Thursday, October 09, 2008

What Turns Out to Be a Rather October-Appropriate Classical Playlist

We're done talking about Mega Man now, right?
Max Bruch: Kol Nidrei, op. 47 for cello and orchestra (1881)

Dmitri Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor (1948)

John Corigliano: Kaleidoscope for piano duo (1959)

Sergei Prokofiev: Quintet in G minor, op. 39 for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass (1924)

W. A. Mozart: Serenade in C minor K. 388 for wind octet (1782)
The Mozart and Shostakovich are both being played here in the next week (twice [!] for the Shostakovich concerto), and I would make a half-baked argument that the Prokofiev quintet sits stylistically right between those two pieces: thus most of the playlist. The Bruch would have made more sense 24 hours earlier, but, hey, still pretty close. Corigliano = obligatory contemporary music, "contemporary" meaning in this case almost five decades old.

2 Comments:

Blogger nate said...

What, you didn't play the epic "Epilogue/ End Credits" theme from Mega Man 3?

Seriously, my favorite October-appropriate (or really early-fall appropriate) composition is Philip Glass' fifth string quartet, which for whatever reason sounds very autumnal to me -- something about the string timbres and the tone of sort of reflective nostalgia, I suppose. As a bonus, it's the only work by Glass that I know of that seems to have any real warmth in it. And as an extra bonus, the third movement kind of sounds like a train. As far as your music, yeah, nice playlist; I've heard shamefully little of it.

FYI, your Shostakovich link points to Bruch again. (Because of course here I am wondering whose recording of the violin concerto you played.)

10/09/2008 9:23 PM  
Blogger Jack said...

Whoops, fixed the broken Shostakovich link. (It's Vengerov.)

I think you'd like the Prokofiev. Good call on the Glass quartet, too -- maybe I can track that down before the leaves fall.

10/09/2008 10:10 PM  

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