The Album Review Club - Week #195 (page 1310) - A New World Record - ELO

arfurclue said:
Have had a few listens now. I like it. Yet I have a feeling that I might love it if I had a deep yearning to visit the Czech Republic. I don’t. But, not knowing Prague, I had a little look online and found this “Prague is famous for well-preserved castles, Baroque and Gothic cathedrals, medieval squares, dreamy bridges, nightlife spots, and a lively arts scene. It's known for its centuries of history and cultural heritage, where the medieval heart of Europe can be felt in its cobblestone streets.” So a glass of pils, maybe a spot of Milan Kundera, Ma Vlast playing, along with the above? Yeah, that works. So I find these poems to be evocative. Will I listen to it more? Quite possibly. Though I might have less time to do so, as have found that this piece and the original write up has been an inspiration to return to a study/exploration of the music in Mexico - along with the questions of musics ties to the people, culture, history, land etc. Thanks for that :) All in all, for the experience perhaps more than any ‘understanding´ I might have, 8/10
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Well after reading that, you clearly didn't need to borrow anything, especially from the likes of me.
Nicely put.
This type of music does indeed encourage the listener to explore it's origins, (in fact, it almost demands it) thus adding a different dimension to the experience. I don't get that from any other genre.
It's nice to look at a bands story, but this, like you say, uncovers so much more, and that's part of the fascination.
 
John Cougar Mellencamp
Lonesome
4/10

The Replacements
Let it be
5/10

Oasis
The Masterplan
7/10

Kate Bush
Before the dawn
Reluctant abstain

Led Zeppelin
Physical Graffiti
8/10

New Score

Bedřich Smetana
Má Vlast (My Homeland)
(Is it just me that thinks of holy communion whenever they repeatedly hit the triangle in this?)

Starter for ten, absolutely brilliant pick by @KnaresboroughBlue , not something I would have ever taken the time to listen to - spot on.

When my selection comes round, its going to look as mainstream as the Spice Girls in comparison to this ;-)

Now, down to brass tax.

I eluded to this in a previous post, but I feel so out of comfort zone trying to critique this. I mean how the hell do I compare a deaf guys long time efforts to Gary's got a boner or Oasis murdering I am the Walrus (general vibe of the thread, not mine ;-) )?

Absolutely impossible but here goes.

There are some lovely movements throughout this piece (I can't really split it into 'songs' as one performance right (remember my inability to put on one song from Quadraphenia)? But as others have noted, the second poem is probably my favourite. It's a lovely piece of music (not sure if recognised the main riff (what do we call this in classical music?) from somewhere. I can't imagine in depth and detailed this all must be to compose, the layers, the crescendo's, arrangements it blows my mind!

However, as I am generally driving or multi tasking when reviewing our selections, it becomes to easy to zone out (especially during the very quiet and ponderous bits. Obviously the lack of narrative or lyrics don't give you that something to hold your attention in those bits (if that makes any sense?).

I am also wary that I have dumbed the music down by streaming it - this music is built to have as much of a rich and thick sound that I am probably not show casing it's potential. How good would this sound with a live orchestra blowing your hair back?

Anyway back to my inability to score this, I am going to have to shoot from the hip and give this a 5. Disappointingly there isn't much rationale to it, I enjoy bits but there is a lot of filler (as we would say for the other albums). I am still comfortable with this score because the sheer amount of work this guy put into this and it obviously means so much more to Czechs and classical music fans.

In fact, it needs to be 6/10, the composer can't go lower than I marked Lennon and McCartney ;-)

How you lot have managed to apply logic to this is inspiring - completely tied myself up in knots over this.

Well played @KnaresboroughBlue , you've broken my scoring system. :-)

Big game today blues - give em hell............
 
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I'd rather not know what the music is meant to mean or describe...I like to use my own imagination and create my own images to the music. I imagine murders, revenge and imminent doom with some of the more dramatic pieces. The more melancholic the piece is, the graver the situation.....
Classical music can fuck about with the emotions...taking you right down to the abyss and then right back up to the heavens. Weed helps too ;) I think classical music is more enjoyable if you're familiar with the actual piece...it's more rewarding for the brain. Gets all those dolphins swimming about.
So much melancholy...that's what I like. 6/10 from me.
I enjoyed this one the most:



Sounds so good right after shitting on the rags on their home ground!
 
