Jimmie Allen - Tulip Drive - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The Goldberg Variations consist of an Aria followed by thirty variations and the reprise of the Aria at the end. Bach wrote the work for a harpsichord with two manuals, a given with which a pianist-who has only the one keyboard at his disposal-is painfully confronted when two voices cross each other his hands have to fight each other for the available space. Bach composed the variations around 1741, and chose an earlier Aria from the Klavierbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach for his theme. The Goldberg Variations were published in 1742. Bach couldn't have guessed that his Goldberg Variations would come to be considered one of the pillars of Western classical music. Yet with hindsight it's easy to understand the composition's undisputed place in the classical music tradition and repertoire. No composer before Bach had ever written so many variations on a single theme, and never so freely and richly filled with fantasy. Structure and feeling, form and content, reason and emotion are all beautifully in balance. Even with the enormous diversity in the variations, the relationship to the theme is always audible. The range and scale of the required keyboard techniques is enormous. A number of these techniques are akin to those of contemporaries, but others point far into the future. The Goldberg Variations form in this way a comprehensive keyboard tutorial, referring for example to the techniques of Domenico Scarlatti, a contemporary, but also leading the way to, among others, Chopin (Var. 26) and Liszt (Var. 29). Metamorphosis, one of Glass's best-known compositions for solo piano, is based on his music from a theatrical setting of Kafka's famous story InchDie VerwandlungInch (InchThe MetamorphosisInch) (1915), in which the protagonist Gregor Samsa wakes one morning to find himself changed into a giant beetle. There is no lack of high-flown interpretations of Glass's work.

L'étoffe des Rêves was naturally born from my strong desire to work with Marc Copland, so moved am I by his sound and his harmonic language. In this album, Jean Charles Richard's musical, literary and emotional influences have woven a music endowed with rare poetry. From the saxophonist's compositions to allusions to Claude Debussy, from a nod to Mussorgsky to the interpretation of Messiaen, this opus reveals a range of colors and images served by the harmonic science of the pianist for whom these timeless pieces seem to have always been intended. Here the mood is thoughtful. There is nothing demonstrative about these high-flying musicians. Just a sharing, an openness flirting sometimes towards a calm, sometimes gentle, melancholy. The fatal destiny of Shakespeare's Ophelia (Hamlet), also taken up in Arthur Rimbaud's poem, is served by Claudia Solal's precise, clear and gentle voice and the reassuringly and light tone of Vincent Ségal's cello. Diaphanous baritone, harmonies of twilight, in this suspended time the volatile confidences of this delicate quartet are cradled.

Skydive.Naked - Dive Harder [COMPACT DISCS] Germany - Import date 03/27/2012