Knoxville: Summer of 1915 by Samuel Barber

 

Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is a work for voice and orchestra (or chamber orchestra) from 1947 by American composer Samuel Barber (1910 - 1981). The text is from a 1938 short prose piece by James Agee. Although the piece is traditionally sung by a soprano, it may also be sung by tenor. This beautiful piece is a poetic evocation of life in a hot summer as seen from the perspective of a small boy. The work is in one movement, and is described in detail in its Wikipedia entry. I came across this gem when exploring Dawn Upshaw's discography in the early nineties after attending a recital by her in Chicago. It was my first encounter with Barber other than his famous Adagio for strings - many more compositions followed though. The version shown above is by Dawn Upshaw and the Orchestra of St. Luke's under David Zinman on a Nonesuch CD.

 

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The Dark Knight

 

The Dark Knight (2008)

Christopher Nolan's 2008 Batman flick, starring Christian Bale, Heather Ledger and Gary Oldman, is far better than anything I've seen in the genre - Heather Ledger was absolutely superb as the Joker. There were several posters for the movie, but this one stands out for me, especially how the bat symbol doubles up as the Joker's make-up/blood smeared mouth. 

 

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Mark Hollis by Mark Hollis

 

 

Mark Hollis is the only studio album by English musician and singer-songwriter Mark Hollis, the former Talk Talk front man, released in 1998. Originally it was meant to be a Talk Talk album, by the name Mountains of the Moon, but in the end it was decided to release it as a solo album. It continues where the final Talk Talk album Laughing Stock left off, atmospheric ambient post-rock with a dash of contemporary classical music. It has been called "the most quiet and intimate record ever made". Not for everyone, but if you are susceptible to this kind of minimal music (like I am) it is an absolute masterpiece. My favourites from the album are Watershed, Inside Looking Out, Westward Bound, and A New Jerusalem.

 

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Kew Gardens

 

 

London is of course a very suitable subject for vintage travel posters, and I selected this one because of the storks - our gallery's name is the mandarin word for stork. It was issued in 1920 as part of a series to promote the London Underground. The artist is Fred Taylor.

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Photoplay (January 1927)

 

 

Photoplay was one of the first American film fan magazines. It was founded in 1911 in Chicago and reached its peak in the 1920s and 1930s. At that time it was considered quite influential within the motion picture industry. The magazine was renowned for its artwork portraits of film stars on the cover by such artists as Earl Christy and Charles Sheldon. With the advancement of color photography, the magazine began using photographs of the stars instead by 1937. The magazine ceased publication in 1980 (from Wikipedia). This cover features movie star Olive Borden, whose career plummeted a few years later due to a reputation for being difficult and her problems to adjust to the new sound films. But she does look lovely behind the wheel of her car. The illustrator is Carl van Buskirk.

 

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Chamber music by Brahms and Dvořák

 

 

This CD has been a long-time favourite of mine. It was one of my first chamber music albums, combining two pieces I still consider in my top 3 for that genre: Johannes Brahms' autumnal Clarinet Quintet and Antonín Dvořák's mercurial 'American" String Quartet (the third being Franz Schubert's String Quintet). The performances by the Delmé String Quartet and Heith Puddy on clarinet are very fine indeed. If I could keep only one chamber music CD, this would be the one.

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Surreal Stairs

 

A dazzling Escheresque abstract image that I encountered in the Aegean shopping mall in Shanghai during our 2018 trip, a combination of reflections and refractions on a decoration piece. One of a series of abstracts I shot in Shanghai's many modern shopping malls.

 

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Jeder's manchmohl einsam by Wolfgang Niedecken

 

About the artist: Wolfgang Niedecken (1951) is a German singer, musician, and visual artist. He is the founder and lead singer of the rock group BAP. Since 1987 he has also released a handful of solo albums. Niedecken sings his songs in Kölsch, the local dialect of Cologne. 

 
About the song: Jeder's manchmohl einsam is a track from the 1996 album Leopardenfell: seventeen covers of Bob Dylan songs, translated into Kölsch. He achieves the impossible on this album: he makes you forget that these are Dylan songs (even though he takes some of the most famous ones like A hard rain's a gonna fall and Mighty Quinn) and makes them sound like his own work. Absolutely brilliant is his version of It's all over now, baby blue, which translated becomes Jeder's manchmol einsam. Sandwiched between some of the best sax playing this side of Baker Street, this sensitive ballad unfolds to great effect.

 

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Summer night, Inger on the beach by Edvard Munch

 

Edvard Munch (1863 - 1944) was a Norwegian painter, who painted in a rather personal style hovering between post-impressionism and expressionism. His best known work, The Scream (1893), has become an iconic image, but I actually prefer many of his others. There are a few themes that are often recurring in Munch's oeuvre - the beach (with or without people) is one of them. This 1889 painting includes a model, Munch's youngest sister. I first came across this image as a CD cover for songs by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg in the version of Anne Sofie von Otter, soprano, and Bengt Forsberg, piano. 

