Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Myaskovsky and the return of esotericism
It's summer and the esoteric pick of the week is back
Nikolai Myaskovsky
As much as I think I know about classical music I continue to be humbled by how much I don’t know. As we turn toward summer, the esoteric pick of the week is back on my radar and it brings with it a slew, nay, a legion of little known pieces of music.
We strayed from this exploratory device during what has been a busy and stellar concert season. The concert season is roughly October to June. That’s an arbitrary designation on my part, but it suits my designs so I’m going to use it.
Video:
Nikolai Myaskovsky
Symphony No. 22 Op. 54 "Symphony-Ballad" (1941)
Nikolai Myaskovsky wrote 27 symphonies. 27! I’d never heard of him until this week. The reason I’d not heard of him could be because he won the Stalin Prize five times. Myaskovsky started as a Russian composer and ended as a Soviet composer. He survived both wars but was a casualty of shell shock on the Austrian front during WWI.
Myaskovsky didn’t have the aura of resistance about him in the way that composers such as Shostakovich and Prokofiev portrayed. This might explain why he is relatively unknown in the West. He wasn’t a freedom fighter who was secretly on our side.
I’ve listened to his first and sixth symphonies and they are great music. I have intentions of listening to all 27, but these aren’t short symphonies. They are full-on post-romantic/20th-century expressions of the form.
For the official pick of the week, I’m going with Myaskovsky’s Symphony No. 22. The music has a melancholic quality and is missing the maniacal and false celebrations of Soviet composers such as Khachaturian, Kabalevsky, and the aforementioned Shostakovich and Prokofiev.
No. 22 feels like a true expression of Myaskovsky’s reticent personality, but that, of course, is committing the sin of "individualism," of which he was accused by the Soviet press.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Myaskovsky and the return of esotericism
It's summer and the esoteric pick of the week is back
Myaskovsky and the return of esotericism
It's summer and the esoteric pick of the week is back
Nikolai Myaskovsky
As much as I think I know about classical music I continue to be humbled by how much I don’t know. As we turn toward summer, the esoteric pick of the week is back on my radar and it brings with it a slew, nay, a legion of little known pieces of music.
We strayed from this exploratory device during what has been a busy and stellar concert season. The concert season is roughly October to June. That’s an arbitrary designation on my part, but it suits my designs so I’m going to use it.
Video:
Nikolai Myaskovsky
Symphony No. 22 Op. 54 "Symphony-Ballad" (1941)
Nikolai Myaskovsky wrote 27 symphonies. 27! I’d never heard of him until this week. The reason I’d not heard of him could be because he won the Stalin Prize five times. Myaskovsky started as a Russian composer and ended as a Soviet composer. He survived both wars but was a casualty of shell shock on the Austrian front during WWI.
Myaskovsky didn’t have the aura of resistance about him in the way that composers such as Shostakovich and Prokofiev portrayed. This might explain why he is relatively unknown in the West. He wasn’t a freedom fighter who was secretly on our side.
I’ve listened to his first and sixth symphonies and they are great music. I have intentions of listening to all 27, but these aren’t short symphonies. They are full-on post-romantic/20th-century expressions of the form.
For the official pick of the week, I’m going with Myaskovsky’s Symphony No. 22. The music has a melancholic quality and is missing the maniacal and false celebrations of Soviet composers such as Khachaturian, Kabalevsky, and the aforementioned Shostakovich and Prokofiev.
No. 22 feels like a true expression of Myaskovsky’s reticent personality, but that, of course, is committing the sin of "individualism," of which he was accused by the Soviet press.
Comments