Category Archive: MUSIC
The Time of the Preacher
Happy Birthday, Mr Honey/Whiskey Tonsils! Now (for God’s sake) get your hair cut! Willie is 83 today, which unfortunately means we may have to contemplate pushing him into TVC’s Dead Pool ™ some time soon…. But for now, let’s celebrate both kinds of great music – country and western – and from Texas, at that. Willie is the last man standing at the Alamo, now that Waylon Jennings has gone. He has ‘cut’ a bunch of great ‘discs’ in his time but we particularly like: Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain Blue Skies (which everyone used to sing,…
Continue Reading →Prince Goes Uptown
(photo by Jimi Hughes)
Vale Prince Rogers Nelson (7/6/1958 – 21/4/2016) Pardon the painful allusion, but a lot of his songs, technically superb as they are, were strictly elevator music. But there’s Pop Life, Let’s Go Crazy, 1999, Nothing Compares 2 U, Raspberry Beret, Kiss, Sexy M.F., Peach and Cream. Many of his songs had production touches frankly reminiscent of novelty songs, but he had je ne sais quoi – he had the power – he was virtually a cult. And now he’s gone uptown. Vale.
Continue Reading →I Go to Sleep
(Turandot, Metropolitan Opera of New York, 2016) Once again TVC turned up to the Nova Palace in Adelaide to watch another chocolate-box treat in the form of Turandot, Puccini’s last opera, filmed in January 2016 at the New York Met (not the Mets). This ‘Orientalist’ production based on an original design by Franco Zefferelli (who knew a thing or two about prettying-up a set) is choreographed beautifully, in a yin-tong, Mikado style, by Chiang Ching. A troika of sopranos have appeared in the run and the HD film (courtesy of the Neubauer Family Foundation – we must invite that family to Australia and show them a good…
Continue Reading →A Wagner Timeline
As Robert W. Gutman observed, “cannonades preluded the birth of Richard Wagner“.* When he passed up, from Venice to Valhalla, almost seventy years later, he had been working on “The Feminine Element in Humanity”, a concept bearing some similarity to work of another German giant, Goethe, and he expired in the arms of his wife, Cosima. Betwixt 4 am on 22 May, 1813, and 3.30 pm on 13 February, 1883, the greatest music dramatist that ever lived led a hectic, crowded life, one that defies encapsulation, even by the very best biographers. You’d need to spare a couple of decades, travel a…
Continue Reading →Impressions of Die Walküre
Josef Hoffman design for Act I, 1876
Richard Wagner Society, 3 April 2016 The Society had a lovely afternoon discussing ‘Visions of Die Walküre,‘ when Wagner enthusiasts spoke of varied productions across the map, and three distinguished speakers (plus yours truly) gave some formal shape to the issues. Neville Hannaford reviewed leading recordings, from the Chereau/Boulez centenary production at Bayreuth to the visually impressive (albeit quirky – Hunding’s hut is represented as a circle of stones) but weakly-acted Valencia offering. He selected Bayreuth as the best naturalistic version, featuring the best Siegmund (Peter Hoffman) and Hunding (a formidable Matti Salminen, who also appeared at Valencia). …
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