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I’ve had a pretty bad week and wasn’t going to participate in this one, but on Thursday I had a bit of time at home on my own and decided that a bit of classical music may be the tonic I needed.
I picked a version done by the Polish National Radio Orchestra and thought the opening of the first piece was promising, but then found it rambling a bit and it wasn’t keeping my concentration.
The second piece is my favourite and the only piece I’m familiar with. It really is a beautiful bit of music in its own right and having read the emotive review by @KnaresboroughBlue it was the only bit I could really relate to. It evoked a spirit of that part of the world and I found myself comparing what it may mean to Czech people, in a way that Sean O’Riada’s ‘Is mise Eire’ would mean to Irish people’s vision of home.

Overall though the rest of the pieces didn’t keep my interest and without context to them I felt that they meandered aimlessly up and down at times.
I actually dozed off during the fourth and fifth poems the first time listening.

So I decided to try it again with a version by The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jiri Belohlavek and I must say that even to my untrained ear I could see a big difference for the better, in the mood and interpretation. It felt better. I enjoyed also the third short movement a lot more this time.

I have the whole thing on again now after the City v Rags game and maybe it really is a mood thing, but again I am getting a lot more out of it now and am glad I didn’t score it after my first listen, which in all honesty didn’t impress me much at all.

I am not really qualified to judge the quality of classical music except to say that my view of the pieces that I know and perhaps pieces we are all familiar with is that the really really special movements seem to be timeless. They could come from any era and would still whip up the same emotions today as when they were conceived.
On that basis, I would regard only the second piece and perhaps the third as having that quality. The rest, to me anyway, seemed firmly rooted in the 19th century.
Who knows, maybe it would grow on me with more listens and through various different moods, but I’m afraid all I can give it is a 5/10, as my overall feeling for much of it was that it was bland too often. I feel that’s probably very harsh for Knaresborough who obviously is deeply invested in it and I admire that passion.
It just doesn’t do it for me.
 
mancity2012_eamo said:
I’ve had a pretty bad week and wasn’t going to participate in this one, but on Thursday I had a bit of time at home on my own and decided that a bit of classical music may be the tonic I needed.
I picked a version done by the Polish National Radio Orchestra and thought the opening of the first piece was promising, but then found it rambling a bit and it wasn’t keeping my concentration.
The second piece is my favourite and the only piece I’m familiar with. It really is a beautiful bit of music in its own right and having read the emotive review by @KnaresboroughBlue it was the only bit I could really relate to. It evoked a spirit of that part of the world and I found myself comparing what it may mean to Czech people, in a way that Sean O’Riada’s ‘Is mise Eire’ would mean to Irish people’s vision of home.

Overall though the rest of the pieces didn’t keep my interest and without context to them I felt that they meandered aimlessly up and down at times.
I actually dozed off during the fourth and fifth poems the first time listening.

So I decided to try it again with a version by The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jiri Belohlavek and I must say that even to my untrained ear I could see a big difference for the better, in the mood and interpretation. It felt better. I enjoyed also the third short movement a lot more this time.

I have the whole thing on again now after the City v Rags game and maybe it really is a mood thing, but again I am getting a lot more out of it now and am glad I didn’t score it after my first listen, which in all honesty didn’t impress me much at all.

I am not really qualified to judge the quality of classical music except to say that my view of the pieces that I know and perhaps pieces we are all familiar with is that the really really special movements seem to be timeless. They could come from any era and would still whip up the same emotions today as when they were conceived.
On that basis, I would regard only the second piece and perhaps the third as having that quality. The rest, to me anyway, seemed firmly rooted in the 19th century.
Who knows, maybe it would grow on me with more listens and through various different moods, but I’m afraid all I can give it is a 5/10, as my overall feeling for much of it was that it was bland too often. I feel that’s probably very harsh for Knaresborough who obviously is deeply invested in it and I admire that passion.
It just doesn’t do it for me.
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Think someone else suggested it but if quite like the listen to it whilst driving / walking round Prague.........
 
I've never been, but whenever Prague is mentioned, I always think of this atmospheric video for one of my favourite INXS tracks, "Never Tear Us Apart", which was filmed in the city.

 
I have been familiar with this collection of tone poems for some years and I like it very much.
I believe that Smetana met the composer Liszt and was greatly influenced in his use of tone poems.
The tone poem (also called symphonic poem) is a purely orchestral work in a single movement, which tells a story, or is otherwise intended to represent in sound, or a specific mood.
As Knaresborough has already alluded to....This work is a collection of 6 such tone poems.
For instance...The second and best-known tone poem, Vltava sounds like brooks and streams trickling, bubbling, splashing, and converging into still larger tributaries and at last swelling into the Vtlava itself.

