1. A few works of classical music that you adore:

Verdi’s La Traviata; Bizet’s Carmen; Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet

2.  Classical music recordings that you treasure:

Callas‘ Traviata; Turandot with Pavarotti and Sutherland

3.  Favorite non-classical musicians and/or recordings:

Alannah Myles; Anastacia; Tiziano Ferro; Whitesnake; John Butler

4.  Music that makes you cry – any genre:

It can happen with any genre, any piece, any time when it collides with personal matters…

5.  Definitely underrated work(s) or composer (s):

Salieri

6.  Possibly overrated work(s) or composer (s):

Out of respect to art and the creative process, I wouldn‘t say such a thing. Art and music always stay subjective and a question of taste.

7.  Live music performance (s) you attended – any genre – that you’ll never forget:

My first rock concert: Bonfire; Arabella in London with Hampson and Mattila

8.  A few relatively recent films you love:

Das Leben der Anderen

9.  A few films you consider classics:

As Good As It Gets; Traviata by Zeffirelli

10.  A book (or two) that is important to you (and why):

Eat, Pray, Love – it helped

11.  Thing(s) about yourself that you’re most proud of:

I did everything by myself… also the mistakes

12.  Thing(s) about yourself that you’re embarrassed by:

I can‘t remember names!!

13.  Three things you can’t live without:

iPod, telephone and computer

14.  “When I want to get away from it all I…”

Go out into nature, best on horseback

15.  “People are surprised to find out that I…”

If I would tell you, the surprise is gone

16.  “My favorite cities are…”

Paris, Vienna and Geneva

17.  “I have a secret crush on…”

Bruce Willis

18.  “My most obvious guilty pleasure is…”

Chocolate

19.  “I’d really love to meet…”

Carlos Saura

20.  “I never understood why…”

Opera-singers must be “divas“

Complied and edited by Albert Imperato. For permission to post or print this interview write to aimperato@21cmediagroup.com.

At a certain point, the size and scale of an event can become so vast that those qualities take on a life of their own, and it is no different with classical music, where some great works have  become defined, at least in part, by their sheer size and, to a certain degree, their spectacle.

So for those who plan to watch the entire Olympics, some of it, or none of it, we offer a list of super-sized classical music and opera to enjoy long after the games are over.  Each of the works share with the Olympic Games a nobility of spirit and grandness of conception.  The performers who take on these works need to be on top of their game – like champion athletes – if they hope to meet the challenges that the composers have laid for them.  For the listener, the challenges of taking all this music in will vary, but the rewards are many and far-lasting.

Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 8 (download on iTunes or buy on Amazon): All of this Austrian composer’s nine symphonies are larger than most by other composers, and most convey a sense of epic journey, especially in terms of their emotional and dynamic range. But none is bigger in scope than his Eighth Symphony, which is nicknamed “Symphony of A Thousand” because of the number of people required to perform it. The score calls for a truly huge orchestra, organ, multiple choirs and soloists (and, believe it or not, a mandolin). The vast first movement is an ocean-sized chorus of voices invoking the “Creator Spiritus” — the creative force, the spirit of life, the energy of the cosmos. However you translate it, the listener is meant to be swept away in a torrent of massed sound. Mahler, in fact, said these were no longer human voices, but “the planets revolving around the sun.” Milchael Tilson Thomas won a few Grammies recently for his new recording of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony with the San Francisco Symphony. Naxos’s budget-priced version has gotten stellar reviews as well.

Giuseppe Verdi – Aida (download on iTunes): One of the grandest of all grand operas, most staged productions of this work heavily underline the spectacular elements of the story with lavish sets extolling its exotic setting (ancient Egypt) and huge casts of extras portraying the warring parties. The famous “Triumphal Scene” is something of a show within a show. Here, hundreds of performers — chorus members, dancers, and occasionally (to the dismay of animal rights activists) even horses, lions and an elephant or two! — occupy the stage as the Egyptian victors parade their Ethiopian captives in front of the ecstatic people of Egypt.

Ludwig van Beethoven – Missa Solemnis (buy on Amazon): Running close to 90 minutes, this work is famous for being difficult — and not just for the audience to sit through and comprehend! Chorus members are required to sing long stretches of extremely challenging music, often to the accompaniment of a large orchestra playing at full throttle, and the demands it makes on the performers are akin to training for a marathon. Many amateur choirs cannot hope to master the material, and even the greatest professional choirs continue to find the music daunting. Written at roughly the same time as his Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis stands like Mount Everest amongst choral works, an awe-inspiring, sometimes terrifying, symbol of the power of faith and hope and human possibility.

