{"id":158882,"date":"2021-10-30T21:38:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-31T02:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/?p=158882"},"modified":"2021-11-02T08:21:12","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T13:21:12","slug":"boo-boo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/boo-boo\/","title":{"rendered":"Boo, boo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple years ago I posted a <a href=\"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/halloween-playlist\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Halloween playlist<\/a> focusing on eccentric music most people have never heard. This year I&#8217;m trying something a little different. Here&#8217;s some seasonally-appropriate piano music, some of which you may know and some of which may be strange to you.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alkansociety.org\/index.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Charles-Valentin Alkan<\/a> was allegedly the only pianist of their generation whom Liszt found intimidating. A reclusive eccentric, he wrote uncompromisingly difficult music that only in recent years has begun to enter the repertoire. Here&#8217;s Marc-Andr\u00e9 Hamelin with the finale to Alkan&#8217;s &#8220;Symphony&#8221; for solo piano, which has been characterized as a &#8220;ride through Hell.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hamelin plays Alkan - Symphony for solo piano (4th mvt) LIVE Audio + Sheet music\" width=\"840\" height=\"630\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Q6qh96b2D6A?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Raymond Lewenthal, who kick-started the Alkan revival fifty-odd years ago with his Alkan recordings, plays the entire symphony <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vwccwuTSre4\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. It includes a funeral march followed by a macabre minuet. A couple more pieces: &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=DlS9EsfmCd0\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Les diablotins<\/a>,&#8221; featuring tone clusters long before Henry Cowell was born; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EHNEWh_pjhU\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Scherzetto<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Liszt&#8217;s various &#8220;Mephisto&#8221; waltzes are too obvious to mention. Instead, here&#8217;s his set of variations on &#8220;Dies Irae,&#8221; &#8220;Totentanz.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Liszt - Totentanz (Audio+Sheet) [Cziffra]\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JWXnB9dCvcc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Bonus: from Liszt&#8217;s late, experimental works, the &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sHlkVrdBKR8\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Czardas Macabre<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Possibly the finest Halloween music ever composed is Ravel&#8217;s &#8220;Gaspard de la nuit.&#8221; Here&#8217;s Martha Argerich. (When Argerich was a student, her teacher at one point thought she had been slacking off and therefore assigned her &#8220;Gaspard.&#8221; Argerich didn&#8217;t know that it was nearly impossible and learned it in a week.)<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ravel. Gaspard de la Nuit - Martha Argerich (Live Saarbru\u0308cken 1972)\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/L31ftDLTlog?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>(This brings back non-treasured memories. Early one morning many years ago, the jackass in the apartment next to mine set the building on fire in a bungled suicide attempt. Fortunately, I was awake and the fire alarm worked, and everyone got out of the building safely. The firemen had the blaze under control before the flames reached my place, and I was able to retrieve most of my possessions later. However, there was much smoke and water damage (I boasted that I had the largest collection of dirty books in town, none of which were pornography). One of the casualties was Argerich&#8217;s early Ravel record, including &#8220;Gaspard,&#8221; which had been on the turntable when the fire started.)<\/p>\n<p>So you don&#8217;t like piano music, but you want to hear something beyond &#8220;Monster Mash&#8221;? Lee Hartsfeld has you covered. He&#8217;s recorded and restored ancient 78 rpm records of Halloweenish music and made them available to download <a href=\"http:\/\/musicyouwont.blogspot.com\/2021\/10\/shivery-shellac-for-halloween-at.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/musicyouwont.blogspot.com\/2021\/10\/shivery-shellac-part-2-little-nell-that.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. And <a href=\"http:\/\/musicyouwont.blogspot.com\/2021\/10\/shivery-shellac-part-3-beatrice-kay.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. The selection is amazing \u2014 the first batch includes Leopold Godowsky playing Edward MacDowell and Zez Confrey playing Zez Confrey. There&#8217;s Cole Porter and Paul Whiteman, jazz and ragtime and novelty tunes and much more, some terrific, some ridiculous. It&#8217;s worth a download or three.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple years ago I posted a Halloween playlist focusing on eccentric music most people have never heard. This year I&#8217;m trying something a little different. Here&#8217;s some seasonally-appropriate piano music, some of which you may know and some of which may be strange to you. Charles-Valentin Alkan was allegedly the only pianist of their &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/boo-boo\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Boo, boo&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-FkC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158882"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158996,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158882\/revisions\/158996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}