I was fortunate enough to hear the great man play twice, the first time at a fund raiser for the Musicians Pension Fund in Philharmonic Hall in New York, with George Szell conducting the New York Philharmonic. They played Mozart K. 466, the Piano Concerto in D Minor, my favorite.
The second time was near the end of Rubinstein’s life, a solo concert at Symphony Hall in Boston. It was a common belief at the time Rubinstein lacked the depth and chops to play late-Beethoven (as far as I know, he never recorded them. Thus it was a bit of a surprise to see Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 111, the last, on the program. The piece is murderously difficult, but the old man (he was nearing 90) played it with such aplomb I still hear in my head a half-century later.
Here the master plays the B-Flat Minor Scherzo by his beloved Chopin. Enjoy.
A stunning video from 2021 of the recording session that resulted in the release below. Such sounds as I’ve never before, it’s a fine complement with the Morales Requiem for Philip II, posted earlier. Josquin de Prez is regarded by many music scholars as the greatest composer of the Renaissance. Watch and listen to gleen why.
Translated: Overture to the Flying Dutchman as Sight-read by a Bad Spa Orchestra at 7 in the Morning by the Well.
Playing as bad as they can.
Two amusing things happening here.
Paul Hindemith wrote this as a comic work, which its title makes clear. Yet observe the audience. None of them even cracks a grin, which suggests they are either tone-deaf or, more charitably, not aware the piece is a send-up, and are doing their best to maintain straight faces as a virtuoso ensemble plays like a bunch of amateurs.
There’s something infectious about these beautifully crafted compositions. While there are certainly jazz idioms throughout, your Tatler’s ears tell him Schoenfield’s oeuvres are more a hybrid of classical and jazz; jazzy compositions using classical forms and nomenclature, i.e, presto, andante, etc. There is also an element of what might be called “controlled chaos,” evoking Spike Jones.
Perhaps though, it’s wiser to pay no mind to the Tatler’s slightly preposterous jargon above and just throw this on the ol’ digital Victrola, sit back and enjoy it.
Not really, Mr von Hoffman has been dead these six years, and is no longer well known, but he was most certainly well known 50 years ago when he got into huge trouble for his utterances on CBS Television over the collapsing presidency of Richard Nixon during the height, or depths, of the Watergate scandal. He was fired for them.
Von Hoffman, a leftist, but a very funny one, on a segment of CBS’s 60 Minutes program called “Point/Counterpoint,” which your Tatler saw, likened the soon-to-be-former President Nixon to a “dead mouse on the kitchen floor.”
But that’s not all he said. Read the rest and keep in mind our current president. Ask yourself if the words below might just apply to him and his administration.
“The question is who is going to pick [the mouse] up by the tail and drop it in the trash. At this point it makes no difference whether he resigns, thereby depositing himself in a sanitary container, or whether Congress scoops him up in the dustpan of impeachment. But as an urgent national health measure, we’ve got to get that decomposing political corpse out of the White House.”
With thanks to Reason Magazine for the complete quote.
Why hello, are you still checking into this moribund blog? Your Tatler is tickled pink there are a precious few still interested in it. Grateful thanks to you few. Your reward for such loyalty is, for what it’s worth, this blog’s revival, but taking a slightly different editorial tack.
Critical essays on the mess that is our Holy Catholic Church shall continue, but with less frequency (to dwell on it is too dispiriting, pun intended) and more attention devoted to interesting musical finds and reviews. Also, of course, there will be pieces on the unseaworthy and poorly managed Biden ship of state, with its hopelessly incompetent crew, and its inevitable sinking or foundering on the shoals of the Trump campaign.
For now however, here is news of a marvelous musical discovery, made only today.
Note: the brief description of this recording is adapted from an email sent to a priest friend.
Cristóbal de Morales (c. 1500-1553): Officium defunctorum Missa pro Defunctis (1544)
Archiv Production 457 597-2
A wonderful discovery: a disc from your Tatler’s increasingly unplayed CD collection (it’s almost entirely hi-res streaming these days, Qobuz being the server of choice, it having the deepest classical catalog (which includes the recording being reported on here) and the best sound.
