Aaron Copland redux

For as long as I recall classical music played a major part in my life from handed down records, broadcasts listened to an concerts attended that over the decades has lead to collection of favourites by various composers.

Parts of this have been mentioned on this blog over the years as I moved from buying performances on lp records and cassettes to now standard Compact Disc and High Definition download

Chunks of my collection are in one respect time periods where I picked what I could as my interests were piqued remaining without being reassessed in the light of newer recordings and improved mastering of older ones.

Aaron Copland is one of America's greatest composers, period, someone who had the art of getting a lot in without losing touch with American home spun idioms and relative simplicity.

It was around Nineteen-Ninety that got to hear across a weekday broadcasting slot the majority of his compositions in an excellent BBC Radio Three "This Mornings Composer" series of programs much of which served as my 'template' for collecting recordings of them around that era.

The mainstays in that era were Copland's own recordings for Columbia (now Sony Classical) records that in 1991 were compiled into three cd box sets.

I bought two at the time as they had the bulk of the works I wanted even if the early sixties sound left a little to be desired but that other set sounded poor so I never got it or its content

Following getting the Super Audio Player  I started this process of reassessment as its reproduction of regular cds  exceeded my previous players looking replacing by better sounding and sometimes played versions of which last months Mozart entry was one example.

There precious few recordings of Copland's Clarinet concerto or of Dance Panels and I had formed the view for my purposes, the two Sony Classical boxes I bought in the early nineteen-nineties would benefit from being replaced and this would be a good start point adding two works and replacing my original of 1925's "Music for the Theatre"

Leonard Slatkin is one the best leading conductors and advocates of Copland's music and he recorded for RCA a series of works featuring the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra well compiled of which this adds the not often heard Organ Symphony with Simon Preston and two other symphonies in modern wide ranging digital sound.

Copland mastered the art of writing film music that both didn't get in the way of the screen action and equally wasn't just soundtrack fodder, capable of being appreciated in its own right.

This disc featured the Red Pony, Music for Movies a arrangement of film music in the forms of a suite, Our Town and seldom recorded Prairie Journal (Music for Radio)which was broadcast on the radio.

This disc featured his Third Symphony and Music for a Great City which benefits from a modern recording.

Naxos had an excellent series of discs covering American Composers and I own most of the Samuel Barber titles but this one appealed as these main two works were in the third box I never bought although I've always loved The Tender Land suite written around life on a Southern Farm during the nineteen-thirties, his Piano Concerto and two collections of American Songs originally intended for piano and voice but transcribed here for orchestra and chorus.

I just love singing along to "I Bought Me a Cat".

A batch of Classical Super Audio cds

We are cycling towards the end of the month so I thought I'd post an update on my collection of classical music Super Audio cds which all can be played on regular cd players too.

One thing you have to recognize is because the format is so much capable of more natural sound doesn't mean you'll ditch any or all your existing recordings as there always two elements involved: the performance and the sound.

Ever since the days of the lp record that elusive balance of the two is what as collectors of recordings we've looking for and there exists from those early mono taped performances from the early nineteen-fifties to the turn of this decade many excellent performances that may not be on sacd and some where for technical reasons they may be little point in issuing them.

This said there are increasing numbers of  excellent recordings from the analogue tape era being freshly mastered and new recordings critically acclaimed so you may be able to 'upgrade' which is where we start.

For a good while I had been looking for a great fairly modern recording of Bartok's ground breaking Concerto For Orchestra which I remember well as a handed down Mercury mono lp record when I was in my early teens where I spied this.

It's reissue of the original Quadraphonic (surround sound) lps from the Deutsche Grammophon catalogue of the nineteen-seventies that only got issued in Japan but whose stereo mixes were issued in North America and Europe that were much admired.

 Arriving only toward the end of last week is a acclaimed recording of Schubert's String Quintet in C Major D 956 from 2011 by the much loved Tokyo String Quartet who have performed in North America and Europe.

Schubert's "The Trout" quintet has been a favourite of mine for a long while and recently I bought this excellent modern recording which will go with my regular cd sets of string quartets and symphonies by him.

This one can be filed under 'filling a hole' as in the years of building my classical music collection I hadn't gotten around to getting a complete set of Beethoven's String Quartets and this set of recordings from 2005 through 2008 is one of the best recorded.

I was able to get this 8 sacd set in stone mint condition used for half the regular price which made it quite bargain.

Mozart and I got back a long time, to the period I often borrowed pre-recorded tapes from the municipal library and most of my Mozart collection goes back to around 1991 on cd buying the many discs in the Mozart Masterpieces set.

Included in that was the debut recording of a then 14 year old Anne-Sophie Mutter with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with its then larger than life conductor, Herbert von Karajan of the 3rd and 5th Violin Concertos to which I had added two slightly later recordings on EMI by her of numbers 1, 2 and 4.

