Mexico Medical Student |

Last week I got the “special” Classical Music edition of the iTunes Store new releases and it had as its featured artist Janine Jansen. I don’t normally pay attention to the looks of most classical artists, but this one is well, jaw-droppingly gorgeous. They’ve tried to make sex symbols of classical artists before; namely, the Eroica Trio were called “babes of classical music” for crying out loud, there’s such a desperation to tie sex appeal (or any appeal) of classical music/musicians to mainstream audiences, and that’s pretty desperate.

Just like in any professional field, one should be judged on merit. There have been too many Anna Kournikovas. Jansen is a serious talent. I bought the “Four Seasons” CD and it was awesome. The latest “style” for baroque instrumentation and interpretation is to basically beat period instruments within an inch of their life, pushing tempos, etc. Her ensemble doesn’t ignore this trend, but they don’t sacrifice lyricism either. They definitely had some fresh ideas. If you don’t have a good copy of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” go to iTunes Music Store and check it out. Meanwhile, I’ll indulge my own fresh ideas…

I think this is totally cool:

On their little heads, the newborns in the maternity ward are wearing stereo headphones and their tiny hands seem to move to the rhythm of the music. From the first hours of their lives, the babies are tuned into Mozart at the Kosica-Saca hospital in eastern Slovakia.

“In the womb, the baby listens to the mother’s heart beat which represents a source of protection and good feelings. We have the baby listen to music so he can recall his mother during the period immediately after the birth when he is not with her,” [the doctor] said.

I’d probably stunt my kids growth with Shostakovich or Prokofiev, since I’m obviously into 20th century Russian music. Mother’s heatbeat, Stalin-regime-induced percussion, same difference.

In the last 24 hours, I have caught two awesome classical music programs with no advance warning whatsoever. Yesterday was Horowitz concert in Vienna in 1988? (the same tour he did his famous return to Moscow) and today was the finalists in the Santander Piano Competition in Spain, with complete airings of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (by two finalists) and the Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto. The Horowitz concert had minimal–less than 3 minute–commercial breaks between major groupings, and the latter had no commercial breaks whatsoever in 2 hours. That’s amazing. Even A&E’s Breakfast with the fArts has gotten so bad as not program classical music programming at all for 6+ months at a time, and has even had the temerity to cut to a commercial mid-movement!

TiVo is not working properly (which is post in and of itself) and I had no VHS tapes to record anything, so I just simply watched and enjoyed. I’ve been in the country a week, and already I’ve seen more true artisitic programming (even apart from these) than I did in the US in the last year. I look forward to new gems I might find, if only I had a channel guide (and it was accurate…)