German Joys

Another Blog Pause

It's that time again -- time for another blogging pause here at German Joys, whlie I go off to the International Institute of Sociology conference in Budapest and present a paper.  (Doing all the work to prepare for this has made posting a big sporadic lately, thanks for your understanding.)  Then it's a short stop-over in Slovenia to visit a friend.

I'll try to post a few pictures and impressions from Hungary, but no guarantees.  Regular posting will resume after July 4th.  In the meantime, here's Nona:

sorry-ok-yes redux

You may remember the poster for sorry-ok-yes, the indie electropunk band from Tuscany, which featured in my recent post about Rome.  Check out their Myspace page, where you can hear their music, and befuddled Scots radio hosts trying to make heads or tails of it.

Sunday Music Blogging

Can't go wrong with lyrics like: "Sorry don't get mad at me / I just did the sex quiz from your magazine"

Wilco Archive Online

I doubt this blog's demographic skews heavily toward fans of American indie rock, but if it does, let me point you to at The Owl and Bear [h/t Bacchus].  It's got hours of taped concerts by Wilco and other bands, available online for free, usually in pristine sound quality.  Their weekly podcasts are also pretty interesting -- it's a feature I'm considering introducing here at GJ (perhaps during the summer, after the day job duties subside).

And a question -- are there similar German sites?  Or did the tape-trading culture never reach across the Atlantic?

DJ Hunee in dem House

So, weekend before last I was in Berlin and went to Cookies Cream, a restaurant that doesn't advertise, coyly hides its exact address, and moves from one minimally-renovated industrial space to another every few years.  There's an enthusiastic English-language review of it here, and a jaded, dismissive German-language review from 2004 here, which finds the whole thing a bit too strenuously hip.  The portions were indeed ludicrously small, but the food sound (I had the parmesan dumplings, a friend had something served with what the English-language menu called 'deadnettle').

People-watching was first-rate; aggressively louche writers (artists? ad copywriters?), what looked like a moderately famous band, and a dinner party for theater types that got amusingly out of hand as the night wore on.  The slim, attractive, clueless waitstaff all seemed to be weathering emotional crises.  One of them kept bumping into the music laptop, causing ear-shattering eruptions of feedback.

And then it was off to have a look-see into Crush, the nightclub next door.  It's housed in a former movie theater, with many intact (and soiled, dusty) furnishings.  The music, provided by a short Asian guy gyrating back and forth behind a turntable and mixing-deck, was first-rate.  Obscure funk and soul, 80s classics with juicy synthesizer hits, and a little bit of hip-hop, all elegantly mixed.  To use the patois so beloved of today's youth, the man was slicing off some phatt beatz.  Who was that non-masked man? 

After a bit of searching on the Interwebs, I was able to determine that he is DJ Hunee (l).  Naturally, he's got a myspace page (his Myspace motto: "I wanna see all my friend at once"), complete mixes you can listen to online.  The one that auto-loads when you visit the page doesn't push all my buttons, but if you page down, you can switch to other ones -- HandMadeMadness is one highlight.  Even features a verions of 'Autumn Leaves' done by a human voice cunningly imitating a saxophone ('wa-pa-do-do-doo, bah-waa').  It's like seeing all your friend at once!

Ravel's Secret...

...was, apparently, frontotemporal dementia:

Ravel and Dr. Adams were in the early stages of a rare disease called FTD, or frontotemporal dementia, when they were working, Ravel on “Bolero” and Dr. Adams on her painting of “Bolero,” Dr. Miller said. The disease apparently altered circuits in their brains, changing the connections between the front and back parts and resulting in a torrent of creativity.

“We used to think dementias hit the brain diffusely,” Dr. Miller said. “Nothing was anatomically specific. That is wrong. We now realize that when specific, dominant circuits are injured or disintegrate, they may release or disinhibit activity in other areas. In other words, if one part of the brain is compromised, another part can remodel and become stronger.”

Thus some patients with FTD develop artistic abilities when frontal brain areas decline and posterior regions take over, Dr. Miller said.

Wednesday Music Blogging: Rihm-time

First Recording of Sound Discovered

The New York Times reports that American researchers have located the first known sound recording in Paris:

The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

You can hear the reconstructed recording at the link.

Sunday Music Blogging

According to the YouTube tag, this is Albert Ayler on the soprano sax.  Anyone know what movie it's from?    

Sunday Music Blogging

Michelangeli plays Debussy:

German Joys Review: Branford Marsalis and the Duesseldorf Symphony

Last night I saw a concert at the Duesseldorf Tonhalle, home to the Duesseldorf Symphony Orchestra.  The program (g) was Ravel, ter Veldhuis, Glazunov, and Scriabin.

But before I spend a few words on that, I thought I'd talk about the building itself, the Duesseldorf Tonhalle. Built in 1926, it was once the world's largest planetarium.    The problem is, a planetarium dome is a terrible thing to put over an orchestra -- it reflects sound in ways that create "ghost knocking" effects at points within the building. 

People somehow lived with this until 2003, when the local government hired the Dutch acoustic-consulting firm Peutz and the architects at Hentrich-Petschnigg Partners to find a solution.  The solution they found, shown in a diagram from from this article (g/sub) in the journal Bauphysik (Construction Physics), is below.  I don't know exactly what the arrows mean, but it looks cool, doesn't it?

The dashing engineer/architect duo coated the inside of the dome with a layer of acoustically-transparent metal panels (they hide the red portion in the above diagram).  The panels conceal a complex network of reflectors which solve the acoustic problem.  Hanging from the top of the dome, in a circular opening about 15 feet wide, are a series of shiny, bepimpled oval-shaped metal objects. 

All of it -- the rhomboid panels covering the entire top of the dome, the metal eggs clustered at the apex -- glow with an ethereal aquamarine light.  The overall effect is extraterrestrial.  I wouldn't have been surprised if the eggs had slowly descended and opened to reveal glistening, Giger-esque creatures.*  And the acoustics are damn good.  I've seen several concerts in the pre-renovation Tonhalle (which was prettier, since the interior of the dome was coated in burnished wood), and the sound is now clearly better.  Although the friend I went to the concert with heard some creaking noises coming from the panels.  The aliens, probably.

Oh, where was I?  The concert!  That's right!  First up was Part 2 of Ravel's refulgent Daphnis et Chloe Suite.  A difficult piece, but they pulled it off pretty well.  Not to carp or anything, but I thought the brass was a bit too dominant. Then came something completely different: the 'Tallahatchie' Concerto for saxophone and orchestra by the contemporary Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis, or Jacob TV for short.  Jacob TV, a committed tonalist, started in rock music, but now straddles the line between pop and classical music, sometimes creating elaborate multimedia shows.