This set recorded in 2011 by PentaTone records is widely regarded as one of the finest coming with the very best sound available and even features a dvd where you see Julia rehearsing.
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"This is what you need!"

 

When you aren't as able as most, you are more dependent on other people for things or completing them which isn't just an irritant that can cause you to lash out in frustration in itself but also a cause of tension between you.

What isn't said I think needs to be is inevitably it does alter the relating dynamic by virtue they have what you need and can't do that they can use as lever and equally you may feel you have leverage because they're your means of getting something done so it is easy to form an abusive relating pattern.

But it's not just that it's also how that person slots into the role helping you realize the idea you had that can become a point of contention too.

Speaking as a person whose always been disabled, our normal expectation is in discussing it with someone, they work with us to do it the way we wish unless that's not possible in which instance we'd expect them to talk though other suggestions reaching agreement on the way forward.

What can happen though is the person runs with what they feel is what you need, taking control not just of the help but also of the very idea itself imposing their ideas in place of yours  then threatening to walk off leaving with an uncompleted job if you even question such attitude as the one looking for help.

It's as if at that point you just became invisible no longer permitted to have any say about some things in your lives and that easily leads to tensions that others soon pick up on.

I think if you spot this early on you need to bring this up as it can easily cause issues.

A little rant

 

I don't know how others feel but I am tired of hearing boys can't do this or wear that.

  Boys can too wear dresses and skirts.

  Boys can too wear panties and slips.

  Boys can too be allowed to express their feelings.

Today Girls are allowed to do all of the above and they are allowed to dress completely as boys, ie pants, shirts, and boxers yet still today boys are discriminated against if they wish to wear a dress or skirt.  

The boys who do are called a whole host of names that are not only degrading to the boys but females as well. IT is like being a girl is something that should be considered less then their male counterparts. 

Just like the "N" word for blacks is no longer in dictionaries the term "SISSY"* or "FAG" should be taken out of the dictionaries.  

To me WE need to make the use of what a gender wears not be included as to that person but see him or her as another human who just has and expresses their gender in a way that makes sense to them.

* Sissy as an insult should be removed, sissy gurl as a gender idenity being too feminine for a girl and insufficient masculine by a wide margin to be any kind of boy I feel should stay.

The needs of littles III

The other week I was mulling over some of things that did crop up at ASB.org, not that sadly that site lasted long, and that generally I tended to talk more in and around the role of age regression within being an adult schoolboy as from my vantage point being one comes from being in the headspace of being a adult little, legally an adult emotionally and psychologically very much a child of your own childhood era.

One piece of the jigsaw puzzle is how psychologically you get to being in that frame of mind and what it is that is in there and one topic that often raised its head was spanking which usually is seen as both sexual or kink centric but for some goes back into their childhood emotions and so forms a part of being in a psychological state of being a "little boy" or "little girl" again

The Benefits of Getting Spanked by Rodney Calmes

Many people believe that if someone likes to get spanked, it is all sexual. That is not the case all the time. Even though getting spanked has some sexual effects or enhances sexual arousal, there are many non-sexual benefits from getting spanked. What can spankings do for you?

1. Getting spanked relieves stress.

2. Getting spanked is calming.

3. Getting spanked generates endorphins and puts you in a euphoric state.

4. Getting spanked generates adrenaline and gives an adrenaline rush, especially if you are anticipating getting a very harsh one.

5. Getting spanked lifts moods. Russian psychiatrists have found success in treating depression with bare butt whippings.

6. The marks left from getting spanked is like an art of its own.

7. For some, it can restore feelings of youth.

Don’t be ashamed of getting spanked, enjoy it! For those who never tried it in your adult years, give it a try. You never know, you may like it.

There have been times when personally I have struggled with spanking as an element of being that adult little not least in website and on social media it's tended to dominate all discussion to the exclusion of look at the how and why we feel still "little children" even though the law says we're adults.

That text emboldened however did set out clearly a lot of the elements for and of what I get from being spanked in an adult little sissy gurl context starting from the very child-like, child-minded side of me needing discipline, direction and correction as I have little 'native' adult or even older child sense of self including self discipline.

The whole context of being subject to spanking, being 'made' to take it at the will of a 'adult authority figure' and the emotional outcome from given a good spanking restores a strong sense of being that little, of being young.

Spanking given some of my issues  around relating to people, understanding appropriate boundaries forms stronger bonds with me especially between myself and adults. I am wired very much toward physicality helps with bonding.

While it is entirely understandable a adult little who was abused in actual childhood would not and may even be could never accept the role of spanking within such relationships or through other outlets such as age play schools and the like, for me it's a core part, the mirror image of how it was to me as a boy back then.

As a sissy gurl I want dominants to spank my bottom.