Your Tatler has no idea where or how the disc made it into his collection, but suspects he saw it in a Taos thrift shop and bought it (probably for 50 cents), because it looked interesting. He then promptly forgot about it.
[Correction: the CD, it turns out, was a gift years ago from the distinguished “ecclesiastical historian manque,” as he likes to refer to himself, William J. Tighe. The Tatler regrets the error and warmly thanks his historian friend of many years.]
It turned up–how else–when looking for something else. Curiosity peaked, as the composer was unknown to your Tatler, he played it. What a glorious and beautiful surprise, it’s quite unlike the many musical settings of the Requiem Mass your Tatler has heard or chanted in. The recording was made in 1998 and appears to be the only one made of the work. The recording also has something rarely heard* in most recordings of the Requiem Mass, the inclusion of the Mass in its entirety: the ordinary and propers of course, plus every word intoned or chanted, prayers, scripture readings, everything but the homily, if there was one.
The advantage of this inclusiveness is that anyone who has yet to experience a celebration of the Latin Mass, can, in the recording, get an idea of its mystical beauty and, we hope, appreciate the great tragedy of it being dropped after so many centuries of its celebration. This recording is a must have then, not only for the serious music lover, but Latin Mass enthusiasts, as well.
Addendum: for those interested in learning a little more about Christóbal de Morales and his Requem, the following brief piece found on a Barcelona website should prove helpful.
*The only other recording known to your Tatler, who had a hand in its re-release, is the Requiem Mass with Mozart’s music, celebrated in Boston following the assassination of President Kennedy. Heavy with history and tragedy, it is a monumental recording. Be aware though, it was recorded in difficult conditions, the packed Holy Cross Cathedral, so the sound quality is only barely adequate. Cuts were made as well, but it is an important and historical document.
–Attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, Chief of Josef Stalin’s Secret Service.
A similar but more detailed offering was given by Robert Houghwout Jackson, Attorney General of the United States and Assosociate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm-in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.
–Kerri Kupec Urbahn on X
Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan D.A., campaigned as the best candidate to go after the former president.
Since this writer alluded in his last post to the College of Cardinals and the future of the Papacy, the thought occured to him future outcomes of conclaves might produce different results, were membership in the College determined by the process of competitive examination, as with the peerage in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe.
How an examination may be accomplished and conducted is way beyond your Tatler’s capabilities, but he recently came across a splendid possibility for the format of at least some of the questions asked in an examination for membership in the Sacred College. It is seen below.
Judge Andrew P. Napolitano attended a forum on Thomas Acquinas last week at the Vatican. He stayed at the Domus, the Pope’s house, and from there he wrote an excellent primer on Aquinas and free will. He closed however with some words about the pope, which is what we are concerned with here. From the essay:
I spent last week living and studying at the Vatican as a guest lecturer at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, or PASS.
. . .
[T]he current Pope may be the worst in history. He has watered down Church teaching on marriage, sexuality and confession.
He has suppressed the Mass that every canonized saint in Heaven attended and participated in. His attacks on traditional theology and liturgy are the opposite of what he is supposed to do — which is to preserve them
Nevertheless, it was surreal when he was brought in to the guesthouse dining room, using a walker and an assistant at each arm. It was bizarre when he sat with his back to us . . .
The Pope is in poor health, can barely speak or walk; and he radiates sadness. I was thrilled to reside in his home for four days, but I don’t think he’ll be there much longer.
The “Without Comment” above is there because, at least in this writer’s opinion, Catholics should never wish harm to, or express pleasure or hope at, the condition of this or any pope (Judge Napolitano’s comments though are certainly within bounds). Rather, we should pray for him and let our Lord determine where and when his ultimate fate.
Worth pointing out though, is there have been so many appointments made by Pope Francis of Cardinals sympathetic to his modernist views, little if anything will change (except, possibly, for the worse) in the Vatican no matter who Francis’s successor is. All the layman can do is pray for Holy Church. Her present situation cannot and will not last forever. We may not live to see it, but our successors will. We pray for their sake.
THE TAOS TATLER. 