![]() ![]() But it’s worth a deeper listen to appreciate the thoroughness of programming and nuanced curation that the Nigerian-Romanian pianist has put into her latest album. The works featured on Rebeca Omordia’s “African Pianism” are similar to the Brahms sextets in that it’s easy enough to listen to them solely for the pleasure of listening. The Belceas, Zimmermann, and Queyras are messengers of that capaciousness. ![]() That’s not to say that the entire sextet becomes a monument to the composer’s personal upheaval perhaps it was even a means of disassociation for him. Agathe’s name is preserved in the opening theme of the second sextet (A-G-A-D-B-E, which in German would spell out as A-G-A-D-H-E). Though written shortly after his first, Jean-Michel Molkhou points out in the liner notes for this new recording that in this interregnum Brahms had lost his mother and ended a relationship with soprano Agathe von Siebold. Fellow Frenchman Queyras and the German Zimmermann complement this balance, one that particularly shines through in the darker shades of Brahms’s second sextet. The blazing styles of Romanian violinist Corina Belcea and Polish violist Krzysztof Chorzelski are balanced out by a more chromatic introspection from their French colleagues, violinist Axel Schacher and cellist Antoine Lederlin. Having played together for nearly 30 years, the Belcea Quartet is well-matched to this sense of yearning-as-baseline. It’s not perfectly calm there’s a sense of longing, of pining, but that too may as well be part of our baseline after being so far removed from anything resembling neutral. It seeps in, almost unnoticed, and it’s easy enough to float in the sweeping gestures that, at times, sound more like an orchestra than a chamber ensemble. The opening movement begins with a warmth that barely registers at first a room temperature that gradually increases to reflect your own body temperature. The best answer I can give to the first question is: “No thoughts, just vibes.” It’s easy to slip into Brahms’s first sextet like a sensory deprivation tank. Why, then, in the times where I want to listen to music, can I not stop playing the Belcea Quartet, Tabea Zimmerman, and Jean-Guihen Queyras’s new recording of Brahms’s two String Sextets? Why did we even need another recording of these two works? ![]() Perhaps those have all lost their currency. I’m not sure that I’m listening for a sense of comfort, hope, or consolation. Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Little, or the intoxicating depths of a fresh read on “Pelléas et Mélisande.” Does my preference for the Adagio from Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto or the opening to Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet verge on the embarrassing? When I have fired up Tidal, however, I’ve found my tastes sidestepping the thorny pleasures of a new Wolfgang RIhm compilation, the catharsis of a new work by David T. I haven’t wanted to listen to music (though I have been content to binge old seasons of “M*A*S*H”). Lately, I’ve been siding more with Stavychenko. What’s complicated for one is a coping mechanism for another. Faced with a hitherto unfathomable amount of suffering and humanity, Winchester slips into the comparatively rational comforts of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. I’m too stressed.”įor whatever reason, the image that came to mind in response to that was of Major Charles Emerson Winchester on “M*A*S*H.” David Ogden Stiers played the Boston Brahmin with a cushy wartime posting in Tokyo before being dispatched to a mobile army hospital on the frontlines of the Korean war. But right now, at home, I’m not listening to any music. I prefer electronica, techno, or something like that. Speaking for myself, I don’t usually listen to classical music. When I hear it, I start analyzing or comparing interpretations. “As a musicologist and music critic, classical music is mainly work for me, anyway. When asked if she could listen to any music at the moment for comfort, Stavychenko replied that she couldn’t. ![]() The first comes from Anna Stavychenko’s recent interview with my colleague Hartmut Welscher, given just before Russia’s invasion, while the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra director was on permanent red alert. Two things have been stuck in my head lately.
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