Most spiritual performances

Started by Carlos von Kleiber, August 06, 2011, 02:11:09 PM

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AnotherSpin

Quote from: Mandryka on August 06, 2011, 11:51:28 PM[..]
The bit with the cellos and basses  at the start of the second movement of Pfitzner's Beethoven 3
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Probably the Silvestri Missa Solemnis but I have never heard it -- someone please upload
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The two seconds of transition between the 2nd and 3rd movement of Edwin Fischer's studio 10.3
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First I didn't understand how 2 seconds or a bit or a never heard performance could be spiritual?

The answer came a little later. It doesn't matter how many bits or seconds it takes to know you are. That you were not born and will never die, that you are beyond time and space, that you and now are synonymous. You mean your self, not music you hear at the moment. Or even one not heard, it doesn't matter --spirituality is you.

What is very compelling is that there are very few things on the list that belong to the 20th century. Mahler songs, Rachmaninoff transcriptions, Prokofiev. Nothing in the list which is atonal, dissected, reduced, distorted or perverted. Nothing from the alluring games of the mind, the opposite of the spiritual.

Mandryka

#21
Quote from: AnotherSpin on August 27, 2023, 10:10:28 PMFirst I didn't understand how 2 seconds or a bit or a never heard performance could be spiritual?

The answer came a little later. It doesn't matter how many bits or seconds it takes to know you are. That you were not born and will never die, that you are beyond time and space, that you and now are synonymous. You mean your self, not music you hear at the moment. Or even one not heard, it doesn't matter --spirituality is you.

What is very compelling is that there are very few things on the list that belong to the 20th century. Mahler songs, Rachmaninoff transcriptions, Prokofiev. Nothing in the list which is atonal, dissected, reduced, distorted or perverted. Nothing from the alluring games of the mind, the opposite of the spiritual.

Roger Reynolds is a good one to explore in that respect I think, The Serpent Snapping Eye for example. It's a partly improvised piece, I'm thinking of the performance with Edwin Harkins.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darĂ¼ber muss man schweigen

atardecer

Maybe this would qualify:

In 1915 Scriabin gave a spirited recital in St. Petersburg, towards the end he reportedly seemed to be in a kind of trance-state at the piano. Afterwards he said it was one of the few times he ever became so absorbed in the music that he became unaware of the audience. 

Two days later he unexpectedly passed away.
"What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup." - Boris Pasternak
"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's" - Carl Jung
"In the wind I hear the poems lost in time" - Sappho

hopefullytrusting

Quote from: AnotherSpin on August 27, 2023, 10:10:28 PMFirst I didn't understand how 2 seconds or a bit or a never heard performance could be spiritual?

It's spiritual; it's absurd on its surface.

An example for me is that I view the entirety of Beethoven's 9th Symphony as context for 1:16:23 to 1:16:50.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn0IS-vlwCI&t=3705s