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The Holy Song of The Busy

Years ago I remember sitting in the Sydney studio of the ABC Classic FM playing a recording of Beethoven’s late String Quartet in A minor Op 132. I think it was around 4am that I was playing the piece and the 20-minute slow movement suddenly got to me as I lay on the studio floor, exhausted and emotional, listening to this music that Beethoven had written and dedicated to his God after achieving a recovery from a terrible few months of ill health. He entitled the movement Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit (A Convalescent’s Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity) and the music is so plaintive, you can really hear the direct thoughts of someone who is just grateful to be alive.  If I had one shred of Beethoven’s genius I would have written my own Heiliger Dankgesang as I recovered recently from my annual summer flu. I’m generally a pretty healthy person and usually only have one burst of illness at the end of the year when my system is so obviously run down that when you make the mistake of actually relaxing the germs promptly swarm in like Visigoths at the gates of Rome. It says a lot for the power of the…

September 7, 2012
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Animal Nature

Last night I was sitting in front of the TV and Macavity, the younger of our two tabby cats, jumped up on my lap and proceeded to purr loudly, nestled with his little nose in my armpit. What a delicious life of small needs a cat enjoys – food, an opportunity to hunt the odd lizard, and the warmth and comfort of his family are the only requirements. I don’t think little Macavity has ever felt the need to compose a symphony or play the violin sonatas of Johann Sebastian Bach and as far as I’m aware he’s never put paw to paper to write a novel nor paint a picture. Listening to him purring away like a small tractor, I wonder what made his brain so different from mine. Why do I feel the need to write an article for Limelight about his cat-mind, when all he does is lie about the house as if it were a five-star resort where the bill never comes? We humans have an insatiable need to express ourselves. We compose music, we write words, we paint, we act, we play instruments and sing and talk and make films about our feelings, and then other humans come……

September 7, 2012
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CD and Other Review

Review: SCHUBERT: Piano Sonatas, Impromptus (Paul Lewis)

Comprising both smaller-scale works as well as three sonatas, this generous collection shows the versatility and mastery of Paul Lewis in Schubert’s piano music. While the Impromptus D899 are among Schubert’s best-known instrumental works, Lewis allows us to hear them as if for the first time. Each is carefully shaped and interesting details are pointed out along the way, without ever losing sense of the melodic and dramatic arc of the whole. Full of references to Schubert’s song style, the late, lesser-known Klavierstücke D946 are ultimately valedictory in tone and Lewis gives them a marvelous rendition. Less easy for some to enjoy are the sonatas, with their emphasis on thematic development at the expense of structure. Lewis’s strong characterisation of successive ideas together with an uncanny sense of musical perspective allows him to guide the listener convincingly through Schubert’s musical arguments. In particular we can delight in the variety of moods Lewis creates in the scherzo of the D-Major Sonata D850 and the laconic humour he brings to its finale. By contrast, the opening of the G-Major Sonata D894 is invested with an admirable quiet devotion. The unfinished sonata Reliquie D840 seems a strange work on first acquaintance, but in…

February 23, 2012
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CD and Other Review

Review: BEETHOVEN: The Symphonies; Overtures (Gewandhaus/Chailly)

Interesting historical fact: In 1825, Johann Schultz and the Gewandhaus Orchestra presented the very first complete cycle of the Beethoven symphonies, a tradition followed by Schultz’s Leipzig successors which have included luminaries such as Mendelssohn, Furtwängler and Masur. Thus, with this new cycle under maestro Riccardo Chailly on Decca, it is fair to say that these works are pretty much “in the blood”. In fact, to sum up this beautifully presented 5-CD set, it is a rather brilliant fusion of the old and the new. The traditional element is immediately evident in the sound. The Leipzig strings offer a rich, beefy timbre while the brass is bright and punchy, though never vulgar. All of this is captured in a state-of-the-art recording of tremendous depth. The new is represented in the playing style – strings eschewing unnecessary vibrato, delicate woodwind – but especially in the tempi. Chailly observes Beethoven’s markings to the letter so we have some very fast movements indeed. The beauty is that the orchestra is so fleet of foot that detail is seldom sacrificed in the interests of speed. These unmannered readings allow Beethoven to speak for himself in exceptional versions of the Second, Third, Eighth and Ninth…

February 1, 2012