What's your take on contemporary classical music that sounds pretty, you're asking?  Happy to oblige!  I try to be ecumenical when it comes to the tonal/atonal debate.  Let a thousand flowers bloom -- composers should use whatever medium calls to them.  Immediately dismissing tonal contemporary music as 'reactionary' is just snobbery.  On the other hand, a lot of it's pretty dull. I can think of many tough, spiky contemporary pieces that are more soulful than any given stretch of Michael Nyman tootling.  Birtwistle, Maxwell-Davies, Ligeti, and Stockhausen at his best come to mind.  Not to mention Anton Webern, the ineffable diamond-cutter.  Every music lover should wear a black armband on September 15 to commemorate his accidental shooting at the hands of an American soldier on that day in 1945.

But back to ter Veldhuis.  The 'Tallahatchie' concerto was pretty to listen to, in a film-music way.  The first movement, a slow, dreamy evocation of a river's rhythms, featured a spare, yearning solo line above shimmering chromatic string chords. The second movement was a series of moto perpetuo motives for the saxophone with syncopated accompaniment in the orchestra.  It held my interest, but didn't really grip me.  Too Nyman/Glass-esque, and with the signature faults of those composers -- no real tension between the soloist and the orchestra, and insufficient thematic development. 

The next piece was a German premiere of a saxophone concerto by Glazunov which I'd never heard of, and which was pleasingly autumnal.  Marsalis played with a wonderful quicksilver tone and just enough well-judged vibrato to tingle the spine.  He played a bebop piece as an encore, with spontaneous accompaniment from a bassist in the orchestra. 

The piece de resistance was Prometheus, Poem of Fire by that fascinating nutcase Scriabin.  Prometheus, his last work for orchestra, isn't performed very often, because the full version actually calls for a "light-piano" which illuminates the concert hall with fields of particular color during the performance.  Scriabin himself enjoyed the gift of color synasthesia -- the perception of sounds as colors.  Thanks to the renovation of the Tonhalle, it was actually possible to realize the piece.  Different sections of panels above our heads did, in fact, light up in various colors during the tone-poem.  And during the finale, the entire audience was bathed in intense white brilliance.  Scriabin has always been a bit too confused and soupy for my tastes, but I have to say, it was a pretty impressive experience.

Overall, it was an adventurous program.  If you live anywhere near Duesseldorf, you should absolutely make the trip to the next concerts on Sunday and Monday.  After all, when's the next time you're going to be able to experience a "light-piano"? 

* What happens when the aliens descend? I, of course, would have been the guy who sits, transfixed by the eerie spectacle, while the other concert-goers run screaming for the exits.  This would either result in me being accepted into the aliens' sticky-but-fascinating community, or flayed by their razor-sharp molybdenum tentacles.

Montero Improvises in Germany

The Venezuelan-born pianist Gabriela Montero is on a German tour and plays in Duesseldorf next Tuesday.  She plays chestnuts from the Romantic repertory, as well as improvisations on themes from the classical repertoire.   

You can submit a request for an improvisation on a particular theme on Montero's Venezuelan-looking website here (warning: it will play her improvisations on Bach's Italian Concerto as soon as you visit it).  The improvisations are fully harmonized, sometimes a bit anachronistic (jazzy), and often damn pretty.  It may sounds like a gimmick, but it was standard practice in Bach's day -- in fact, Bach's spine-tingling ability to improvise on his own and others' themes helped him get many of his posts. 

I'm thinking of submitting a request for improvisation on the Sex Pistols' "No Feelings," (the lawyers' anthem).  On second thought, what about John Cage's 4:33?

Peppy Ballads from Ludwig

Software designer Matthias Wüllenweber has already given us Fritz (G), the chess software that beat world champion Vladimir Kramnik 4:2. 

Now comes Ludwig (G), a program that composes entire songs on its own.  Wüllenweber stuffed Ludwig full of thousands of facts about harmony and theory from publications down through the ages.  Now, all you need to do is enter a few adjectives (Type: "Rock Hymn"; mood "Sad"), and Ludwig, named after you-know-who, will compose an entire song for you.  You can hear some examples in this radio interview (G).  To my ears, sounds just like Elton John.  If you need lyrics, go here.

Cultural Driftwood Wins Bambi

After floating around in the roiling sea of Anglo-American popular culture, many artists find themselves stranded on the lonely shores of obscurity.  There, they're gradually bleached out by neglect, playing to ever-smaller venues, bumping down the food-chain to ever-smaller record labels, and giving ever-bitterer interviews to ever-smaller magazines, until the interviewers finally stop calling.

Then, like an interesting piece of driftwood spotted by a beach wanderer, Germany picks them up, takes them home, polishes them lovingly, and displays them on the coffee table.  This has happened to Chris de Burgh, Motörhead (perhaps because of the umlaut), Metallica, and dozens of other grateful has-beens, including Jon Bon Jovi, who is not only still alive and apparently producing records, but just won a Bambi award, which is basically a German grammy. 

Yes -- Jon Bon Jovi.  Touching, really.

Employment Contracts circa 1703

I recently bought a CD in Rome which reconstructs a musical contest between Haendel and Scarlatti at the Church of San Giovanni in Laterano in 1709.  From the liner notes: "[I]n 1703, Haendel accompanied Mattheson to Lubeck on a visit to Dietrich Buxtehude, who then held the official post of organist at St. Mary's Cathedral there.  However, like Bach a few years later, Haendel was less than thrilled at the idea of being the old master's successor due to a 'certain clause' concerning marriage to the daughter of the outgoing organist."

Jay-Z feauting Pharrell, with Special Guest Appearance by ECB

Yes, American hip-hop stars tour Europe (G).  Judging by the size of the venues, they get large crowds.  Which might explain what happens starting at 1:19 of the video "Blue Magic" by Jay-Z featuring Pharrell.  Word to my niggaz at the E to the C to the B: Keep doin' yo' thang.

[h/t Andrew Sullivan]

Classical Music on the Web

Apropos of nothing in particular, here is a site that collects all classical music stations broadcasting on the web. If you're like me, you'll particularly enjoy surfing around all the state-run classical stations in Europe, hearing what Finnish or Hungarian sounds like, and what Finns and Magyars like to hear. [h/t Samo K.]

