Music Update

Okay. I may have been just a touch hasty in my assessment of the Gorecki Harpsichord Concerto.

It's still not a concerto. It's just not. There's no solo in the first movement. There's no interaction between the "soloist" and the orchestra, except that, you know, they're playing the same piece. And the first movement ends on some silly major chord, when the entire movement has barely modulated at all within the minor keys. The final chord, which comes from nowhere, sounds like the noise my iMac makes when I turn it on.

And the last movement is strange - there is some "interaction" - the harpsichordist plays a glorified version of chopsticks, the orchestra responds - it sounds like a train motif would in some sort of Wagner-inspired silent movie accompanied by an orchestra - the "train leitmotif." The first movement is briefly hinted at it - maybe a half bar, one bar before the end. Dumb.

But the first movement, in hindsight, has some value. It has a certain urgency, an ominour brooding, a sense of gathering menace. That might be left over because I read it while reading about civilian life in East Prussia during the end of the Second World War, and maybe had I listened to it while sipping cocktails on the beach, things would have been different.

But it has something - some deeper emotion that maybe I didn't pick up on the first time. I sort of like it. I still visualize some sort of Goetterdaemerung Berlin-in-flames closing scene from a movie, but no matter.