Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Mahler's First and Second Symphonies

Gustav Mahler
(July 7, 1860 – May 18, 1911)

Today is the 100th anniversary of Mahler's death.  In an effort to due credit to the man behind the music, I will be posting his music throughout the month starting with his first and second symphonies.

Performed by the NY Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein:

Symphony No. 1 in D, Titan
Click HERE to download.

Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Resurrection
Click HERE to download.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Gluck's Air des Furies

Christoph Willibald Gluck's Air des Furies, from his opera Orphée et Euridice, is one of my favorite selections to listen to. Brilliantly composed with passion, swelling runs, and a thorough bass line, you can't help but feel it. Make it loud and listen proud.



Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Johann Strauss's Vienna Blood Waltz

Another classic waltz by Strauss. Most of you should've heard this before somewhere.



Saturday, April 9, 2011

Eric Whitacre's Sleep

Another piece from the wonderful composer Eric Whitacre.  This time, the second piece he ever composed, Sleep.  Here performed by Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 2.0.  This recording is comprised of 2052 individual performances of Sleep totaling 1752 singers from 58 countries.  All of the performances were individually recorded and uploaded to YouTube between September 2010 and January 2011.  They were all edited together to create one glorious sound.




Sunday, April 3, 2011

Popol Vuh's Aguirre

This is the greatest score to any movie that wasn't scored by a soundtrack composer (i.e. Williams, Shore, Elfman, etc.).  This album features six songs, three of which are from the movie Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes.  This film, directed by Werner Herzog, is considered by Roger Ebert to be one of the greatest movies ever made in the history of the world.  The performance given by Klaus Kinski is ... Kinskian.  There's really no other way to describe it.  Popol Vuh is a "krautrock" band.  I have no idea what krautrock is, but what I do know, is that Popol Vuh is awesome.  Morgengruß II and Aguirre II are my favorite tracks on the album.  The linked album has a couple extra files (split versions of Aguirre I into L'Acrime di Rei / Flöte, etc.) so I've put the track listing here so you can reference it and make sure you just pick the right ones and in the right order, etc.

Track Listing:
  1. Aguirre I                         7:22
  2. Morgengruß II                2:55
  3. Aguirre II                        6:15
  4. Agnus Dei                       3:03
  5. Vergegenwärtigung       16:51
  6. Aguirre III                       7:16

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Aghaei and Jacobsen's Ascending Bird

This is a pretty cool piece, again performed by the 2011 Youtube Symphony Orchestra. The video also features Kseniya Simonova, a Ukranian sand artist. I'll maybe write a description up of it later.