Richard Wagner – “The Ring Cycle” (buy 2 CD “Ring Excerpts” or
the budget-priced single CD of “Ring Without Words” on Amazon): Clocking in at approximately 16 hours of music, the four myth-inspired operas of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” come together to make pretty much the largest work of musical art ever created. Countless books have been written to describe what Wagner’s “Ring” is all about, but the truth is, it’s about everything that human beings experience and think about in life: nature (and how man interferes with it), love, loyalty, greed, redemption — the list goes on and on. Though written between 1848 and 1874, today’s listeners will be amazed at how many of our current problems and issues are touched upon. In this digital age, you can buy the whole “Ring” at a budget-price, but a great way to start is to just hear excerpts, which include one of the most famous and viscerally exciting things ever composed: the “Ride of the Valkyries.”

Check out this YouTube clip of André Previn and the NHK Symphony Orchestra performing the first part of the third movement of the second symphony.  I don’t feel bad that I don’t get it, because I know that if I am not getting my ecstatic experience from Rachy, I can get it elsewhere.

For me Rachmaninov (to paraphrase Bugs Bunny) made the wrong turn at Albuquerque after Tchaikovsky.   Tchaikovsky had gone far enough in the direction of sweet indulgence.   For me, we did not need to go further.  So I have found myself taking the other turn with Schoenberg and Shostakovich.

Curiously, I am able to find a parallel with my personal experience with rock music history.  Just as I felt rather sickened by the early 80s rock of groups like Foreigner and Toto (the Rachmaninovs of rock, if you will) I found my way in their diametric punkish counterparts, Black Flag, the Butthole Surfers and Dead Kennedys.  Bands who felt and expressed angst darkly both with radical sound and the occasional touch of humor.  This is how I found Shostakovich and my way into the angst-expressive side of the classical music tradition.

I realize that I am swimming against the tide here.  Rachmaninov is music for the people, as is proven over and over again by the borrowing of his melodies by pop and soundtrack composers and was demonstrated again that night at the New York Philharmonic when the audience jumped to their feet with ecstatic applause.  My ecstasy happens to lie in the grit.  The clouds that threaten the sunset.  The bitterness in that chocolate cake.

This is strictly a matter of taste as Rachmaninov was not expressing an easy life through his music.  Quite the contrary, he was expressing what he felt was the antidote to hardship.  Yet many of us seek a more homeopathic (“like cures like”) approach to our antidotes.  And the chief procurer of alternative music at the time was Arnold Schoenberg.

Around the time Rachmaninov wrote his second symphony (1906-7), Schoenberg wrote his Chamber Symphony No. 1, which is a work that takes the left turn at Albuquerque.  It emerges strongly from the world of romantic music, lush and large minded, but rhythmically and tonally it begins to stray and quest, to murmur and complain that we need change to face the challenges of a new era.

This brief segment of Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 played with ferocity by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic might just get you on your feet and wanting more:

Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 turns the sound world of Mahler in upon itself almost jazzily playing off of Mahlerian seriousness.  Yet it is not without its great climatic moments.   The work has five movements, but is meant to be played without pause and near the end of fourth movement Schoenberg creates a beautifully balanced apotheosis, which tracing its way back through the humor and lightness of the works beginning opens the way to a triumphant finale.

Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 is characterized by its sweeping and saccharine (to me) melodies and is thus a very different work than Schoenberg’s funky Chamber Symphony.    But Schoenberg can ‘do lush’ as good as anyone and better than many, although his hues tend much more to dark red and indigo than light blue and pink.  One of the greatest examples of lush Schoenberg is his famous tone poem Verklaerte Nacht (Transfigured Night), which happens to sit very high on my personal list of ecstatic masterpieces.

Verklaerte Nacht is an earlier work written when Schoenberg was even more under the influence of the Romantics, particularly Wagner.   At the time he composed it, Schoenberg was caught in a romantic spell with Mathilde von Zemlinsky, whom he would later marry.   Verklaerte Nacht conveys all the uncertainty and swelling thrill of new love.   Yet even as it ends happily there are the strains of suffering that cloud and color that happiness.

