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Category: May 2014

“L’escalier du diable” – György Ligeti‏

one of the benefits of watching a piano
competition, or any recital, or concert,
for that matter, is in finding gems you
wouldn’t otherwise have heard of

at the 14th Arthur Rubinstein International
Piano Master Competition
held only last
month, May, Sun Yutong delivered a
riveting Ligeti, “L’escalier du diable”,“The
Devil’s Staircase”,
great, incidentally, title

here’s Sean Chen doing the same piece, if
you don’t have time for the extraneous
elements of a competition, however
meritorious this exhilarating presentation
might’ve been

cheers

Richard

psst: find Yutong doing the Ligeti at 28:00

“Fernando”, revisited‏


despite still so profound an emotional
impact I haven’t been the only one to
wonder about Fernando‘s specifics

what’s happening, apart from the
throbbing melancholy, glory

it turns out that there are a couple of
people here, two men, or maybe a man
and a woman, reviewing a long gone
night when they crossed the Rio Grande

so Mexico, rather than Spain, must’ve
been the setting, I conjectured

the Mexican-American War, 1846 –
1847, established the border between
the victorious Americans and Mexico

these two must’ve been remembering
a particular private night, but I suspect
a more momentous night, conquering
territory, however ultimately it may
have been, however ignobly, lost

Wes Carr, an Australian Idol contestant,
does an impressive interpretation of a
song that is too iconic
to much ever
overtake, not to mention overwhelm

but what do you think

Richard