Ecstatic Living Room

Xuefei Yang is an internationally acclaimed classical guitarist, performing for audiences across the globe. Her talent was recognized early – at the age of 14 she made her Spanish debut in Madrid, with the composer Joaquin Rodrigo attending her concert. She is the first Chinese guitarist to become a professional musician on the international music scene. She performs in the world’s major concert halls, plays concertos with the world’s leading orchestras and has an exclusive recording contract with EMI Classics. Her first EMI CD, Romance De Amor achieved a gold disc, and her second, 40 Degrees North, was recognized in China as the best classical CD of 2009, and CD of the month in Gramophone.

Xuefei has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs, including a successful performance at the BBC Proms, and an interview for “Woman’s Hour” on BBC Radio 4. In 2009 Xuefei performed at the Brit Awards at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Xuefei was the subject of a documentary by CCTV in China.

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A few days ago, I almost flew off the treadmill running at full-sprint speed – that is, I was going at more than 10 miles per hour! Everyone in the gym threw a look my way, some gasping, as my running shoe made a loud, squeaking sound as it hit the part of the belt that DOESN’T move and I lurched forward like a game animal that had been hit with a tranquilizing dart. I pretended that there was something wrong with the machine, turned bright red from embarrassment, and told people that I was okay and that they should return to their workouts. But the real reason I almost flew off the device is that I was air conducting the finale of Brahms’s First Symphony and with a particularly bold downbeat I had lost my balance. I just missed a total wipeout, which would have been a very ugly (and bloody) scene indeed!

I’ve been jogging to the sound of classical music ever since the CD Walkman was new on the scene. Keeping the damn device from skipping was the crucial issue then, but with the advent of the iPod all obstacles to jogging while listening were removed.

It turns out that many symphonies and orchestral works are perfectly suited to jogging, even running at a very fast clip. I discovered jogging relatively late in life – I was just into my thirties – and I’m absolutely sure that being able to hear and enjoy my favorite music as I worked out is exactly what got me over the hump when I really hated running. The more I listened, the more it felt that symphonies were, by design, almost perfect for running, with various works being beautifully suited for various length jogs and time frames. There was something in the flow of a symphony – the mix of fast and slow, the steady beat, the pacing from measure to measure, and, often, the building to a final climax – that made me realize that the inner clock associated with music is closely related to the inner clock we go by when we are doing physical exercise.

What also makes listening to symphonies and other orchestral works while running so amazing is that it’s actually an ideal time to learn a new piece of music that you’re not familiar with. Listening at home, you can easily be distracted by e-mails, and phone calls and any number of other distractions (including boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses and children, of course). But out on a run, with nothing else to distract you, an orchestra raging on your iPod is the gift that keeps on giving.

PLAYLIST

Here below is the first playlist in a series that will accompany classics for jogging posts. You’ll find five recommended titles for 20+ to 70+ minute jogs. A few words of caution, though: DON’T air conduct while you’re on a treadmill. And don’t let your musical pleasure lessen your attention to cars, buses, bicycles and pedestrians who might get in your way, especially if you’re a city jogger where you have to factor in potholes with the list of potential hazards.

Approximately 25 minutes – Haydn, Symphony No. 104, “London”. For a cheerful morning jog, just about any of Haydn’s 104 symphonies will do, but best to start with Haydn’s last and work your way backwards. Buy on Amazon

Approx. 34 minutes – Beethoven Symphony No. 7. Wagner called this symphony “the apotheosis of the dance,” but you’ll quickly consider it a must have for a fast-paced run. The finale FLIES, so save up a bit of juice for a proper sprint! Buy on Amazon

Approx 38 minutes – Dvorak, Symphony No. 8. This joyous energy-fest is sure to delight, especially along a country road (for this Czech composer, a Bohemian trail would have been the location of choice). Buy on Amazon

