Norwegian Composers On Spotify

"The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance" — Lewis Thomas

The tragedy in Norway this week once again reminds us that ignorance is still the greatest enemy of humanity. All I can hope is, we may reach a better understanding of each other through the power of music.

This playlist features 20 Norwegian composers: Ole Bull (1810-1880), Johan Svendsen (1840-1911), Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), Hjalmar Borgstrøm (1864-1925), Johan Halvorsen (1864-1935), Fartein Valen (1887-1952), Harald Sæverud (1897-1992), Eivind Groven (1901-1977), Geirr Tveitt (1908-1981), Edvard Hagerup Bull (1922-), Finn Mortensen (1922-1983), Edvard Fliflet Bræin (1924-1976), Arne Nordheim (1931-2010), Alfred Janson (1937-), Ketil Hvoslef (1939-), Lasse Thoresen (1949-), Rolf Wallin (1957-), Ståle Kleiberg (1958-), Dagfinn Koch (1964-), Asbjørn Blokkum Flø (1973-).

Here's the Spotify playlist:  Norwegian Composers (20 tracks, total time: 2 hours) Tracks are arranged by composers chronologically, as listed above. This playlist is inspired by Alex Ross's tweet. Further listening: Fartein Valen: The Four Symphonies.

Smithsonian Folkways on Spotify, A Sampler

As a postscript for the Bob Dylan post, I made a 20-track playlist for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. See tracklist below. The 20 albums selected here will provide a broad overview of this prestigious label to the newcomers. I linked songs and performers to their Wikipedia pages, and albums to their Folkways pages, where you can download the complete liner notes in pdf.

01, Frankie by Mississippi John Hurt from Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol.1

02, Little Moses by The Carter Family from Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol.2

03, The Coo Coo Bird by Clarence Ashley from Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 3

04, Pretty Boy Floyd by Woody Guthrie from The Asch Recordings, Vol. 1-4

05, Dark as the Dungeon by Cisco Houston from The Folkways Years, 1944-1961

06, Little Sadie by  Doc Watson, Clarence Ashley from Original Folkways Recordings of Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley, 1960-1962

07, Moonshiner by  Roscoe Holcomb from The High Lonesome Sound

08, Duncan and Brady by Dave Van Ronk from The Folkways Years, 1959-1961

09, John Hardy by Dock Boggs from  His Folkways Years, 1963-1968

10, Barbara Allen by Jean Richie from Classic Mountain Songs from Smithsonian Folkways

11, Goodnight, Irene by Lead Belly from Lead Belly's Last Sessions

12, Freight Train by Elizabeth Cotten from  Freight Train and Other North Carolina Folk Songs and Tunes

13, Red River Valley by Pete Seeger from American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 5

14, The House Carpenter by The Doc Watson Family from The Doc Watson Family

15, Roving Gambler by The Country Gentlemen from Classic Bluegrass Vol. 2 from Smithsonian Folkways

16, Tiny Broken Heart by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard from Classic Bluegrass from Smithsonian Folkways

17, Tom Dooley by The New Lost City Ramblers from New Lost City Ramblers - Vol. 2

18, This Train (Bound for Glory) by Big Bill Broonzy from Classic Folk Music from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

19, Changes by Phil Ochs from The Best of Broadside 1962-1988: Anthems of the American Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine

20, There's a Brown Girl in the Ring by Lord Invader from There's a Brown Boy in the Ring and Other Children's Calypso Songs 

Here's the Spotify playlist: Smithsonian Folkways: 20-Track Sampler (20 tracks, 1 hours). For world music recordings from the same label, also check out my previous post: Music On the Voyager Golden Record.

Chopin For Japan

20 great renditions of Chopin's e minor prelude, plus one more played by one Jack Nicholson.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Chopin E minor Prelude (20 tracks, total time: 41 minutes). Tracks are arranged in fast-slow sequence, so you may hear very different moods and characters in almost every two consecutive tracks. Also use this as an index of Chopin preludes recordings on Spotify. And do check out this Ted video of Benjamin Zander talks about music, passion and this prelude.

I dedicate this playlist to the Japanese people. You are, forgive me for quoting a scripture that bears no relation to most of you, the light of the world, and the salt of the earth.

The Most Significant Piano Work of the Millennium

At least the eminent Charles Rosen said so.