In this YouTube clip from a Live From Lincoln Center telecast, Arnaud Sussmann, Erin Keefe, David Kim, Teng Li, David Finckel, and Priscilla Lee give us a nice sampling of the piece:

In the early 1920s, Dmitri Shostakovich began to compose some of the most exciting, radically charged symphonies of the 20^th century.   His symphonies will find many places in the Ecstatic Livingroom, but I will just sight his first symphony here as an antidote to Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2.

Shostakovich’s works are very lyrical, but he deploys force and atonal wallops like no other composer.    It is perfect transitional music from hard rock to symphonic music, if you are so inclined.    Shostakovich’s first symphony is a great introduction to his symphonic output.  At around 30 minutes, it’s a relatively brief listen and offers many of the trademark Shostakovich elements.    It begins innocently and easily enough with a few hummable tunes, but by the second movement those tunes have begun to morph into huge, explosive expressions of awe and fear.  It is a journey through beautiful lyrical moments and unspeakable fear, which ends in a thrilling climax. Shostakovich was only 19 when he completed this symphony and it is relatively easy going, compared to what was to come.   Even so, I cannot imagine what the first audience to have heard his Symphony No. 1, must have felt.

Here is a clip of Valery Gergiev, one of the world’s greatest interpreters of this repertoire, leading the London Symphony Orchestra in the finale:

This is music that gets me jumping up and down and often when I hear it live in concert halls, I look around and wonder how everyone can just sit there so apparently calm and not feel the need to get up and move!   This was of course, one of the reasons we created the Ecstatic Living room.  So we could just let go and do what we want to the music that we love.

This post was inspired by my personal inability to find the ecstatic experience in Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2, but it’s not meant to be a full-on put down of Rachmaninov.  He wrote some great ecstatic works, including his final piece, the Symphonic Dances, which is absolutely rocking.    But we’ll leave that for another time…..

And in case you’re interested, here are a few recommended recordings of these pieces:

Download on Amazon

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Buy on Amazon
Buy on iTunes

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Buy on Amazon
Buy on iTunes

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Buy on Amazon

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Buy on Amazon

In 2009, the world celebrated the bicentennial of Haydn’s death (he was born in 1732 and died in 1809), but I don’t think he received the kind of shout out that he deserved.  Chatting with artists and writers I work with, I have yet to find one person who doesn’t like “Papa” Haydn’s music, even if it has never been as well-known as Mozart’s (Mozart, it should be pointed out, revered the elder composer and his music and dedicated a set of string quartets to him).  A writer friend of mine compared Mozart to a smoothly paved road noting that, by comparison, Haydn’s music was more like a scenic country road – bumps and all.

Haydn spent much of his creative life on the country estate of his patrons, the wealthy Hungarian Esterházy family, and in that relative isolation he said that he was “forced to become original.” Lucky for us! Haydn nonetheless achieved fame across the continent, especially in London where his two extended visits met with an enormous outpouring of public affection.  It’s no exaggeration to say that in in his two trips there he was greeted and treated like a rock star.

I’ve been a bit of a Haydn junkie since first discovering his music 25 years ago.  The reasons are pretty simple: the world can be a fairly rotten place, but Haydn’s music is exactly the opposite – it’s charming, earthy, (mostly) joyous, imaginative, clever and inexhaustibly fresh. Heck, it’s even fun.

If I had to pick one genre of Haydn works for my desert island I’d go with the symphonies. Our panel of experts below tell you a bit about their favorites (responses are in alphabetical order, to avoid bruised egos!), and some recommended recordings follow that.

Marin Alsop, conductor (music director, Baltimore Symphony): Choosing a
favorite Haydn Symphony is a bit like choosing your favorite child. I love Symphony No. 49, La Passione. It breaks ALL the rules and foreshadows the Romantic revolution around the next bend! Extremely emotive and moving!

Leif Ove Andsnes, pianist: I love the “Clock” Symphony, No. 101. The first movement is one of the deepest and at the same time most joyful pieces he ever wrote. The serenity of the opening, then when it turns to major in the Allegro section – such an exploratory atmosphere! The themes and rhythms are exhilarating.

Here is a YouTube video of Sir Roger Norrington conducting the first movement of Haydn’s “Clock” Symphony.

