Narciso Yepes is a ten string demon. In my uneducated opinion, he is a consummate musician of the highest order. When he plays, you can hear his amazing and absolute control over the music and his instrument in terms of technique, expression and the the wide tonal palette at his disposal. His playing is austere, sober and dignified, never lapsing into self-indulgent sentimentality or sensuousness, never giving more or less feeling than is necessary to convey the emotional content of the piece.
My favourite video is the first, where Yepes plays Recuerdos de la Alhambra, a piece by Tarrega that I loved immediately when I first heard my good friend Hunter play it more than 10 years ago. I’ve also included Romance, a piece that became popular in the 1950s.
Recuerdos de la Alhambra
Chaconne by J.S. Bach
Prelude – Lute Suite No.1 BWV 996 in E Minor by J.S. Bach
“In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians – Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing – whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide. The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God’s messenger and was eventually driven insane trying to prove his theories of infinity.”
This is something different for the guitar-centric crowd that visits this blog – songs from Asian divas.
For those who don’t understand Mandarin, fret not (no pun intended) – good music is good music. Music from the heart is what matters, music sung from the depths of the soul, scraping the barrel of the soul. Heartbreak, despair, nostalgia, yearning, longing, the sweetness of love, the bittersweetness of remembering love lost – all are universal experiences regardless of language, time and culture. Heartbreak is heartbreak. Jewish heartbreak, Russian heartbreak, American heartbreak, Chinese heartbreak – they are all the same pain. And pain is pain. Just listen with your heart.
I’ll start with Poon Sow Keng who was born in Macau and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and achieved early fame from discs cut in Singapore.
Stay tuned for more torch singers and their torch ballads to haunt your soul.
Lover’s Tears
“A lover’s tears are the most precious thing, and that is why I cry after you forsook me”
