Classical Music for Aficionados

@frogman -- I enjoyed my Nyiregyhazi Lizst LP for a good while but, yeah, he's not exactly for the long haul. As much as I love a bit of self-indulgence, he went a bit over the edge. And am I nuts, or did I actually see him live in L.A.? Maybe at the Ambassador Auditorium?

I'll chime in and report my love for the music of Philip Glass.  He is a great composer.  While his earlier works -- such as the operas Akhnaten and Satyagraha -- are perhaps his best-known, and I enjoy them, I particularly love later works, such as the opera Kepler.

Kepler is an astonishingly beautiful, rhythmically forceful and impactful opera. The CD of Kepler is well worth a listen -- it rocks!

Glass's opera Orphee is also one of my favorites.  It is based on Jean Cocteau's great film, Orpheus, but in my view, arguably surpasses the original (just as Verdi's Otello arguably surpasses Shakespeare's Othello).

Other great Glass works include his 8th Symphony, his cantata Itaipu, and his first violin concerto (get the Kremer version).  Much of his best work is unfortunately not available on Qobuz, but is readily available on CD.  I strongly recommend a 2017 recording streaming on Qobuz -- Vikingur Olafsson's record of Glass Piano Works.  

About 40 years ago I was taking a class from the foremost Philosopher
at the Sorbornne in Paris .

She said something I never forgot ." No one who has watched TV could
ever do what Mozart did "

Still makes sense to me . Imagine the digital brain !

I listened Satyagraha this night and i was not disappointed at all...

I dont know which one i prefer, i will say that Akhnaten seems more formally mature and i think was written 4 years after Satyagraha...

Anyway the music in Satyagraha is like in Akhnaten , incantatory, but at a level near gripping ectasy...

Then like meditation and silence could be boring to some, a ritual could be insupportable for unprepared listener... And to appreciate these operas we must see and lived immersed through them anyway...It is not works written to be evaluated at distance by esthetical values on a performance scale, it is a world revelatory of the deepest and the oldest stratas in the human mind.... It is way more intense work than only a merely beautiful work.... They are more like therapeutical catharsis....They dont move you by touching feeling only , they grip you completely at the level of the will...

Glass created here more than a mere "art" work but reach the level of Bach passions, which are way more than an exercise in musical style....A spiritual event is not a pleasurable distraction....( By the way here i dont say that Glass has the musical genius mastery  of Bach, no one have this mastery in occidental history for me,  i only say that this 2 works of Glass may be  impactful in the future  like Bach passions were in  traditional christianity, they own this potential)

History is throwd in the cosmos like in very ancient religion and is based on experience not on dogmas as much...This feeling of Akhnaten pervade also satyagraha... The force of the will here is a cosmic event not only a human free choice...

We must listen very carefully to appreeciate this opera which is thought to be like in Wagner, a worldwide event impactful ceremony, a bit like the spiritual musical ceremony to save the world in Scriabin idea ....

No direct use of classical Indian music permeate the work, instead a telluric inspiration coming more from very old rythms or hypnotic varying melopea remind me of pre-historical tales......

This music grip us and is designed to do so like in trance ceremony, or probably the rythm in ancient mysteries...

This music is created by Glass and suggest to me that the consciousness level of the artist put him on touch with the common spiritual ground of any religion : the pure experience of the sacred...

His operas , all of them, but i know just 2 for now,remind me of the "Passion genre" in occidental musical history....And after all Christ has revealed also the most intimate human experience with God on the world stage for ALL and each humans not for a few chosen one...Satyagraha is the " passion" for justice and freedom....

Glass made history with these 2 works....

It is not moving melodies who will stay in your ear, it is complete transformative ceremony designed to rewire the brain...

Music is not there to be loved only , like we love our most precious esthetic values and chosen love one or our childs...

Music is to be thought of like a "mystery at play" in our body and mind and soul, and we must wait for a new surprizing and sometimes troubling revelation each time ....Music teach us something and is not only an esthetical possession by our feeling, it is also an ethical an spiritual education of the will, a yoga... ...

But we must be ready...

I was ready to welcome Philip Glass....

This music is at the genius level of Wagner not so much by creating something ideologically "new" like in the Wagner purely "german" case, but by reinitializing ancient spiritual experience in the brain/heart stratas of all humans....

My best to all....