Jonathan Biss, pianist: If I’m forced to name a favorite Haydn Symphony, it’ll have to be No. 102. In terms of invention, it is probably no more remarkable than any of the great symphonies, and while its humor runs the gamut from the urbane to the slapstick, others are more uproarious. What makes 102 unique is the stunning, almost ostentatious use of orchestral color. From the florid cello obbligato in the slow movement, to the timpani rumbles that decorate runs in the finale, I can think of no other work where he exploited the possibilities of the orchestra in such a unique fashion.

Leon Botstein, conductor (music director American Symphony and Jerusalem Symphony): There’s no such thing as a bad Haydn Symphony, but I’m especially fond of the late ones – Nos. 98, 99, 100, 102. These have all the complexity, drama and imagination that are the hallmarks of mature Haydn.

Jeremy Geffen, artistic administrator (Carnegie Hall): Symphony No. 99 in E-flat major. I heard this symphony first while a viola student at USC. At that time, as now, the piece seemed bursting with distilled joy – a Falstaffian humanity. Every time I hear the work I feel as if it is the first day of spring, and think of the wonder of that first encounter.

Alan Gilbert, conductor (music-director designate, New York Philharmonic): How about 48, 45, 90, 99 and 103 for starters? These are just a few that would make my list as I don’t particularly feel like choosing one over the other! Among his other incredible qualities, Haydn’s ability to write a last movement like nobody’s business puts him in a category all his own.

Paavo Järvi, conductor (music director, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra): When I think about Haydn I think of my Dad. We played four-hands symphonies since I was ten, paying from the score! I love Haydn and Johann Strauss and both of them make me think of my father. Of all of the Haydn Symphonies that I love – and I love them all – I’ll choose No. 82, “The Bear,” which I recently conducted. I can’t help to think how wrong people are to think of Haydn as slightly gray and not exciting and a bit pedestrian. I can’t understand that reputation! His music is insanely entertaining. His music is like the orchestra bursting out laughing, but, at the same time, it’s perfection! Mozart and Beethoven called him Pape for a reason: you don’t call just anyone Papa!

Alex Ross, New Yorker critic: I’m partial to Haydn’s “Sturm und Drang symphonies, and especially the “Trauersymphonie.” The main theme of the first movement – rising fifth, rising fourth, falling semitone – is a rather scary entity, somehow putting me in mind of a gallows. Haydn spins out a customarily elegant argument from the idea, but it retains its threatening edge.

David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer critic: Symphony No. 100, “Military.” I love all of them because they so cleverly continue their thematic development in all regions of any given movement, and that’s definitely the case here. Also, Haydn was a creature of his own empire, so marches and such were a part of his landscape. And in second movement of this symphony, it’s so clever the way he turns a military march into high art – but without any undue grandeur or pretention. I believe the form is theme and variations. My favorite recording is Eugen Jochum with the London Phil on DG. But I hope that Roger Norrington will take it on soon, because I think he’s maybe the best Haydn conductor alive.

Howard Kissel, New York Daily News blogger and actor: Symphony No. 88: It has a gravity that reminds you he was Beethoven’s teacher, but a levity that reminds you he is Haydn.

Some box set recommendations:

If you have to own them all (and I wouldn’t discourage anyone from doing so), conductor Adam Fischer’s complete set does not disappoint, and is available in a lovely budget-priced boxed set from Brilliant Classics.

Haydn’s so-called “Sturm und Drang” (meaning “storm and stress” and related to a pre-Romantic literary movement emphasizing creativity inspired more by more personal, subjective feelings than reason) symphonies are very colorful, diverse and sometimes even a bit strange. Trevor Pinnock’s budget-priced set with the English Concert is always lively and vividly recorded.

Haydn’s most famous works, the so-called “Paris” Symphonies and “London” Symphonies are fabulously entertaining from first note to the last. Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt is masterful in the former; and Eugen Jochum is full of character with the latter.

Symphonies 73 – 75: I absolutely love “La Chasse” (The Chase – no. 73), especially the opening movement. Roy Goodman and the Hanover Band have a great one.

Sir Charles Mackerras and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s kick up some dirt with their rousing performances. Either 101 and 104, “London” or 100, “Military” and 104, “Drumroll” will do the trick.

For a terrific and handsomely-produced introduction to Haydn and his music, Harmonia Mundi’s “Haydn Celebration” (book + 2 CDs) features many photos and illustrations and a not-too-long biographical essay about Haydn’s life and works.

