dear everyone,
as i begin to write this, i have to confess that i'm not sure what to
say. it starts with 'world music', a body of music i would have to call my
favorite these days. as those of you who don't instantly delete my posts
realize, i have sought out non-classical music, going away from my operatic
roots. to say what i seek is pop music is not really accurate. to say
that i hate opera is not really accurate either. what i seek is a 'purity
of expression'.
lloyd, you had said that you particularly enjoy live performances of
opera by good but not too well known singers. i would guess an excellent
student performance by promising students on one of those 'magic' nights
would be something you would really find satisfying(?). somehow related to
that (maybe), it always bothered me in high school that i seemed to like
certain rock groups, like alice cooper, who just seemed kind of rough, over
groups like emerson, lake and palmer or yes, who seemed more technically
proficient. i also seemed to prefer 'live' recordings of rock groups to
their studio output and was always disappointed when a group's live output
was not what i had hoped. there is magic to a live bayreuth recording of
wagner that a studio recording just doesn't have.
world music seems to me to have the qualities that other music has
when it is live. even when it aspires to commercial success, it seems to
retain the innocense of the unspoilt. in listening to operatic recordings
of yesteryear, i hear the same quality. i hear the sound of the unspoilt in
a giuseppe de luca that i don't hear in the spoiled thomas hampson.
battistini had it. sergei lemeshev had it though nicolai gedda did not
(although live, as lensky, he did).
this evening, before the great blizzard hits, i went to our local
border's, where they are great about having sample cds of music to listen to,
and sampled putumayo's italian collection. there are some voices,
particularaly the male singer in rua port'alba's selection that have a
'purity of expression'. i know that sounds like the search for the meaning
of 'rosebud' but, i think i mean by that, that it is when the essence of what
you are hearing is the point of the song. whether it is to tell a story or
just to have fun, it is about that and not the package it is.
my favorite recording of brahms second symphony is a recording from the
forties conducted by wilhelm furtwangler. it is an absolute mess. it
sounds like half the orchestra was lost half the time and the recording
quality sucks, even by the standards of the time. so why do i like it?
maybe it is because it implies how furtwangler thinks the brahms second
should go and that is exactly how i'd like it.
mike
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