From the vaults

I picked up a cheap used CD a few weeks ago. It appealed on every level: 1990, moody looking pair on the front, one holding a viola, and nothing about them on the interweb I could find. £3 for a new experience? Bargain.

The album is Swans and Turtles, by Mark Springer and Sarah Sarhandi. She's a viola player and composer, I guess you'd say: she exists in the space between classical and jazz and pop. Potentially unutterably pretentious, you might think, but no. Mr. Springer? I have no idea. There's nothing about him anywhere - and no youtube footage of any of it. Even Last.fm has very little, and one comment from someone who did the same as me.

What's the music like? Well, I'm a sucker for the viola anywhere: Vaughan Williams' Flos Campi is one of my favourite pieces of music, and the same goes for Morton Feldman's The Viola in My Life. They say the cello is lovely because it's closest to the human voice's range - I reckon the viola is close too. Terrible violinist though I was, I always assume that I'd be a better viola-ist just because there's the wonderful warm hum about a viola. This album sounds to me like a mix of Vaughan Williams, Delius, the minimalists, 4AD, the Velvet Underground, Galaxie 500/Damon and Naomi and Madder Rose. Soft, melodic, but with an underlying edge. Melancholic, sure but sweet too.

It's so good that I've rather naughtily uploaded some for your delectation. Hope they work.

John Cale - Y Cymro

Who linked the high art world of experimental modernist music to art happenings with Warhol and the smacked-up confrontation of The Velvet Underground? A nice viola-playing Welsh-speaker, that's who: and now he's Wales's representative at the Venice Biennale (an important art thing).

Feldman

Alex Ross over at Therestisnoise has posted a few moments of Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel. If this doesn't convince you of the joy of modern music, nothing ever will. The first instrument is a viola, that underestimated but noble plank. 

I can't help thinking that in this snippet, it sounds very like the opening theme of Vaughan Williams's Flos Campi, a far more beautiful piece than The Lark Ascending, although perhaps that's because the former hasn't been done to death by Classic FM (soporifically stealing your soul with music from bourgeois commercials: all your M+S favourites). I hate that station. It's the Daily Mail of classical music.