Monday 12 October 2009

A Tale of Two Concerts

Radio 3 last Friday (9th Oct): Martinu, Strauss - 4 Last Songs - Mahler's 10th Symphony, First Movement (Adagio).
Picked up on Martinu through Radio 3's composer of the week for a couple of days when I was off sick.
Mahler - hadn't listened to this for ages, even years. The shattering power of this movement is actually remarkably invigorating: if the 9th Symphony is a gut-wrenching emotional evisceration (if that's a word), of the nearness of the end, this pulls you beyond to a sense of beyond destruction, the phoenix from the ashes and all that. A triumph and a glimpse of what Mahler might have become in a modernist age if he'd lived longer.


Picture from www.thsh.co.uk, accessed 12/10/09.

Town Hall last night (11th Oct): Old Dance School, Toy Hearts, Destroyers.
Lively, tuneful, atmospheric - and in the case of the Destroyers, completely and superbly mad.
Folk (Dance School), bluegrass with their own songs (Toy Hearts), Klezmer in thrash-tuba-fiddle-guitar mode.
Tremendous talent and all local bands!

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