Over the years I’ve had many “Winter Solstice” parties, some entirely by myself, some with many friends, most with copious amounts of chilled vodka.  Probably the biggest of these parties occurred at the downtown loft of my pal and Ecstatic Living Room partner, Glenn Petry.  I bet there were 75 people  there, and after a few hours of drinking and eating I remember giving a brief spoken introduction to the piece and then letting it rip over Glenn’s stereo as everyone listened intently and went along with the ride.  When the piece roared to its conclusion the crowd gave a huge ovation as if we were listening to a live orchestra.  Glenn’s apartment had been transformed into an Ecstatic Living Room.

The first movement bears the heading “Dreams of the Winter Journey,” and it’s flickering strings and mysterious air conveys the feeling of a night-time sleighride through a vast, snow-covered expanse.  The second movement, “Land of Gloom, Land of Mists,” is an achingly beautiful and sweepingly romantic slow movement.  Its centerpiece is a gorgeous horn solo, which eventually leads the massed strings to a huge climax.  After a strange, ghostly scherzo, Tchaikovsky regroups for a what becomes a rousing and celebratory finale, which you can sample here:

Once winter has fully arrived, one of the other great symphonies that I can hardly wait to blast on my stereo is Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica, the British composer’s Seventh Symphony.  I’m listening to it tonight, an icy night (6 degrees Fahrenheit and dropping) in upstate New York.

Quite remarkably, Vaughan Williams was in his 80s when he tackled this truly awe-inspiring work. His experience writing the score to the film Scott of the Antarctic (1947) was so compelling that the composer decided to explore the subject further in a symphonic treatment of the story. Vaughan Williams captures not only the forbidding, unfathomable beauty of the frozen landscape but also the heroism of the intrepid yet tragically doomed explorer Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912), who perished with members of his team just short of the South Pole (the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to reach this “Last Place on Earth” just days earlier). Vaughan Williams provides short snippets from various literary sources at the headings of each movement to underline the spiritual meaning behind Scott’s quest, none more telling than Scott’s last journal entry at the head of the final movement: “I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us; therefore we have no cause for complaint.”

Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica is what I affectionately call an “IMAX in sound,” brilliantly scored to evoke the majesty, desolation and mystery of the Ice Continent. A wind machine helps whip up blizzard conditions, and a combination of harps, vibraphone, deep bells, and celesta (a piano-like instrument whose hammers hit metal plates instead of strings) – with a wordless women’s chorus and solo soprano – casts a decidedly otherworldly spell (something that likely influenced Danny Elfman in his various film scores, especially for the Tim Burton films, and Bernard Hermann in his music for Hitchcock films, especially the famous Dali-designed dream sequence in Spellbound).

The shattering climax of the piece is a truly thunderous entry by the organ in the third movement “Landscape,” which conjures up vast slabs of ice shearing from the cliffs and plunging into the frigid seas (you’ll hear it at around the three minute mark in this YouTube video clip). There’s nothing that I know in all of music that conveys the menacing power of winter more than this.

And in case you’re interested, here are a few recommended recordings of these pieces:

The dynamic young Russian conductor Vladimir Jurowski delivers a potent Tchaikovsky First in a new recording with the London Philharmonic.

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There are several great recordings of VW's "Antarctica" including this powerful one led by Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink.

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I also enjoy this Naxos recording by Kees Bakels and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. And for $8.99, it's the most afordable way to get to Antartica.

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But the past two years have been different, and thanks to the generosity of my family I’ve spent two consecutive Christmases in the Dominican Republic.   I could go on and on about how fun my family is to spend time with, and how incredibly funny and loving they all are.  They really understand that life is about having a good time and enjoying each other’s company.  That’s not a very difficult thing to do at a place like the Sanctuary resort in Cap Cana, where our daily regimen consisted of a lavish breakfast buffet, hours lying in the sun on a beachside lounge, lunch and afternoon drinks by the pool, a brief pre-dinner cocktail party, and then a big family meal either at one of the restaurants at the resort or at the nearby beach club or marina.  The Cap Cana area is one of the “up and coming” resort areas of the D.R., and the resort itself is breathtaking in every way.  The landscaping was impeccable and lavish, the buildings meant to capture high colonial Spanish style.  And of course, there’s the beach itself and that brilliant, shimmering blue of the Caribbean Sea.  The picture here can only hint at the overwhelming sensation of warmth that envelops you as you look out over the water to the horizon.

