Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
Hurt
(photo by Joel Baldwin)
Songs in Our Heart # 27 Hurt (Johnny Cash version) (Written by Trent Reznor; released 2002) [The Man in Black’s parting shot, a guilty gift to the world. He had such a great gift for songs of real people in extremis – Folsom Prison Blues, I Walk the Line, etc. Yet this is a wonderful song per se, originally performed by The Nine Inch Nails, and though Cash loved its anti-drug message, actually, the meaning is so much wider. Note that the original video with the Cash version is worth buying – it wonderfully complements Cash’s great delivery of the…
Continue Reading →Simone Young, Schubert & Mahler
Adelaide Festival Theatre, 23 July 2016 The ASO, under the great Simone Young, performed a brilliant version of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, the conductor superbly engaged, dominant, physical; synthesizing and wrangling the musicians. The highlight was her cajoling of the cellos in the sonorous solos, extending their moment and heightening the gothic mood of the piece. It made one yearn for the composer’s increased application. If only he had resisted the lure of the pub, and not stayed in his brother’s filthy apartment, he might have finished the Symphony! (And damn you, syphilis!) After the break, we were treated to an intense and fiery 6th Symphony by Mahler. …
Continue Reading →A Day in the Life
A Day in the Life...(photo by Graham Crumb)
Songs in Our Heart # 25 A Day in the Life (The Beatles) (Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney; released 1 June 1967) [The first pop anthem, weird and wonderful. 50 years on, it is still singular, with unique structure, drug-and-pop-culture-drenched imaginings, the mix of classical and pop instrumentation, and that final strident, ominous, lingering chord of E major, using the great Daniel Barenboim’s grand piano.]
Continue Reading →Aren’t Those the Eagle’s Claws?
20 July, 1969: Apollo 11 Mission lands men on the Moon, in the Sea of Tranquillity. In these days of rapid technological advances and diminishing personal heroism, it is easy to forget how earth-shaking this achievement was. But anyone alive and out of nappies in July 1969 won’t forget. “From time immemorial men have gazed into the sky and pondered, theorised, even worshipped ‘the silver ornament of night‘”.* At Rice University in Houston, 12 September 1962, President John Kennedy said: “…the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and the planets beyond…We have vowed that we shall…
Continue Reading →Richard Wagner & Visual Art
"Knight of the Flowers" (aka Parsifal) by Georges Rochegrosse
A talk to the Richard Wagner Society of SA by Trevor Clarke, 17 July 2016 This was a marvel of learning, a sumptuous panorama of somewhat saccharine mythical paintings, presented superbly by our fraternal guest, Trevor Clarke, member of the Richard Wagner Society of Victoria (or Danielgrad, as it is apparently now known – we wish that great State had kept its original moniker, Batmania). Trevor’s two hour talk was a fascinating and wide-ranging review, dazzling, and in some ways, dizzying, in its vast construct of connections and influence. Wagner obviously drew on the visual arts in a myriad ways –…
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