Hamburg Gets a New Concert Hall

From Alex Ross' classical music blog, a picture of what Hamburg's new concert hall will look like on the inside:

Guest poster Justin Davidson continues:

In a press conference at Carnegie Hall today, Jacques Herzog [of the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron] remarked that he and his associates had learned more about designing symphonic spaces from the stadiums they've done (notably the Beijing Olympic bird's nest) than they had from the whole history of concert halls. Here, the stage, like a soccer field, is in the middle, rather than at one end, and the seats rise up along a bowl's precipitous walls.

Bruckner and the Belgians

Some composers are worldwide, others are a bit more regional. Brahms is in the former category, but Bruckner seems to be in the latter.

On Saturday, I listened to a concert (G) of Brahms and Bruckner works for chorus and orchestra on DeutschlandRadio Kultur. The interviewer asked Belgian conductor Philippe Herreweghe how the extremely Austrian Bruckner was received in Belgium and Amsterdam.

In the big cities, no problem, Herreweghe said. However, in places like Brugge, he noted a bit of skepticism. The Brahms works (Alto Rhapsody and Schicksalslied) they knew well, but Bruckner's F-minor Mass was a bit new. Nevertheless, the initial distrust evaporated during the concert, and everyone recognized Bruckner's shaggy, sprawling paroxysm of Catholic fervency for the locomotive-like masterpiece it is.

Before we go pointing fingers at those Belgians, let us not forget that German concert programs have lacunae as well. May I bitch about the informal Sibelius ban? Jean Sibelius is cruelly neglected here, apparently because Adorno hated (G) the glorious Finn (one of Adorno's many questionable musical opinions). As an obsessive Sibeliusphile (I even spent 20 Euros in Slovenia to buy an out-of-print CD of Neeme Jaervi conducting Sibelius' stage music (G) to 'Scaramouche'), I say German concert programs have far too much Shostakovich, and far too little Sibelius. In this one respect, I say: 'Fuck Adorno'.

But I digress.

Back to Bruckner. As far as I know, Herreweghe is relatively new to Romantic terrain. He's better-known for his Bach recordings, done almost exclusively with the Collegium Vocale and a group of trusted soloists. These are all fine recordings, especially the B Minor Mass (my favorite recording of the 8 or so I own) and the almost as wonderful pairing of the Oster-Oratorium and the cantata 'Erfreut Euch, Ihr Herzen.' Both CDs I'd kill for, if I didn't already own them.

For the Brahms and Bruckner, Herreweghe played with the Orchestre de Champs d'Elysees, which uses authentic instruments and 19th-century performance practice. I found the result magical. Bruckner can get kind of cloudy and bombastic in the wrong hands, and even in the right hands it's the reddest of orchestral red meat. Herreweghe trimmed the bombast and kept the tempos crisp. The 19th-century horns are much quieter than their modern counterparts. This keeps the texture much more transparent than one usually hears in this music. I hope these concerts are being recorded, because I heard some brand-new Bruckner that I'd like to hear again.

Plus, Herreweghe's Dutch-accented German was extremely amusing during the mid-concert interview.

Interlude: "Opus 40" by Mercury Rev

Currently watching a DVD called, a bit pompously, The Work of Anton Corbijn. A Dutchman, he's directed of videos for Nirvana's Heart-Shaped Box, Henry Rollins' Liar, and Herbert Groenemeyer's Mensch.

It's a European joint: moist, suffering, exalting humans fill the screen, there's always a narrative, plenty of religious imagery, and constant allusions to stages and other created interiors. The only thing that's missing is a few commedia dell'arte characters. Speaking of America (follow the link), the USA, in Corbijn's videos, is seen through Wim Wenders glasses: all big open spaces, cowboy hats, theater marquees, and homespun interiors.

Here's a high point, courtesy of YouTube: Corbijn's video for the glorious Mercury Rev's majestic song "Opus 40". They're troubled geniuses: "[T]he group was reportedly banned from air travel after Donahue attempted to gouge out Grasshopper's eye with a spoon in mid-flight. Following the tour, Mercury Rev again went their separate ways; the members found menial jobs, moved in with their parents, or earned money by participating in medical experiments. "

The Non-Existent Virtuoso Caught by CD Lookup

Gramophone magazine reports that an English pianist named Joyce Hatto became an underground sensation in the classical music world. Her recordings, all of which were produced by her husband, William Barrington-Coupe, on his tiny, private Concert Artist record label, seemed to span an almost-impossible repertoire. But when someone popped in one of her CDs into his computer, the automatic CD-lookup function identified it as a previously-released CD by someone completely different. It gets even stranger from there...

German Joys Mini-Review: Geoff Goodman Quintet

If you want to hear American jazz, come to Europe. This continent plays host to hundreds of American jazz expats. They resettle here for several reasons: loyal, cultivated, jazz-loving audiences, a network of subsidized music schools that can always seem to find some sort of teaching position for an exile drummer or bassist, and a simpler, cheaper lifestyle that leaves more time to practice and play, without pressure to become a "star" or build a career. You could say everything's just looser here, including the women and drug laws.

One of these expats, the American-born guitarist Geoff Goodman, played in my neck of the woods yesterday. He fronted a quintet: alto saxophonist Felix Wahnschaff, bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, bassist Henning Sieverts, and drummer Bill Elgart (also a transplanted American). The vibe was laid-back and experimental, and the program varied. Goodman's own compositions reminded me, by turns, of Monk, Eric Dolphy, and the meditative Miles Davis of records like In a Silent Way. For these last pieces, Goodman used some sort of device that can make his guitar sound a bit like a Mellotron. Other Goodman originals were just plain sizzlin' straight-ahead be-bop.

Goodman, who plays seated, was a laid-back group leader. His on-stage banter (including a charming explanation of the title of the tune "Frisch Ueberfahren") was in both English and German. He ceded many of the solos to the gangly, goofily-smiling, not-entirely-sane Rudi Mahall on bass clarinet (an instrument I'd never seen before) and bassist Henning Sieverts: a young man with long, beautiful hair, whose intense, introspective solos heralded great things. The quintet also covered some tunes, like "I Can't Give You Anything but Love" and Skip James' "Cherry Ball Blues." Actually, "deconstruct" is probably a better word than cover. No swinging, chirpy conventionality here. "I Can't Give You..." was especially spiky, consisting of staccato bleatings of the main melody followed by envelope-pushing solos. I can't really call the result an unqualified success, but I can salute the will to experiment that produced it.

