2 posts tagged “shostakovich”

It's Shostakovich's centenary, so here's a movement from the 4th Quartet. Listening to it again makes me think what an operatic composer he is, for someone who wrote so few operas: there's a lot of single line material, a lot of call and response, a lot of melodies that sound like they could be folk tunes (did he sneak them in, or did he just grow up in Russia?); a lot of stuff basically that could be sung by a large man with a big black beard.

Miles at Carnegie Hall, 1964. Great music, great sleeve. No-one ever looked sharper.

The grubby scan of this one doesn't do justice to the lush deep greenness of the original LP; this was the first classical record I can remember seeing (it was long before Kronos) where the artists weren't dressed up in daft white ties and tuxedos; the Fitzwilliams were from Cambridge: I'd worn those flares in those same fields - not the facial hair though.

Lastly, not an album but a 12-inch: old-skool deep phat beats and gnarly loops, super sw33t.