Sunday 13 February 2011
Reader's Choice
Richard is one of my regular readers. He suggested the above performance outplays the Couperin I posted last week. It is a splendid performance and on a button box too.
If anyone would like to share a video of their favourite music, please email me or leave a message in comments and I could organise a reader's choice post regularly. Jazz, comedy, pop, rock, folk - anything that you think others may enjoy.
You might remember this music from the Walt Disney Classic 1954 film 2000 Leagues Under the Sea. I've published it because I'm a fan of James Mason and thought his performance as Captain Nemo was breathtaking.
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10 comments:
If I ever win the lottery, I have promised myself lessons with a dialect coach in order to speak with James Mason's accent. Odd, but as I don't drive a Ferrari isn't on my shopping list.
If you win the lottery than you would afford the Ferrari Brian. But, even with James Mason's accent that wouldn't turn me on. I know I couldn't get out of a Ferrari without crane.:)
I am sure the young man playing the button accordian is indeed accomplished, and it would have been nice to have heard his rendition of Bach. But listen to any accomplished Accordionist on You Tube, or anywhere else, and you will hear a sound quite different to that heard in this recording. What you are hearing, is a full blown wind tubular organ, probably in a Church. The sound is so deep and reverberant it cannot be repicated on a vibrating reed instrument.
It's a shame, the artist may well have been listening to the piece and copying the notes, he certainly has the fingering right as far as I can tell. Just one or two laces where the sound does not quite synchronise with the fingers, but I'm sure he must be very good. Perhaps he has played this piece on an organ, and then played the Accordian. I'm not buying it.
Very fine.
- Aangirfan
Derek may well be right, I don't know.
I did once hear a performance of Bach's D major Prelude and Fugue (BWV 565 iirc) on a button-box, in Basel, and the sound was so realistic I thought (from out in the street) that it was actually someone playing the Town Hall organ.
But it was in fact a squeeze-box. The guy had a crowd of over a hundred, at a guess, by the time he finished; hardly a note out of place - as I would know, having played this piece myself on a real organ - and many many well-deserved Swiss Francs went into his "hat" afterwards. It was an astonishing performance.
Ah Derek, I do know the depths a good accordion can reach but then I'm only a beginner on a keyboard one. Even my small instrument can convey notes which can't be achieved from an expensive piano keyboard - one of those which does everything.
Unfortunately, with it being a button box I can only judge by the left hand. Maybe I can ask a real accordion player their opinion.
WY you're lucky. I've seldom heard classical music played on an accordion. It's only recently the musical elite allowed the accordion to be classed as a musical instrument and access to RMA examination. Much of that work was achieved by David Wilkie of Perth who has worked hard all his life to achieve it. Wish he'd update his wee shop though but he still sells quality instruments.
Have to agree wirh Derek, that's an accomplished mime.
The 'cat' escapes the bag at 2m.25secs. He gets to the end of bellows travel and reverses, but there is a continuous fluid not quite unbroken. I thought for a moment it could be delay between sight and sound, but the note is quite continuous. This cannot be achieved on an accordian without that momentary reversal.
Try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUj6SlEX4mY&feature=related
I don't quite hear what you do Derek, although there are a couple of places in which his fingers do not co-ordinate with the actual music. Initially I thought it was a problem with the recording, but on second thoughts...
Then again I'm no expert on button boxes. The sound they produce can be quite different to piano keyboards.
Thanks for the video. Very interesting.
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