Goodman will be on tour again in April, for all of you jazz fans who aren't afraid of a little fusion and freedom.

The Party is Always Right!

Some people have accused this website of being little more than Communist propaganda. Damn straight, comrade!

Here's some more: perhaps the most famous propaganda song of the former German Democratic Republic, also known as East Germany. It's called, appropriately enough, the Song of the Party (The Socialist Unity Party, that is). You can listen to it here. (.mp3 file; 2.7m).*

The song was written in 1950 by Louis Fuernberg, a the son of a Jewish merchant family from Moravia, a part of Czechoslovakia which then had a substantial German-speaking population). Fuernberg joined the Communist party when he was 17, and formed an agit-prop group called "Echo from the Left." When World War II broke out, Fuernberg emigrated to Palestine. His family remained in Czechoslovakia and were all murdered after the Nazi invasion. After the war, Fuernberg made his way through Czechoslovakia to East Germany, where he became a well-known playwright and novelist. He died in 1957

Below the fold, I've provided the German lyrics, with a literal English translation. I have not even attempted to make the translation rhyme or match the meter of the original German. That's really too bad, but of course it's Communist propaganda, folks, not Goethe.

You may find the song laughable or chilling, but it illustrates a typical propaganda technique. The "party is always right," goes the refrain. Not because everything it does is right, mind you, but because, as a whole, its purpose is to "fight[] for the right" and bring "freedom and peace" to the "poorest of the earth." Any stern measures the Party might have to take against decadent bourgeois individualists (remember, the Party never "flatter[s]" us) are justified by the overarching positive goals the Party pursues.

The lines about the Party giving us "sun and wind," however, are just plain bizarre.

Michael Henderson on Schubert

A nice little encomium to Franz Schubert, coupled with some bitching about how the world's gone downhill since. Let's stick to the encomium:

It is unwise to claim he was the greatest composer, but it is the unvarnished truth to say he is loved as no other, and for fairly obvious reasons. There is not a single false note in his music, particularly his chamber music, which ranks alongside that of his hero, Beethoven – who, oddly enough, he didn't know, even though they walked the same streets.

What you hear in Schubert is what you hear in Chekhov's plays and stories: the unfathomable mystery of existence, treated with the pitch-perfect ear of one who understands the fragility of life, and the vulnerability and yearning of each human soul. It is also important to note what you don't hear. There is no bombast, no vanity, no "leading on". The music springs naturally, fountain-like, from an open heart.

Maxim Gorky, grumpy and a tiny bit jealous of Chekhov, complained that "when you mention Anton Pavlovich, people sigh as though a baby deer had just walked into the room". That is how friends regarded Schubert, too, and how generations of music-lovers have responded to his work. Unlike Beethoven, he didn't want to change the world, and yet, in his lyrical way, he scaled the emotional peaks that Ludwig climbed more dramatically.

Le Chansonist Deutsch

This morning on Deutschland Radio Kultur I heard a few songs from Dirk Loombeek's (G) new album, In den Tiden der Stadt, which was billed as a sort of extended love-song to Berlin. His model is the French chansonnier.

Anyone who knows me knows that, despite being fully heterosexual, I am a fan of le chanson francophone, whether it's classical (Faure, Hahn, Debussy), classic (Trenet, Piaf, etc.), or the young French chansonniers who are reviving this sort of music-making (about whom I don't know enough).

Monsieur Loombeek seems to favor the meditative, half-drunk sort of chanson (kind of a male Juliette Greco, perhaps), and his backing band, the Norden Ensemble, drenched his lyrics in just the right amount of nostalgia and accordion. It's a tad jarring to hear this sort of stuff sung in German, but the shock of the Teutonic wore off soon, and I was impressed.

I plan to pick up a few of his records (one called Chansons has been out for a while now) and will dutifully review them on this site in the name of general public edification.

Mozart's Complete C Minor Mass In Düsseldorf

Anybody who's going to be in Düsseldorf on the 26th of November should visit the St. Antonius Church to hear the Junger KonzertChor Düsseldorf e.V. sing the Mozart's Mass in C Minor.

It's a a completed version of the partial manuscript Mozart left behind at his death -- the completion was done by the American pianist and musicologist Robert Levin of Harvard University. Read an interview with him about his completion here (G-pdf). I've seen the Young Concert Choir in action, and they're a talented and fresh-faced bunch.

Come by and hear the Mozart that never was!

Pandora Internet Radio

A friend (hat-tip J.C.) recently twigged me to Pandora Internet Radio, and I'm glad about that.

You type in a song or performer, and this online web service, part of the Music Genome Project, consults its database of artists and puts together a virtual radio station of similar songs, based on your song's musical structure, genre, tonality, and the performer's reputation. The music plays automatically from your web browser.

It’s Googleliciously to use, it’s free, and it doesn’t spam you when you register. My “They Might be Giants” channel is full of surprises, my "Slowdive" channel induces a comfy trance, and my "Sun Ra" channel sets me down gently on another planet.

So far they don't have much non-English-language music available, but you can apply for a job helping them find and classify French and German pop.

Bill Evans Playing 'Autumn Leaves'

I finally figured out how to embed YouTube videos, instead of just linking to them. To celebrate this advance, I give you Bill Evans, with Eddie Gomez on bass, playing 'Autumn Leaves' in 1966:

Wotan with a Briefcase

Elke Heidenreich is Germany's literary Popette, reigning at the right hand of octogenarian Marcel Reich-Ranicki, the (Jewish) pope. Together, they tell Germans what to read, nudging the lowbrows into picking up a book in the first place, and nudging the middlebrows into reading something ambitious, like Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities.

Heidenreich presides over a literary mini-empire which includes a show called "Read!" (G), and a series of audiobooks featuring female authors. Here, Elke visits the Glyndebourne Opera Festival in England and discovers that opera can be amusing and thrilling, as she writes in Opera without Angst, courtesy of Sign and Sight.

After getting used to Germany's often brutally confrontational and acidly political opera stagings (Wotan, King of the Gods, for instance, wandering about with an ordinary briefcase to illustrate something-or-other about bourgeois conformity), Heidenreich wonders what's wrong with her people:

The Italians – recently at the Verdi festival in Parma – let it out. The English do too, as I have now seen. Only in Germany does the half-cultured intellectual sit in his chair, his mouth pursed, fearing abandon: he might make a fool of himself. I spent an entire evening disputing [composer Marc-Aurel] Floros' theory that Germans can't do it, they don't have the elegant levity, but now I lay down my weapon: he's right. This Glyndebournian Handel, bubbling with life, would not be possible in Germany. We would wrinkle our noses and demand the seriousness that Schopenhauer, Kant, and the disastrous Adorno condemned art to. In Leipzig's Gewandhaus, it's engraved in the wall: "Res severa verum gaudium" - true joy is a serious thing! Bestowed.

