Thursday 27th August 2009

Here are the ears!

In the car today:
Radiohead - The Bends

At my desk:
Bruckner - Symphony No.4
David Fanshawe - African Sanctus
Mendelssohn - Octet
Beethoven - Septet
Blur - All the People (Live at Hyde Park July 2009)

Planned for the bath:
Schoenberg - Verklaerte Nacht

Comments:
1. I'd forgotten how lovely that Bruckner is. I always forget how very much I do like Bruckner. Mental note - listen to more Bruckner!

2. Hadn't listened to the Fanshawe for YEARS. I have it because I had to teach it when I was in charge of the Music International Baccalaureat programme in my first teaching job. Couldn't make head nor tail of it then. Makes more sense to me now that I have a much broader perspective on music in general, but I don't think I'll ever be in love with it. Quite like the description though:
For African tapes, choir, operatic soprano, light soprano, shouter, African drummer, rock drummer, two percussion, electric guitar, bass guitar, piano, and Hammond M. 100 organ.

"Shouter" eh? What on earth I managed to teach my students I'll never know! I did however, get to go to a local private school for a day to see what they were doing with IB music there - fascinating, but mainly because I'd never been in a private school before and I was staggered to discover they had TWO school orchestras! Wow!

3. Today's recording of the Octet was the Vienna Octet one, which is my fave (yesterday was Hausmusik). I don't generally make much of which recordings I listen to because I cannot generally afford to own more than one (I'd usually prefer own more music, rather than more recordings of stuff I already have, unless the performance is TERRIBLE), and I've nearly always had to just go with what's cheapest! However, as I used to be a Mendelssohn scholar (yes, really!!), he is the composer for whom I'm most likely to own multiple recordings.