panapp

DeRank ™: 7,88

DeAge™ : 6612 days • Here since 3 may 2008

Maurizio Pollini - Wiener Philarmoniker Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Concerto per pianoforte ed orchestra in sol magg., K. 453

16 aug 10

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@fusillo: are you kidding? Performances with original instruments are the foundation of musicology! Today we can see the Mona Lisa in her true form because the finished product remains, and not the instructions, but for music, we only have the instructions (the score) and not the finished product (which today is the CD). If we only had the execution instructions for the Mona Lisa and used modern tools to recreate it, we would have to use spray cans or Photoshop, and it's clear that the final result would not be the same as what Leonardo left us. The same goes for music: we have the instructions left, but if we perform them with modern instruments, the result will be different from what the author originally envisioned. Today we play Bach on the piano, and I’m not saying the result is terrible; goodness knows, but it is objectively different from the intentions of the author who had a different instrument available. I hope this example makes the idea clear.

Maurizio Pollini - Wiener Philarmoniker Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Concerto per pianoforte ed orchestra in sol magg., K. 453

16 aug 10

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@fusillo: just as all contemporary instruments are modified (think about how keyboards and guitars were 50 years ago compared to today), the instruments of the past have changed, with the difference that this evolution has been going on for much longer, and thus the differences are definitively more striking. And of course, this applies to any type of instrument, not just musical: what were glasses, pens, and shoes like 1000 years ago?

Maurizio Pollini - Wiener Philarmoniker Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Concerto per pianoforte ed orchestra in sol magg., K. 453

15 aug 10

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@cabernet: excuse me, but do you have Erik Satie as your profile picture? +1,000,000 respect points.

Maurizio Pollini - Wiener Philarmoniker Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Concerto per pianoforte ed orchestra in sol magg., K. 453

15 aug 10

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I really liked the review, I really liked it, and the introduction is frame-worthy: ça va sans dire that I think exactly like you, and when my mother told me the other day that “Giovanni Allevi plays classical music because he doesn’t sing,” I felt a wave of depression mixed with resignation for years of music studies thrown to waste when the average opinion (of which I consider my mother a representative) thinks like that. But anyway. The album is splendid, not Mozart's best legacy, but after all, we’re still at very high levels.

Kayo Mitsuami Heroine

15 aug 10

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@Bartleboom: but why should your opinion not interest us? On the contrary! ;) Anyway, yes, I first noticed when I approached Japanese music that it all, from the sweetest pop to the most extreme death metal, has the two characteristics you highlighted: exceptional technical skill and a focus on image. The first comes from the fact that 75% of Japanese children are introduced to a piano at the age of three, because even if they don’t become musicians, pedagogues know that musical practice organizes and disciplines children’s brains so that as adults, they become thoughtful individuals, as one must always be in front of a musical piece, which always presents a rhythm to study and can never be played well on the first attempt. Also, the issue of image is deeply rooted in Japanese culture: think about how they have always dressed in incredible, colorful, carnival-like clothes (google kimono and see that explosion of colors—they still wear them today), and so they aren't embarrassed to walk around in absurd outfits since that’s always been the norm; then there’s the fact that for them, appearance is a reflection of content, meaning good content loses value if poorly packaged and vice versa (which is fundamentally the preservation of the ancient equation beautiful=good, which used to make sense in the West as well). Combine technical skill with a carefully crafted image, and you will have a Japanese group.

Dari In Testa

15 aug 10

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My sister is a fan and listens to them too much. That said, I find them nice as people and mediocre as musicians, and for now, they have produced a truly limited number of songs that are really worth considering (I didn't say beautiful). "L'amore ci chiama" stands out with its nice lyrics and catchy melody; for the rest, we're at uniformly low levels, inferior to the first album which had ideas that were, if not more original, at least more fun. They need to work on their irony, or they're not going anywhere.

Squaresoft Vagrant Story

14 aug 10

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One of the most deserved 40/40s of all time. Nothing to say, actually yes: Art.

X-Japan Blue Blood

14 aug 10

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«"Rose of Pain" [starts] with Bach's "Fuga"... which of the hundreds he wrote? These little mistakes are a bit clumsy and make you lose a star. As for the album: X JAPAN are legendary, epic, magnificent and all that, but frankly, I prefer hide as a solo artist; like in all their albums, there's excellent material here too, but over the years it has become a bit heavy, whereas hide's stuff has remained fresh even today.

Vidoll Romanesque Gothic

13 aug 10

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@Schizoid Man: now I know. @Bartleboom: you might absolutely not like the musical proposal, imagine that! ;) Versailles are five men: out of the hundreds of visual groups, those made up of women can be counted on one hand, and at most, those composed of men with female members on two hands. It all started in the 90s thanks (or rather, because?) to Mana, the guitarist of the famous MALICE MIZER (here they are in their most well-known music video: YouTube video non trovatoVhiwRhPS1O0) google "Mana MALICE MIZER" to understand what I'm talking about. Yes, he is a man; no, he is not gay; yes, he played the role of the princess in the band; no, I assure you he is neither gay nor cross-dressing nor anything like the other princesses are not; yes, he follows the principle I mentioned in the introduction to the review where beauty=woman, so for a man to be beautiful also means to be feminine. It's theater, and if you think about it, we’re not far from Greek, Elizabethan, and kabuki theater.

Vidoll Romanesque Gothic

13 aug 10

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@Bartleboom: don't worry, I don't expect everyone to like them. I think they are extremely valid and, if not entirely original, at least skilled in reinterpreting things we've already heard in a completely novel way, and in any case, de gustibus. About the bassist: he goes by Rame and yes, he is a man, he has a truly monstrous technical ability and dresses in a manner that aligns with the conventions of visual kei, where often (especially in the metal-oriented bands that emerged in the '90s) there was a sort of role play in which two members are the prince and the princess (in this case, the singer and the bassist) and the others are the courtiers. You have to see it as a theatrical performance or you won’t grasp either the meaning or the potential value. For example, these are the Versailles, a band that is currently quite popular: Immagini di Versailles – Last.fm As you can see, they dress even more elaborately than Vidoll, in a style that suggests the ancien régime as their name implies: the singer KAMIJO is the prince (in this case, Louis XVI), the guitarist HIZAKI plays the princess (Marie Antoinette), and they previously even had Countess Du Barry, the bassist Jasmine You who has now passed away. This is what I mean when I say that visual is theater: at concerts, they play as if it were the soundtrack of a musical that they are almost performing on stage. Example: I believe I’ve been a bit clearer now. Another example: these are the D and they don’t have a "princess," and indeed in their videos, they almost always use a model: These performances may seem like buffoonery or art depending on whether you see them as Western rock or as theater. Of course, there are also some poor souls in visual, eh, and a high percentage of them: I’m not defending the category here, far from it, but I’m just explaining that it has characteristics that, if not understood, risk losing their significance.