Coming momentarily (if not sooner): An adventure in musical metamorphosis -- presented in a pair of mutually accessible parts

EARLY MORNING UPDATE: Part 1 of the post is now posted. Part 2 will be coming soon.

UPDATE: Two more clips added, clearly related to each other, and to the other clips -- can you figure out how they're related?

STAGE 1 -- a grand old theme, which comes to us stated in three distinctly different ways:


Vienna Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Decca, recorded September 1957

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded April 1977

Staatskapelle Dresden, Kurt Sanderling, cond. Eurodisc, recorded Nov. 1971

STAGE 2 -- Talk about a transformation! Again, we hear it at three slightly but noticeably different paces:


Berlin Radio Symphony, Heinz Rögner, cond. Berlin Classics, recorded 1983

Bavarian Radio Symphony, Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG, recorded May 1967

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded April 1993

STAGE 3 -- This one's a doozy, which'll really come into its own in Part 2 of the post:


Bavarian Radio Symphony, Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG, recorded May 1967

Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live, April 1972

BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez, cond. Live performance, Nov. 1974

by Ken

That's right, what's coming up is a two-part post, whose two parts (and I've never attempted this) are going to be posted at the same time and be mutually accessible, meaning that you can, if you wish, jump back and forth between them. I apologize for, but am not going to further comment on here, my long blog silence. (There'll be a few words in Part 1 of the post. But I can't change what is, or was. What is, or was, is -- or was.

The above material is going to be more properly presented in Part 1 of the post, which I hope will be up . . . well, real soon! Both parts are, er, almost finished. But I know only too well that the time gap between "almost finished" and "press the button to publish" can be, shall we say, considerable. Still, I think some fun can be had playing with the above clips, what with the contrasts between the three "stages" of our theme and the contrasts in the way each "stage" is heard here.

There's also the fringe benefit for me that once this promise-of-a-post is published, I myself can call up at least these nine audio clips just by clicking on them. Which just leaves the roughly zillion other clips waiting to be transformed into music. This post itself has been that much more than usually hampered by the fact that until a post is published, in order to imagine a clip being activated at the appropriate place, I have to find ways of summoning them from where they're currently tucked away computerifically. -- Cheers, and happy listening (at least nine clips' worth) -- K


NOW FOR THE UPDATE: HERE ARE THE TWO NEW CLIPS



[in both clips] Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. Telarc, recorded in Usher Hall, Edinburgh, January 1997

Wait, these are the same, aren't they? No, they're not the same, but they . . . um . . . are, y'know, how to put it?, different.

Of course in Part 2 of the actual post you'll find out exactly what the two clips are (if you don't know already) and how they're related. For now, though, I think it could be interesting to just listen to them both two or three times, maybe more, and see what difference you notice about the effect each has for you? How are you enjoying, or not-so-much-enjoying, them? If you don't actually know (and I'm sure some of you will), can you guess what the relationship between them might be?

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