Say "Bruch Violin Concerto" and we usually think of the No.1. But there are three, which I've just bought from Amazon. Here's the lovely opening to the No.2:

Hon Simon Power
Minister of Justice


Justice Minister releases ballpoint possession report

Justice Minister Simon Power has today released a report on ballpoint pen possession laws in order to stimulate public debate on the issue.

Charles Munch conducts the Boston Symphony in the final movement of Saint-Saens' much-loved Symphony No. 3:

In legend said to be written for Chopin's funeral, but in fact written to lament the failure of an uprising against the Hungarian monarchy. Martha Argerich on the piano first, and then a stunning performance by Pierre Labric of a transcription for organ:

SOLO-NZ Press Release: Sterilise the Politicians!

March 8, 2010

The desire of ACT MP David Garrett and Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws to sterilise scum who beat and murder their infant children is entirely understandable, and on the face of it laudable, says SOLO Principal Lindsay Perigo.

“It’s also, in their case, utterly hypocritical,” Perigo adds.

President Obamugabe's intention to ram Health Care Sovietization through by this hilariously misnamed process called "reconciliation" would appear to be at odds with his campaign statements.

This astonishing performance was discovered by Jason. It's the co-winner of the 2009 Cliburn Competition, a Japanese boy, Noboyuki Tsujii who's been blind since birth! The video is 7' 00" long but two and a half minutes of that is applause. The piece is Liszt's Etude on a theme by Paganini:

I'm restickying this since absolutely no one got it, except, apparently, the truly evil Psycho-Prof. Neither the brilliance of Mario's singing, nor that of the movie, was apparent to any of the braindead cruds here, except for the brain-alert Mr. Donohue. Well, I'll try again:

I've just watched the movie Notebook, made in 2004. It's the antithesis of "normal" contemporary unspeakable excrement.

Jessye Norman with the last of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs, "Im Abendrot." It doesn't get much more glorious than this:

Here's Yundi Li with Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu in C-sharp minor:

An English flavour today, what, as Sir Thomas Beecham conducts a piece by his friend Frederick Delius: the Intermezzo from FD's opera Fennimore and Gerda. Not so much KASS, what, as exquisitely sweet. Bally good show, what?!

As I've argued about religious music on other threads, the sublime serving the ridiculous, however incongruously. Case in point: Mozart's setting of the Ave Maria Corpus, the text supposedly written by a mediaeval pope, meditating on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. No question that it's heavenly:

SOLO-NZ Press Release: BSA Gets One Right

February 23, 2010

The Broadcasting Standards Authority, which should be abolished, has nonetheless made the right decision in refusing to censure TVNZ's Paul Henry for saying homosexuality is unnatural, says SOLO Principal Lindsay Perigo, himself a former TVNZ presenter ... and shameless homosexual.

This would be considered way over the top now: a truly KASS rendering by the stentorian Mario del Monaco of the famous lament in which Canio the Clown bemoans his lover's infidelity and the fact that the show must go on regardless. Clearly the audience can't get enough of "over the top." Damned drama queens are everywhere!

Continuing with my policy of keeping my men happy: here's Anna Netrebko with Puccini's O mio babbino caro. Value-swoon rating: 100/10:

SOLO-International Press Release: When Tigers Become Pussies

February 20, 2010

Tiger Woods's ritual self-abasement before the world today on the matter of his marital infidelities was pitiful, unnecessary and improper, says SOLO Principal Lindsay Perigo.

"Unfortunately such obscene ejaculations by stars in public have become commonplace in a world which has forgotten, as have the stars themselves, that what consenting or solitary adults do in private is no one else's business.

Kathryn Grayson, who co-starred in Mario Lanza's first two movies, and eighteen others, died in her sleep overnight at her California home. She was 88.

On the Giordano Bruno thread, Hilton Holder has unearthed this link to a YouTube video featuring the voice of the great Robert Green Ingersoll: orator, freethinker, fearless campaigner against totalitarian, sadistic, evil Christianity.

This is the finale to Pictures at an Exhibition, Modest Mussorgsky's musical depiction of an exhibition of works by his recently-deceased friend Viktor Hartmann. The first performance, portraying two pictures, Hut on Hen Legs and The Great Gate of Kiev, is an arrangement for orchestra by Ravel. The second, The Great Gate only, as written for piano, is a sizzling rendition by the great Evgeny Kissin. Hang on to your hairpieces darlings!:

A fun piece from The Marriage of Figaro in which the amorous page-boy Cherubino (played by a woman), about to be despatched to the army, is having the looming paucity of women rubbed in by Figaro. Listen for the interaction between singer and orchestra:

Recently re-ensconced in Auckland, I've taken to reading The Herald on Sunday on Sundays. Tabloid trash, mostly—the mindless "writing" about the matterless.

Mr. D found this glorious performance of Dove Sono from The Marriage of Figaro. He doesn't know I once called Kiri the rich man's Julie Andrews. She's undeniably much greater than a rich man's Julie Andrews in material like this:

Here's a tune you can whistle. And it's heavenly to boot:

This reminds me of the Oirishman who burned his ear upon being phoned while doing the ironing!

An exceptionally good recording of an exceptional thing, Wagner with melody. Sir Georg Solti conducts the Vienna Philharmonic: