise of teenage culture in America gave these newer 1970's "noir films" an added boost of nihilism.

Here's the trailer for the film:



'Badlands" I feel owes some of its hypnotic power to other road films of the time such as "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967), "Easy Rider" (1969) and the lessviolent but disturbing "Five Easy Pieces" (1970).




All these films show characters who somehow don't fit into society and face a journey we know will not end with a rosy sunset and a new start in life.

Terence Malick's--a director who has only made a handful of features since--captured the underbelly of American life in a very unflinching way.

In the film Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek playing a pair of young Midwestern misfits--he a young adult man, she barely a teenager-- who go on a killing spree in 1959 Kansas. It was based on actual events.

A story about an outlaw couple is nothing new in itself, expect that the characters remain fully dimensional if totally reprehensible in their actions. The development of the movie is flawless in my view. This is what makes the mayhem and murders in it all the more disturbing.

Part of the reason the film works is contained in the soundtrack, which incorporates this Carl Orff masterpiece at key moments in the film.

But, of course, the music stands alone and can be appreciated by itself, which I hope you will find on display here.

Franz Schubert-- "Serenade"

A serenade for the beauty of nature. One of the most famous and romantic works by the great composer (1797-1828).

His music has turned up in dozens of films, mostly his most famous work, "'Ave Maria". "Serenade" set the proper mood most recently in Harry Jaglom's romantic-drama feature, "Deja Vu" (1997), and the historical romance "The Young Victoria" (2009).

The story behind the piece, from the "Music At Ease" website:
"One Sunday, during the summer of 1826, Schubert with several friends was returning from Potzleinsdorf to the city, and on strolling along through Wahring, he saw his friend Tieze sitting at a table in the garden of the 'Zum Biersack.' The whole party determined on a halt in their journey. Tieze had a book lying open before him, and Schubert soon began to turn over the leaves. Suddenly he stopped, and pointing to a poem, exclaimed, 'such a delicious melody has just come into my head, if I but had a sheet of music paper with me.' Herr Doppler drew a few music lines on the back of a bill of fare, and in the midst of a genuine Sunday hubbub, with fiddlers, skittle players, and waiters running about in different directions with orders, Schubert wrote that lovely song."

Ennio Morricone "The Ecstasy of Gold" from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"

This haunting piece of music comes near the end of Sergio Leone's classic 1966 Western. In the film, the "Bad" character Tuco (Eli Wallach) races through a vast desert graveyard of wooden crosses, attempting to find the one marked "Arch Stanton", whose coffin is supposed to contain a cache of gold. Hot on his heels are Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef (the Good and the Bad, respectively).

This is a recent orchestration conducted by Maestro Morricone himself, with Susanna Rigacci as the soloist.

The graveyard was created by the Spanish Army on loan to Leone and company for the shooting of the film. They also blew up a bridge for the cameras during a scene depicting an epic American Civil War battle.

Antonin Dvorak - Humoresque No.7 (Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman)

"Humoresque (or Humoreske) is a genre of romantic music characterized by pieces with fanciful humor in the sense of mood rather than wit. Notable examples of the humoresque style are Schumann's Humoreske in B-flat major (Op. 20, 1839), and Dvořák's set of eight Humoresques (Op. 101, 1894), of which the one in G-flat major is well known."
(above, Wikipedia)



The most famous of Antonin Dvorak's short pieces, and one of the most romantic and moving works of music I've ever heard, "Humoresque" was a series of eight orchestral movements. They were written in the Summer of 1894 when Dvorak was 53 years old and back with his family in his native Bohemia.

The then-world famous composer was taking a break from a three-year stay in America, where he was the head of New York's Conservatory of Music. He spent a good deal of his free time absorbing and distilling American music and worked and learned with white and black musicians.

He had also headed orchestras as a guest conductor Moscow, London and Birmingham England.

He also composed the famous folk and African American-spiritual based "New World Symphony" at about this time.

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Serenade to Music (original version for 16 soloists) part one

This is a cold Winter night where I am and this music--warm and serene--I hope will ease any heavy hearts.

One of the most beautiful shorter symphonic I've had the pleasure of hearing: composed in 1938 and performed for the first time at the Royal Albert Hall. it was composed by Williams as part of a jubilee concert for a friend, Sir Henry J Wood.
The words in the chorus come from Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", specifically ACT V, Scene One where--after the drama of the trial featuring Shylock and Lorenzo's friend Antonio has concluded successfully (at least to the characters here) ---the lovers Lorenzo and Jessica are united and listening to beautiful music on a romantic evening in a country home called Belmont.
The lines from the singers here are taken from Lorenzo's lines in that act.

