Saturday, October 22, 2011

In Your Ear: Anthony Fantano

As part of Tell Me More's occasional series "In Your Ear," Anthony Fantano, host of "The Needle Drop" from WNPR in Hartford, Connecticut, shares his favorite electronic tunes.



MICHEL MARTIN, host: Now it's time for the occasional feature we call In Your Ear. That's where we asked some of the guests on our program to share the music that gets them going. This week though, we decided to reach out to music gurus from public radio stations around the country to hear about their personal playlists. Today we hear from a radio host and music reviewer from Hartford, Connecticut.


ANTHONY FANTANO: Hi, everyone. I'm Anthony Fantano, the Internet's busiest music nerd of WNPR's THE NEEDLE DROP. I also run a website with THE NEEDLE DROP, where I review music there on a regular basis. And this is what's in my ear.


(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CITY STAR")


FANTANO: The first song I wanted to show off was this track "City Star" from the new Rustie album "Glass Swords." Rustie is a Glasgow electronic music producer.


(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CITY STAR" ALBUM)


FANTANO: You know, when I was reviewing this record, this is one of the most recent records I reviewed. There are a lot of songs that, you know, just get me excited because they create a certain, I guess, set of colors in my head. And I when I first listened to this song it was like quite literally, you know, just rainbow, fireworks exploding in every possible direction in a really overwhelming way, in a really exciting kind of way.


(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CITY STAR")


FANTANO: While I was listening to this song, I was not under the influence of anything.


(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CITY STAR")


(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE GOLDEN AGE OF APOCALYPSE")


FANTANO: Well, the next song over here that's in my ear is this track from the new Thundercat album, "The Golden Age of Apocalypse." Thundercat is a bass player - jazz bass player, jazz fusion, to be exact - from the West Coast.


(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE GOLDEN AGE OF APOCALYPSE")


FANTANO: Now what I did find on this album was something different, just a different take on a lot of jazz fusion ideas. And I would love to see a lot of other artists in the future, kind of, take jazz down this avenue and make it younger again, make it more interesting again, and make it something that is just as innovative and as current as a lot of the other genres out there.


(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE GOLDEN AGE OF APOCALYPSE")


(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NIGHTLIGHT")


FANTANO: Another song right now that's, kind of, in my ear is a track from the new Little Dragon album, "Ritual Union," and it's kind of a sensual album for me. And that's one of the reasons this track in particular "Nightlight," has kind of hung with me. And the singing to me that stands out the most about this song is just their front woman's, Naomi's vocals. She's just got such a fantastic voice. It's just got a lot of personality to me and she has a fantastic range.


(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NIGHTLIFE")


NAOMI: (Singing) (Unintelligible)


FANTANO: I just love a great groove. And Little Dragon brought that on this album, and this track, especially, to me.


(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NIGHTLIFE")


NAOMI: (Singing) Turning and (Unintelligible) form the line. Moving shoulder. (Unintelligible)


MARTIN: That was Anthony Fantano, host of THE NEEDLE DROP on WNPR in Hartford, Connecticut, telling us what's playing in his ear.


(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NIGHTLIFE")


NAOMI: (Singing) (Unintelligible)


MARTIN: And that's our program for today. And remember, to tell us more, please go to npr.org and find us under the Programs tab. You can also friend me on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at TELL ME MORE/NPR. I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News and the African-American Public Radio Consortium. Let's talk more tomorrow.

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Friday, October 21, 2011

Guest DJ Leif Ove Andsnes' Liszt List

Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, circa 1886. The 200th anniversary of his birth falls on Oct. 22. W. and D. Downey/Getty Images

Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, circa 1886. The 200th anniversary of his birth falls on Oct. 22.

Poor Franz Liszt. With all of his sparkling compositions, musical innovations and staggering virtuosity as a pianist — not to mention the 200th anniversary of his birth on Oct. 22 — it's still fashionable in some corners to bad-mouth him. A Gramophone critic recently related the story of how his book publisher balked at the idea of including Liszt in a collection of 50 great composers.

And then there are people like pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, who see Liszt as one of the towering figures in music — and still underrated. Click the listen link at the top of this page to hear Andsnes spin and discuss some of his favorite Liszt recordings.

