Listening Quest March 2017: Debussy's The Sunken Cathedral

Wednesday, March 1, 2017 by Vicki Martin | Listening Quest

If you were to ask me what my favourite piece of classical music is, this is probably it. I love the rich harmonies and big washes of sound that Claude Debussy creates, and this piece shows it off. The Sunken Cathedral, or La cathédraleengloutie as it was named in the original French, is based on an old legend that the beautiful city of Ys was that was submerged in the sea, perhaps as a punishment for its wickedness, depending on which version of the story that you read. In this piece, you can hear the bells of the church cathedral, which can be heard on clear mornings or as fabled, once a century, when it rises up out of the water and then sinks back down again. You can hear in this song how Debussy recreates the rising of the cathedral by building to a big climax in the middle of the song, by the bell sounds throughout, and by the sounds of what could be waves rippling in the left hand at the end.

This recording is by PavelKolesnikov, a young Russian performer who won the Honens Piano Competition (one of Canada’s biggest piano competitions, held in Calgary every three years) in 2012. He now lives in London, but he’s been to Edmonton a few times since then to play with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and to do a piano masterclass which I attended. He’s a nice guy and well worth listening to!
Extra exploring: The Sunken Cathedral is just one of twelve preludes written by Debussy. You can hear all of them here played by Claudio Arrau.  
Photo of Debussy by Nadar, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=983139
Photo of PavelKolesnikov by Colin Way, http://pavelkolesnikov.com

Listening Quest February 2017: The Planets by Holst

Wednesday, February 1, 2017 by Vicki Martin | Listening Quest

Gustav Holst was an English composer and teacher who lived from 1874 to 1934. He was a quiet, shy man, who became famous for writing The Planets, written for orchestra and a little bit of choir with one movement written for each of the planets, not including Earth. Pluto wasn’t discovered until 1930, well after the piece was written in 1914-1916, and the work was already popular enough that Holst didn’t bother to add another movement for it. That’s probably good, given that Pluto has been demoted to a dwarf planet now! You may have heard some of this music in film scores before, and Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, is probably the best known, so here goes:
Extra Exploring: Watch all the planets!
Photo by Herbert Lambert (1881–1936) - National Portrait Gallery - Portrait NPGAx7745; Gustav Theodore Holst, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7667183 

Listening Quest January 2017: Glenn Gould

Sunday, January 1, 2017 by Vicki Martin | Listening Quest

I think it is time to listen to some music for piano! I’d like to introduce you to Glenn Gould, if you haven’t already heard of him. He is considered one of Canada’s best pianists of all time.

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Glenn Gould was born in Toronto in 1932, studied at the Royal Conservatory, and completed his associate diploma by the age of 13. At the age of 20, he recorded his first album, which was enough to get the attention of Columbia Records, who signed a recording contract with him. His first recording with them was in 1955, and he chose the Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach. It wasn’t a very well-known or popular piece at the time, so it was considered a risky choice, but it turned out to be Columbia’s best selling classical album! In 1981, 26 years later, he had changed his mind about how he thought it should be played and recorded it again. The second version is slower and includes more of the repeats, making the entire recording 51 minute and 18 seconds, quite a bit longer than the 38 minutes 34 seconds of the 1955 version. It was only a year later, just a few days after his 50th birthday, that he died quite suddenly of a stroke. You could say that Gould’s career both began and ended with the Goldberg Variations.

Gould was considered a genius, particularly with his interpretations of Bach. He played more detached than most other performers but had the remarkable ability to bring out each individual voice in the counterpoint (intermingling melodies). His style is distinct and unique, so once you know how Gould usually sounds, he is hard to mistake for other performers. You’ll often hear him singing or humming along as well! He was very eccentric and some would even say a little crazy. He sat at the piano extremely low in a chair his father made him, which he used until it was literally falling apart. You’ll see it in the video below. He always wanted to be warm, so he would wear a long coat, hat, and mitts or gloves, even in warm weather, and insisted on his recording studios being very warm. Gould hated audiences, so he only gave about 200 concerts in his lifetime (which many concert pianists would do in two years) and was notorious for cancelling at the last minute. When he was 31, he gave up giving concerts altogether in favour of playing in the recording studio where he could be more in control. Because of this dedication to recording, he recorded 65 albums in his short lifetime.

The Goldberg Variations was the only set of variations written by J.S. Bach. There is an aria (song) to begin with, followed by 30 variations, and then the aria once again to finish. When you listen to it, it’s easy to think that they don’t sound very much like the first aria because they aren’t variations of the melody, but rather the bass line. In addition, every third variation (3, 6, 9, and so on) is a canon (like Row, Row, Row Your Boat sung in a round) where the bass line enters a little later, but to make it even more complex, it enters on the same note in variation 3, a second above in variation 6, a third above in variation 9, and all the way up through the intervals. The 30 ^th and last variation breaks the pattern for a “musical mashup” using the theme mixed together with a bunch of German folk songs. It was meant as a clever joke, but it’s unfortunately a little lost on those of us who don’t know the popular songs of 1741.

Here we have it – the 1981 recording and video of Glenn Gould playing the aria and first 7 variations of the Goldberg Variations!

Extra Exploring: Well, of course, you’re going to listen to the rest of the variations!