Musical surprises #24: What Rumanian dances sound like without the Bartók
I love Bartók’s Rumanian Dances, and indeed, I’ve just recorded them with the violinist Gillon Cameron on the album After Class 2. But I was gobsmacked when I heard my…
Musical surprises #23: Vauxhall, Strauss & Tchaikovsky
Although the light and popular dance rhythms of Johann Strauss II seem a sociocultural world away from the ‘classical’ Tchaikovsky, they’re not. It’s our own snobbery that obscures the connections…
Musical surprises #22: There’s a psychopomp in my barcarole
Next time you get to a slow bit of a ballet where there’s something a bit wafty and barcarole-ish in 6/8, look out for a psychopomp. A psychopomp, explains the…
Musical surprises #21: If you want to play for children’s ballet, study semiotics
Thanks to the musical semiotician Raymond Monelle and his wonderful book The Sense of Music, I am happily aware that there is a concept in music of a horse which…
Musical surprises #20: The end of Sleeping Beauty is a French song
That’s not the whole surprise, because it’s a fairly well-known fact that the big tune in the apotheosis of The Sleeping Beauty is an old French song, the pre-revolutionary national…
Musical surprises #19: That Russian sound is Italian
When you think of Russian folk music, what do you hear in your head? Probably the sound of someone playing a tune on a balalaika with that heart-rending tremolo on…