 

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The Shanghairen

 

 

The Shanghairen is a magazine that does not exist. Wait, what? From their website (link): "The Shanghairen is a collaborative project gathering dozens of emerging and confirmed talents from Shanghai and the rest of the World. It's a tribute to the famous covers of "The New Yorker", "The Parisianer", "The Tokyoiter" and "Le Montrealer". All artists were given full freedom of style and topics to express their vision of the city."  

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Shéhérazade by Maurive Ravel

 

Shéhérazade is a song cycle of three poems for (mezzo) soprano (or tenor) and orchestra (or piano), completed in 1903 by French composer Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937). The songs are based on the exotic texts of the French poet Tristan Klingsor, and evoke Persia of days gone by. I have a strong preference for the female voice in this work, and an even stronger preference for the orchestral version rather than the piano. The version shown above is by Elly Ameling and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under Edo de Waart on a Philips CD. 

 

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Memoirs of a geisha

 

Memoirs of a geisha (2005)

 

This 2005 Rob Marshall American epic period drama film about a young girl being forced to become a geisha is one of the most intriguing ones I've seen - only the ending was 'too Hollywood' for my taste. It starred Zhang Ziyi, Ken Watanabe, and Michelle Yeoh.The poster is very attractive as well - it reminds me a bit of the art by Partick Nagel. 

 

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Red Skies over Paradise by Fischer-Z

 

 

Red Skies over Paradise from 1981 is the third studio album by British New Wave group Fischer-Z. The theme of many songs is the Cold War threatening to escalate to World War III - a real threat that was on many people's minds in those years (and unfortunately once again at the moment). The outstanding title track about a nuclear attack on London, and songs like Battalions of Strangers, Berlin, and Cruise Missiles, are some of the striking examples. Other songs worth mentioning are the hit single Marliese, a creepy but great stalking song, and Song And Dance Brigade. For me this album is the highlight of their career, and one of the best albums of the decade.

 

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Carriso Gorge

 

 

The first decades of the twentieth century are a goldmine for beautiful travel posters. I had not seen this one before. The "Southern Pacific" made me wonder where this could be - turns out that this gorge is in Southern California, near San Diego. The poster is by Maurice Logan.

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Pictorial Review (February 1927)

 

 

Pictorial Review was a New York based women's magazine published from 1899 to 1939. By the late 1920s it was one of the largest of the "women's magazines". The Great Depression ended its existence a decade later. No information on the illustrator of this cover portrait.

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Moeran's Concertos

You have never heard of the English composer Ernest John Moeran (1894 - 1950)? I don't blame you - even at classical music discussion sites his name hardly rings a bell with many members. I have loved him ever since I got my first CD of his works (his only symphony) in the 1980s - he is a solid top20 composer to my taste. The CD shown above is a marvel. If I could save only one Moeran CD it would be this one. His Cello Concerto (played by Raphael Wallfisch with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta under Norman Del Mar) is for me the very best ever composed for that instrument (yes, even better than Dvorak and Elgar), and his Violin Concerto (played by Lydia Mordkovitch and the Ulster Orchestra under Vernon Handley) is almost as impressive. The two short orchestral works (Lonely Waters and Whythorne's Shadow, played by the Ulster Orchestra under Vernon Handley) are welcome bonuses. 

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Nanjing Usnisa palace

 

An example of architecture abstractions in photography. About halfway our 2018 Shanghai trip, we took a short organized three day excursion to Nanjing, Yangzhou and Zhenjiang. The first stop was at the Nanjing Usnisa Palace, a formidable complex that houses relics of the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama. The architecture is incredible, and the visit was unforgettable.  Here we have a detail of the roof of the entrance building - a stunning abstraction full of twists and turns. 

 

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Tequila Sunrise by The Eagles

 

About the band: The Eagles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1971. They are one of the world's best-selling bands, having sold more than 200 million records, including 100 million albums sold in U.S alone. Their highest popularity was in the seventies, when they released six of their seven studio albums.

 
About the song: the hit single Tequila sunrise from the 1973 album Desperado is a prime example of early Eagles, when their country-rock style still leaned very much toward country rather than rock. A simple melancholy ballad, lyrics that are rather run-of-the-mill, and somehow, some way, this song settles in your mind and you like it forever. The title is a play of words on the sunrise observed after a night of drinking, as well as on a well-known cocktail.

 

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The rag collector by Marianne von Werefkin

 

 

Russian artist Marianne von Werefkin (1860 - 1938) is one of my favourite expressionists. I first encountered her work on the internet, then we saw a few of her paintings in musea before Corona, and a few weeks ago we saw dozens of her works in a fabulous exhibition in nearby Zwolle.

 

This 1917 work, which was also in the exhibition, is just one example of her style. Could this landscape be more menacing? And to top it, we have the figure of the rag collector upfront, collecting rags from the seashore or lakeshore, likely remains from a boating accident. Morbid.

