Here’s hoping that somehow that blatty first movement is a grower, because—the other movements! Second: Typically pretty Tchaikovsky (my daughter said was “very nice”) lent operatic, Italianate gravitas by Pappano and his Roman band. Third: Five minutes of charming, sometimes Looney Tunes pizzicato that remains grounded by its serious interpretation. Finale: I laughed out loud euphorically at this vigorous street party.
In a concordant, resolute response to Damon Krukowski’s brief “Revisiting the Pyramid of Inequality that is Streaming Music,” I remind myself that if I want humanity to keep recording music that isn’t of mass appeal—and I do—then assuming I have the means, I must buy records from the recorders and not merely rent them from the tech fiefs.
Just listened to: a bunch of recordings of Tchaikovsky’s familiar symphonic poem Romeo and Juliet (1870/1880) as my inaugural part of a co-listening project with Travis. Of those, I enjoyed all of the following:
Bernstein conducts NYPO as if Tchaikovsky had written the piece as the score to a 1950s movie.
Muti conducts Philharmonia and Fischer conducts Budapest as if the composer had written the piece as the score to a 21st-century movie (which is weird in Muti’s case because he made the record in 1977).
Abbado conducts Berlin as if Tchaikovsky had written the piece as the score of real-life, magical fairy tale.
Doráti conducts LSO as if Tchaikovsky had written the piece so that Rite-of-Spring-era Stravinsky could conduct it (or eat it for breakfast).
Pappano conducts Santa Cecilia as if Tchaikovsky had written the piece as an opera.
Again, all are worth hearing, but I enjoy the Abbado third-best, the Doráti second-best—because it’s just so different and exciting and snarly—and the Pappano the mostest. Because let’s face it: Romeo and Juliet is squarely the sort of story out of which operas are born. The hi-fi recording helps here, too, of course.)
Just listened to: Teeth of Time (2025) by Joshua Burnside at the recommendation of my friend Josh (no relation). Arresting, sometimes brusque, close mic’d shiny-brogue Irish neo-folk to whose genre description we might occasionally add the affixes “glitch” or “-tronica.” Highly recommended.
One niggle: Would it be too much to ask Burnside to endow his songs with proper endings? I acknowledge that the title of the last track is “Nothing Completed” and that there’s a certain formal congruence between that idea and the fact that almost all the tracks here either fade into nothing quickly or come to a sheer, abrupt stop, but if he’s trying to tweak our aesthetic noses with this, he has in my case succeeded.
Seen from another angle, this is Adagio for Strings, redux, except in the form of a single-chord prolation canon and probably even better suited to accompany Platoon. That Pärt wrote this to grieve to death of a man he’d never met fascinates me.
Just listened to: Christmas Songs (2004) by The Eddie Higgins Trio. Straight-ahead Christmas piano trio jazz of the sort you get for free on a Roku music channel.
Lately, I have grown slightly bothered by the aloneness of two of my favorite things to do: listening to recorded music and reading books (and poetry). In most cases, these pursuits involve me walking, standing, or sitting by myself taking in artifacts of work done by people I don’t know—often people who I couldn’t know this side of eternity because they’re dead. Of course, none of that entails listening to records and reading books solo can’t be good. Often, the artifacts are insightful or beautiful enough to move me toward thanksgiving to the Ultimate Creator, to engender joy or peace, to inspire good deeds, and even adjust the course of my life.
No, the bother comes from the non-sharing of these very benefits. I suppose addressing that bother is partly why I blog. Yet blogging is an indirect way to share. It’s not exactly interpersonal. And interpersonal is the way of Life.
So. Today I took two small steps toward making music appreciation and book reading interpersonal: (1) I called and left a voice message for Travis suggesting we take periodic turns suggesting we both listen to specific classical music recordings, perhaps even simultaneously even though we’re a continent apart, and then talk about them; and (2) I called and spoke with Aaron suggesting we recite passages and stanzas to one another in person, in phone conversation, or via voice message whenever something really hits us.
Just listened to: a recording of Messiaen’s L’Ascension (1933) by Paavo Järvi conducting Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich on Alpha Classics (2019) while on a short sunset walk. Because sometimes you wanna go beyond la frontière Debussy. A devout, twenty-something, 20th-century French organist composes a short, innovative, delicious four-course symphonic prix fixe from a mathematically constrained but phenomenally boundless (thus predictably unpredictable) harmonic palette, neither tonal nor dodecaphonic. And a world-class, Grammy-winning Estonian conductor and his first-rate Zürcher waitstaff serve it with all the attention and grace you expect at a Michelin-starred restaurant.
I’m not sure I enjoy any sociospatial context more than free-spirited, small-group conversation at a table at Webster’s Bookstore Café, surrounded by the sight and smell of used books, the taste of good tea, and the sound of vintage hipster music that isn’t even trying to be cool. (I just wish they stayed open past 7 PM!)
