Lee Kesselman: Mbiri Kuna Mwari (Shona Mass)

1. how you come across to it:
It is introduced by Paul Hondrop at the workshop in Taipei International Choral Music Festival 2008.

2. why this piece?
MAYBE my choir will pick this piece for their Mus. Fest. competition.

3. (and...)
Primitive music is the real "international/intercultural/transcultural/cross-cultural language" (metaphor only).

J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier (complete)

1. how you come across to it:
Probably ABRSM syllabus. I started to appreciate it after listening to No. 13 in F sharp major and No. 18 in G sharp minor from Book II on Dino Lipatti and Maira Yudina's CD. This time, the overwhelming experience of listening to the complete WTC played by Angela Hewitt, one book for each night, in the length of over two and a half hours for each performance, as part of her Bach World Tour.

2. why this piece?
Not only it is intellectually challenging to listen to the complete WTC at a time, but emotionally intense. Thanks to Hewitt's humanistic, or at times, sentimental approach, emotions of different kinds that were wrapped in musical lines are disclosed. I am not sure if I can have another chance to listen to the complete WTC in live concert ever again in my life.

3. (and...)
Listening in the sequence of C-c-C#-c#-D-d-Eb-d#-..., it was like inspecting a whole spectrum of keys manifested themselves in carefully articulated matrixes of notes. I have an impression that a certain preludes and fugues sound like they were composed exclusively for the keys they are now in, that they should only be played in that key, but not otherwise.

4. (also...)
Being someone vulnerable to the sound of the piano, there are moments I was moved to tears in both evenings, out of joy and gratitude. I didn't expect to shed tears in an all-Bach recital.

If I have to limit myself to the oeuvre of only one composer, he would definitely be Johann Sebastian Bach.

BWV 883


BWV 893
http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=jj12th02yT4

Vaughan Williams: Sea Symphony

1. how you come across to it:
- forgot

2. why this piece?
- A true choral symphony that the choir is used throughout the work and is an integral part of the musical texture
- the 70-minute music is simply a great soundtrack while the choir sings out what is going on in the motion picture

3. (and...)
- Ravel paid Vaughan Williams the great compliment of calling him “the only one of my students who does not write my music.” (Vaughan Williams studied with him for three weeks in Paris in 1908)

Richard Davy (flourished c.1490-1510): Salve Regina (from the Eton Choirbook)

1. how you come across to it:
I first learned about the Eton Choirbook (Eton College Library Ms. 178; compiled c.1500) some 10 years ago in a Renaissance music history class at UBC taught by Prof. J. Evan Kreider. He played a Salve Regina setting of William Cornysh (d. c.1502 or 1523) from the first Eton-Choirbook CD of The Sixteen (dir. Harry Christophers). I was instantly blown away by its incomparable beauty.

2. why this piece?
I loved these antiphons to the point that during my last undergraduate year, I decided to do a thorough directed study on this manuscript with Prof. Kreider. Last week, some unknown forces prompted me to reread my undergraduate thesis, motivating me also to listen to these wonderful pieces again.

3. (and...)
I regard the Magnificats and antiphons in the Choirbook as one of the most significant contributions of England to the Western classical music tradition. Most of them were composed on texts in praise of the Virgin Mary, expressing the choristers' devotion to this dedicatee of the Eton College. Written mostly in 5 to 13 voices, they have sectionalized structures alternating between full and solo sections. Different solo sections are written for different voice combinations for color variation across the antiphon. In the full sections, the highest voice tends to sound separated from the dense middle voices owing to its very high register and florid lines, resulting into a sound that is both transparent and magnificent.

The Sixteen has recently reissued their 5 Eton-Choirbook CDs under the Coro label after Collins went out of business.

Schubert: Piano Trio No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 100

1. how you come across to it:
Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, in cinema house. Later on, re-visit it on the Beaux Arts Trio webcast last month.

2. why this piece?
I found myself humming the fourth movement on the streets in India. And I still haven't had enough of it since coming back to HK! :)

3. (and...)
The unabridged version of the fourth movement contains a passage with themes from both the second and fourth movment intertwining together.

a scene from Barry Lyndon, on how Barry got together with Lady Lyndon:

Piano Trio No. 2, second movement

Piano Trio No. 1, first movement, performed by Menuhins + Gendron: