Sunday Morning Concert

Welcome to the Weekend and your Sunday Morning Concert.  I have had a gloriously relaxing Weekend so far as I hope yours has been also.  My weekend will be cut short once again as I have to work at 5, but I will enjoy it while I can.  Speaking of enjoyment, I have a couple of terrific live performances for your listening pleasure today. The performances were recorded during the Final Round of the 2015 Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition in Hannover, Germany.  These competitions like this and others such as the Tchaikovsky, Van Cliburn and the Queen Elisabeth which I have featured in these pages both showcase and develop young, talented Classical Musicians.  I am always in favor of encouraging our youth in their endeavors and since Classical Music is one of my passions, those two things go hand in hand as I present these performances here today and in the future.  

So let's get right into it, shall we?  The Orchestra for the Final Round concerts is the NDR Radio Philharmonic under the baton of Hendrik Vestmann.  Posted down below, the Violinist from the Netherlands, Benjamin Marquise Gilmore performs Beethoven’s ‘Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, Op. 61’.  In a battle of first Violin concerti, over on my tumblr, you may join the NDR and Vestmann for the Russian violinist Sergei Dogadin who performs Shostakovich’s ‘Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 77’.  This performance garnered First Prize for Sergei.  

To add visual beauty to the aural, I have an exquisite edition of Naked or Nearly So! posted down below that is sexy, studly and evocative!  Over on my tumblr, uncut  yet sculpted Tommy Hansen, is your Hottie of the Day!, who greets you in all his glory with a gigantic and devilish grin.  Thanks for sharing a moment of your weekend with me, see you again soon.  Until next time as always, Enjoy! 

And Then The Phone Rang...

I think I made it to Friday.  Let me check that Thursday is ACTUALLY  over...  Last we spoke I was saying my Pay Day was to be jam packed with activity.  Boy was it ever.  I thought it would never end.  I had made good progress through my list. So much so, I eliminated the last errand as it had become unnecessary.   I was winding down getting ready to head off to some much deserved rest.  And then the phone rang...

It was my boss of course saying some waste-oid had called in for some flimsy excuse or another (For a waste-oid, almost any one will do!) and wanting me to cover the shift.  I did it of course, but by the time I did get around to getting that much needed rest, it was nigh onto 10 PM.  As a result, both my body clock and my schedule are kinda whacked today.  No matter, after truck night, I have the weekend off and all will be OK!  Luckily as I began my process to put this post together, a beautiful thing popped up in my You Tube Subscriptions In Box.  I would thus like to share it with you now.  

Today's Musical Moment is the first recording ever released of the Sonata for Cello and Piano by Dimitri Shostakovich.  The recording is by the Moscow Radio House from 1959 and features the Composer himself at the Piano and Mstislav Rostropovich as the Cellist.   It is a monaural recording, yet the mystery of Shostakovich and the rich masterful tones of Rostropovich ring out  in this marvelous classic recording.  Fast forward a few years and you will find this performance of the Shostakovich Cello Concerto Number 1 by  Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra with  Yo Yo Ma as the Soloist to be equally intriguing.  You may hear that recording over on my tumblr.  

Then Friday would not be Friday with just a bit of Fantasy Fuel which you will find posted down below.  There is also the Hottie of the Day! who wants to take you on a Picnic in the Park over on my tumblr.  Thanks for the visit, stop in tomorrow for another Fabulous Live Saturday Evening Concert, see you then.  Until next time as always, Enjoy!

Happy Halloween

It's Friday.  It's Halloween.  It's Truck Night.  A Triple Whammy if ever I saw one.  It should be a 'very interesting' evening, all things considered.  I just hope it does not get too wild, wooly or weird out there.  We will see how it goes down and report back to you tomorrow.  In the mean time, it is the one night of the year everyone gets the opportunity to be someone besides themselves by donning a disguise or costume.  This is known as guising or Trick-or-treating. 

