Jennyanykind - Big Johns - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Jennyanykind - I Need You [COMPACT DISCS] date 02/11/2000

Hans Sitt (1850-1928) was an extremely important personality in the transition between the 19th and 20th centuries, a great violinist by training and culture straddling Hungary, Bohemia and Germany, but even more of a great teacher who trained many of the great violinists of later years. He was also a remarkably prolific composer. Astonishing in his catalogue, however, is the enormous number (and weight) of his transcriptions of the most important 19th-century symphonic works for the duo of violin and piano. Sitt transcribed all (!) of Beethoven's nine Symphonies, already a cyclopean feat in itself, but also two by Haydn, one by Mozart, Schubert's two best-known (the Unfinished and Ninth), two by Mendelssohn and one by Schumann. This is a labour of unimaginable proportions, if one thinks of the difficulty of distilling for violin and piano these scores of vast proportions, entailing thousands of choices to be made in each bar, and again bar after bar. It is precisely in Sitt's choice of target ensemble that his transcriptions stand out from those around him, indicating his purpose as distinct from that of his peers. The clear majority of transcriptions of that era were for piano four-hands, because of the impression that dividing the piano between two performers halved the demands on piano technique and that the possibility of register-filling was more apt for the broad spectrum of an orchestra. Sitt's decision to transcribe, instead, for violin and piano allows him to make the violin a part among parts, to immerse it in the (very rich) piano fabric, sometimes giving it a thematic role and sometimes not, a display of compositional virtuosity which naturally requires the two performers to find the right balance between the sonic weights. It is also astonishing to say, but if one listens to it many times, Sitt's transcription of the Ninth ends up revealing aspects of th

Jenny Hollingworth, best known as one half of Let's Eat Grandma, steps into her own with Quicksand Heart - a 10-track debut that's equal parts tender and defiant. Taking the playful alias Jenny on Holiday, she trades the band's surrealist pop for a lucid, heartfelt exploration of joy after loss, drawing on the energy of punky basslines, twinkling synths, and the crystalline clarity of her voice. Written in the quiet of Norwich summers and honed in London studios with producer Steph Marziano, the record distils her love for straight-talking lyricism and bold, immediate pop - songs to be shouted in festival crowds or quietly carried home on the night bus.Rooted in the idea of a Inchquicksand heartInch - fragile, flawed, yet full of feeling - Hollingworth turns vulnerability into propulsion, weaving stories that shimmer between cinematic drama and simple truths. It's a work that embraces pop's directness without dulling it's emotional complexity.