Fellow pianist Stephen Hough is another Liszt defender. He's not only been playing Liszt throughout this anniversary year, he's been writing about the composer, too. In the Telegraph (excerpted below) and on his blog, Hough points out a few of what he believes to be the composer's many virtues.

That it's 200 years since the birth of Franz Liszt seems like a misprint when you consider how his influence on the musical life of the 20th century was as great as on the 19th. The man who was born within an echo of the harpsichord was the most important inspiration and influence on the creation and development of the modern piano. The man who grew up in a world where pianists played perhaps just one item on mixed concert programmes ended up inventing the piano recital (his word) — pianist as star, at the centre of the stage for a whole evening, in profile to a concentrated, adoring audience.

Still, 200 years after his birth, Liszt is lost to many classical listeners. I admit I've had my own struggles cozying up to his music. There's so much that simply doesn't connect with me, compared to, say, music by Chopin and Schumann, the two other great piano composers whose 200th birthdays we celebrated recently. One thing I do know: Hearing Liszt performed by the best musicians can help. An all-Liszt concert a few months ago by Evgeny Kissin turned my head around about some of the piano pieces.

 

For Andsnes, the attraction to Liszt's music has a lot to do with colors.

"When you're playing Liszt you feel like you have an orchestra in your hands," Andsnes says. "He was starting to use all these tremolos in the bass, reminiscent of a bass and cello section in an orchestra."

And it's those colors, plus interpretive insights, that Andsnes finds irresistible in many of his favorite Liszt performances. In Dinu Lipatti's Petrarca Sonneto 104 there's "a level of refinement of pianistic perfection." In the young Chinese pianist Yuja Wang's B minor Sonata he hears the "fresh" and "rhapsodic" combined with "endless possibilities." With William Kapell's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 11, it's the "burning passion and conviction," and in Geza Anda's Waldesrauchen Andsnes finds an uncalculated "element of surprise."

Perhaps Andsnes' most surprising pick is a 1936 recording of Bela Bartok performing Sursum Corda. "Often this piece is very static in performances," Andsnes says. "But here it moves forward with an inner ecstasy and happiness."

And then there's Liszt the man. Andsnes feels it's sometimes easy to look askance at Liszt when you focus too much on his reputation as a composer of flashy pieces, the ladies who threw jewels on stage at his electrifying performances and still more ladies (26 in all, we're told) with whom the handsome virtuoso had affairs.

"He was, sometimes, a kind of shallow pop star of his time, and there is music to underline that," Andsnes says. "Everything is done with a sense of pianistic perfection, but there are seductive pieces that are maybe not so meaningful musically today and seem rather superficial. And the figure himself, he seemed to be sometimes calculating with his audience in how to get success. And in that sense he's quite a modern figure."

But Liszt was also generous. He took on students for free and championed what was then misunderstood music by colleagues such as Berlioz and Wagner, who became his son-in-law. His interest in spiritual matters slowly increased, and by 1865 he had taken several holy orders of the Roman Catholic Church.

Perhaps listening to someone like Andsnes talk about Liszt and his music will open a few closed doors for those who are less than enthusiastic about Liszt. But let's give the last word to Hough: "While it would be a mistake to see Liszt as a saint, it would be even more inaccurate to view him as a fraud. And those of us who spend time with him at the piano usually end up thinking of him as a friend."


View the original article here

Franz Liszt At 200: An Important, But Not Great, Composer

Enlarge Hulton Archive

Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt wrote incredibly difficult music, music that only he was capable of playing.

Hulton Archive

Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt wrote incredibly difficult music, music that only he was capable of playing.


Tomorrow is the 200th birthday of composer and pianist Franz Liszt. Morning Edition's music commentator Miles Hoffman thinks there are plenty of reasons to celebrate.


"This is a man who lived an extraordinarily long and an extraordinarily productive life — a very complicated life," Hoffman says "By many accounts he was the greatest pianist of the 19th century, somebody who revolutionized people's ideas of what was possible on the piano."


What Liszt did for the piano was what Paganini had done for the violin a generation earlier. And he did it in a similar way, Hoffman says.


"He wrote incredibly difficult music — music that completely bowled audiences over. And at the time it was music only he was capable of playing."


