DG: the year 1917

[Nick Armstrong]

What an interesting new (to me) way of compiling a 2-CD set: DG's new The Year 1917: Music in Turbulent Times



Good selection (though some bleeding chunks - e.g. RVW 3, 2nd movement.... )

[teamsaint]

What an interesting new (to me) way of compiling a 2-CD set: DG's new The Year 1917: Music in Turbulent Times



Good selection (though some bleeding chunks - e.g. RVW 3, 2nd movement.... )

Terrific way of filling a gap in the release schedule.

Sorry, couldn't resist.
Enjoy.

[Nick Armstrong]

Terrific way of filling a gap in the release schedule.

Sorry, couldn't resist.
Enjoy.

Oh I shan't be investing, got most of the stuff separately. But I liked the idea.

Come on, support your fellow publishers with month-ends to make!

[teamsaint]

Oh I shan't be investing, got most of the stuff separately. But I liked the idea.

Come on, support your fellow publishers with month-ends to make!

Yes, you are right , all in it together. Poor old DG, with their b list roster........

Anyway, I have a LOT of copies of a major movie tie in to get shifting, so there will be a bit less grouchy larking about on here from me in the spring, you may be pleased to hear !!

[Conchis]

Potentially good idea, but would be better as a box set of complete works around this theme than a double-CD sampler featuring bleeding chunks.

In fact, I can't think who the target market might be: the works featured aren't populist and most serious music-heads will have complete versions on their shelves, anyway.

Great artwork, though. :)

[Petrushka]

Potentially good idea, but would be better as a box set of complete works around this theme than a double-CD sampler featuring bleeding chunks.

In fact, I can't think who the target market might be: the works featured aren't populist and most serious music-heads will have complete versions on their shelves, anyway.

Great artwork, though. :)

This sums up my own reaction very well.

[Nick Armstrong]

Potentially good idea, but would be better as a box set of complete works around this theme than a double-CD sampler featuring bleeding chunks.

In fact, I can't think who the target market might be: the works featured aren't populist and most serious music-heads will have complete versions on their shelves, anyway.

Great artwork, though. :)

True

[Alain Maréchal]

I find it a slightly tasteless marketing ploy, in view of what was happening in Belgium that particular year, but I suppose I would.

[Bryn]

I find it a slightly tasteless marketing ploy, in view of what was happening in Belgium that particular year, but I suppose I would.

Indeed, and also a poorly researched gimmick. Les Noces, for instance, may have been completed in short score in 1917, but was conceived in 1912 and commenced upon in earnest in 1914, and the instrumentation used in this double album is from 1921.

[pastoralguy]

I find it a slightly tasteless marketing ploy, in view of what was happening in Belgium that particular year, but I suppose I would.

Mrs. PG and I stayed up late last night and were channel suffering when we came across one of these compilations programmes. This one was about magic tricks that had gone wrong. Most were people, who should have known better, getting mild injuries. However, one concentrated on a man called Franz Reichelt who attempted to 'fly' from the first level of the Eiffel Tower wearing a 'parachute' of his own design. The parachute failed to deploy and he was killed on impact.

This event was filmed and is really quite distressing to watch even though it happened 105 years ago. What I found difficult to watch was the innocuous remarks by the various talking heads as they mocked what was a misguided tragedy. Just because it happened a long time ago and is documented on flickering nitrate film doesn't make it a subject for cheap mockery.

Reicelt was genuine in his wish to develop a working parachute to assist aviators who may have wished to exit their planes at some height. Very sad.

[aeolium]

I don't think a commemoration of the music (or art in general) of a particularly violent year is necessarily wrong; it depends on how sensitively and imaginatively it is done. In 2014 the Cheltenham Music Festival under its director Meirion Bowen mounted several programmes in commemoration of the First World War, including concerts which programmed music from each of the war years - and with a number of linked events e.g. lectures, a screening of the 1916 film about the Battle of the Ancre, poetry readings etc. I thought the idea and its execution was very good. After all, many of these works were directly or indirectly responding to the horrific events of the war.

There is currently something of an outcry about the Royal Academy's exhibition of Russian Revolutionary Art 1917-1932, as if it were propagandising totalitarian art. I think that's misguided as it misrepresents the variety of this art, from the futuristic optimism and energy of the early years, and also because it is still important to see the reactions of artists to social and political change even in a highly constrained and dangerous political environment (would we have similar qualms about artists of the French Revolution - David, for instance?)

It can be worth looking closely at isolated periods of intense conflict and the way artists respond to it - as in fact Alistair Sooke did very well in a programme on the British artists of the First World War not so long back.

[Beef Oven!]

Indeed, and also a poorly researched gimmick. Les Noces, for instance, may have been completed in short score in 1917, but was conceived in 1912 and commenced upon in earnest in 1914, and the instrumentation used in this double album is from 1921.

Showing yer age.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Showing yer age.

Looks like a gatefold album, too!

[Alain Maréchal]

I don't think a commemoration of the music (or art in general) of a particularly violent year is necessarily wrong;

I agree, but this is not a commemoration. It is a commercial venture using a centenary as an excuse.

[Beef Oven!]

Looks like a gatefold album, too!