Approx. 52 minutes – Brahms Symphony No. 1. The pounding drums and brass that open the symphony will get you moving quickly, with plenty of variety and repose in the inner movements and a fabulous finale to carry you along the rest of the way. See my Ecstatic TV post on a Brahms 1 country jog! Buy on Amazon

Approx 75 minutes – Philip Glass: Powaqqatsi. Quite possibly my very favorite piece to run with! The powerful drumming, slowly built climaxes and super high energy of this work can give you just the right jolt to power you on a longer jog (6 – 8 miles). The word Powaqqatsi is a Hopi term for “life out of balance” (the work is a soundtrack to a powerful, path-breaking and prophetic – that is, pre-global warming awareness – film about the way technology and industry are destroying the planet and, with it, our humanity), but Glass’s music will put you in the zone for high achievement with the production of virtually no greenhouse gasses! Buy on Amazon

Italian-born Giuseppe Filianoti has won acclaim around the world for his superb performances in the Bel Canto repertoire. The well-read family man appears May 12-25 as Nemorino (opposite Diana Damrau) in Laurent Pelly’s staging of L’Elisir d’Amoreat Covent Garden.
His beautifully sonorous voice has been heard on all the great opera stages including New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Milan’s La Scala and London’s Royal Opera House. Describing his performance in January 2009 in Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Met, the New York Times praised his “virile, bright voice with Italianate ping in his upper range” and “limber and youthful appearance.”

Following his run in the Donizetti classic, Filianoti sings the title role in Gounod’s Faust at France’s Théâtre du Capitole Toulouse. In September he returns to the United States for Elisirperformances at Los Angeles Opera.

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

Massenet’s Werther; Cilea’s L’Arlesiana; Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes; Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress; Verdi’s Ballo in maschera, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. All works of Mahler and Chopin.

2. Classical music recordings that you treasure:

All tenor recordings of Aureliano Pertile, Alfredo Kraus, Tito Schipa and Fritz Wundrlich; Carlos Kleiber in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

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

When I don’t work or study I don’t like to listen any kind of music. Since I spend so much time in my life singing, I prefer to do something else.

4. Music that makes you cry – any genre:

Usually I cry when I don’t sing as I would or should, but also listening the fabulous music composed Ennio Morricone, Chopin and Puccini.

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

Cilea’s L’Arlesiana and Gloria; Manfroce’s Ecuba

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

Mascagni, Giordano, and a lot of modern music

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

Every time Alfredo Kraus sung he taught me how to use my voice. Every minute in which my son Riccardo (4 years old) performs for me like a tenor – he is surely better than his father.

8. A few relatively recent films you love:

Elizabeth – The Golden Age; A Beautiful Mind; La Vita è Bella; Il postino;Hamlet

9. A few films you consider classics:

Psycho; Rebecca; Schindler’s List; Amarcord; Jules and Jim.

10. A few books that are important to you (and why):

In my opinion every artist must read these books. There is not a real reason but for me it was a route. Vladimir Nabokov: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight; Henry James: The Lesson of the Master and Real Thing; Richard Powers: The Time of Our Singing. These others are my best classic, deeply engraved in my soul: Italo Svevo: The Confessions of Zeno; James Joyce: Dubliners; Everything by Italo Calvino…and many, many others.

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

First of all, my beautiful wife Annalisa and my little son Riccardo, who are part of everything in my life. After of all my tenacity and my constancy, to understand how many things in this world are so useless or without importance, and false in comparison, with the love of our family and our real friends.

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

My totally incapacity with everything of scientific or mathematics; to always forget the name of people just a few minutes after I speak with them; sometimes to not be able to shut up and to say anything I think.

13. Three things you can’t live without:

My family, my music, my books.

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

Go inside myself

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

I am sooooo stubborn!

16. “My favorite cities are…”

Reggio Calabria, New York, London, Barcelona, Madrid.

17. “I have a secret crush on…”

No secret, please!!!…but sometimes during the night I awake looking for …dark chocolate, sorry.

