Shostakovich Doesn't Care What You Think Of His YouTube Video
A little ballet music and a pretty sweet bass instrument:
Here he plays the end of his own piece:
And here are some typical deadpan shots and a taste of what he was working on around about the time of the war:
Remind anyone else of Pearl Bomb by the Melvins? A little, a little.
Here's my favorite recent discovery, the unusually chill second movement of Piano Concerto #2:
I love those comforting/menacing strings. Shostakovich does Chopin. I do really like it. You sort of have to enjoy feeling nervous and giddy to enjoy Shostakovich's impulsive context switches, but this piece shows he could even get something on your Soothed By the Greats mixtape if he felt like.
And for no reason besides Bach is super, a little touch of J.S. in the night:
I don't know why this piece, which is the opening of his St. John Passion, reminds me of Blonde Redhead. Well I suppose there's that descending chord progression, that takes a handful of measures longer than you expect to get to its lowest point... and the pipes linger a little too long, too, and overlap, and there's that steady pulse of the bass and string arpeggio. I have a recording of this that I'd have worn out if you could do that with mp3s. Whether this has something in common with Blonde Redhead, or I'm crazy, judge for yourself here, here, and here.
Currently Listening Bach: St. John Passion / Gardiner, The English Baroque Soloists By Johann Sebastian Bach, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Nancy Argenta, John Eliot Gardiner, Neill Archer, Cornelius Hauptmann, The Monteverdi Choir, Michael Chance, The English Baroque Soloists, Richard Earle, Lisa Beznosiuk, Pavlo Beznosiuk see related
