Traces of Oliver

Picked up my guitar

I picked up my guitar again today and spent some time practising, after a break of 10 days or so. I like the sound of my Aparicio guitar very much. My fingertips don't hurt as much as they used to. The problem is (always) my left wrist, which just doesn't seem strong enough to take the strain of pressing and stretching. Anyhow - progress is slow but there is some.

Pelleas and Melisande

I've started listening to Schoenberg's symphonic poem, "Pelleas und Melisande". Karajan's 1974 recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker orchestra is superb!

... rarement on aura entendu ces œuvres parées d'une telle splendeur instrumentale et traduites avec un lyrisme et un dramatisme aussi intensément nuancé. (La Revue des Disques, 1975)

I found a synopsis of the drama by Maurice Maeterlinck, upon which Schoenberg's symphonic poem is based, but obviously knowledge of the action gets you only so far in understanding the music, which is enormously dense and complex.

I found reading Glenn Gould's article on "The prospects of recording" (published 1966 in "High Fidelity" magazine) very illuminating - a real "ear-opening" experience for me. Karajan's Schoenberg recording is a brilliant example of what can be achieved in a recording studio - a presence, immediacy and clarity of sound impossible to produce in a concert hall. So much closer to the composer's intention than what you will ever hear live.

Informed by Gould, I think I understand more fully recordings of works which are far more "canonical", far less "advanced", indeed far less complex than "Pelleas und Melisande" - for example Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony. In Georg Solti's 1984 recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, even the last movement makes sense to me while the 1st movement has proved to be addictive! Not a single tone gets lost in the muddle, not even in fortissimo passages. Everything is extremely transparent - and yet so powerful!

Hans Rosbaud

Hans Rosbaud promoted contemporary music early on, was one of the first radio symphony orchestra conductors, introduced instruments and music to audiences in order to help people appreciate music, was general music director for some years during the Nazi dictatorship in the town where I was born, was the first conductor of the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, helped establish the modern music festival at Donaueschingen.