The article then becomes a manifesto:

We have to make our audiences love opera again. The old has to be preserved, the new has to be introduced with care. No shallowness, beware, no comfortable reposing; it has to be demanding, but with lust, love, passion. Without interpretive rage and dissection. Without the need to be more shocking. Not that it should be over-harmonised, but we've already suffered through enough nakedness, blood, sperm and Nazi boots on the German stage. In Glyndebourne, we can see how others are doing it. Understand what a gift we have in opera. Thousands of people listen in darkness to a single human voice, they are moved and thus connected to each other.

More about Polish Punk Band KSU

It's kind of silly to post a song whose lyrics you don't understand, but I did it anyway. Thanks to the cosmopolitan community that is the Internet, a fellow from Poland recently explained what the song was about. Click here for the exciting, and strangely timely result.

And yes, there will be more about Poland soon.

Order your West Music East DVD Now!

A few months ago, I posted a short review of a documentary about the tour of the University of Duesseldorf Orchestra through China and Japan. I saw the documentary at its premiere, you can read my review here. The DVD is now available for anyone to buy and enjoy in their own home, for the very reasonable price of 13 Euro. Visit the website here (G) where you read a description of the movie and see a trailer, and then order the film here.

A Bunch of Non-Communist Punks

Hardcore punk -- an international movement, with followers behind the Iron Curtain.

I didn't know that last fact until I saw Episode 10 of Kieslowski's Decalogue, which features a Polish hardcore band. I brought back from Polska a record called 22 Polish Punk Classics. One of the bands is called KSU (photo at left).

According to the international hardcore punk history site Kill From The Heart, KSU were formed in 1977, and quickly moved from covering traditional rock to playing punk in the tradition of the "Sex Pistols, Damned, Wire, UK Subs and Polish BRAK."

Back when I was a young lad in the U.S., hardcore was the bee's knees. Everyone wanted to be the first on their block with the new Black Flag or Fear record. American and British punks had problems with authority, but authority didn't return the favor. Not so in Poland. Take it away, Kill From the Heart chronicler "Konrad":

Around [1978, KSU] they have sent a letter to Radio Free Europe asking them to play punk records which were banned from the Polish record stores. RFE follows up with their request and dedicates the songs to them. Since listening to RFE was illegal in communist Poland, the members of KSU were arrested and their homes were searched. Soon after those incidents the band starts an organization called Wolna Republika Bieszczadzka (Free Republic of Bieszczady) which again leads to arrests and searches. WRB's goal was to preserve the ecosystem and the cultural traditions of the Bieszczady Mountains.

From 1980 to 1985, the two founding members were "drafted into the army one after the other," but managed to keep the band alive until the mid 1990s.

Here, a German Joys exclusive: KSU's 1986 anthem "Liban" (big mp3 download). I have no idea what it's about (perhaps " the cultural traditions of the Bieszczady Mountains"). But it rocks.

Getting Tired of Sir Simon

As a complement to my previous post, more anti-Rattle backlash here. The (rather opaque) summary: "But he also induces mild despair in the experts by essentially failing to expand, blithely diversifying instead of specializing. For him, Berlin is always a bit like Birmingham. In working with this venerable orchestra, he neglects the great German symphonic tradition, in particular the works of Anton Bruckner. Nor does he set out for distant lands."

Who'll Take Over the Berlin Philharmonic?

That Eurovision contest was fun.  I'm putting it on my calendar for the rest of my life.

But now to classical music. This weekend's FAZ [newspaper] has an entertaining piece on the behind-the-scenes positioning to replace Sir Simon Rattle as the Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic. Rattle's tenure has been a little rocky: in 2004, he got a taste of German criticism (which can be even more caustic and unsparing than its British counterpart), when Axel Brüggemann wrote in the Welt am Sonntag that "while Rattle romps expressively on the podium, the Philharmonic musicians sometimes tend to play as inconsequentially as if they were a wife reaching to the fridge to get out a beer for her husband."

That storm blew over, but the rumors continue that after having a few non-
Germans at the helm (Claudio Abbado and Rattle) for the past sixteen years, the orchestra feels it's time to pick a German, or at least someone with a more Romantic sensibility. According to Fabian Bremer in Sunday's FAZ (21.5.2006, p.27), "The initial excitement about the British new-music specialist has blown over. The longing for a new Karajan is growing in these neo-romantic times." Rattle, for all his gifts, is apparently just a little too crisp, too user-friendly and too modern. 

The two front-runners to replace Rattle are Daniel Barenboim and Christian Thielemann, the last Karajan's German protege and currently Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic. Thielemann's by far the younger of the two, but has already established a reputation with his Bavarians; his recording of Bruckner's No. 5, which I've heard, is pretty glorious Bruckner, alternately primeval and mist-shrouded and blazing.

One doesn't openly campaign for this post, of course. That would be Vulgar, and is Not Done. Instead, you limit your present musical engagements, just so everyone knows you'd be able to take over the post if you had to. You also arrange your current programs and engagements to highlight your strengths. If there's an opportunity to show up yourself against your closest competitor, don't miss it (such as when Thielemann took over during rehearsals for Barenboim during Bayreuth preparations, during which he showed that he, unlike Barenboim, knew the score of Tristan by heart).

Bremer ends the story with this lovely anecdote:

Daniel Barenboim recently performed a guest engagement in Munich, performing Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier." Christian Thielemann was also in the city, and, as always, had rented the five-star suit in the Palace hotel. The hotel piano was also in the suite. When Barenboim wanted to practice, the hotel director went to Thielemann and began to ask him, but Thielemann cut him off: "Mr. Barenboim can have whatever he pleases from me." The instrument was then pushed across the corridor. The next evening, both of the men cancelled their engagements and sat together at the hotel bar.

LiveBlogging Eurovision V: And the Winner Is...

11:00 PM: I've spent 3 minutes giving the matter thoughtful consideration, and I've chosen Hari Mata Hari from Bosnia, because he sang in his own language, he reminded me of Wayne Newton, and the truly outstanding song's stuck in my memory. Sorry, Texas Lightning. You're number 2 in my heart.

