How do you fill a large hall for 20th-century repertoire? Play Rachmaninov. Composers who lived through these turbulent and violent times but composed in their own styles, rooted in romanticism or not, rather than the supposedly prevailing avant-garde, should be indivisible from our complete artistic picture of their age. Yet it's taken a startling amount of hindsight to reach the idea that someone who died in the 1940s is not "really 19th-century". (Sergei Rachmaninov: 1873-1943.)
These composers - Strauss, Rachmaninov, Korngold, et al - were as much of their specific era in their own ways as anyone else. Well done to The Rest is Noise for taking such a radical step - which should have been obvious years ago, but, well, you know how it goes in this funny little world...
Tonight at the RFH it's Sergei's turn. The fabulous Simon Trpceski plays the Third Piano Concerto and the LPO top it off with the Second Symphony. Yannick Nezet-Seguin is sadly off sick, but Mikhail Agrest has stepped in to save the day. Oh, and it's full (might be some returns, though, from Yannick fans). Yes, 20th-century music is popular when it's allowed in from the cold.
The fact that Rachmaninov is a man for more recent years is all too obvious...
Brief Encounter, 1945
Eric Carmen, 'All By Myself', 1975
Dana, 'Never Gonna Fall In Love Again', 1976
It's also true that the greatest music has something indescructible about it. Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Chopin are just a few of the other towering figures whose works have been set, reset, ripped off, shredded and otherwise bowdlerised, and still survive and often sound as good as ever. That puts Rachmaninov in excellent company.
Try Chopin. Once a Parisian sophisticate, always a Parisian sophisticate.
Serge Gainsbourg/Jane Birkin, 'Jane B', 1969
5 comments:
Ah, how I remember that Chopin piece! I don't think he would have minded Jane covering it, do you?
Good points, but can we also hear it loud and strong for:
the re-setters like Bach
the rippers-off like Liszt
the shredders like Ravel
and the bowdlerisers like Busoni
Long ago it was films such as "Brief Encounter" and others that were my introduction to Classical Music, for which I am forever grateful But as someone who worked on a station platform only a handful of years after this film in retrospect it might have gained from the presence of some parcels porters with a robust view of life and sense of humour.
And what about all the jazz musicians to be added to the list?
Also, it's wonderful how traditional folk melodies seem to survive despite being ripped off and shredded by the likes of Brahms, Bartok, Kodaly, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Smetana, Britten... (contd. p94). Or to put it another way, how many listeners bother to investigate, for example, the original pieces siliconised by Respighi into his cheesy 'Ancient Airs and Dances'? The mainstream classical tradition is the biggest bowdlerised mash-up of all.
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