The first performance of "Serenade to Music" brought tears to the eyes of many in the Albert Hall, including one of Vaughan Williams and Sir John Wood's friends, the great Sergi Rachmaninov, who was present at the concert hall that evening after performing his Second Concerto in the first half of the program.

The Russian composer later wrote that he had never been so moved by music. The second half is also on You Tube.

Shostakovitch, Symphony No. 5, Bernstein

Dimitri Shostakovitch (1906-1975) Symphony Number Five was first performed in Leningrad in 1937, at the height of the show trails and the general "Great Terror" of mass state-sanctioned murder against all groups of citizens , including a purge of the higher ranks of military officials and even some "Old Bolshevik" revolutionaries. All had in some way fallen out of favor with their paranoid and beyond-heinous leader, Joseph Stalin.

Previously, Stalin had had the young composer's work "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" denounced for "formalism". ( I guess that meant not dumbed down enough for the dictates of socialist realism expected from a great artist.) "Uncle Joe" apparently had gone to see a performance and abruptly left the theater---not a good sign, not the sort of "informal" musical distraction the Fearless Leader was expecting!
Many thought Staliin was upset over the depiction of the Macbeth character in the opera as a bloody tyrant. The Fifth Symphony was, naturally, produced under a cloud of fear. Many of Shastakovitch's protectors inside the Soviet apparatus and several friends were either sent off to gulags or shot. He had to be very, very careful and heed the dictates of what passed for official musical criteria . The music of the final fouth movement of the Fifth was understated, performed and recorded in a downbeat mode.

A dozen years later, in 1948, Shostakovitch was denounced by Stalin's media again--- for the old charge of formalism. Two years later the composer joined the Communist Party--perhaps as an act of desperation, or maybe he was just feeling more social, you decide.

In 1959, with Stalin long dead and something of a limited thaw taking place inside the Soviet Union with its cultural exchanges, Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic visited Russia. Bernstein decided to produce a performance of the "5th Symphony" with a more upbeat and triumphant ending to the fourth movement.
The great composer, in bad health, was present for the performance and went up to Bernstein and embraced him. It wasn't his original tempo from 1937 that he supervised, but he loved it!

Here's a slightly slower version of the final movement of the Symphony, performed in 1979 by the NYPO with Bernstein at the helm.

Gabriel FAURE': Pavane, Op. 50 - Paintings By 'CLAUDE MONET'

One of the most haunting yet beautiful compositions I've ever heard. Oddly enough I first heard this music quite by accident. It was played over a video of nature scenes used by a television station as their sign-off-the-air program! I had to call the station the day after to find out both the name of the work and the composer. It seemed to express an inner longing about solitude and mortality that I can not then or now quite put into words.

I suspect I am not alone in this.
I soon found out from a musically attuned friend that it was a very popular piece with symphonies.

Faure (1845-1924) was a pupil of Camille Saint-Saens, and a teacher to Ravel, among many others.
According to Naxos. Com:
"Gabriel Faure took the rhythm for this piece from the slow, stately Spanish Court Dance known as a Pavane. It was originally composed for a small orchestra and an optional chorus, who sung about the romantic helplessness of men! Pavane was first performed in 1888, and three years later it was performed with dancers."

The art of Claude Monet needs no introduction.

Overture to Candide - Leonard Bernstein

Although this 1956 musical adaptation of Voltaire's novella was not well-received initially by New York critics, despite its impressive musical and literary pedigree, this overture has become a staple of symphonic programs all over the world. The show itself was later revived on Broadway in 1974 by director Harold Prince, to better success.
Here, the composer himself, the great Leonard Bernstein, conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a definitive 1989 performance.

"Candide"

Music: Leonard Bernstein
Lyrics: Richard Wilbur
John Latouche
Dorothy Parker
Lillian Hellman
Stephen Sondheim
Leonard Bernstein
Book:
Lillian Hellman
Hugh Wheeler

http://www.answers.com/topic/candide

Cuban Overture --George Gershwin-O.Sinfonica Ciudad de Leon

Originally titled "Rhumba", this is the last movement of the overture, which was composed in 1932. It was an immediate success for the composer. It's debut in a New York stadium that same year on an "All-Gershwin" program was a major cultural event. Twenty thousand fans of the composer were in attendence with another 10,000 or so listening from outside the gates. He later wrote the evening was his most satisfying professional experience.
It was retitled in 1933 for its debut at Carnegie Hall to better reflect the total theme of the composition. It continues to be one of his most popular works, and was inspired by a two-week vacation he took to the island nation.


source:Wikipedia