oops

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A belated "Happy Birthday" to filkerdave. I meant to do this yesterday, when everybody else in the world was doing it, but I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!

So I hope it was a good one.
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one hand clapping

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Last time I looked for it, it wasn't there, but as of January, there is now a video of Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand up on YouTube. Leon Fleischer does the honors, and it's a terrific performance. The camera obligingly spends a lot of time showing the graceful ballet of fingers on the keyboard, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

Amputee and ingrate Paul Wittgenstein commissioned it after losing his arm in World War One, and Ravel gave him the greatest piano concerto ever written. It starts with a "three blind mice" theme that only the orchestra gets to play, then the piano comes in with a percussive solo that sets the table for what is to come. Ravel's writing makes one hand sound like more than two at times, and at other times, he lets a section of the orchestra act like another set of fingers.

Perhaps I'm being over-imaginative in thinking the music evokes the war in which Ravel drove an ambulance and in which the lives of several of his friends were lost, but the dark tones certainly bring out emotions in me. Before searching for this, I was listening to my cherished 1960 stereo recording of the music with Robert Casadesus fronting Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and when it was over, I had to wipe tears off my face.

( videos after the cut )

tearing down the hall

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I fear that posting too much music too close together will mean that nobody looks at any of it (and don't get me started on all the terrific Godowsky performances by Hamelin and Berezovsky on YouTube), but I have to mention this as well. Glenn Gould didn't like Ravel. The French impressionists didn't do a thing for him, but he did this for them: he made and recorded a knockout solo transcription of "La Valse" (not that Ravel's own solo version of it doesn't rock), and even put it on video. In two parts, here it is:

( and I'll keep talking )