The view from the beach at the Sanctuary in the Dominican Republic

In the old days I would always travel with a bag of CDs or even cassettes (yes, I’m THAT old) because having the right music around when you’re on the road is crucial to setting the mood.  You really can’t fully comprehend the eloquence of Elgar until you hear the finale of his mighty First Symphony blazing in your ears as you stand at the center of a buzzing Trafalgar Square.  But oh, the iPod – how did we live without it?  After loading a few special Christmas selections beforehand, I was fully ready this time for a week on a tropical island.  Along with jazz classics like Getz/Gilberto, I had a handful of classical titles on my playlist, which I list here for those either lucky enough to be heading to a beach in the coming weeks, or cold enough to be looking for a little (and virtual) escape to a tropical paradise.

Debussy: La Mer and Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (Bernard Haitink with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on Philips Classics)

La Mer is the most beautiful musical depiction of the sea ever written. The light reflecting on the water, the wind whipping up the surf, the awesome power of the ocean – all of this comes to life in this three-movement masterpiece.  And if there’s a more relaxing way to spend ten minutes than listening to the Prelude of a Faun under a gently swaying palm tree I would like to know what it is!

Buy on iTunes
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And here is something to whet your appetite (this is from a performance of by Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra).

Ravel:  Daphnis et Chloé (Myung-Whun Chung conducting on DG)

This “ballet for orchestra” is Ravel’s most lavish score, a love story between a Shephard (Daphnis) and a Shephardess (Chloé) set in the Greek Isles, complete with a  kidnapping by Pirates, an appeal to the God Pan, and a final ecstatic dance of celebration.  The stunning “Daybreak,” featuring chirping birds and glistening waterfalls, is one of the most glorious and rapturous moments in all of music.

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Rimsky-Korsakov: Sheherazade (Charles Mackerras conducting the London Symphony Orchestra on Telarc)

This five-movement symphonic suite is a musical magic carpet ride to Arabia and the world of the 1001 Nights.  It’s a dazzling score with beguiling Oriental flavorings, depicting episodes from the tales of adventure related by Sherharazade,as she uses her master story-telling skills to save her life from the the bitter Persian King whom she beguiles and ultimately marries.

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Here is one of the tracks from the album, titled “Air Pour Les Guerriers”:

I sensed the bit of jest in Albert’s question, because perhaps the idea of us two guys listening to harpsichord music to unwind might seem a bit, well, fey.   Not that we have anything against fey, of course, but more because we had had a long history of unwinding with drinks to classical music.   In fact, the idea of the Ecstatic Living Room was launched, right where we were sitting, in Albert’s living room, many years ago where we would convene regularly to relax and explore music….though typically more muscular stuff.    We spent hundreds of hours listening to classical music, but in our 20s and 30s we seemed to gravitate to the music of Shostakovich, Beethoven, Mahler and new music that had, at least for me, supplanted much of the rock music I had been listening to.

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Buy on ArkivMusic

1. A few works of classical music that you adore:

There are so many! Eugene Onegin. Everything by Rachmaninov! Piano Concertos by Mozart – No. 23 is my favorite, particularly the second movement.

2. Classical music recordings that you treasure:

There are millions! Alexandre Tharaud’s Rameau Suites; Perahia’s Bach albums; Caballé singing Trovatore, especially “D’amor sull’ ali rosee”

3. Favorite non-classical musicians and/or recordings:

Ella Fitzgerald; Bill Evans; Take Six.

4. Music that makes you cry – any genre:

Some of the ones I mentioned in the first question, especially the second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, and Caballe singing “D’amor sull’ ali rosee” from Verdi’s Il Trovatore. And Maria Callas singing “Addio del passato from the third act of La Traviata.

5. Definitely underrated work(s) or composer (s):

I like Hummel’s music, such as his Piano Concertos. He was a dear pupil of Mozart.

6. Possibly overrated work(s) or composer (s):

Verdi sometimes. Sometimes he goes for facility, but Falstaff, Otello and La Traviata are undoubtedly masterpieces.

