Music For Medical Recuperation

[richardfinegold]

I downloaded the disc of British Guitar music, which sounds really appealing, but will probably follow up on the others as well.

My wife listened to this album last night. We both enjoyed it immensely. It is a nice mix of relatively light listening with more challanging fare. I would really like to explore more 20th and 21st Century Guitar Music. I have nothing against Sor, Albeniz, Giuliani, etc but as I have complained before so many Guitar discs seem to recycle the same pieces. Given the dominance of the instrument in pop music over the past 60 years there must have been an increase in compostions for Classical Guitar in parallel.
Also listened via Spotify to Goran Sollscher's Bach recordings, of the Cello Suites arranged for 12 string guitar, and while nice I find myself missing the grit and resin feel of the bowed instrument compared to the relatively light feel of the plucked one. Some of the Suites just do not seem to survive the transposition as well as others, particularly when Bach calls for long sustained, arcing notes or phrases.

[Richard Tarleton]

I was at the first performance of the Walton Bagatelles (on the British disc) by Bream in January 1973.

Agreed re the Bach. And I don't mind if I never hear Albeniz Asturias on the guitar again. My heart sinks when I hear someone start it. But just listen to Presti and Lagoya playing Granados Spanish Dance no 2, "Oriental".

An excellent Sollscher disc is his Renaissance Album on DG, a tremendous anthology of English and continental lute music and Spanish vihuela music played on guitar.

Sor is worth exploring beyond the overplayed favourites (the Mozart Variations) - likewise Giuliani - but as a plucker I'm probably biased.

[Dave2002]

HS. Msg 43: Great story. perhaps it won"t mean so much to younger people, who might even protest that "we don't talk like that!"
A long while back I had a friend who came from Bristol, and his speech definitely had a distinctive regional accent.

However, local accents change. In the 1960s people in Norfolk and Norwich might have had distinctive voices - remember the singing postman and phrases like "strike a light, lad!". The name "Norwich" itself used to be pronounced something like "Narch". But now I think it's hard to find people who speak like that any more, as Essex English seems to have taken over.

[richardfinegold]

HS. Msg 43: Great story. perhaps it won"t mean so much to younger people, who might even protest that "we don't talk like that!"
A long while back I had a friend who came from Bristol, and his speech definitely had a distinctive regional accent.

However, local accents change. In the 1960s people in Norfolk and Norwich might have had distinctive voices - remember the singing postman and phrases like "strike a light, lad!". The name "Norwich" itself used to be pronounced something like "Narch". But now I think it's hard to find people who speak like that any more, as Essex English seems to have taken over.

My wife, Rita, moved with her family to New England at age 13. When we visit it is also amusing to have her name become
"Reeter" and to try to "pahk the cah"

[Hornspieler]

Schubert's 'Ave Maria'

My daughter Georgina played this in a concert at her Junior School in 1970.

Here is a recording of the piano arrangement by Franz Liszt, played by my lifetime friend and fellow student Valerie Tryon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52wVimT4h_A

HS

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

http://www.music-therapy.org.uk/events.html

[gradus]

A friend recently gave me two discs of Johanna Martzy in Bach solo violin works sonatas, partitas etc and now I have them on the car player all the time. She is not much talked about now but her performances are, for me, passionate, extremely beautiful, virtuosic without being flashy and with a violin tone that appeals greatly. Despite the fities recordings the sound is excellent.
Anyhow I thought of you RFG and wondered if you might enjoy her playing.

[clive heath]

Richard, I hope you will forgive me being very slightly off-topic in that the problem was emotional not medical but here is John Steinbeck on the subject of Ed Ricketts, the "Doc" in "Cannery Row" and his companion on the boat trip that led to "The Log of the Sea of Cortez"

"Knowing Ed Ricketts was instant. After the first moment I knew him, and for the next eighteen years I knew him better than I knew anyone, and perhaps I did not know him at all. Maybe it was that way with all his friends. He was different from anyone and yet so like that everyone found himself in Ed, and that might be one of the reasons his death had such an impact. It wasn't Ed who had died but a large and important part of oneself…

But no one who knew him will deny the force and influence of Ed Ricketts. Everyone near him was influenced by him, deeply and permanently. Some he taught how to think, others how to see or hear…

Nearly everyone who knew him has tried to define him …

He was a great teacher and a great lecher—an immortal who loved women. Surely he was an original and his character was unique, but in such a way that everyone was related to him, one in this way and another in some different way. He was gentle but capable of ferocity, small and slight but strong as an ox, loyal and yet untrustworthy, generous but gave little and received much. His thinking was as paradoxical as his life. He thought in mystical terms and hated and distrusted mysticism. He was an individualist who studied colonial animals with satisfaction…

Once, when I had suffered an overwhelming emotional upset, I went to the laboratory to stay with him. I was dull and speechless with shock and pain. He used music on me like medicine. Late in the night when he should have been asleep, he played music for me on his great phonograph—even when I was asleep he played it, knowing that its soothing would get into my dark confusion. He played the curing and reassuring plain songs, remote and cool and separate, and then gradually he played the sure patterns of Bach, until I was ready for more personal thought and feeling again, until I could bear to come back to myself. And when that time came, he gave me Mozart. I think it was as careful and loving medication as has ever been administered."

