Friday Soirée III: Dangerous Ideas
I'm not certain that "dangerous ideas" is exactly right, but I'm not certain that it's not, either. Tonight's program is a bit longer so let's get right to it.
One of the "dangerous ideas" is due to Darwin, to use the phrase that Daniel Dennett used in his excellent book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, a book that I tremendously enjoyed reading and that I've found stays with me in a way that very few books do. (My book note.) So, in the intermission of tonight's musical program we'll have some remarks by Dennett on why Darwin's big idea was so dangerous.
The music tonight was all written by Dmitri Shostakovich, certainly in my canon of greatest twentieth-century composers. His music, in addition to being tremendously exciting, at its best seems to me ironic and somehow filled with ideas. Whether those ideas were "dangerous", who can say. It's music, after all, and it expresses its ideas differently. Were they subversive? Stalin apparently thought so.
Piano Trio No. 2 in e minor, op. 67, IV
Our musical program is nearly chronological. This first offering is the final (fourth) movement of Shostakovich's second piano trio, written in 1944. Some people find it profoundly disturbing; I find it profoundly moving, although that's not an incompatible assessment. The work was dedicated to Ivan Sollertinsky, a close friend of Shostakovich's who had just died, and who was Jewish. That latter fact is used to explain the prominent klezmer-sounding tune that appears in this movement, but I have a hard time not hearing it as a very bitter reminder of what was happening in war-time Germany at the time with the "final solution".
This performance is by Cristian Valenzuelal piano; Jimmy Liu, violin; and Abe Katzen, cello, at Cornell University. It's about 10 minutes long.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player. The other movements, performed by the same group: I, II, III]
String Quartet No. 8 in c minor, op 110, I & II
The eighth string quartet, written in 1960, is the one by Shostakovich that gets played most often, and not without reason. It has a great deal to offer, particularly in the dangerous-idea category. We'll listen only to the first two movements (of five).
In this quartet there is an abundance of musical material that sounds very, very Shostakovich, largely because he used it over and over again. The opening four-note motif is the Shostakovich "signature": D-S-C-H (or D-E♭-C-B) that he used continually, but there are other familiar themes that make this work seem pivotal. There is material (in this movement and later ones) that should sound familiar from the e-minor trio (above), and in a later movement there are quotations from the cello concerto (below).
This performance is by the Seraphina String Quartet, about 7 minutes long.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Daniel Dennett & Jonathan Miller: Why Darwin's idea is so dangerous
In 2005 Johathan Miller put together a BBC series called "Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief" (links are listed on the YouTube page for this video, linked below). As the story goes, s series of six supplementary programs was made from material that did not fit into the program; this was dubbed "The Atheism Tapes". This is one of those.
In under 10 minutes Dennett gives a very succinct explanation for why he thinks the idea of natural selection is so significant and also so scary, still causing people to react against it with such violent emotion.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-Flat Major, op. 107, I
This concerto, which you should recognize as being by Shostakovich just by hearing it after listening to the pieces above, is from 1959, just the year before the eighth quartet. Perhaps that explains why there are so many musical ideas that seem to flow back and forth between them.
This concerto is certainly one of the all-time great concerti for cello, but I think that, like few of its peers (the exception is Dvorak's cello concerto), it is also great music and of interest regardless of its cello-ness. This first movement of the work, which begins with a distorted statement of the DSCH signature, is relentless and thrilling.
This performance is by Tina Guo, cello, with Enrique Batiz conducting the State of Mexico National Symphony. It last about 7 minutes.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player. The other movements of the concerto by the same performers: II, III]
In: All, Friday Soirée, Music & Art, The Art of Conversation
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on Saturday, 29 August 2009 at 12.36
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Very entertaining. Nice to hear a Shostakovich chamber and orchestral work. Thanks.