Great Performances

[av8rmike]

You haven't lived until you've heard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee", or "Stars & Stripes Forever" played on eight pianos at once. Especially when the pianists concerned are Leif Ove Andsnes, Martha Argerich, Emanuel Ax, Claude Frank, Evgeny Kissin, Lang Lang, James Levine, and Mikhail Pletnev, some of the most famous and talented pianists alive today. I was watching "Great Performances" on PBS tonight instead of practicing, so maybe it makes me the ultimate music geek. It was the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. I just thought the idea was really cool. And the Bach concerto for four pianos was awesome, especially with the pickup orchestra they put together, a veritable who's-who of the string world: Christian Tetzlaff, Sarah Chang, Ilya Gringolts, Vadim Repin, Yuri Bashmet, Mischa Maisky, among others, with Gidon Kremer as "concertmaster." It was worth skipping the practicing, especially since I'm really tired and my right wrist is starting to bug me.

Comments

[violaman.livejournal.com]

The things I miss when I'm halfway around the world. All I get is outdated Olympics coverage and year-old reruns of American shows like
"NYPD Blue," "CSI," and "King of Queens." Unless you like your artsy programming in Chinese, in which case you have your choice of dramas and movies. But nothing like "Great Performances." Maybe they'll rerun it when I'm back next week.

[av8rmike.livejournal.com]

The downside is that it was only on for about 45 minutes, once you take away the PBS commercials.

I hope you had Liz TiVO this week's "Daily Show", because Kerry's appearance and Steve Colbert's segment were really good.