7. Live music performance (s) you attended – any genre – that you’ll never forget:

Philippe Caubère is a French actor who did many plays that he wrote himself – improvisations telling us his story and his experience with Ariane Mnouchkine who is a famous theater director in Paris. She has a company called La Theatre de Soleil that is justifiably famous.

8. A few relatively recent films you love:

I’m actually too busy to go to the movies very often, but I saw and loved Slum Dog Millionaire.

9. A few films you consider classics:

Anything by Frank Capra, especially It’s A Wonderful Life.

10. A book (or two) that is important to you (and why):

Stefan Zweig’s memoir The World of Yesterday is difficult to describe but people should read it! Balzac’s Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes. I loveHamlet – it’s written centuries before Freud, but is so amazing in its psychological insight.

11. Thing(s) about yourself that you’re most proud of:

My fruitcake – I have a wonderful, simple recipe. I’m a very good baker. And my new long nails! I used to bite them, but it’s great to get rid of an addiction!

12. Thing(s) about yourself that you’re embarrassed by:

I won’t tell you!

13. Three things you can’t live without:

A view, flowers and humor.

14. “When I want to get away from it all I…”

Go to the sea.

15. “People are surprised to find out that I…”

They don’t find out anything about me. I keep it secret.

16. “My favorite cities are…”

New York and Paris.

17. “I have a secret crush on…”

I won’t tell you! Okay, I wouldn’t call it a crush, but I loved the young William Holden – especially in Picnic with Kim Novak.

18. “My most obvious guilty pleasure is…”

Pastries.

19. “I’d really love to meet…”

Peter Ustinov. I just love him. He was brilliant and very, very funny.

20. “I never understood why…”

People have to obey silly rules.

BONUS QUESTION:

21. Question you wish someone would ask you (and the answer to that question):

Q: I don’t like questions!

A: [silence]

For more on Dessay, including discography and upcoming calendar, visit www.natalie-dessay.com.

A prolific recording artist, with releases on both major and independent labels, Rousset has a distinguished discography that includes the complete harpsichord music of Couperin, Rameau, d’Anglebert and Forqueray, the great keyboard works of J.S. Bach, and a host of baroque operas – including lesser known French works and important scores that he discovered.

1.  A few works of classical music that you adore:

Monteverdi Eighth Book of Madrigals; Mozart Così fan tutte; Schumann Piano Concerto; Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande

2. Classical music recordings that you treasure:

Harnoncourt/Gruberova Concert arias/Mozart; Gardiner Idomeneo/Mozart, S.Richter Waldszenen/Schumann; Abbado Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune/Debussy

3. Favorite non-classical musicians and/or recordings:

I’ll have to get back to you on this one!

4. Music that makes you cry – any genre:

So much in Mozart; second movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto; Brahms’ Deutsches Requiem

5. Definitely underrated work(s) or composer (s):

Leonardo Leo, a great composer

6. Possibly overrated work(s) or composer (s):

Vivaldi and Donizetti

7. Live music performance (s) you attended – any genre – that you’ll never forget:

Krystian Zimmerman piano recital in Menton festival (when I was a child) and Les Troyens by Berlioz in Paris conducted by Gardiner with Susan Graham and A.C. Antonacci.

8. A few relatively recent films you love:

Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut; Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises

9. A few films you consider classics:

Fellini’s La dolce vita; Godard’s Pierrot le fou; Lynch’s Mulholland Drive; Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard

10. A book (or two) that is important to you (and why):

Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. Why? Because it teaches me to live better.

11. Thing(s) about yourself that you’re most proud of:

Being sincere and truthful (it has cost me some effort!)

12. Thing(s) about yourself that you’re embarrassed by:

Getting angry too easily

13. Three things you can’t live without:

My harpsichord, a lover, and a project for the future

14. “When I want to get away from it all I…”

Go to my place in Tuscany in the hills and dream

15. “People are surprised to find out that I…”

Am more tender than they expect me to be.And that I actually press my own olive oil with the olives I grow!

16. “My favorite cities are…”

Paris, San Francisco and Florence

17. “I have a secret crush on…”

Chocolate

18. “My most obvious guilty pleasure is…”

Sweets

19. “I’d really love to meet – or to have met…”

Montaigne

20. “I never understood why…”

I insisted being a musician, but now I guess I have to keep on…

BONUS QUESTION:

21. Question you wish someone would ask you (and the answer to that question):

Q: Do you think human being is going to survive the crisis of civilization we are living now?