Smetena composed the work as a paean to the Czech nation at the stage in his life when his musical activities had become restricted by the onset of deafness. Nevertheless, however this loss of hearing may have influenced his work as a composer, this symphony can be mesmerizing. Indeed, it often has been so. My Country is not music that people either love or hate; but rather, listeners tend either to like or to love the symphony. There really is little here that's not to like, and there's certainly a lot to love.
This is a great choice and I encourage everyone to carry on listening to this. You will be rewarded.
7/10
 
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Firstly let me state I am a philistine when it comes to classical music , I have never listened to an album or been to a concert.The only time I get to hear any is on soundtracks to films.This was always going to be a difficult listen and I was not looking forward to it, however after hearing it for the first time I can understand the passion it evokes in fans.The music is stirring and emotive.
thanks Knaresborough for widening my musical tastes
7/10
 
Mancitydoogle said:
Firstly let me state I am a philistine when it comes to classical music , I have never listened to an album or been to a concert.The only time I get to hear any is on soundtracks to films.This was always going to be a difficult listen and I was not looking forward to it, however after hearing it for the first time I can understand the passion it evokes in fans.The music is stirring and emotive.
thanks Knaresborough for widening my musical tastes
7/10
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It sounds to me that you are a candidate for hearing this (as @crublue1 was) its only 4 minutes long but worth every penny :)

Headphones on...

 
Sadly I have no time with work, kid stuff and travel to write much. I have some other thoughts but want to get my score in in time. I did enjoy this, and it's a pleasant diversion, but don't have enough classical music context to know what it is like relative to other pieces. I agree that's it is stirring and I can see why it would stick in one's heart, evocative as it is supposed to be of the Bohemian landscape and its legends. 6/10.
 
A good effort this week. As a collective, classical music is obviously not something that we know a great deal about, a few members aside, but 14 people have given Má Vlast a listen. The average score of 6.5 makes it the lowest ranked album so far, but it's not a million miles off the pace. Thanks to @KnaresboroughBlue for nominating something different.

Next up is @Onholiday(somemightsay), who sent me the details of his nomination last week, so I'll be posting it tomorrow morning. I think I may have already dropped a subtle hint in the other thread last week, so the only further clue I'll give is 11/06/63.
 
was just about to do mine!

a bit like @FogBlueInSanFran I didn't had much time but managed to listen to this last night and on way to work this morning

I'm way out of my depth with Classical Music as been bought up on a diet of Pop and Rock so this was all a different world for me - but I admit I found some beauty here, and the quiet interchanges in the mix really work - some lovely build up to a crescendo (in a similar way to how I felt listening to Sigur Ros)

I wouldn't begin to understand the creativity involved and the artists national pride involved in this and I just can't get in the mindsight of visualizing the beauty of rivers, trees, buildings etc in bohemia based on the sound of classical music.
still, it sounded nice on the ear, better than I expected and I will try and give it a few more listens to understand.

Great pick.

5/10
 
BlueHammer85 said:
was just about to do mine!

a bit like @FogBlueInSanFran I didn't had much time but managed to listen to this last night and on way to work this morning

I'm way out of my depth with Classical Music as been bought up on a diet of Pop and Rock so this was all a different world for me - but I admit I found some beauty here, and the quiet interchanges in the mix really work - some lovely build up to a crescendo (in a similar way to how I felt listening to Sigur Ros)

I wouldn't begin to understand the creativity involved and the artists national pride involved in this and I just can't get in the mindsight of visualizing the beauty of rivers, trees, buildings etc in bohemia based on the sound of classical music.
still, it sounded nice on the ear, better than I expected and I will try and give it a few more listens to understand.

Great pick.

5/10
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Go on then, I'll update the scoreboard. It's moved from 6.5 exactly to 6.4 exactly.
 
RobMCFC said:
A good effort this week. As a collective, classical music is obviously not something that we know a great deal about, a few members aside, but 14 people have given Má Vlast a listen. The average score of 6.5 makes it the lowest ranked album so far, but it's not a million miles off the pace. Thanks to @KnaresboroughBlue for nominating something different.

Next up is @Onholiday(somemightsay), who sent me the details of his nomination last week, so I'll be posting it tomorrow morning. I think I may have already dropped a subtle hint in the other thread last week, so the only further clue I'll give is 11/06/63.
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I think I’ve got it. That would be the day of a certain heroic/tragic event depicted on the cover of the record.
 
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