If you are interested in this magnificent composition, J.S. Bach's The Musical Offering, and Prussia history of Bach's time in general, I recommend this book: Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment.

Here's the Spotify playlist: The Musical Offering: Ricercar in 6 Voices (21 tracks, total time: 2 hours) It features the ricercar played on piano (by Rosen), organ, harpsichord, and by various kinds of ensembles, plus orchestra arrangement by Anton Webern, and a triple orchestra version by Igor Markevitch. Yes it's the same music played 20 times (one version is not available in the UK and one in Sweden), but this is probably the best example of a piece of music that bears, deserves and benefits from repeated listens. Enjoy.

The Greatest Opus One Ever?

Berg by Schoenberg

A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but the title may not be far off the mark,  provided we don't take Bach's last word on the keyboard suite, the Six Partitas as his Opus one as the composer intended. Glenn Gould argued that many composers's first works are their best, and he used the Berg sonata op.1 as a major example. It is also one of his favourite pieces, so we have three recordings from him in this playlist, placed at the beginning, followed by interpretations from fourteen other pianists, arranged alphabetically. At the end, two recordings of the string sextet arrangement and an orchestra version.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Berg Piano Sonata Op.1 (21 tracks, total time: 3 hours) And Analysis of Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1907-8) by Andrew Kuster. Tomorrow is the first day of the Year of the Rabbit,  an especially great time to enjoy this great opus one :)

P.S. I recently updated my Schoenberg Op.1-50 playlist.

John Cage: Number Pieces

Happy New Year everyone. Hope you all had wonderful holidays. I've been doing a lot of reading recently, and, I found myself listening to one particular playlist the most when reading modern literature: John Cage's number pieces. I found these music has a cleansing effect on the mind, as if it paints the walls of the room I'm sitting in with soothing colors, sometime in amusing shapes, but never to the point of freezing your mind, or distraction. The music always stay where they are, hanging in the air, on the walls, and leave the listeners to their own devices. Sometime it sounds even more quiet than silence.

Here's the Spotify playlist: John Cage: Number Pieces (20 tracks, total time: 6 hours)  Program notes on some pieces can be found here.

A Brief History of Post-World War II Music

I am always fascinated by the seemingly incongruous worlds of music and other historical events. Isn't it a bit surreal that the last guardian of the classical tradition, Johannes Brahms, could have met the amateur violinist Albert Einstein? The latter was 18 years old when Brahms died. Richard Strauss, who was born in the year of Second Schleswig War, lived to see the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and composed arguably the last great late romanticism piece Four Last Songs three years after the bomb. Britten wrote his splendid yet shadowy Suite For Harp, "it is rather 18th century harp writing" as he put it, around the same time they put men on the moon. And Shostakovich was composing the formidable Viola Sonata when John Lydon joined the Sex Pistols. This bewitching conflict came all the way into the new millennium, when Gorillaz's single Clint Eastwood was released in 2001, the 71 years old Clint Eastwood himself had yet to make Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters From Iwo Jima, Flags Of Our Fathers, Gran Torino, and Changeling. That single could come out today and still sounds utterly fresh, by the way.

A couple of months ago, I had this idea of trying to make a playlist that reflects, and plays with this surface conflict, by choosing one popular song, and one piece of classical works from every post-WWII year. Before long I realized that it's simply impossible to pick up "best songs of the 1960s" or "most representative composition of the year", so I just let my personal taste take the lead, while sticking to some simple principles: The micro-interplay of consecutive tracks is most important. Classical tracks should be less than 10 minutes long in order to maintain the flow of the playlist, except for tracks at or towards the end. And of course I tried to embrace as many styles and genres as I could. Needless to say, the title of the post is exaggerated, but History of Post-WWII English-Language Pop Music and Western Classical Music would be just too dull.

I like the way this aerial survey begins with Bing Crosby's It's Been A Long, Long Time from 1945, is there a more appropriate title to start with? And the fact that Bruno Maderna's Notturno For Tape came out at the same time with Chuck Berry's Roll Over Beethoven makes the former sounds more bold - classical composers were quietly experimenting electronic instruments when the pop musicians just began to realise that they could challenge the old LvB too. The slow movement of Barber's piano concerto works surprisingly well as a postlude to Tony Bennett's I Left My Heart In San Francisco. The triumphant ending of the heroic Bridge Over Troubled Water makes the violent striking of Crumb's Black Angles that "sail right behind" even more frightening. Reich's Electric Counterpoint works great as an prelude to EBTG's ode to nostalgia. Listen to the Snoop Dogg track and Peter Lieberson opera extract back to back, you probably would have a hard time figuring out which is the rapper. Both are from 1992. The interlacing of different kinds of music adds an inexplicable charm to the whole listening experience.