Ed Ricketts' son says that his father's favourite was Mozart's K.466 piano concerto. Best wishes.

[richardfinegold]

A friend recently gave me two discs of Johanna Martzy in Bach solo violin works sonatas, partitas etc and now I have them on the car player all the time. She is not much talked about now but her performances are, for me, passionate, extremely beautiful, virtuosic without being flashy and with a violin tone that appeals greatly. Despite the fities recordings the sound is excellent.
Anyhow I thought of you RFG and wondered if you might enjoy her playing.

Those recordings were legendary in the Audiophile community, fetching $5000/set. Now they have been reissued for the rest of us plebes to enjoy. You have a very nice friend

[richardfinegold]

Richard, I hope you will forgive me being very slightly off-topic in that the problem was emotional not medical but here is John Steinbeck on the subject of Ed Ricketts, the "Doc" in "Cannery Row" and his companion on the boat trip that led to "The Log of the Sea of Cortez"

"Knowing Ed Ricketts was instant. After the first moment I knew him, and for the next eighteen years I knew him better than I knew anyone, and perhaps I did not know him at all. Maybe it was that way with all his friends. He was different from anyone and yet so like that everyone found himself in Ed, and that might be one of the reasons his death had such an

impact. It wasn't Ed who had died but a large and important part of oneself…

But no one who knew him will deny the force and influence of Ed Ricketts. Everyone near him was influenced by him, deeply and permanently. Some he taught how to think, others how to see or hear…

Nearly everyone who knew him has tried to define him …

He was a great teacher and a great lecher—an immortal who loved women. Surely he was an original and his character was unique, but in such a way that everyone was related to him, one in this way and another in some different way. He was gentle but capable of ferocity, small and slight but strong as an ox, loyal and yet untrustworthy, generous but gave little and received much. His thinking was as paradoxical as his life. He thought in mystical terms and hated and distrusted mysticism. He was an individualist who studied colonial animals with satisfaction…

Once, when I had suffered an overwhelming emotional upset, I went to the laboratory to stay with him. I was dull and speechless with shock and pain. He used music on me like medicine. Late in the night when he should have been asleep, he played music for me on his great phonograph—even when I was asleep he played it, knowing that its soothing would get into my dark confusion. He played the curing and reassuring plain songs, remote and cool and separate, and then gradually he played the sure patterns of Bach, until I was ready for more personal thought and feeling again, until I could bear to come back to myself. And when that time came, he gave me Mozart. I think it was as careful and loving medication as has ever been administered."

Ed Ricketts' son says that his father's favourite was Mozart's K.466 piano concerto. Best wishes.

Not OT at all. Sometimes emotional pain can be far more damaging than physical.
I read a lot of Steinbeck as a teenager but Cannery Row. Perhaps I should check it out

[LeMartinPecheur]

Schubert's 'Ave Maria'

My daughter Georgina played this in a concert at her Junior School in 1970.

Here is a recording of the piano arrangement by Franz Liszt, played by my lifetime friend and fellow student Valerie Tryon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52wVimT4h_A

HS

Thanks for that HS, I've always had a soft spot for Tryon since I bought very many years ago an (unfortunately non-Dolby) BBC cassette of her playing Rachmaninov, the Etudes-Tableaux Op39 and transcriptions. Have always thought she could have (should have?) had a much bigger career. Possibly living in Canada didn't help? Whichever, I hope she's happy with the career she's had

At the side of the Tryon YouTube page I was rather intrigued by another box marked
"Franz Liszt - 14 Schubert Lieder
by Wolfgang Amade Mozart"!

Wondered if someone's ouija board had been working overtime!

[The actual performances, by Oxana Yablonskaya, alas didn't seem to have any inputs from WAM]

[EdgeleyRob]

There was a time when I was suffering serious depression,and having strange and frightening thoughts.
During those days I couldn't listen to music.
Vaughan Williams saved me.

This recipe works for me.

Feeling stressed ,say after a bad day at work - Howells,chamber and choral.
Feeling sorry for myself,say after a minor illness - Mozart and Mendelssohn chamber and piano.
Feeling the day can't get any worse - DSCH 4 and Arnold 7,8,or 9.
Feeling the Black Dog about to bite - anything by RVW

[richardfinegold]

There was a time when I was suffering serious depression,and having strange and frightening thoughts.
During those days I couldn't listen to music.
Vaughan Williams saved me.

This recipe works for me.

Feeling stressed ,say after a bad day at work - Howells,chamber and choral.
Feeling sorry for myself,say after a minor illness - Mozart and Mendelssohn chamber and piano.
Feeling the day can't get any worse - DSCH 4 and Arnold 7,8,or 9.
Feeling the Black Dog about to bite - anything by RVW

Where does Vainberg fit in?

[EdgeleyRob]

Where does Vainberg fit in?

A fairly recent discovery Richard,but his music has become something of an obsession for me.
There's certainly a place for his 16th String Quartet in the 'music to listen to if I think I've had a bad day'category.

[Boilk]

During those days I couldn't listen to music.
Vaughan Williams saved me.

The inference is that you didn't consider VW to be music?