What Are You Listening To?

[Teo]

Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. Thanks for asking!

[HeartbeatsBand]

Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. Thanks for asking!

http://www.bandheartbeats.com

[CRAZY-HORSE]

PAUL McCARTNEY "ocean's kingdom" cd,2011.

im not a fan of classical music...actually 99% of it bores me to tears!, however as a big McCartney fan i have to buy all of his classical,operatic material to keep my collection complete...
four seperate pieces on here, each well over ten minutes in length...way too long to keep my attention fixed on it, so i had to listen to it in short spells...
there are some lovely little passages here which are quite emotive,haunting and at times quite uplifting...other times though,i think...how long do i really need to listen to a violin play what appears to be the same notes over and over agian for what seems like an eternity!?
look, not bad for background music i suppose but thats about as far as i'd go with it...the same for his other classical experiments!
that said, it is pretty hard to knock a guy who cannot read nor write music, and has been responsible and part of at least twenty of the top 100 albums of all time(IMO), and its amazing just how far he has come from the simplicities of 'love me do' to writing classical operas,classical dance and classical music in general( maybe one day i will understand all this classical music, but right now, i am not really ready for it!)

tracks:

1. movement 1-oceans kingdom *
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2LdPUyF6Ks audio
2. movement 2-the hall of dance **
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CEwBo9wESM audio
3. movement 3-imprisonment *
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=162jKyaksN4 audio
4. movement 4-moonrise **
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiDqkncS7FQ audio

paul mccartney interview about the making of....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nSUDo_6EaE video

3s=0
2s=2
1s=2

rating: 1.5

[SteveO]

I like this album ! I don't try at all to analyse classical music...I just let the sounds take over...sometimes good sometimes not thay good...that's how I view all music in general I guess !

PAUL McCARTNEY "ecce cor meum" cd,2006.

God!, i dont know what to write about this one as im not a classical impressario,but here goes....
five tracks,total running time of some 56 minutes...
some nice choral vocals but i cannot understand what they are going on about,even when reading the inserted lyric sheet
not my kind of thing at all, guessing i bought it to keep my Macca collection complete
i cant score this one as there are little bits here and there within each track that i do like,likewise bits i do not like...
either way, you got to admire the guy for what he has achieved in 50yrs of music since "love me do" first hit the airwaves
so i'll give you the allmusic review and you can make up your own mind about it!

allmusic:

If only one of Paul McCartney's varied musical strengths carries his oratorio, Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart), it is his astonishing melodic talent: indeed, it is because of the piece's undeniable tunefulness that it is at all viable. This grandiose, neo-Romantic work for soprano, mixed choir, boy choir, and orchestra would seem unbearably tedious were it not for the chains of attractive themes that are laced throughout, and the monumental structure would collapse under its ponderous weight were it not for the light, lyrical touches that hold it up. McCartney the pop master is still the classical naïf who, by dint of his supreme self-confidence, believes he has the technical skill and artistic imagination to set his rambling, sentimental text with enough interesting material to hold the listener's attention for close to an hour. Yet the predominant tempos are slow to moderately slow, the orchestration is lackluster, and the textures are so thickly chordal that even McCartney's amateurish attempts at counterpoint bring welcome relief. The somber tone of a requiem is unmistakable throughout, and McCartney's gravitas is expressed through dark timbres and minor harmonies that seem borrowed from Mozart and Verdi; only in the third movement, "Musica," is the mood lightened to a bittersweet nostalgia, expressed through a poignant melody comparable to anything in McCartney's popular song catalog, and brightened with brass fanfares reminiscent of "Penny Lane." Yet the bulk of this overlong work is heavy going, and despite the best efforts of soprano Kate Royal, the London Voices, the combined boy choirs of Magdalen College, Oxford, and King's College, Cambridge, and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under Gavin Greenaway, this oratorio comes off as a pretentious exercise with few worthwhile highpoints. EMI's sound is good, though better separation of parts might have made this recording more listenable.

tracks:

1. spiritus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMRnfqkBNIo audio
2. gratia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E41dcCCw3l4 audio
3. interlude/lament
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k75AnPnwRyU audio
4. musica
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGF_1z2dTJU audio
5. ecce cor meum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH1G1Vd7FHk audio

[SteveO]

^ Excuse the typing error above - thay should read that...my PM and edit button aren't working. Crazy, could you kindly contact the Tech Man for a fix ?

[CRAZY-HORSE]

i have done that SteveO...he's not answering his emails, i know he and his wife have a newborn in the house now, but i'd have thought he'd have at least checked his inbox by now.

[SteveO]

Thanks mate ! I appreciate it !

i have done that SteveO...he's not answering his emails, i know he and his wife have a newborn in the house now, but i'd have thought he'd have at least checked his inbox by now.

[CRAZY-HORSE]

PAUL McCARTNEY "working classical" cd,1999.

Macca's third classical sojurn, and again, one i cannot get into.
fourteen tracks on here,some previously recorded by him, but now given classical treatment, some work, most dont, things like 'maybe im amazed' ,'my love', 'calico skies' and 'golden earth girl' had a classical quality to the originals, so they work ok, others like 'junk', 'she's my baby' and 'the lovely linda' just appear to be making up numbers from a man with a then current muse towards classical music.
also,several pieces written especially for this album, but they are long and drawn out IM, but im not a classical type of guy, so what the hell do i know if they are good or bad pieces of music?
all-up four tracks i like, ten i dislike giving an overall score of 1.3 or 4/10..

[Gossens]

Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Hodie by RVW, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, the Choir of Guilford Cathedral, and conducted by Sir David Willcocks, on the EMI label. It's getting me into the mood of the season!

[CRAZY-HORSE]

PAUL McCARTNEY "the family way" cd,1966.

whole John Lennon was away working on his "how the war was won" movie, Macca approached George Martin and asked if it was possible for him to write a theme song for a movie...
GM enquired with a few people he knew and Macca got given the chance to work on "the family way"...
because he cannot read or write music he played all the pieces on this albumon acoustic guitar to GM who then wrote them down and transcribed for classical instruments...
the result here is fourteen tracks for the movie of the same name above...
two of these tracks, "love in the open air" and "theme from the family way" were released as singles in the UK under the name "the tudor minstrels", i cannot find anything anywhere to say whether they charted or not, but they probably did on some 'classical' chart somewhere...
anyway, these little pieces of music arent too bad IMO, as they are each only a couple of minutes long...just short enough for my to hold my interest LOL!...
mostly this does sound classical but there are a couple of tracks with distinct jazzy overtones, all nice subtle pieces of work IMO, and shows just how Macca's craft and mind was developing at such a young age...
also, inbetween doing these tracks tracks The Beatles were also recording "strawberry fields Forever"..two totally different styles of music..
i am not rating this one as i simply do not know how to rate classical music really, only to say that if i did this would probably come close to a pass mark...so 1.6 it is!

from the album:

love in the open air
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFvkyFXDPnA audio

theme from the family way
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d84w9x0FNgo audio