Tuesday, October 04, 2005

First Posting and already highly opinionated

Moravsky podzim is in full swing at the moment. This is a classical music festival for the cognoscenti. A program which flaunts the Grieg Piano Concerto as an overture to the Tchaikovsky Pathetique (23.9) can only be outdone by one frolicking in the pop music of Bizet and Saint Saens (30.9). And despite being in different venues, the piano concertos were played on the same tired old thuddy Bosendorfer which needs at least restringing, if not an overhaul of the entire action. The cognoscenti demand more! They've told me.

But one should not start with an incision. A gentle swab before the knife plunges in is just what the doctor ordered. The real overture to the concert on the 23rd was Erbeniada by Blatný, a composer who proved beyond reasonable doubt that he is still with us by appearing on stage at the end of the work ... to modest applause. It is a wonderful work and quite possibly the best piece of Czech music I have heard from a living composer. With compositional talent like that in our midst, one wonders why a piece such as this did not win the ... composition competition last year.

As this is my first post, I shall stop here and see what it looks like. Plenty more gushings where that came from ...

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