“Gustav is a composer. For months he has been carrying on a raging debate with Säure over who is better, Beethoven or Rossini. Säure is for Rossini. “I’m not so much for Beethoven qua Beethoven,” Gustav argues, “but as he represents the German dialectic, the incorporation of more and more notes into the scale, culminating with dodecaphonic democracy, where all notes get an equal hearing. Beethoven was one of the architects of musical freedom—he submitted to the demands of history, despite his deafness. While Rossini was retiring at the age of 36, womanizing and getting fat, Beethoven was living a life filled with tragedy and grandeur.”

“So?” is Säure’s customary answer to that one. “Which would you rather do? The point is,” cutting off Gustav’s usually indignant scream, “a person feels good listening to Rossini. All you feel like listening to Beethoven is going out and invading Poland. Ode to Joy indeed. The man didn’t even have a sense of humor. I tell you,” shaking his skinny old fist, “there is more of the Sublime in the snare-drum part to La Gazza Ladra than in the whole Ninth Symphony. With Rossini, the whole point is that lovers always get together, isolation is overcome, and like it or not that is the one great centripetal movement of the World. Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs. All the shit is transmuted to gold. The walls are breached, the balconies are scaled—listen!” It was a night in early May, and the final bombardment of Berlin was in progress. Säure had to shout his head off. “The Italian girl is in Algiers, the Barber’s in the crockery, the magpie’s stealing everything in sight! The World is rushing together. …”

so it goes, with this epic debate, beethoven or rossini.

i agree with gustav, and do not think it is even a fair debate. beethoven is everything; rossini is bourgeois nonsense.

so, when the dso set up rossini and beethoven on the same night, it set my pynchon senses tingling. surely, i'd have to crack it open again, right?

but, alas - this is merely beethoven's first, which is fairly well composed for classical music, but before beethoven's peak, and not going to drag me out of the house.

i'll still take it over rossini, though.

as for prokofiev, i expect nothing less than prancing russian unicorns.

it's a little light...

i was able to find my previous kali masi review, at least.

(https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2019/11/i-tend-to-avoid-sad-boy-emo-like-plague.html)

i suspect i'll check them out eventually, but probably not on a random tuesday in hamtramck.

https://kalimasi.bandcamp.com/album/wind-instrument

again: i'm rather certain that i mentioned something about this band around this time last year, when i realized the show in detroit was sold out. at the time, i was concerned about border issues, but i had decided i would try it...until i realized it was pointless, anyways.

i remember saying something about how i remembered slow magic from a chill wave kick i went on in the early 10s, and how i hadn't kept up with them much, since.

i also remember saying something about how i would keep track of shows i was missing. i can't find any of this...

that was a somewhat different context, as it was in a much smaller club, and i was kind of in need to get out. listening to it now, it no longer sounds fresh like it did all of those years ago - it sounds generic and overdone, and any interest i had has largely evaporated.

i posted videos and everything...

why delete this, and not something else?

https://slowmagic.bandcamp.com/

my initial perusal through the show listings for may actually pulled out the may 3rd show - which is chopin to start and xiu xiu to close - as the most likely day out, all month. it's even looking like it's going to be a nice day....

but, a closer look through the logistics indicates that this would not have been likely.

first, i wasn't entirely sure what "xiu xiu (solo)" actually meant. it seems like a jamie stewart acoustic set, which would have been of minimal interest to me. that's probably what i should have expected, but i just wasn't sure.

second, it turns out that the chopin set was in the suburbs, again - apparently so that orchestra hall could be rented by some students for a recital. this is actually sort of shocking, to me. it didn't happen, so i'm just going to leave it at that. but, it's sort of beyond disappointing to finally tune in, only to have them ship all of the interesting performances out of town, and replace them with watered down trash for the uneducated masses.

so, what that means is that what i thought would be a short walk to the orchestra hall, followed by a short walk to el club, would actually be an almost impossible transit nightmare out to the furthest reaches of the detroit metropolitan area and back, and neither this particular chopin piece nor a jamie stewart acoustic set would be of enough interest to me to justify such a thing, unless maybe i was out that way on the saturday night, anyways....

my interest in the chopin piece shouldn't be surprising given what i've already posted. the piano was the main instrument during the romantic era, which is the type of classical music that i find most compelling, so these concertos by beethoven, tchaikovsky, rachmaninov and now chopin are actually in a continuity with each other. the debussy is not far removed from it, either.

this particular piece by chopin was written when chopin was very young, and only months after beethoven had died. it is not difficult to tell who the dominant influence on the young chopin really was, meaning this comes off as a sort of addendum-to or beethoven-lite - which is not to say it's a bad piece, so much as to clarify that it is a little bit outside of chopin's own distinctive style. hey, i've been critical of myself for holding up my own influences on my sleeve as a teenager, as well. that was even normal 200 years ago, it turns out.

there's a high chance i'd have gone if i could have walked, but i don't know if i could have even bussed out to where it was.

let's hope the dso gets back to scheduling things downtown, next year. book the lightweight stuff in ferndale, or something...