But who will Europe choose? The votes are being counted while a Greek Chrous prances colorfully about the stage. Now an angel has arisen from their midst. A horrifyingly hot Greek angel. Female dancers dressed, inexplicably, in Green Arrow-style tights are diverting us while the accountants count the SMS's. now Orthodox monks are marching about somberly. Will somebody please shut off that damned bazouki? No, apparently, they won't. Peter Urban, the German commentator, is continuing his dry, objective German commentary. Yes! Slovenia, one of my favorite European countries is now being mixed in.

The point-counting system appears to be mind-breakingly complex. Now to the postage-stamp-sized countrylet of Andorra, then Romania, then Denmark. The countries seem to be voting for their neighbors. Finland's beginning to break away. Germany's getting creamed. UK as well, and deservedly so. Finland gave most of its points to Russia, perhaps for appeasement reasons. Serbia-Montenegro is voting, perhaps for the last time as a two-country bloc. Nobody understands the Finnish signs. Finland is beginning to pull away from the pack. Poor France, still 0 points. Malta gives 12 points to Switzerland, which the German commentator, in his best German, calls "strange."

UK gives five points to Germany. That's reassuring. The UK gives its points to Finland, to honor its attempt to genuinely rock. France's announcer is speaking only French, showing a bit of linguistic nationalism. The German announcer sounds as if he'd like to leave for the nearest bar, even as he announces the points from German voters. Germany's announcer is riding a mechanical bull. Germany has given Finland a nearly insurmountable lead, but gives 12 points to Turkey, no surprise. Spain's announcer is speaking French, for some gloriously European reason. Now from Moldova. [Where the hell is Moldova?] According to the German commentator, Iceland's contribution, which got them thrown out on Thursday, was "very shrill."

The real country fans, says the German announcer, live in Albania, which gave Germany 5 points. Greece is hosting the contest, but cannot afford an actual live picture of the Parthenon in the background as the vote is announced. Finland has it officially wrapped up. The comment from Germany: "Finland. My God."

And that wraps up the live blogging!

LiveBlogging Eurovision IV

10:40 PM: Turkey's heavily-tatooed singer, well on the north side of 30, looks like she just stepped (or perhaps better, crawled) out of a porn video, which is of course a compliment. Dress looks like shiny mother-of-pearl colored couch upholstery. The song appears to be half-Turkish and half-English, and deals vaguely with the theme "superstar."

10:43 PM: Armenia's fielded a pleasantly-olive-skinned young man with a yearning expression. Musical accompaniment features a small stretch of squealing Armenian bagpipe (called the turniesdrtacntien. Perhaps). Touches of S&M in the choreography.

10:55 PM: The wrap-up and voting! Damn, I'm excited!

An American actress of Greek ancestry is co-hosting the event. Nana Mouskouri is now onstage, speaking French, then English, and perhaps some Greek. The German commentator is Peter Urban. I'm glad I missed Switzerland. I'm sad I missed the healthy blondes of Norway. Where did Israel get a gospel choir? Germany most certainly deserves to win with its turbocharged but still appropriately twangy Texas swing.

Wait, here comes Bosnia's super-soulful Hari Mata Hari again, and he's tugging at the strings of my heart again.  For me, it's down to Germany or Bosnia. Who will Europe choose?

LiveBlogging Eurovision III

It occurs to me this is perhaps not live, because there seems to be refreshingly little nonsense between the entries. Hmm.

10:24 PM: I want to like France's entry, because she's a hairdresser from the provinces and is nice-looking in a healthy, moist-skinned, Dove-ad way. She's even singing a ripely melodic song in French. Tragically, she about 20 eardrum-punishing Hz off the right tone.

10:27 PM: Croatia's Severina, who was terribly shocked a few weeks ago when someone released her "private" porn video, is giving us a light, frothy, rhythmical folk-song adaptation, and has just ripped off half her dress. I'm impressed.

10:31 PM: Brian Kennedy from Ireland doesn't sound Irish enough for me. His weepy little ballad is called "Every Song is a Cry for Love." Really? Even this one? Unforgivably bland and fully-clothed backup crew. This man shared a stage with Van Morrison?!

10:36 PM: Sweden is marrying straight-out-of-the-can techno to spine-cracking Bonnie-Tyler belting. The announcer called her "super-professional." Can I have Brian Kennedy back, please?

LiveBlogging Eurovision II

10:00 PM: The Lithuanians are cheeky.  Their song is a long taunt in which they claim to have already won the contest ("We are the Winners"). They're wearing suits, making faces, and break dancing, but the background music is straight Casio.

10:07: England is crap.

10:10: The Greek entry is a white, better-looking Donna Summer. Feathered hair blowing nicely in the wind machine. Age unguessable. Song forgettable. In fact, I've already forgotten it.

10:17: The Finnish monsters Lordi are entertaining me. They're singing about being monsters and celebrating hard rock, although I've heard much harder. They seem to be having good, clean fun.

10:20 PM: The Ukraine has sent a delectable blonde (Tina Karol?) onstage in a skimpy white dress. She's singing in English about hot her panties are and how someone's feeling her butt. Or that just might be the accent. The choreography's not living up to the vaguely military costumes. The voice-over is getting more and more cynical.

LiveBlogging Eurovision I

9:50 PM: The German voice-over is most amusing. The unseen speaker gives his immediate impressions of the songs, and translates the moronic phrase-making of the hosts ("You're the greatest crowd in the history of Eurovision") with delicious irony.  The past few entries have been formulaic Top 40 from Eastern Europe.  The singers look like nail-salon employees (female) or male hustlers waiting outside the train station (male).

9:55 PM: A touch of class: Bosnian Hari Mata hari wears a white suit with a lily in the button-hole, sings against a starry background with a vaguely Greek-chorus accompaniment, and avoids theatrics and, most importantly, break-dancing. The song is sung in Bosnian, and is actually lovely, with a folk-music tinge and a heart-moistening Balkan climax. 

Radu Lupu Opens the Schumannfest

Robert Schumann and his wife, Clara, lived in Duesseldorf from 1849 until Robert was sent to an insane asylum near Bonn in 1854. To celebrate its most famous resident (with the arguable exception of Josef Beuys (G)), Duesseldorf has named a music school, a concert hall, and streets after one or both of the Schumann's. They've also recently begun staging a Schumannfest (G), a two-week long celebration of Robert Schumann's life and work.  Yesterday I saw one of the earliest events of this year's fest, a piano recital by the Romanian pianist Radu Lupu, whose Edison-Award-winning 1996 Schumann recital disc is a treasured part of my music collection. 