Liszt's music has waxed and waned in popularity over the years. Some complain that its reliance on thousands of notes and flashy passagework renders it shallow. Defenders point to the quieter, innovative and often deeply spiritual music of Liszt's late career — music he wrote after his seemingly endless barnstorming tour through Europe ended and he settled down in Weimar, Germany. Nevertheless, these days, almost every concert pianist of note has a few pieces by Liszt in their repertoire.


Hoffman's own view of how Liszt fits into so-called pantheon of great composers may spark a little controversy.


"I think there are people who would disagree with me, but I would make the case that Liszt was not so much a great composer but was an extraordinarily important composer," Hoffman explains. "I don't think of Liszt as a composer of masterpieces. When I listen to his piano works, for example, I'm more struck by the virtuosity than by the beauty or the depth of the music itself. But I should probably make an exception — or pianists would angry with me — for Liszt's B minor Piano Sonata, because many people, especially pianists, do consider it a masterpiece."


What's certain, Hoffman says, is that Liszt was in many ways an important pioneer as a composer. Wagner, Bartok, and Debussy were all heavily influenced by him. And as a person, Liszt was remarkably benevolent. He championed composers who were alive at the time — Berlioz and Wagner. But he also championed works of composers who had come before.


"These were composers whose genius Liszt felt it was terribly important for the world to recognize — especially Schubert and Beethoven," says Hoffman. "The way he championed these works, very often, was to transcribe them for piano so he could play the music in his recitals — for instance he transcribed all nine symphonies of Beethoven, a tremendous undertaking. His was able to bring this music to the attention of people who otherwise would never have heard it."

First Watch: CANT, 'Believe'

Chris Taylor is a busy guy. He's not only a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist for the psychedelic folk-rock band Grizzly Bear, but he's also produced all of the band's albums since Yellow House. Now he's releasing solo material on his label, Terrible Records, under the moniker CANT, and promoting the release of his album, Dreams Come True, with a video for "Believe."


With its big, sludgy bass line, layered vocals and syncopated rhythm, "Believe" sounds like the sort of breakup song a guy from Grizzly Bear would create. It's what Taylor calls "a song about the value of truth between you and your lover, and the consequence of withholding." However, the song takes on an eerier sheen when paired with grainy footage of UFOs (complete with date stamps from '90s-era home videos) and other extraterrestrial phenomena hovering over city skylines and desolate farms.


Lines like, "Things I haven't shown you / You won't believe / Things I haven't told you / You won't believe" turn from the plea of a desperate lover into a challenge to viewers to decide what's real and what's fake. It's as if Taylor is saying, "Look at all this evidence! How can you deny these things exist?"


We asked director Jamie Harley to tell us a bit more about his inspiration for the video.


Jamie Harley:



I've always been fascinated by this kind of footage. Even if you know that what you see is an obvious fake or just an out-of-focus weather balloon, there's always a poetic quality to these kind of images.

Tracy Nelson On Mountain Stage

"Victim Of The Blues""I Know It's A Sin""Howlin' For My Baby""Without Love"

Singer Tracy Nelson marks her 16th appearance on Mountain Stage with a set drawn from her new album, Victim of the Blues. The album was nearly lost when Nelson's century-old farmhouse caught fire with the completed digital master inside. Rescued by firefighters as the house burned to the ground, the album features an assortment of powerful blues standards by Ma Rainey, Jimmy Reed and Willie Dixon, just to name a few.

In the '60s, Nelson cut her teeth at the feet of legends like Muddy Waters and Charlie Musselwhite, and was a part of San Francisco's Fillmore scene alongside Jimi Hendrix and others. Nelson fronted the group Mother Earth, which added a country to rock years before such a combination was fashionable; at the time, Nelson was often compared to Janis Joplin. Now based in Nashville, she's also become known as a songwriter, seeing her tunes covered by Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt and Cyndi Lauper.

The singer's latest album, Victim of the Blues</em>, was almost lost in a fire at her Nashville home.

The singer's latest album, Victim of the Blues, was almost lost in a fire at her Nashville home.

The Australian bluegrass band brings incredible musicianship to a five-song set on Mountain Stage</em>.

The Australian bluegrass band brings incredible musicianship to a five-song set on Mountain Stage.

The roots-rock band makes its first appearance as a group on the show to perform new material.

The roots-rock band makes its first appearance as a group on the show to perform new material.



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