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Mozart is just... ;DDD

#stuff we should play #mozart #favourite composers #divertimento in d major #gonna assemble a quartet.... in my dream xD

No 31 Bach Arias

This collection of Bach arias is the first album released by Kozena under her Deutsche Grammophon contract.

This album was made and released some eight years before the Mozart album, and voice-vise, the singer on this album could be someone else. Kozena is 24 here, and you realise the DG must have been really excited to discover her - the booklet states boldly that “a star is born”. Bach is one of my absolute favourites, but for a new recording star with no known background as an academic Bach singer, he’s not an obvious choice. It is one that works though - this album is stunning. Kozena sings with a style that is just right, clean and unadorned (Bach really has already done all the work, there’s no need to try to “make” Erbarme dich, mein Gott any more emotional than it is).

Favourite tracks: no 1 (Et exsultavit spiritus meus from Magnificat in D) is wonderful, as is Erbarme dich (no 4), but I’ll pick no 9, Zerfliesse, mein Herze from St John Passion.

Bach Arias Magdalena Kozena, mezzo Musica Florea, playing period instruments Marek Stryncl, conductor

#magdalena kozena #bach #favourite composers #sacred music #baroque

[Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)]’s memorable opening credit sequence with its close-ups of Kim Novak’s mouth and eyes and Saul Bass’ iconic spiral designs, is accompanied by [Bernard] Herrmann’s “Prelude” musical cue. “Prelude” functions as a microcosm of Scottie’s world in Vertigo in that it presents the themes that are central to Vertigo’s narrative. The cue opens with a rapid-paced ascending and descending figure that is repeated throughout and accented in such a way that it plays with the viewer/listener’s sense of musical expectation. At points in this figure the harmony is also jarring and in combination with its frantic movement, the overall effect is that one feels agitated and a sense of unease. The “Vertigo” figure is meant to function as the musical equivalent of a bout of Scottie’s vertigo and as Robin Wood, author of "Hitchcock’s Films", notes, it also mirrors Scottie’s ambivalent neurosis in that he has “both a fear of falling and a desire to fall.

Clare Nina Norelli, The Sound of Falling: Bernard Herrmann’s Score for Vertigo