It reminds of when Public Image Limited's Metal Box was released. I saw it up on the shelf behind the counter and asked for it. It wasn't the same shop in which the assistant had complimented me on the purchase of a Patti Smith album but it was similar, in which they like to think they know a thing or two. (In another shop I had asked for the Cortina's Fascist Dictator and Chelsea's Right to Work, neither of which they stocked, so I then asked for The Logical Song by Supertramp at which the assistant sneered. Well, you don't have the ones I wanted, do you.) Anyway, having been provided with the PiL tin of 10'' records, I said, 'And have you got I Wanna Hold Your Hand by Dollar'.
He said, Do you listen to anything in between.
While Thomas Mann demands returning to, it won't be immediately.
It's the same in music, with the arrival of the Silesian Quartet's Bacewicz. I never got to the bottom of the String Quartets so why I need the Piano Quintets I don't know. Because it is quite clearly tremendous is why.
This is a good bit,
With the Weinberg Quartet no. 7 also due, needing to get in on the Weinberg vogue, it is as if I suddenly don't think Shostakovich is Shostakovich enough. These fragments I have shored against my ruin.
Tony Blackburn's joyful Sounds of the Sixties, Sat 6-8 a.m. is a fine thing to set off against such high seriousness but one can't stay awake for all of it of a weekend early morning. Early Sunday mornings are best spent with R3's breakfast show and once more this week, music heard in that floating, half awake condition was entirely convincing. I might have been only half awake but made sure I stayed awake, playing Guess the Composer, thinking I could almost hear Remember Me from Dido & Aeneas in it and so went for Purcell.
So I'm glad to be notified that The Sixteen's new release, Royal Welcome Songs Vol 2, should be here by Friday. After the intensity of the worthy, demanding Bacewicz, I'll deserve some of that and then, being unsatisfied by only having Vol. 2, I'll have to get Vol. 1.
I warmed up for its arrival with Come, Ye Sons of Art, with my favourite singer, James Bowman. Favourite, that is, alongside Al Green, Carolyn Sampson, Diana Ross, Nathalie Stutzmann, Gregory Issacs, Barbara Hannegan, Dusty Springfield, Hurricane Smith, etc.
One just can't help making lists but they never get anywhere near telling the whole story. Purcell is genuinely a compelling candidate for England, or Britain's Greatest Composer. Handel was German and wrote Italian music. There is Tallis, Elgar, Britten, Byrd and, lately John Tavener and James MacMillan but I might be siding with Purcell.
I see that the Bacewicz Quintets was released last year so it isn't new so I don't have to review it as if it is. I might have used up all my limited vocabulary to describe music but, as the Quartet for Four Cellos begins, I do need to mention this music because it needs mentioning. Words, or my words at least, can only detract from it. I recommend all the above if they sound like the sort of things you might like the sound of.