Here are the Spotify Playlists: 1945-1955  1956-1965  1966-1975 1976-1985  1986-1995  1996-2005

I stopped at 2005 as it's hard to find classical works from the last couple of years in recorded version. For the sake of usability I broke it down into 10-year, 20-track playlists. You can put them into a folder. Every playlist is within 2 hours, and offers much more fun when you listen to it from the beginning to the end. Pop songs are selected according to their initial release years, and classical works are according to the date of completion, not the premiere. I've double checked to make sure that all tracks are available in the UK and Sweden.

So, that's all for the Christmas Special. I may not post new playlists until 2011, and after three days I will set that Personal Appeal post sticky for the rest of the year. Don't worry about whether the books could be delivered in time for Christmas, the Chinese New Year is in February this year:) Thank you all for helping me share the music that I love. Best wishes for Christmas 2010 and the New Year to come.

I pasted the tracklists below, with Wikipedia or other useful links to each classical work:

Winter Music, When You Dream of Springtime

Mozart: Schlittenfahrt (Sleigh Ride)
Michael Finnissy: Snowdrift
Howard Blake: Walking In The Air
Prokofiev: Cinderella -The Winter Fairy
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker - Waltz of the Snowflakes
Debussy: Preludes for Piano, Book I: Footprints in the Snow
Holst: In the Bleak Mid-winter
Chopin: Étude Op. 25, No. 11,"Winter Wind"
Leroy Anderson: Sleigh Ride
Rimsky-Korsakov: The Snow Maiden
Charles Griffes: Winter Landscape
Ned Rorem: Winter Pages: II. The sun that brief December day
Raff–Symphony No. 11 "Der Winter": III. By the fireside
Josef Strauss: Winterlust Polka
Tveitt: Piano Concerto No. 4, II. Sparkle In The Winter Sky And
Astor Piazzolla: Estaciones Porteñas - Buenos Aires Winter
John Cage: The Seasons - : Prelude 1, Winter
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, Winter: II. Largo
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.1  "Winter Daydreams"
Franz Schubert: Winterreise - Frühlingstraum (Dream of Springtime)

Here's the Spotify playlist: Winter Music (20 tracks, total time: 1 hour) I especially like the way Mozart's sleigh crushes into Finnissy's snowdrift in this playlist. Have a nice winter weekend.

A Sampler of Brahms's Solo Piano Music

"For me, the slow movement is the most beautiful love music after Tristan, and the most erotic." Claudio Arrau on Brahms' Piano Sonata No. 3.

I am not sure if Arrau temporarily lost his mind to the beauty of that slow movement, because actually it was written 12 years before Tristan. Anyway here is another playlist to throw off the Friday fever. Lately I grew a fondness for 20-track playlists, which you can listen through in one sitting, and get a good overview on one theme or genre, so you can investigate further by yourself. And this Brahms playlist is my first try that I want to share. Brahms is by no means my favorite composer, but just as Britten said that he played through all of Brahms' music every year just to see if he still disliked it as much, I constantly find myself listening to Brahms. Even when my heart still resents the marble coldness on its surface sometime, I have come to realize that he is perhaps very underrated as a composer for solo piano. The Op.10 Ballades, which Brahms wrote before the age of 22, are up there with the masterpieces of Chopin. And Op.116-119 as a whole is in the same league with Beethoven's last three piano sonatas.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Brahms Solo Piano Music (20 tracks, total time: 1 hour). It features 20 pianists from Michelangeli to Yuja Wang playing 19 pieces. The only duplication being the C-sharp Minor Intermezzi, both performance from Gould and Pogorelich are included. The bookends of the playlist are a enchantingly beautiful A minor waltz and the last of Paganini Variation Book I. I know the four-hand waltz is not strictly solo piano music but I like the current shape of this playlist, hope you enjoy it too. Have a nice weekend.