18. “My most obvious guilty pleasure is…”

To love so much to sing.

19. “I’d really love to meet…”

Myself from the outside to see how many things I have to change and my grandmother (she is no longer with us) to tell her about my baby, my career and to see in her eyes that she is proud of me.

20. “I never understood why…”

It is so difficult to be accepted and to be appreciated by people for who we really are.

BONUS QUESTION:

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

Q: Why are you giving answers to this stressful questionnaire?

A: Because I am trying to reveal more of myself, so people that who come to listen me sing can decide if I am only a simple tenor or also a good boy. At least I hope.

Cabell – who shot to fame after winning the 2005 BBC Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff – graces the Met stage as Adina inL’Elisir d’Amore through April 22. She is the latest to donate her time and musings to our Q&A.
After her stint in the Donizetti classic, the soprano heads to Europe for concerts in Prague and Copenhagen. She returns to the U.S. later this spring for a jazz cabaret series at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and a role debut with Cincinnati Opera as the Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.

Cabell has a successful and critically acclaimed solo CD, Soprano – on the Decca label – and her Musetta was recently singled out for praise in the Robert Dornhelm film, now on DVD, of La bohème, with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon.

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In the midst of a cross-country U.S. recital tour (which includes an April 14 stop at Zankel Hall), Biss filled out our questionnaire- providing detailed answers and insights, some of which may surprise you. He wraps up his current traveling program April 20.
Since making his New York Philharmonic debut in 2001 when he was 21, Jonathan Biss’s international career has flourished through his orchestral, recital, and chamber music performances in North America, Europe, and Asia, and through his acclaimed EMI Classics recordings. Mr. Biss is a former student of Leon Fleisher at The Curtis Institute of Music and the third generation in a family of musicians that includes his grandmother, cellist Raya Garbousova, and his parents, violinist Miriam Fried and violist/violinist Paul Biss.

His diverse repertoire ranges from Mozart and Beethoven, through the Romantics to Janáček and Schoenberg as well as works by contemporary composers, including commissions from Leon Kirchner and Lewis Spratlan.

With a reputation for intriguing programs, artistic maturity and versatility, the 28-year-old American pianist has been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2005 Leonard Bernstein Award and the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. Mr. Biss’s newest recording as an EMI Classics artist is a CD of Mozart Piano Concertos 21 and 22 with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Two previous recordings—all Beethoven and all-Schumann recitals—won an Edison Award and a Diapason d’Or Award, respectively. Mr. Biss blogs about his life as a musician at www.jonathanbiss.com.

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I’m probably the last person in the United States to see The Shawshank Redemption (I finally got around to Netflixing it, and watched it last night over my favorite meal – a plate of cheese ravioli with home made tomato sauce), but for me it was worth the wait. Obviously, it’s one of the most inspirational films ever made, but for a classical music lover it’s an especially heartening experience to hear music from a Mozart opera take center stage at one of the film’s key moments. Tim Robbins, playing the wrongfully convicted banker who refuses to have his spirit broken by prison life, has briefly barricaded himself in one of the prison offices and decides to treat his cellmates to some music over the Shawshank loudspeaker system. Sitting back in his chair, Robbins’s character, Andy Dufresne, sinks into reverie as Gundula Janowitz (The Countess) and Edith Mathis (Susanna) sing the Duettino (little duet) “Sull’Aria” (“on the breeze”) from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Andy gets time in solitary confinement for the infraction, but it’s a small price to pay for the transcendent moment he has given himself and his fellow inmates. His unlikely prison friend Red (played by Morgan Freeman) sums up the experience this way:

“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”

