The blogger at the Greek blog ΜΟΝΑ - ΖΥΓΑ came up with a similar idea to mine on famous people born in 1908. While looking for people born in 1908 he found my post and so he linked to mine and reposted my post. In a separate e-mail he added two more well known names: Ian Fleming (May 28, 1908 - August 12,1964) whose commemorative stamps come out tomorrow apparently (January 8, 2008) and Herbert von Karajan (April 5, 1908 – July 16, 1989.)
I've posted the first part of his post. Can you find the names? Ropi, you're working on the Greek alphabet, this should be easy. (There are three other names which the list I copied already had - Galbraith, Cartier-Bresson, and , Levi-Strauss)
Διαβάζοντας κανείς την ειδική έκδοση που είχε χθές το ΒΗΜΑ για τις επετείους που συμπληρώνονται το 2008, βλέπει πως τη χρονιά που άρχισε "κλείνουν" εκατό χρόνια από τη γέννηση των Χέρμπερτ φον Κάραγιαν, Ιαν Φλέμιγκ, Ανρί Καρτιέ Μπρεσόν, Τζόν Γκαλμπρέϊθ και Κλόντ Λεβί- Στρός.
Karajan Video Courtesy of YouTube
I've got a fairly big von Karajan CD library. Not as big as my old cassette library, nor nearly as big a my long-abandoned LP library.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I respect his overall impact on the quality of music-making in Europe after WWII, he also stifled individual initiative. Not just among members of his ensembles, but in soloists who played under him.
Only three of the performances I have by him do I regard as definitive - his early 60s "Moldau," late 60s "Karelia Suite," by Sibelius, and his magnificent live 1980 performance of Mahler's 9th.
The first two pieces are pops numbers, but the Mahler performance is simply stunning, and I try to limit myself to only listening to it once a year, but usually fail and listen to it more often.
The only other performance to match it in tension is the 1938 Vienna performance by the Vienna Philharmonic, directed by Bruno Walter. It was the last performance in Vienna of Mahler, or of any Jewish composer, by the brilliant Vienna Philharmonic with its many gifted Jewish players, before the Anchluss.
How ironic that one Austrian, who joined the Nazi Party in Salzburg in 1933 (way before the Austrian Nazi Party was important to the career advancement of a young conductor), and a naturalized Austrian Jew, would be the two supreme interpreters of this masterpiece the composer never lived to hear.
well I gave it up, reason in my blog.
ReplyDelete