Smorg's Favorite Tunes: The First Five

I promised my good friend Georg at Washing Without Getting Wet Blog quite a long while ago to make a post about my 10 all time favorite pieces of music. My slow-sluggedness alone, I'm afraid, doesn't account for the delay. I have so many favorite tunes that it is hard to settle on just ten, so I found myself making changes to the list every time I look at it. :oP After many months of dragging, I'm putting my big foot down on the following numbers simply because I'd never get a post started if I don't quit fidgeting with it. So... here are the 10 pieces of music that pop up in my head to stay the most, much to my comfort and pleasure - depending on circumstances, listed in no particular order:

                                               

1. 'Gia dagli occhi il velo e tolto' from Mozart's Mitridate (preferably sung by Vesselina Kasarova)

Farnace spends most of the opera betraying his father and brother to get what he wants (his dad's fiancee) until his treachery comes home to roost and lands him in jail. Having time to re-examine his unwieldy behavior he now realizes his rottenness and resolves to reform himself in this long song of atonement. It is an amazingly elegant soul-searching tune especially considering that Mozart was only 14 years old when he came up with it. The aria was custom-composed for the wackily low-voiced alto-castrato Giuseppe Cicognani, which makes singing it quite miserable for most mezzo-sopranos and countertenors performing the role today. The melodic line lives in the dusky depth of the chest register and thrives on sadistic octave-yo-yoing vocal leaps done in legato... If anyone deserves to be treated like that by a composer, I suppose Farnace does! 

2. Mendelssohn's E minor violin concerto (preferably played by Tasmin Little with the BBC Scottish Symph. Orch.)

Well... just because it is popular doesn't mean it is tart! It really took a genius to compose this thing. I've never heard how so many emotions can be put on just one violin string. And when the others are added, of course, the thing just explodes your mind in the cleanest eruption there is. No flash, no bang, no 'shock and awe', but pure acoustical delight that simply doesn't wane with repeated playing. I first encountered this piece via a video of Yehudi Menuhin performing this, I think, for a television program.

3. 'Kyrie' from Mozart's Mass in C minor (especially when sung by Barbara Bonney with JE Gardiner)

I first heard this number on the soundtrack cassette tape of the film Amadeus some time in the '90s while I was golfing around the US West Coast. It stuck in my head for the entire tournament with quite good result. To this day when I hear the tune I can remember much of the last round I played at Merced Country Club. It is always good to remember the 'good old days' when I was too naive to notice much 'not good' stuff that existed regardless of my ignorance. The rendition on the cassette was by Dame Felicity Lott with Sir Neville Mariner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Field. A great performance in its own right! I'm not religious now, but I still enjoy the music no less. Everyone has to confront helplessness every now and then and I can easily substitute crying for godly mercy with the search for the strength within to deal with whatever problem I'm facing. It comes down to the same thing regardless of how one chooses to label it.

4. Sarasate's Introduction and Tarantella (preferably by Mirijam Contzen and Valery Rogatchev)
Another very popular violin & piano duet that somehow didn't hit it right off with me on the first few go's, I guess mainly because it is very tempting for the violinist to make it his/her own show (and the pianist tend to willingly accommodate that). When played like a 'duet' as Mirijam Contzen and Valery Rogatchev do, however, this is a deadly infectious harmonic conversation I have a hard time stopping myself from repeatedly eavesdropping upon with the aid of the 'replay' button on my stereo. Listen to it... they (the soloists) actually listen to each other!

5. Verdi's Requiem
Not just one of two sections from it, but the whole thing! Of course, most people will be familiar with the fiery 'Dies irae' section. It has a knack for showing up in television commercials and in intense (and sometimes supernatural-ish) movie scenes, and, if I may say so, doesn't paint a very merciful picture of that notion of god that the piece invokes. I don't remember where I first heard the piece, or even which section first struck my ears. I'm partial toward the soprano-mezzo duo in 'Agnus Dei' and the surreptitious 'Quid sum miser', and, of course, everyone's favorite 'Libera me' -- not for the religious lyric of the thing but for the moodiness Verdi provides. Having this thing playing in my ears makes the brooding cloudy gray days especially enjoyable.