Just listened to: a recording of Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas (1820–1822) by Penelope Crawford on Musica Omnia (2011) during a rainy walk through the neighborhood. A master of the fortepiano plays the final trilogy of a (by then deaf) master of piano composition. Together, they bless us with helpings of hymn-like lyricism, proto-jazz, and Debussy—the last two written eighty years ahead of schedule. (They also serve us some C Minor storminess. But with this guy, what else is new?)
Just listened to Kings Kaleidoscope (2023) by Kings Kaleidoscope. Therapeutically upbeat chamber beatbox pop that sits just on this side of my K-LOVE hate line (thanks to its offering some musical adventuresomeness alongside its therapeutics).
Just listened to: Yesterday’s Wine (1971) by Willie Nelson. More Christian moral instruction in a single, ten-line song than in whole catalogs of Christian devotional music. What a dirty, liberal, redneck hippie. And what an understated, if occasionally soporific, country mini-masterpiece the whole album.
It’s not regimen or self-discipline I’ll need if I want to write songs, silly. I have that. It’s company. In the sea of commitments I swim in, it’s commitments alone that cause efforts to float. It’s time to start a songwriting group.
Just re-listened to: Swordfishtrombones (1983) by Tom Waits. Barroom theatre under a heavy patina of sonic curios (horns, accordion, harmonium, Chromelodeon, bagpipes, bass-marimba, aunglong, squeeze drum, bell plate, brake drum, legs of a stool), creating a whole pocket universe of underbellies. If Heath Ledger didn’t take direct, wholesale inspiration from “Frank’s Wild Years” for his portrayal of The Joker, then I’ll be an organ grinder’s monkey.
Just listened to: Midnight Of A Good Culture (2025) by Sho Baraka. Fortysomething 116er delivers 57 minutes of mannered, Christian yet doubt-laden, occasionally 80s/90s retro, occasionally obnoxious, yet masterful conscious hip-hop. RE: “Christian”: Despite this—and it is charmingly unabashed—this album ought to have a Parental Advisory sticker on it. It’s certainly the first Christian album I’ve heard with “n——” in the lyrics. RE: “mannered” and “occasionally obnoxious”: When the recording artist describes himself as a polymath and wears his love for André 3000 and Kanye on his sleeve, what else should I expect?
Just re-listened to: The Ballad of Dood & Juanita (2021) by Sturgill Simpson. Like the art on its cover, dramatically it’s just a sketch (or a series of sketches in a single narrative line). A hackneyed one at that. But country, bluegrass, and old-time music trade in hackney almost by definition. And if this is the kind of affectionate craft (and vocals!) you put into your seven-plus teetering-on-corny vignettes, I’ll take seven more, please. A top-ten EP for me.
Just listened to: Audio Vertigo (2024)by Elbow. Hey hey, my my—rock and roll (of the Peter Gabriel and In Rainbows variety) is still alive. Amidst middle-aged men in Manchester, anyway. (Props to them for pushing themselves as fiftysomethings.) How does a band like this count fewer than a million monthly Spotify listeners? The music is inventive, skillful, mostly happy, frequently groovy, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. It isn’t petulant, mean, lascivious, repetitive, or harmonically simplistic. Oh, wait.
Just re-listened to: Semper Femina (2017) by Laura Marling while on a foggy walk at dawn. I enjoy her stuff most when it’s paired with alternative tunings and/or uptempo drumming (especially hand drums). I hear little of that here, which, despite the Tom Waits feint opener, results in a more MOR offering, like some slightly fey (that might’ve been the fog), ivory, female Amos Lee record. Not that I’m complaining.
Just listened to: Don’t Shy Away (2020) by Loma. Arrangement and composition are equal artistic partners in this trip-hoppy, art-rocky, twilit, encouraging, other-oriented dream pop.
Just listened to: venter på noen som venter på noen (“waiting for someone as waiting for someone”) (2025) by Valkyrien Allstars. More Norwegian prog folk rock, occasionally sonically reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac. Not as shimmering as their 2020 outing, and I miss the bit of vocal variety brought by Erik Sollid taking half a song’s worth of lead on that one. Still, even though I’m not Norwegian, these feel like some of my native sonic-musical textures.
Just listened to: Our Gilded Veins by Rory Macdonald conducting The Royal Scottish National Orchestra on Outhere Music / Linn (2024). Bracing, pictorial, alternately elegiac and cathartic Scottish and English classical music, all of it written within the last forty-five years, most of it this century. Hubert Culot has written a more detailed review on MusicWeb International that renders much further comment from me superfluous, but I should like to note that the flautist Katherine Bryan’s performance in the title piece qualifies her as an endurance athlete.
Just re-listened to: Ratatat (2004) by Ratatat. Because laptops were instruments even back then—and instruments capable of contributing to the creation of bittersweet instrumental vibes, at that, albeit indietronica vibes best suited for, say, an indie Sega Genesis game in which the characters mostly wander city streets. I admit I’m often not entirely sure which sounds are the synths and which are the guitars. Anyway, this is an album my whole family can agree on. Good for close listening or for background music, but admittedly slightly better for the latter.