Revisiting our musical glimpse into the sublime, Part 2

As I explained last week, in the post "Found Music Dept.: When music that pops into your path grabs hold and won't let go," the "found music" that made such an impact on me came in an early episode of the FX-via-Netflix series Pose, when 17-year-old Damon (Ryan Jamaal Swain), whom we see here making his way to NYC, having been thrown out of his home for dreaming of being a dancer (and, oh yes, being gay), has his world turned upside-down when he gets his first glimpse of real, live ballet, in the form of a dance choreographed to music by the Dance King himself.


Claudio Arrau, piano; Staatskapelle Dresden, Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded November 1984

Alfred Brendel, piano; Vienna Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, cond. Philips, recorded February 1998

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano and cond.; Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Sony, recorded in Prague, May 20-21, 2014

by Ken

Of the music in question, I wrote in Part 1 of this week's post earlier today ("Revisiting our musical glimpse into the sublime, Part 1"), "It's a piece I know about as well as I know my own name," which though accurate may have been a trifle misleading, in that these days there are moments when I give some thought to dredge up my name, and the truth is that while I knew the composer right away, it took me a bit to home in on the identity of the piece, of which I went on to write: "I don't think I'd ever heard it in quite this way: as a prime example of Beethoven's singular ability to give us a musical glimpse into the sublime."

The fact that it did take me a bit to make the positive ID puzzled me, and the best guess I came up with is that it stands as the middle movement between two movements I might best describe as "colossal" -- Beethoven at his "E-flat major"-est. There are keys that are known to be hospitable to string instruments, and there are keys known to be hospitable to wind instruments, among which perhaps none is more so than E-flat major, which always lends itself to full-throated musical celebration.

IS THERE ANY MORE FULL-THROATEDLY E-FLAT-MAJOR-ISH
MUSIC THAN THE OUTER MOVEMENTS OF THIS CONCERTO?

Van Cliburn (1934-2013)

SCHUMANN (arr. Liszt): "Widmung" ("Dedication")

Van Cliburn plays the Liszt arrangement of Schumann's exhilarating song "Widmung" ("Dedication"), c1970.

by Ken

I want to put off doing a proper memorial to pianist Van Cliburn until I get the copy of RCA's newly released Van Cliburn: The Complete Album Collection which I ordered as soon as I saw that it exists, not realizing at the time that he had in fact just died.

The easy way to go would have been with the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto, the piece that became so identified with him when he rocketed to fame in 1958 (at age 23) with his grand-prize win at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Instead I thought we'd lead with a solo piece we heard played by Arthur Rubinstein in the November 2011 Sunday Classics post "And then came 'Widmung' " -- and then the following week played by the great American Romantic Earl Wild.

I think we hear here the basic Cliburn virtues: the beautiful, clean, effortlessly full sound and the wholesome extrovert temperament.

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