A: Our civilization is like an adult in his 40s having his crisis and having the choice of getting fat or having plastic surgery or just deciding to concentrate on “higher” matters, like philosophy, arts and ethics. Everything is still possible, but getting fat is probably the most likely.Valuing the head, the intelligence, and not the body is something requiring great maturity, I suspect.

Unlike most other holidays, I don’t really have a lot of music that I go out of my way to hear on Memorial Day.  Wondering what people were listening to across the country, I visited a bunch of radio websites and found plenty of Americana, and a few requiems on the playlists.  Vermont Public Radio cleverly programmed Beethoven’s Third, the “Eroica,” which the composer famously dedicated to the “memory of a great man” (that be his former hero, Napoleon, whom Beethoven had written off in disgust when the Frenchman appointed himself Emperor).  All of these are fine choices, but for me, they don’t really capture the mood of the day.

But there’s one piece of music that really does.  Perfectly, too.  It’s Charles Ives’s “Decoration Day,” the second movement of A Symphony: New England Holidays. The Great American composer wrote the symphony in the early days of the 20th century, and each holiday (the other movements being “Washington’s Birthday,” “the Fourth of July,” and “Thanksgiving and Forefathers’ Day”) captures the special feelings and associations of a particular season.  “Decoration Day,” scored in 1912-13, is the spring movement, and the name of the movement comes from what Memorial Day was originally called.  Decoration Day was established after the Civil War.  As the official government order put it, “The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”  Eventually, the holiday was moved to the last Monday in May, and called Memorial Day, in honor of those who died in all America’s wars.

The cemetery next to Claverack Town Park.

To this day, Charles Ives (1874- 1954) has retained his reputation as one of the leading musical mavericks our country has ever produced.  He was a visionary and innovator; a tireless experimenter who used advanced musical language way ahead of its time.  For some people’s tastes, he was also a bit of a crackpot.

But that’s what makes him so much fun to listen to – like a favorite, eccentric uncle that you don’t always understand but who always tells a compelling story.  For Ives, just about everything was suitable material for a musical work.  Snippets of march tunes, and hymns, and popular songs swirl around in his scores, often rising to a chaotic roar that conveys all the messy energy of the American character.

Ives “Decoration Day” lasts less than ten minutes, but in a short time it covers a lot of ground, beginning, as Ives described in detail, with the mysterious quiet of the morning woods and gardens around the village as people gather flowers to take to the cemetery.  The mood is subdued, though pierced at times with intense emotion, as the crowd moves down Main Street towards the cemetery (listen for bits of “Battlecry of Freedom” and “Adestes Fideles” along the way). When all is done, and Taps are played, the band bursts into a brash march as everyone heads back to town – a classic Ives noisefest!  But it all ends as quietly as it began, with a hushed tone of reverential mystery.

Ives’ music can sound confusing, even annoying, at first (and even after you’ve heard it many times, but that’s partly what Ives intended).  The trick is to sit back and enjoy the ride and not try too hard to figure it all out.  After all, you don’t have to know how to make beer to get a buzz from it!

One last note:  if you want to read the composer’s detailed notes about Ives’s “Holiday” Symphony, visit http://www.musicweb.uk.net/ives/WK_Sym_Holidays.htm.

PLAYLIST

David Zinman recorded the “Holiday” Symphony with the Baltimore Symphony and it’s one of my favorite Ives albums.  Don’t feel guilty if you listen to only one holiday at a time – Ives’ intended each movement to also be playable separately.  It’s paired with another Ives classic, Three Places in New England.  Buy on Amazon.

Michael Tilson Thomas’s brilliantly programmed Ives: An American Journey, recorded with the San Francisco Symphony, is another must-have Ives album, a mix of orchestral, vocal and choral music performed with both affection and authority.  Two tracks on the album are particularly suited for Memorial Day spins.  Ives wrote the song “In Flanders Field” (track 10), sung with fervor by baritone Thomas Hampson, as a response to America entering World War I.  Ives was originally against the War, but he came to see America’s involvement as necessary, and the song captures the conflicting emotions of war as both patriotic duty and tragedy.  The Fugue to Ives’s Symphony No 4 (Track 13) – one of the greatest symphonies by an American composer – is deeply moving, a sea of hymn-tunes that rises to heights of profound expression.  Buy on Amazon.