Uzeb interprets “Blue in Green” and “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”

Your link does not seem to work. Please fix. – fk mod

Quite nice Saker, though Jazz mostly passes me by.

Here is Bach – Richter, Conciertos de Brandenburgo 1-6, BWV 1046-1051

https://youtu.be/Ehbar90jHz8

Recorded Moscow Conservatory, 28th March 1978.

A fair amount of spiel before they get going “it is only Richter who can perform Bach’s music” etc etc says the commentator with the becoming modesty of a true Russian.

Someone made a lovely comment a bit long, but it sums up the music rather well to a large extent. I hope I’m aloud to repost it here . . .

“The look in Richter’s eyes when he’s waiting for the director’s sign to start (2:56) strikes me. It reminds me of a orangutan or a great silverback gorilla. I can only try to imagine why this is the case: it is the same look my old seasoned and hugely experienced sailing shipper had in his eyes when looking out over the sea, standing on his 60 foot two-masted wooden sailing vessel. It is a look of perfect calm and concentration, a look of 100% mindfulness if you like, a fully focused mind. Beautiful. And it shows, in the music.

I was born a month after this recording, and looking at my father’s taste in music, I have probably heard this piece and others on a regular basis before I was born. And in some way, hearing Richter playing stuff like this feels like coming home and knowing myself on the deepest level possible, odd how that may sound. It makes my life, and life in general, worth living. It makes everything all-right. What a re-assurance. There is no need to worry, you may, but it’s okay. It will all come to right. Everything is okay, everything will be okay. There is no disaster that will not pass, no grievance that cannot be overcome, no hatred big enough that it cannot be turned into sadness, no sadness dark enough that it cannot turn into new-found joy. There is eternal comfort. Probably what Sam meant when standing on Mount Doom, suddenly looking up at the stars, suddenly realizing that there is eternal beauty, forever beyond the grasp of destruction. Very, very strange indeed, that music can evoke feelings like that, which are almost religious. Could it be that we are hearing the voice of God? I do not care much for religion in general, in my mind it’s a social construct born out of a need for guidelines and security. But here I am, not looking for guidelines or security, just feeling a bit lost in the depths of time amidst the innumerable stars (more Tolkien for you right there) in a universe without meaning or purpose other than what we make of it – I had accepted it fully. And then suddenly, there is this music, and against all knowledge, while knowing better, I am suddenly sure that everything will be allright. The music communicates a truth of beauty and joy that dwarfs any other philosophical / mathematical / scientific truth that I may have arrived at at a later age. And it’s a truth that is not alien, it’s something that I have always known and felt all my life. . .”

There is a god.

– Shyaku