Decisions, Decisions!

After burning the candle completely out at both ends yesterday, I pretty much napped the morning away today after coming home from work.  Now that I am awake, I have no clue what's going on in the world outside my little bubble.  That's OK, sometimes it's all I can do just to keep up with my own shit much less the world.  At any rate, it is a brilliantly sunny day and I am torn between lazing at the pool and shopping therapy.  Maybe I should do a little of both, eh?  First things first however, as I am sure you have come expecting beautiful Music and gorgeous Guys to accompany all my pithy commentary.  And I have some good stuff lined up for you today.  

Let's start with the Music which today features the works of Johannes Brahms, one of the famous "3 B's" of Classical Music along with Bach and Beethoven.  In addition to being a prolific Composer, Brahms traveled extensively and used his travels to inspire his compositions.  His works are a staple of any orchestra's repertoire and he remains as popular today as at any in his lifetime.  Here in these pages today, the man who is seemingly everywhere in Classical Music today, Daniel Barenboim performs Brahms' Piano Concerto Number 1 in D Minor, Opus 15 with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under their legendary Conductor Sergiu Celibidache.  This performance was recorded live at the Stadthalle Erlangen in 1991.  While over on my tumblr I have another wonderful live performance featuring Brahms' Double Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor, Opus 102.  That performance is by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Christoph Poppen, Conducting. The Soloists are Julia Fischer on Violin and Daniel Müller-Schott on Cello. 

For a visual enhancement to your aural pleasure, since this is Tuesday, you get a mixed bag of Random Hotness that is sizzling with sultry sexiness which you will find posted down below.  Over on my tumblr, your Hottie of the Day! is a surfer who is definitely 'Sex on a Stick'!  Thanks for the visit, now I have to decide between shopping and swimming or both.  Decisions, decisions, a (rude euphemism)'s work is never done, lol.  Anyway, you guys have a fabulous day, and we will check in with you tomorrow with this week's  episode of New Adventures in Good Music.  See you then.  Until next time as always, Enjoy!

TGIF In Spades...

... Can I get two margaritas and a fucking AMEN!  I am so glad this week is over save for one more truck night.  I am looking forward to the weekend, it should actually be sunny and nice for the first time in a month, so maybe I will get out and wash the car and do something outdoorsy.  Who knows, I may just hide at the house and ignore the world, lol.  I will have to come up with a couple of fabulous live performances for your Saturday Evening Concerts, but that is always a pleasant task much akin to 'forcing myself' to examine hundreds of photos of sexy men in order select just a few for display.  Such is the life of the blogger, research is what distinguishes a great post from the mundane.  Sometimes I achieve the ideal, and sometimes I don't.  But I always try.  So lets show off a little research, shall we?  

Czech Composer Antonin Dvorak spent 3 years in America from 1892 to 1895 as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City.  He began at a then-staggering $15,000 annual salary, almost unheard of for a Musician or Composer of his times.  The conservatory was unique in that it was open to female students as well as male and also black students as well as white.  Definitely unusual for the times.  While in America, Dvorak composed some of his most recognizable and popular works.  He was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in 1893 to compose his 9th Symphony "From the New World" which debuted to tumultuous applause and remains popular today.  You will find a wonderful performance of "From the New World" by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Sergiu Celibidache recorded live at the Munich Phiharmonie in 1991 posted down below.  

Dvorak wrote several other works of note while in America including String Quartet in F (the "American"), and the String Quintet in E-flat, as well as a Sonatina for violin and piano.  Of particular note in the winter of 1894-1895, Dvořák wrote his Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191, which he completed in February 1895.  His Cello Concerto is a star among the standards of the Cello repertoire, with performances around the world to this day.  You will find Jacqueline Du Pre's performance of Dvorak' masterpiece with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of her then husband Daniel Barenboim, recorded in 1971 over on my tumblr.   

Finally for Friday is a little visual inspiration for us all.  This week's edition of Fantasy Fuel is chock full of sublime sexiness which should feed any erotic fantasy in which you might care to indulge. Cruise down the page and lose yourself in your reverie.  When you surface for air, head over to my tumblr for one more little indulgence in Fantasy Fuel with your Hottie of the Day! who is "Ripped and Stripped!'.  Thanks for the visit, be sure to tune in for tomorrow's concerts.  Until next time as always, Enjoy!

