02 January 2013

Astride the rolling years

Things I had never guessed the missus and I would do together New Year’s Eve:
 
  1. Listen to bits of Shostakovich’s film scores to Hamlet and Alone.
  2. I’d read “Annabel Lee” to her.
 
The Poe is not particularly holiday fare (what of Poe’s is?) but then, this is partly why (to borrow a line from Kate Hepburn in The Lion in Winter) I should have been a great fool not to love her.
 
The resolution I slouched into is, to listen to something I’ve never heard before, each day of January.
 
Yesterday: Tchaikovsky’s Concert Fantasy for piano and orchestra, Op.56, and two “juvenile” string quartets by Rakhmaninov.
 
To-day: Shostakovich’s complete score to New Babylon, and Rakhmaninov’s The Rock, Op.7 – another early work, come to think of it.
 
Thinking bits of both the Organ Sonata and Annabel Lee to-day, must make sure to scribble some actual measures, to remain in compliance.
 

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