Music of Joy and Sadness

Quote of the day:
“Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.”
--Bertrand Russell

Quote of the day no. 2:
"I never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure."
--Clarence Darrow

It’s been an all-piano-concerto day. We began the day with Mozart and enjoyed it so much that we kept putting on more concertos and different pianists. I think we listened to seven Mozart concertos before switching to Beethoven (no. 1), Rachmaninoff (no. 3) and Bartok (no. 1).

We have some of these works on CD, but all our listening today was to LPs, mostly from the 60s and 70s. Among the Mozart pianists were Rudolph Serkin and his son Peter, Lili Kraus, Alfred Brendel and Geza Anda.

The Beethoven First was a live performance by the reclusive pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, an LP I’ve always loved, released by Deutsche Gramophone in the 1970s.

A few years ago Merrie and I bought the now-famous CD of Martha Argerich playing the Rachmaninoff Third. It is a spectacularly maniacal and totally authentic performance and is incredibly enjoyable. Today though, we heard a performance of elegantly restrained passion and subtlety by Alicia de Larrocha.

You have to be in the right mood to listen to the Bartok First. It’s not for the faint of heart, and is therefore rarely played on the radio or on any of the digital services. It is propulsive, explosive and aggressive. And in the the DG recording with Maurizio Pollini, it’s extraordinary.

What a day! And this was just the beginning.