 

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Cherie

 

Covers of sheet music from the twenties are often great pieces of art, but this stylish one from 1921 by Art Phillips may be the most beautiful I've seen so far. And if you wonder what the song sounds like, I found it on YouTube here.

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From Me Flows What You Call Time by Tōru Takemitsu

 

From Me Flows What You Call Time is a concerto for 5 percussionists and orchestra from 1990 by Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu (1930 - 1996). It fits in with the 20th century tradition of writing concertos for unusual instruments. The title is taken from a poem by the Japanese poet Makoto Ooka, titled “Clear Blue Water”. It's a beautiful and evocative piece that deserved to be better known than it is. The version shown above is by percussion group Nexus and  the Pacific Symphony Orchestra under Carl St. Clair on a Sony CD.

 

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Dames Ahoy

 

 

När Sjömän Gå I Land (When Sailors Go Ashore) is the Swedish title for the American 1930 movie Dames Ahoy, directed by William James Craft, starring Glenn Tryon, Helen Wright and Otis Harlan. At that time, separate movie posters were designed and printed for the Swedish market, many of them very attractive, like this one.

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Philharmonics by Agnes Obel

 

 

Philharmonics is the debut studio album by the Danish singer-songwriter Agnes Obel, released in 2010. For me this is one of the best debut albums of the decade - and it was surprisingly successful as well. Her piano-dominated sound is clearly influenced by classical music, especially Erik Satie. It is refined, pure and calm, yet never even remotely boring. As one critic wrote: "There's an elegant, slipping darkness that creeps in around the corners, like something is being hidden in plain sight." Among the many highlights are Riverside, Brother Sparrow, Just So, Beast, Philharmonics, and Close Watch.

 

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Nehi

 

A cute poster promoting the USA soft drink brand Nehi (pronounced knee-high, introduced in 1924) with an image of a female pilot in front of her airplane. Originally I thought it was from the late twenties or thirties, but this could actually be from the forties and it might be depicting Hedy Lamarr. No information on the designer. 

 

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Jugend (December 1926)

 

Jugend (German for Youth) was an art magazine issued weekly in the first decades of the 20th century, often featuring beautiful covers. This one was created by Christian Schad (1894 - 1982), a German painter associated with Dada and the New Objectivity movement. 

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Mahler's Song Cycles

 

 

Gustav Mahler is widely recognized as an important composer, especially for his symphonies. I find it surprising that even among classical music aficionados there are many who have never listened to his orchestral song cycles. The three best (note that Das Lied von der Erde is an unnumbered symphony, not a song cycle) are collected on this CD, sung by baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (accompanied by the Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under Rafael Kubelik), Kindertotenlieder and Rückert-Lieder (accompanied by the Berliner Philharmoniker under Karl Böhm. This Deutsche Grammophon CD is one of my desert island discs: the song cycles are among the best ever composed, and Fischer-Dieskau nails them from start to finish.

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Shard

 

 

I've shot many rust abstracts over the years, but this is one of the most remarkable. There is actually a 3D structure formed by the rust here. A photograph I took a few months ago with my Canon Ixus 170.

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Chance for a Lifetime by Kayak

 

 

About the band: Kayak is a Dutch progressive rock band formed in 1972, and still going strong after a time-out from 1982 until 1999. Their singles and albums sold well in the Netherlands, but they made little impact internationally. A pity, because they are my favourite Dutch band. 

 
About the song: a track from one of their best albums, 1975's Royal Bed Bouncer. This song is the highlight of this great album with its tremendous drive and a science fiction theme (humans leaving a dying earth in a spaceship). Unfortunately, the record company decided to cut out a marvelous instrumental interlude when they released this as a single, and that version appears on all compilations as well. I clearly prefer the longer version on the album.

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Bather at Deauville by Kees van Dongen

 

Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen (26 January 1877 – 28 May 1968) was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauves ("Wild men" = the French equivalent of the German expressionist movement) . Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually into a rough pointillist style. From 1905 onward – when he took part at the controversial 1905 Salon d'Automne exhibition – his style became more and more radical in its use of form and colour. Van Dongen gained a reputation for his sensuous portraits of especially women (information from Wikipedia). Based on my personal taste I would rank only van Gogh higher among Dutch painters.

 

A few weeks ago we saw some his work exhibited in the Lalique Museum in Doesburg, and some others in the Singer Museum Laren. When I first came across the 1920 painting Bather at Deauville, I would have never guessed that this is by Kees van Dongen. My wife was right at the first try though. Anyway, it is beautiful.

 

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Blue Angel

 

 

Under Anything Goes I will be sharing anything I think worthwhile that does not fall under one of the other categories. Examples are book covers, song sheets, and like today vintage fasion illustrations. This is a particularly brilliant one, that is claimed to be from the Purple Parrot magazine (one of the 1933 issues). I could not find any further information.
 

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