Saturday at the Symphony

Welcome to the Weekend and your Saturday at the Symphony.  I have a great lineup for your today featuring the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and the Symphonic stylings of Austrian Composer Anton Bruckner.  In February of 1979, Sergiu Celibidache conducted his first concert series with the Munich Philharmonic and in June of the same year he was appointed General Music Director. Concert tours took him and the orchestra through many European countries as well as to South America and Asia. The legendary Bruckner concerts made a major contribution to the orchestra’s international standing, and during the Celibidache era the orchestra was repeatedly invited to accompany the Federal Government or the Federal President as musical ambassadors.  While touring Japan in 1990, The Munich Philharmonic gave a series of concerts at Suntory Hall in Tokyo.  Today's Symphony Selection comes from this series of concerts.

Bruckner's symphonies are all in four movements (though he was unable to complete the finale of the Ninth), starting with a modified sonata allegro form, a slow movement in ABA’B’A’’ form (except in the Study Symphony, the First and the Sixth), a scherzo in 3/4 time, and a modified sonata allegro form finale. (In the Eighth, Ninth, and the first version of the Second, the slow movements and scherzo are reversed. The revised version of the Fourth features a scherzo – the "Hunt scherzo" – in which the outer sections are in 2/4 meter, not the customary 3/4.) There is a marked preference for the use of consistent four-bar periods. They are scored for a fairly standard orchestra of woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two or three trumpets, three trombones, tuba (from the second version of the Fourth), timpani and strings. The later symphonies increase this complement, but not by much. Notable is the use of Wagner tubas in his last three symphonies. Only the Eighth has harp, and percussion besides timpani (though legend has it the Seventh is supposed to have a cymbal clash at the exact moment Wagner died). With the exception of Symphony No. 4, none of Bruckner's symphonies have subtitles, and most of their nicknames did not originate with the composer. Trademarks of Bruckner's works are powerful codas and grand finales, as well as the frequent use of unison passages and orchestral tutti. His style of orchestral writing was criticized by his Viennese contemporaries, but by the middle of the twentieth century musicologists recognized that Bruckner's orchestration was modeled after the sound of his primary instrument, the pipe organ i.e. alternating between two groups of instruments, as when changing from one manual of the organ to another.

Nicholas Temperley writes in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980) that Bruckner:

alone succeeded in creating a new school of symphonic writing.... Some have classified him as a conservative, some as a radical. Really he was neither, or alternatively was a fusion of both.... [H]is music, though Wagnerian in its orchestration and in its huge rising and falling periods, patently has its roots in older styles. Bruckner took Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as his starting-point.... The introduction to the first movement, beginning mysteriously and climbing slowly with fragments of the first theme to the gigantic full statement of that theme, was taken over by Bruckner; so was the awe-inspiring coda of the first movement. The scherzo and slow movement, with their alternation of melodies, are models for Bruckner's spacious middle movements, while the finale with a grand culminating hymn is a feature of almost every Bruckner symphony.^[27]

Bruckner is the first composer since Schubert about whom it is possible to make such generalizations. His symphonies deliberately followed a pattern, each one building on the achievements of its predecessors.... His melodic and harmonic style changed little, and it had as much of Schubert in it as of Wagner.... His technique in the development and transformation of themes, learnt from Beethoven, Liszt and Wagner, was unsurpassed, and he was almost the equal of Brahms in the art of melodic variation.^[28]

Cooke adds, also in the New Grove,

Despite its general debt to Beethoven and Wagner, the "Bruckner Symphony" is a unique conception, not only because of the individuality of its spirit and its materials, but even more because of the absolute originality of its formal processes. At first, these processes seemed so strange and unprecedented that they were taken as evidence of sheer incompetence.... Now it is recognized that Bruckner's unorthodox structural methods were inevitable.... Bruckner created a new and monumental type of symphonic organism, which abjured the tense, dynamic continuity of Beethoven, and the broad, fluid continuity of Wagner, in order to express something profoundly different from either composer, something elemental and metaphysical.^[29]

