Okay, the verdict is in, and my choice for a Tenth Composer is gonna be........Beethoven. After listening to all those sonatas yesterday (bits and pieces mostly, but a few in their entirety), I realized that he had to be the guy. With one sonata, #13, known as "Pathetique", another early memory came back of my Dad practicing one of it's famous themes. So that particular melody line, as it turns out, is one of my very first musical memories. Now, I am also a big fan of Alexander Scriabin, who I mentioned last night as being the other finalist for the tenth position on my list. Scriabin's compositions are somewhat off-center; sometimes his notes seem to topple over each other, but I came to appreciate his music when I became aware of the great Russian pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky, as mentioned last night. Sofronitsky's recordings of Scriabin capture the metaphysical expression of his piano works, and are as great a spiritual achievement as anything I have heard in music. According to Scriabin's daughter, who married Sofronitsky, he was always "playing to God", his Audience of One, which clearly comes through to the modern listener.
So that's how great Scriabin's music is, when played by Sofronitsky, and I feel like it should be a tie between the two - Beethoven and Scriabin. I mean, lists are dumb because of these kinds of decisions and the exclusions that end up being made, but on the other hand, lists are fun because they give us something to talk about. :) So, barring a tie between the two composers, I am gonna go with Ludwig Van, though you can more or less call it a tie if you want to. :)
For my favorite Beethoven piece, listen to the aforementioned Sonata #13 on Youtube, as played by Valentina Lisitsa, or listen to Sonata #30 as played by Wilhelm Kempff. I got a bit swept up in the sonatas yesterday and ordered an 8 CD set of The Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas by Wilhelm Kempff, for only 17 bucks, and on Deutsche Grammophon to boot.
For one of the best pieces by Scriabin, listen to the Preludes, Op.11, as played by Vladimir Sofronitsky at this link, which you will have to copy and paste because it won't be clickable here on Blogger:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy8MTTrh-Z8
Also listen to Scriabin's Sonata #5, but again it's gotta be by Vladimir. Accept no substitutes. :)
Okay, so that was fun, eh? We have completed our list of Top Ten Favorite Classical Composers, and they were, in no particular order except for Bach being #1 : J.S Bach, Franz Schubert, Frederic Chopin, Richard Wagner, Felix Mendelssohn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Domenico Scarlatti, Claude Debussy and Ludwig van Beethoven.
I had to leave out Couperin, Rameau, Rachmaninoff, Schumann, Sibelius and Poulenc, and many others, but we will list some favorite pieces by these guys too. Let's keep the discussion going, just because we are having fun doing it. One last thing - I know that most of my "favorite pieces" by each composer were piano works, and piano is definitely my favorite instrument for classical music, but I also have a fondness for string quartets (which many folks won't like), and even more so for organ music, which you already know if you have seen my posts on Facebook.
There is so much to talk about with classical music, and if you give it a chance - as I did when I was about 25, and got hooked by about age 40 - it will enrich your life just as much as the rock music we all grew up on and love and know by heart.
A friend of ours from the 1980s, nicknamed "Shecky", who is by now long gone to parts unknown, once said that "music is the second most powerful force in the Universe", and I tend to agree.
He didn't need to add that love was the first most powerful force, because that goes without saying.
But music.......yeah. It's a trip, because no one really knows what music is.
Or where it comes from, or why. We sort of know "how it comes", though The Muse, or inspiration.
But we really don't know What It Is, except that we can tell, by an inner sense, that it is some kind of Monumental Expression of Human Emotional Language.
But we still don't know where it comes from, or maybe we do. ////
That's all I know for tonight. I did watch a movie, "Charlie Chan In Honolulu" (1938), with Sidney Toler in the starring role. It was an early Chan, and a good one, but you already know the formula for the CC films and I wanted to place the focus on the music tonight.
Tomorrow is the first day of Spring, which elicits an "Oh Boy"! from Yours Truly. That was one of the most trying Winters in recent SoCal memory, and all of a sudden, just yesterday in fact, we jumped 35 degrees, from the constant 50 of the "endless Winter" to 85 all of a sudden. I had to turn my air conditioner on at The Tiny yesterday afternoon. Today we reverted to overcast again, but the temp was still a pleasant 70.
Happy Spring! I am sure you are as glad to welcome it as I am.
See you in the morning, with love through the night as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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