"massive chords of intemperate savagery"
August 21, 2015 3:11 PM Subscribe
Jón Leifs' Organ Concerto (jump to 21:30) was played tonight as part of the BBC Proms classical music program by organist Stephen Farr and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo. Farr recounts the work's strange story, first performed by the Berlin Philharmonic in 1941 to walk-outs and booing. Jón Leifs' own story is strange enough. After gaining prominence in post-WWI Germany, he was popular in Nazi circles for a few years, but became a persona non grata. Nonetheless, he, his Jewish wife and their two daughters received permission to leave for Sweden in 1944. After his death in 1968, he seemed headed for obscurity but some pieces became popular, such as the Requiem for his daughter. In recent years he's gained some ardent fans, such as Alex Ross of The New Yorker. For more, read this collection of reviews of recordings Leifs' work.
The Requiem is lovely...
posted by jim in austin at 3:31 PM on August 21, 2015
posted by jim in austin at 3:31 PM on August 21, 2015
That requiem is beautiful, thanks.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 5:53 PM on August 21, 2015
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 5:53 PM on August 21, 2015
I'll put my small-mindedness on display; I have a gut reaction to regard Iceland as a sort of quaint, neighborly place, so my first reaction was to think "I wonder what Björk thought the first time she listened to Leif's works...."
Seriously, though... I'm a fan the Nordic composers who leaned on folks music for their works around the turn of the twentieth century: Grieg, Sibelius. I was heretofore unaware of Lief, though he seems cut from the same cloth, in a sense. The links seemed to summarize the issues he had in composing with this sort of focus a few decades after Grieg and Sibelius: a Nazi regime all to eager to co-opt any sort of nationalistic thinking. Interesting to see how this tension found a denouement with his concerto performance in Berlin.
As a listener I'm not drawn to his music, but in understanding how it fits in with those circa 1900's Nordic compositions, I'm much obliged for the FPP. I'll soak in the mental pictures of travelling the Iceland countryside in the 1920's looking for folk melodies!
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 10:34 PM on August 21, 2015
Seriously, though... I'm a fan the Nordic composers who leaned on folks music for their works around the turn of the twentieth century: Grieg, Sibelius. I was heretofore unaware of Lief, though he seems cut from the same cloth, in a sense. The links seemed to summarize the issues he had in composing with this sort of focus a few decades after Grieg and Sibelius: a Nazi regime all to eager to co-opt any sort of nationalistic thinking. Interesting to see how this tension found a denouement with his concerto performance in Berlin.
As a listener I'm not drawn to his music, but in understanding how it fits in with those circa 1900's Nordic compositions, I'm much obliged for the FPP. I'll soak in the mental pictures of travelling the Iceland countryside in the 1920's looking for folk melodies!
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 10:34 PM on August 21, 2015
Theophrastus Johnson: so my first reaction was to think "I wonder what Björk thought the first time she listened to Leif's works...."
Funny you should wonder about that, because Alex Ross wondered about Björk's opinions about Jón Leifs.
Funny you should wonder about that, because Alex Ross wondered about Björk's opinions about Jón Leifs.
Björk herself loves Leifs’s music. “I think he almost animated eruptions and lava in sound,” she said. Yet this composer lived out the tragedy of Laxness’s “independent man,” who fails to see that his pride is the source of his suffering.She even worked with a particular choir because she liked how they had sung on a recording of Leifs' Hekla:
Most of the singers were members of a group called Schola Cantorum, which has appeared on several recordings of the music of the furiously original Icelandic composer Jón Leifs. Björk heard the Leifs recordings and liked the chorus’s crisp, potent sound.posted by Kattullus at 7:48 AM on August 22, 2015
Freaking amazing-- what a climax! I'm listening to Hekla now. I've found a new star. Thanks Kattullus!
posted by cleroy at 11:40 AM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by cleroy at 11:40 AM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
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