In a concert review, Bernard Holland described parts of the first movements of Bruckner's sixth and seventh symphonies as follows: "There is the same slow, broad introduction, the drawn-out climaxes that grow, pull back and then grow some more – a sort of musical coitus interruptus."^[30]

In the 2001 Second Edition of the New Grove, Mark Evan Bonds called the Bruckner symphonies "monumental in scope and design, combining lyricism with an inherently polyphonic design.... Bruckner favored an approach to large-scale form that relied more on large-scale thematic and harmonic juxtaposition. Over the course of his output, one senses an ever-increasing interest in cyclic integration that culminates in his masterpiece, the Symphony No. 8 in C minor, a work whose final page integrates the main themes of all four movements simultaneously."^[31].  Today's featured work is Bruckner's Symphony Number 8 in C minor which illustrates perfectly the sweep and grandeur so typical of Bruckner's works captured live with Celibidache at the podium on October 2, 1990.  You may also hear Celibidache and the Munich Philharmonic's October 18 performance of Bruckner's Symphony Number 7 in E Minor over on my tumblr.

 While mesmerized by the symphonic styling of Bruckner, I have an exquisite photographic portrait collection of lithesome lads au natural in this week's edition of Naked or Nearly So on display below the video.  These portraits evoke their own imaginings of the heart, soul and spirit within each subject from youthful winsomeness to the more mature and sensual.  Additional inspiration can be found in the Hottie of the Day! over on my tumblr.  Thanks for sharing a part over on my tumblr.  Have a fabulous weekend and join me again on Monday for another week of Music, Men & More!  Until next time as always, Enjoy!

Author's note: this post features liberal use of information found on Anton Bruckner's Wikipedia page and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra's website. 

Going Red For Russian LGBT's

I received an email from Hudson Taylor and Athlete Ally regarding the Sochi Olympics which begin on Friday.  I have posted the email below as Hudson proposes the Athlete Ally plan better than I.  

This Friday, the Winter Olympic Games will begin in Sochi and all eyes will be on Russia. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s government is pressing ahead with discriminatory laws that persecute LGBT people and mean someone can be arrested just for saying the word gay.

Principle 6 of the Olympic Charter states that discrimination of any kind has no place in the Olympic movement. That’s why we launched the Principle 6 campaign, which is now supported by more than 50 Olympians, including Sochi-bound Belle Brockhoff, Simona Meiler, Mike Janyk, and Alex Duckworth. Their commitment helps bring attention to the issue by supporting the Olympic ideals of inclusion and equality. As they make their way to Sochi, will you join them in a show of support?

Click here to download the Principle 6 image for Facebook, Twitter and other networks.

By uniting in visible support for Principle 6, we’re telling Russia, the IOC and the world that equality is a fundamental right for everyone, no matter which country they live in.

The only way to beat discrimination and intolerance is to stand up and be counted in support of equality.

Thousands of people have joined the campaign since is launched, and this week they are displaying Principle 6 online to send the message to Russia (check out actress Julianne Moore’s Twitter page!)

Will you join us in a visible display of solidarity by changing your profile picture before the Winter Games begin?

Click here to download a P6 profile picture for Facebook.

There’s never been a more important time to defend equality – thank you for joining us.

Together,

Hudson, Sam, Brian, Ethan and the team at Athlete Ally

PS: If you're in a hurry you can post the image straight to your timeline: Click here to share the Principle 6 image on Facebook.

www.athleteally.org

For your Midweek Musical Moment, Sergiu Celibidache conducts the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in their performance of  Piano Concerto Number 1 in D Minor, Opus 15 by Johannes Brahms with Daniel Barenboim as the Piano Soloist.  You may also want to hear Joshua Bell's live performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major,  Opus 77 over on my tumblr. 

Finally for today is a collection of scrumptious sexiness in this week's edition of Wet Wednesday.  Be sure to check out the Hottie of the Day! while you are over on my tumblr.  Thanks for sharing a part of your day with me, see you again tomorrow.  Until next time as always, Enjoy!