"According to many scholars, All Hallows' Eve is a Christianized feast initially influenced by Celtic harvest festivals,^[13][14] with possible pagan roots, particularly the Gaelic Samhain.^[8][15][16] Other scholars maintain that it originated independently of Samhain and has solely Christian roots.  Confined to the immigrant communities during the mid-19th century, it was gradually assimilated into mainstream society and by the first decade of the 20th century it was being celebrated coast to coast by people of all social, racial and religious backgrounds.^[100] The annual New York Halloween Parade, initiated in 1974 by puppeteer and mask maker Ralph Lee of the Lower Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village in New York City, is the world's largest Halloween parade and America's only major nighttime parade, attracting more than 60,000 costumed participants, 2 million in-person spectators, and a worldwide television audience of over 100 million."  (Source: WikiPedia)

So what are your plans for the evening?  I hope your plans are much more entertaining than my scheduled activities for tonight.  At any rate it is still Friday and I have Marvelous Music and Gorgeous Guys to add to the celebration.  Musically, today's featured selections are the String Quartets Number 11, 12 and 13 by Dmitri Shostakovich with a performance by the Borodin Quartet.  Over on my tumblr you may hear Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No.1 in A minor, Op.77 with a performance by Daniel Barenboim conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin featuring Maxim Vengerov as the Violin Soloist.

As for the Gorgeous Guys, this collection is full of Halloween Treats.  Although these guys are not in costume, it is not a Trick that they will provide plenty of Fantasy Fuel for a Friday evening.  Over on my tumblr is a Fiery Fantasy Hottie of the Day! to add to your celebration.  Thanks for the visit, see you tomorrow for the Saturday at the Symphony Evening Concert.  Until next time as always, Enjoy!

Saturday at the Symphony Evening Concert

Welcome to the weekend and your Saturday at the Symphony Evening Concert.  Tonight's featured work the Symphony No. 13 in B flat minor (Op. 113, subtitled Babi Yar) by Dmitri Shostakovich was first performed in Moscow on 18 December 1962 by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and the basses of the Republican State and Gnessin Institute Choirs, under Kirill Kondrashin (after Yevgeny Mravinsky refused to conduct the work). The soloist was Vitali Gromadsky. This work has been variously called a song cycle and a choral symphony since the composer included settings of poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko that concerned the World War II Babi Yar massacre and other topics. The five poems Shostakovich set to music (one poem per movement) are earthily vernacular and cover every aspect of Soviet life. *

 Tonight's recording is historically significant as is the performance with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra along with the Male Chorus of the Mendelssohn Club, Philadelphia featuring Tom Krause, baritone. Recorded January 21 and 23, 1970 (following the Western premiere of the work by the same artists), in the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, and released as RCA Red Seal LSC-3162. It was the first recording of the work outside the Soviet Union, and the first professionally-made one anywhere. Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13 is in five movements, the last three of which are played without pause:

1. Babi Yar
2. Humor (at 17:03)
3. At the Store (at 25:45)
4. Fears (at 36:50)
5. A Career (at 48:50)

The transliteration of the Russian text, and its translation, shown on this video from the insert for LSC-3162, is by Igor Buketoff.**

You may also hear Shostakovich's Symphony No.7 in C major, op.60 "Leningrad" with a performance by the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra at the Konzerthaus, Vienna, 4 12/2010 under the baton of Valery Gergiev over on my tumblr.  

While you are listening to the musical stories of Babi Yar, gently scroll down the page to view the sizzling hot gallery of the svelte and sultry in this week's edition of Naked or Nearly So.  If these guys don't inspire a little fire in your furnace, then you better check to see if your pilot light is still lit, lol.  Additional male iconography can be viewed on my tumblr with today's Hottie of the Day! which features a Black Stallion, Poolside.  Thanks for sharing a part of your weekend with me.  See you again on Monday for another week of Music Men & More!  Until next time as always, Enjoy!

*    source: Wikipedia

**  source: You Tube Video Description