A Quote Just Before February 2011

Xenakis and Messiaen: Because I couldn't find a picture of Messiaen and Varèse (it was always going to be a long shot). Taken from a 'Q & A' with James Dillon on The Arts Desk.

Varèse, whom I heard him [Messiaen] describe as 'my brother, who does for the urban landscape what I try to do with nature'.

Alexander Goehr: Finding The Key ('The Messiaen Class').

Also do check out this Varèse documentary extract on YouTube. Best thing I've seen on him so far but I can't find out where to get the full length film. Don't think it's the new Frank Schaeffer film Varese: The One All Alone (which I haven't seen, yet). Looks too dated but it's hard to tell with all the stock footage and YouTube compression etc.

Lutoslawski Video: It's Mi Parti and I'll Cry If I Want To

Lutoslawski (R): Garden party guests never tired of Witold's jokes about limited aletoricism and Soviet repression.

Alright so this post isn't actually about Lutoslawski's piece Mi Parti but I had to make use of that pun at some point - it was rapidly burning a hole in my blog-post-pun-title-pocket.

Instead you can watch a documentary imaginatively entitled 'Open Rehearsals With Witold Lutoslawski'. It was produced in 1984 for the USC School of Music.

I wasn't aware this existed until I spotted it in Ádám Kondor's FB news feed today (thanks to him then). Interesting to see him rehearse and conduct various bits and pieces of his repertoire and to hear him discuss some of his ideas (no new insights really, you'll find the same arguments in Conversations With Witold Lutoslawski and The Music of Lutoslawski for instance. Nice to hear it from him directly though, perhaps).

Below is the first part, you'll need to find the other three yourself. Good luck, we're all counting on you (ad libitum, natürlich).

TinyURL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/6y3m6bn