The 61-year-old Lupu has gotten rounder and more hirsute as the years have progressed, and now looks a bit like Johannes Brahms, which is perhaps not unintentional.  He played an all-Schumann program -- the Forest Scenes, Humoreske, and the Sonata No. 1.  And he was glorious -- fierce and almost-unhinged, then suddenly reflective and profound.  That's Schumann for you, especially in the Sonata.  Lupu's glorious performance earned him several curtain calls and two encores from the demanding German audience.

Duesseldorf's lucky to have a link to the Schumanns, since they are among the most thrilling personalities to have emerged from German Romanticism, which wasn't stingy in the production of human brilliance and refinement. Schumann pledged his love to his lovely inamorata, the young piano virtuoso Clara Wieck, by sending her compositions inspired by his love.

Chainsaws, Loincloths, Eurovision

This band is Finland's entry to the 2006 Eurovision song contest:

They're called Lordi. They sing songs like "Chainsaw Buffet." According to the New York Times, after they were nominated to represent Finland, "critics called for President Tarja Halonen to use her constitutional powers to veto the band and nominate a traditional Finnish folk singer instead."

Lead singer Tomi Putaansuu said ""In Finland, we have no Eiffel Tower, few real famous artists, it is freezing cold and we suffer from low self-esteem. Finns nearly choked on their cereal when they realized we were the face Finland would be showing to the world."

I have mixed feelings about Lordi, despite my general approval of blood-spurting chainsaws and leather loincloths. On the one hand, mocking the Eurovision song contest is a national industry in the English-speaking world, providing needed subject matter to thousands of music journalists. From this perspective, the Eurovision song contest needs more, not fewer traditional Finnish folk singers.

But maybe it would actually be good for humanity if the ESC somehow became hip. Assuming, of course, that a higher global level of hipness is desirable. In any case, Lordi's still playing catchup, considering that GWAR (featuring Oderus Urungus) was spurting blood on its audiences way back in the mid-1980s...

A German Orchestra in the Middle Kingdom

On Friday, I saw the premiere of a documentary about a German orchestra's tour of China and Japan.  The orchestra in question is the Heinrich-Heine-University Orchestra, a semi-professional ensemble made up of current and former students of the University, under the leadership of University Music Director Silke Loehr.  (Disclosure: I know several members of the orchestra).  After months of intense preparation, the Orchestra finally set out, in fall of 2005, to play six concerts in Shanghai, Tokyo, and Beijing.

Ordinarily, you would hire professional tour managers to move 74 people and $60,000 worth of musical instruments around big foreign countries.  The HHU Orchestra, though, doesn't have fancy managers.  The orchestra members all have day jobs, and took time away from those jobs to organize the tour themselves.  They booked the hotels, planned the itinerary, and managed the customs and visa regulations themselves.  Nobody paid them a cent; and many used up most or all of their vacation days to make the trip.

Fortunately for us, the orchestra was accompanied by a team of young filmmakers from Duesseldorf's Robert Schumann Conservatory (G).  The conservatory students are studying sound and image technology, and the resulting film is their doctoral dissertation.  And boy, does it look professional -- the director, Aleksander Bach, seamlessly mixes interviews, jump-cut videos of pulsing, neon-drenched metropolises, cinéma vérité treks through the backstreets of Beijing, dramatic confrontations with defective hotel doors and defective Chinese customs officials (who unexpectedly demanded a huge security deposit to let the orchestra's instruments through customs), and -- of course -- generous excerpts of the orchestra playing Wagner, Schumann, Bizet, and Beethoven.

The Bach Business

American economist Brad Delong relates the main theme of a lecture he heard recently on Cultural Consumption and Identity in 18th Century Germany by Prof. Michael North (Professor of History Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University, Greifswald):

If, in the late eighteenth century (if you were rich--solidly bourgeois) you wanted to get the score of a piano sonata by [C]arl Philip Emmanuel Bach, it was easy: C.P.E. Bach sold subscriptions and partnered with publishers to make money off of selling scores. He was, among other things, an intellectual property entrepreneur. On the other hand if, in the middle of the eighteenth century, you wanted to get the score of one of Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concertos... you needed to know and be owed a favor by the Kapellmeister of some small princely state who knew and was owed a favor by the Kapellmeister of Frederick the Great and so had a copy of the score that could be recopied by hand. C.P.E. Bach was in lines of business that J.S. Bach was not.

Anyone but Wolfgang

Classical curmudgeon Normal Lebrecht is on a mission, which can be summarized in two words: Fuck Mozart.

As anyone whose breath still steams up mirrors knows, Europe's cultural bureaucrats are staging a merciless "shock and awe" campaign to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus' birth.

Lebrecht is not one to take shelter in bunkers; he's declared war. As a defense against the endless performances of sickeningly familiar Mozart works, and the stale, formulaic speeches, Lebrecht is proposing counter-candidates for adulation, among them Robert Schumann, who died in an insane asylum near Bonn 150 years ago this year.  Schumann, suffering from bipolar disorder and end-stage syphilis, had earlier attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Rhine in Düsseldorf, his last posting.

Of course, Lebrecht notes, Schumann's a harder sell than Mozart, despite the achingly beautiful song-cycles and the symphonies:

Let's not be naïve about this. Jowly Robert Schumann with his hangdog eyes is never going to sell as many marzipan boxes as the Wolf Gang, nor does any of his music fall as easily on the ear as the Amadeus soundtrack or the special-offer i-Tunes site. Where Mozart mints money, Schumann hints at suicide.

...

There is an undercurrent of darkness to everything he wrote, even (perhaps especially) to the Dichterliebe with its 'wonderfully beautiful month of May' when all the buds are bursting and the heart is full of love. In the seventh of 16 verses, 'Ich grolle nicht', the poet declaims that he won't complain when his heart is broken; in the concluding verse he flings the coffin of his love deep into the river Rhine. Like all true romantics, Heine and Schumann could not tell love from death and both are foretold in the sunniest times of their lives.

...

I can understand why artists and orchestras who depend on public favour shrink from playing Schumann in the 150th year of his death and will doubtless do so again in 2010, the bicentenary of his birth. I can sympathise with the strategists, the image makers, the ticket counters. But it seems a terrible waste, a missed opportunity to explore the depths of human experience, another triumph for the tinsel of easy tunes over the riches of human civilisation.