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Some music-loving friends find it corny (but that’s why it’s so much fun, of course) that I coordinate so much of my listening to the changing seasons. Part of the reason I do this is that my imagination makes certain connections early on and the rest of me just can’t let go. On balance, I think it’s a good thing because it prevents me from overdosing on some of my favorite works. For example, I can’t listen to Mahler’s Third Symphony until the first day of summer (more on that work in a future post); I save that same composer’s “Song of the Earth” until the fall because there are colors and shadows in this music that remind me of late afternoon autumn light. Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony, “Winter Dreams,” has helped me welcome in this most forbidding season each year since I first heard it in college (I’m not much of a winter person, so music definitely helps keep my spirits up until spring returns). When a conductor programs Tchaikovsky’s First or “Nuctracker” ballet in the summer I think, “Hey, what’s up with that?”

As is evidenced above, seasonal words sometimes sneak into the titles of certain works, but those aren’t the only works I connect with particular seasons. Mahler’s Fourth Symphony doesn’t have a seasonal subtitle or a nickname, but for me it’s definitely summer music, the slow movement passing like high clouds against a bright blue sky as you gaze at them from a hammock. Ravel’s Dapnhis and Chloe ballet is summer muic for me as well, conjuring up sunlit Greek Isles and brilliant white-sand beaches. On the other hand, Sibelius’s seven symphonies are mostly winter fare for me: I’m sure Finland (the composer’s homeland) has perfectly beautiful summers, but for me much of his music has a bracing, wintry quality that’s both awesome and imposing.

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One of today’s most eminent Schubert lieder interpreters, the English tenor’s newest album features the composer’s Schwanengesang song cycle. Bostridge generously took time to share some thoughts, favorites and opinions in this Q&A feature.

Ian Bostridge is widely acclaimed for his deeply expressive and intense performances on the opera stage, in the concert hall with the world’s leading orchestras, and in solo recitals.

The London native was a post-doctoral fellow in history at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, before embarking on a full-time career as a singer. His Oxford historical monograph, “Witchcraft and its Transformations 1650 to 1750,” was published in 1997.

Bostridge’s extensive discography, mostly for EMI Classics – with whom he records exclusively – includes many award-winners and Grammy nominations. His latest project, Schubert: Schwanengesang, was released on the label last month. Frequent collaborator Antonio Pappano serves as conductor/pianist.

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My name is Albert Imperato. I’m the founder and co-managing director of 21C Media Group, an independent public relations, marketing, and consulting firm specializing in classical music and the performing arts. I’ve been working in music promotion since 1987, and many of my friends and family are still very curious about what exactly I do for a living.“I promote classical music,” is my express answer, to which I get responses from the genuinely fascinated to the completely perplexed. Over time, though, these same friends and family members invariably come in contact with the music I am promoting, whether because I’ve played something for them on my stereo or iPod, given them a CD to try out, or actually take one of them to a concert or an opera. For the most part, these people find themselves intrigued by their contact with the music, and invariably I am asked, “”What’s the best way to get to know classical music?” My initial reply is, “Just listen to it,” which usually gets the response, “well, what exactly should I listen to?”

Well, there are many potential answers to this question. Back when I worked for a record company it was easy to just hand a bunch of CDs to someone – the “Mad About” series that I helped produce for Deutsche Grammophon – and tell them to listen and let me know what they liked, but I was still surprised over time when people would tell me that the problem wasn’t just “what” to listen to but also “when.”When, as in, “I was having people over for dinner, and I put on one of those CDs you gave me and while some of the tracks were perfect, some of them were really distracting.”

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At only 29 years of age, soprano Danielle de Niese regularly graces many of the world’s most prestigious opera and concert stages, and has released her first solo album as part of her exclusive contract with Decca Records, titled Handel Arias.This February she embarks on a seven-city recital tour of North America, which culminates in an appearance Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall on February 27^th. Australian-born to parents of Sri Lankan and Dutch heritage, Danielle de Niese grew up in Los Angeles.Her career got off to a prestigious start when, at age 18, she became the youngest singer ever to enter the Metropolitan Opera Young Artist Program.

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