Haydn Update, Film Scores, Ravel, and Firkusny

My Haydn Symphony listening project continues. As I write this, I have made it though Symphony no. 64. Forty more to go. I should be there in a couple of weeks. Like I said in my previous entry, I am really enjoying Haydn's music I have developed a deeper appreciation of his music. One Symphony that stood out thus far is Symphony no.60. Haydn wrote it in late 1774 and it was published in 1775. David Threasher of Gramophone calls it "Decidedly Odd." It has six movements...it was written as incidental music for a play....and in the last movement, the music stops and the violins tune. Weird. Fun.

Some great music in contemporary films. The Phantom Thread starring Daniel Day Lewis is a remarkable film. The soundtrack is equally as wonderful. The original score is by Jonny Greenwood, a musician in the band Radiohead. I am not a Radiohead expert nor fan for that matter...but his score for this film is exceptional. It is a blend of Nelson Riddle, Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Gabriel Faure, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Bill Evans, and many others. Delightful.

I also enjoyed the movie Isle of Dogs. A wonderful animated adventure with a snippet of Prokofiev in the soundtrack:

Speaking of Ravel....if you have studied music theory, a common exercise in class is to dissect chords. Sometimes composers become identified with certain types of chords. A good example is the  "Tristan Chord"...Richard Wagner's opening statement of Tristan und Isolde. It's essentially an augmented fourth, sixth and ninth above a bass note for that key. Says Bryan Magee, "The Tristan Chord remains the most famous single chord in the history of music. It contains within itself not one, but two dissonances, thus creating within the listener a double desire, agonizing in it's intensity, for resolution. The chord to which it then moves resolves one of these dissonances but not the other, thus providing resolution, but-not-resolution. Be that as it may, Maurice Ravel used unique chords to great affect as well. And Jonny Greenwood picked up on this in his score for Phantom Thread. "The "Famous Ravel Chord" according to Stephen Broad in his book Oliver Messiaen Journalism 1935-1939, which is almost his trademark, the ninth with a minor third, was present back in the hair scene of Pelleas. On the first page of Pelleas, there is an A-major chord superimposed on a fifth: B-flat, F. For Debussy, this chord is simply an embellishment, but Ravel indulged himself with it in La Valse until it sounded quite commonplace, and it has become one of Darius Milhaud's bloodthirsty polytonalities."

One of my first posts in this blog back in 2014 talked about my love of Leos Janacek's music...my Dad gave me a stack of hand-me-down records for my little record player. One of these was the Sinfonietta  and Taras Bulba suites, still favorites of mine all these years later. But about 5 years ago, I absolutely fell in love with On an Overgrown Path, a piano work ..in particular, the version by pianist Rudolf Firkusny.

Mr. Firkusny came to my hometown, Kansas City, in 1938 and performed with the Kansas City Philharmonic. This was long before his recording of On an Overgrown Path (1970) But it's cool that he came to KC. I found coverage from the Kansas City Times 2/25/38.