Features: Prokofiev; Scythian Suite – Dance of the Pagan Monster

Carnatic classical music Vidyullatha and SeethaPragna at Chennai. Video 5.

Victor Borge is an enigma for me. Though many would consider him to be simply a clown, albeit a clown spoofing classical music, some of his work is, to say the least, strikingly acute and tantalizingly interesting. The present piece is proof of this. The variations form is well-known and appears in virtually any classical music period. It would seem almost impossible to do anything new with the form but Borge proves us wrong by adopting a very unusual approach. He chooses a painstakingly well-known theme, here – “Happy birthday to you”, and sets about to create variations to it. But it is only the top of the iceberg: each variation is, effectually, the way a certain composer would write the theme itself. All in all, there are eleven variations of very different composers: we start by passing through Bach and Mozart and finish with Irving and… Read the rest entry…

Classical music for your day. Here’s some ’stormy’ music from Russian composer, Mussorgsky. Modest Mussorgsky – (1839-1881) A Night on Bald Mountain performed by: Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Fritz Reiner label: Living Stereo