I’ve had little time to properly rip some discs the past couple of days. Busy working on finishing up a recording project, and today was also Celia’s 5th birthday. We started the morning out with ‘Birthday’ by The Beatles (don’t think she would like the Sugarcubes as much yet, though I might be surprised). I’ve also been making sure to keep up on some exercise, and I will be releasing a small piece of software soon that accesses your iTunes library, and let’s you make mixes that are keyed to your running pattern. I’ve been running / walking to Led Zeppelin the past couple weeks, and for the most part it works nicely. Though some tunes a poor choices in hindsight. ‘Achille’s Last Stand’ is fine for running AFTER the first 40 seconds of fade in droning guitar. ‘When The Levee Breaks’ = worst running song ever??? But the best cool down song is five minutes of walking home to ‘The Lemon Song’ and playing air bass.

So I went ahead and added some purchases from the past couple of months tonight. These included a couple discs of music for viols by Marin Marais and Pollini and Abbado’s set of Beethoven piano concertos. The Marais is wonderful music, and can sound quite different to ears that haven’t heard much viol music. The viol (viola da gamba and friends) has a more nasally sound, not quite as resonant as the cello. It also is a little slower to speak. Much of the music also tends to have longer, more sweeping lines (this is a generality I probably shouldn’t make, but I think most people who have heard music for viols would probably agree with me that this is the music it played best), and can be very lyrical and emotional. One of this discs though is a set of suites, and some of it really moves. Some of the articulations (which even survived in French music to the present day) are quite snappy, even surprising after hearing such long drawn out attacks in slower movements.

The Pollini set was a big surprise to me. I don’t dislike his solo Beethoven sonata recordings, but don’t really like them much either. Mostly, I was indifferent about them. But the concerto recordings were done close to 20 years after the other recordings, and as a pianist Pollini has grown amazingly. He may be one of the best living pianists today. And Abbado, as he was nearing the end of his time with Berlin, had also grown and learned probably as much from working with such an amazing orchestra as they learned from him. These recordings are wonderful pretty much all around. I’m going to throw on the fourth concerto right now I think before I go to bed… or maybe the middle movement of the ‘Emperor’. Either way, I know it will be a good way to end the night.