I hereby join Lebrecht in his noble crusade. I'll be designing armbands and banners for everyone, which will be available at reasonable prices for all German Joys members.

Horst Fascher and the Early Beatles

I just heard an interview with Horst Fascher, the German club-owner who gave the Beatles their start in various clubs in the German port city of Hamburg in 1962.  He's written a book called (title in English, book in German) Let the Good Times Roll, about his adventurous life. 

Fascher himself is a formerboxer who spent some time in prison for manslaughter, but also learned excellent English in the sea trade.  Fascher realized the Beatles' potential soon after he heard them. He invited them to play in clubs he managed, most notably the Star Club, provided them with accommodations (the Fab Four slept two to a room in a two-bedroom place), and even invited them home to share his mother's stew, which she cooked in a big laundry-pot and flavored with plenty of meat that Fascher's father, a butcher, brought home.

Fascher had plenty of juicy anecdotes.  The Star Club, it seems, was no dinner theater.  Things got moist and smoky and alcoholized. Paul McCartney handled it all gracefully -- he really was the nice Beatle, according to Fascher.  In fact, he still returns Fascher's phone calls, although Fascher has to go through McCartney's front office like everyone else, since McCartney has no cellphone. 

John Lennon was much more difficult (George was introverted and thought only of his guitar).  When a fan yelled something rude or spilled beer on him, Lennon might well call him a "fucking Nazi bastard."  Not infrequently, Lennon jumped into the crowd and started mixing it up.  Fascher stepped in to prevent Lennon getting beaten to a pulp.  Fascher introduced the Beatles to Hamburg's infamous red-light district, St. Pauli, and recorded their amazement at how realistic German transvestites looked.  Fascher also hinted, with some amusement, that he made sure the boys always had "the things they needed" when they decided to "pay visits" to that part of the city.

Consider the Bourgeoisie shocked

The magisterial diva Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who defined the role of the Marschallin in the 1957 Karajan production of Der Rosenkavalier, is not pleased with what she's seen at the opera lately:

What I hear and have seen -- in Vienna, I'm told, there was recently a production of "Cosi fan tutte" in which all the roles were played by gay men -- leaves me with only one option, to run away, and look to the Japanese and Chinese for example.  They have a sense for the music and not the whole production "magic" that we see around us.  The "magic" -- perhaps at my age I might be allowed to use some sharp words -- is a criminal delusion.  It's really a sickness which will one day destroy German art, of that I am certain.  In fact, very soon.  I myself had to run out of the theater recently during the Salzburg festival -- I could just barely last until the intermission. 

[FAS, 4 December, p. 27]

"[A] solid piece of musical manufacture"

So did George Bernard Shaw describe Brahms' German Requiem, which I just saw performed by the Duesseldorf Symphony under the American Leon Botstein.  The choir was especially good, although there were some coordination problems with the symphony during the fugues. 

Brahms composed the German Requiem in the mid-1860s to a text of his own composing.  Although Brahms had been confirmed a Lutheran, nothing pissed him off more than to be taken for a conventional believer.  Thus, instead of adopting the Latin text, he chose the most tender and consoling Biblical passages he knew, without regard to their theological significance.  Carl Reinthaler, the organist of Bremen Cathedral, helping Brahms prepare for a early performance, gently noted that none of the texts mentioned a Redeemer, to which Brahms replied, in effect, "so what?"

The German Requiem has adorable flaws.  The soprano and tenor solo parts are overshadowed by the choir's near-constant participation.  The solo parts are just too short, which reesults in the two soloists having to sit onstage doing nothing for 80% of the performance.  Most commentators consider the last of the sevent movements rather unfortunate; in fact the whole thing was considered too long (and too unorthodox) to perform in its entirety for the first years after its completion. 

So it's a masterpiece, but not an intimidatingly perfect one.  The minor flaws are forgotten in the many moments of tender, dignified lyricism and the fiery, galloping affirmation of the climaxes -- especially the coruscating brass passages in the sixth movement.  In re-reading a little monograph about the Requiem I bought some time ago, I was struck by how its reception into the standard repertory was held hostage to the Great Brahms-Wagner conflict of the last decades of the 19th century.  It was decades before the Requiem was accepted into the orchestral canon.  George Bernard Shaw was a feverish Wagnerian (I don't know exactly why, but this fact surprises me), so he jeeringly praised the Requiem, saying "it could only have come from the establishment of a first-class undertaker."

Luckily for us, other Englishman knew a fine piece of choral music when they saw it, and they helped establish op. 45 in the repertory for ever and ever.  Amen.

Blitzkrieg Bop; or Bubblegum-Nazis

The campus newspaper rarely contains much more than mundane hints about student aids and endless griping about tuition fees.  But the latest issue contained something very special.  Excerpts follow (my translation):

Girlie-Band makes Nazi Music

Right-wing radical music.  In Germany, one thinks generally of raw, loud music with simple-minded lyrics.  While you cannot buy such music on the open market in German, the situation is completely different in America. 

There, the two siblings Lamb and Lynx Gaede, 13-year-old girls from California, formed the nationalistic band "Prussian Blue" to, as they put it, honor their German heritage.

The two twins, who look like thoroughly normal American teenagers, believe in a nationalistic idea.  They grew up in a radically right-wing family whose youngest daugher is named "Dresden," and appear to be completely indoctrinated in right-wing thought.

The Charm of Obscure CDs

Yes, liner notes -- those short essays packed in the little booklets that come with CDs.  When you buy CDs from the major labels, you are likely to get dry, formal little essays written by musicologists.  All well and good, as far as it goes, but where is the charm? 

For charm, you turn to the small labels, the amateur labels, the out-of-the way labels.  In my travels this summer, I happened across a few recordings of just this description.  One of them is a recital of works by Fauré and Dukas by the French pianist Yvonne Lefébure.  The CD is made in France by Solstice Records, (FYCD88), which you can visit here.  An insert in the CD informs us that Solstice is dedicated to recording music "hors de sillons battus"; "off the beaten track", and promises the following program of "fidelity": "One 1-CD reference offered for total purchasings over the last 12 months (posterior to November 1st, 2003 and shipping excluded) greater than or equal to € 150." 

The liner notes were written by Ms. Lefébure herself, and begin thus:

THERE MUST BE VERY FEW PEOPLE STILL ALIVE today who actually knew Fauré well. As a young child, I was fortunate enough to meet him, and play for him ;he was always extremely kind and encouraging. I was eleven when Marguerite Long introduced us; it w