12-06: Pavlos Sidiropoulos & Spiridoula : Flou 1978 - Wagner Die Walküre : King / Crespin / Frick / Nilsson / Hotter / Ludwig / Fassbaender / Watts / Solti 1965 - The Definitive Leadbelly 3 Discs

1716 – Benedictus Buns (Dutch Carmelite priest & composer)
1746 – Lady Grisel Baillie (Scottish songwriter)
1785 – Kitty Clive (English actress & soprano)
1865 – Sebastián Iradier Salaberri (Basque composer of habaneras "La Paloma" & "El Arreglito," the latter used by Bizet in Carmen)
1867 – Giovanni Pacini (Italian opera composer)
1903 – Frederic Grant Gleason (American composer)
1920 – Karel Kovařovic (Czech composer, conductor, harpist, clarinetist & pianist)
1933 – Auguste Chapuis (French composer, organist, choirmaster & teacher)
1939 – Charles Dalmorès (French operatic tenor)
1943 – Hermann Löhr (British composer of Austrian ancestry, active also in Australia)
1946 – Maximilian Steinberg [Максимилиан Штейнберг] (Russian composer, pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, peer of Stravinsky, teacher of Shostakovich)
1949 – Lead Belly [Huddie Ledbetter] (American blues & folk singer, guitarist, accordionist, pianist, violinist & songwriter)
1951 – Léon Rothier (French operatic bass & violinist)
1957 – Evan Gorga (Italian lyric tenor, creator of Rodolfo in Puccini's La bohème in 1896)
1958 – Erwin Bodky (German-born American pianist, harpsichordist, clavichordist, composer & author)
1966 – Hermann Heiß (German composer, pupil of J.M. Hauer)
1971 – Hugo Godron (Dutch composer, violinist & teacher)
1973 – Justus Hermann Wetzel (German composer, author & teacher)
1983 – Lucienne Boyer (French diseuse & cabaret singer, "Parlez-moi d'amour")
1988 – Bill Harris (American R&B guitarist, The Clovers)
1988 – Roy Orbison (American rock & country singer, guitarist & songwriter)
1989 – Sammy Fain (American pop song composer & pianist, "I'll Be Seeing You")
1990 – Pavlos Sidiropoulos [Παύλος Σιδηρόπουλος] (Greek rock singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1995 – Claire Polin (American composer, musicologist & flutist)
1997 – Eliot Daniel (American popular composer, "I Love Lucy", "Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly)")
2000 – Aziz Mian Qawwal [عزیز میاں قوال] (Pakistani quawwali singer, songwriter, harmonium player, poet, author & philosopher)
2003 – Hans Hotter (German bass-baritone)
2005 – Danny Williams (South African pop singer)

I'd been wanting to get through an entire Ring cycle before this blog has run its course. (No, we won't be here forever!) We've already had a fine Das Rheingold, and now Hans Hotter's moving and authoritative Wotan provides us with our next opportunity, in the superbly sung and recorded Die Walküre we have for you tonight. I mean, just look at that cast. And with Solti reining them all in... this particular installment of his studio Ring cycle is a sonic and performative landmark.

And Lead Belly. King of the 12-string. I guess with Wagnerian opera coming before, you could say he serves as the foil. This particular compilation is supposed to be the best, unless you want to have every song the man ever recorded.

Now about our headliner. Pavlos Sidiropoulos is considered perhaps the greatest singer in the history of Greek rock music. In the 70s, when almost all Greek rock musicians were still singing in English, he went against the grain and insisted on singing in Greek. He had substance abuse issues, and died young - but he's still one of the most popular rock singers in Greece, more than 20 years later. His 1978 album Φλου (Flou), recorded with the group Spiridoula, is one of his very best, and still gets a lot of airplay in Greece. I downloaded it, and listened to it, and of course I didn't understand a word... but I can understand how this music is loved and appreciated, and I hope to listen to it a lot more, and get it under my skin. You should too! Expand your minds, open your hearts. It's a big world out there, and maybe we no speak-a the same language, but music is universal.

09-05: Antonio Mairena : Actuaciones Historicas - Mahler 5 & 8 Solti - Wolfgang Fortner : Triplum etc. Wergo 1967

1629 – Domenico Allegri (Italian composer & singer, younger brother of Gregorio)
1734 – Nicolas Bernier (French musician & composer)
1803 – François Devienne (French composer, flutist & teacher)
1890 – Ludwig Deppe (German composer, conductor, pianist & teacher)
1910 – Franz Xaver Haberl (German priest, church musician & musicologist, friend of Liszt)
1910 – Julian Edwards (American composer & popular songwriter)
1921 – Joseph Mann (Polish-born Austrian operatic tenor)
1962 – Alessandro Granda (Peruvian operatic tenor)
1964 – Giórgios Kokoliós (Greek operatic tenor)
1965 – Stephan De Jonghe (Belgian musicologist)
1969 – Mitchell Ayres (American conductor, arranger & composer, Perry Como, The Hollywood Palace)
1969 – Henk Bijvanck (Dutch composer)
1973 – Petre Ştefănescu Goangă (Romanian baritone)
1975 – Georg Ots (Estonian baritone of opera, art song, folk song & film)
1980 – Don Banks (Australian composer of concert, jazz, & commercial music)
1983 – Antonio Mairena (Spanish flamenco singer)
1987 – Wolfgang Fortner (German composer, conductor & teacher)
1993 – René Klijn (Dutch pop singer & photo model)
1994 – Billy Usselton (American jazz tenor saxophonist, clarinetist & oboist)
1995 – Pigmeat Jarrett (American blues singer & pianist)
1997 – Sir Georg Solti (Hungarian-born British conductor)
2003 – Gisele MacKenzie (Canadian-born American pop singer, violinist, actress & TV personality)
2007 – Saint Thomas [Thomas Hansen] (Norwegian alt-country singer, songwriter & guitarist)
2011 – Salvatore Licitra (Italian operatic tenor)

Sometimes you go with what you can. For Domenico Allegri's much more famous brother Gregorio (he of the sublime, if not entirely his own, Miserere), there is a good etching of his likeness. For Domenico, we have a receipt from his employer.

The most recent addition to our list of names is that of Salvatore Licitra, an excellent tenor whose star only began rising about 12 years ago. Things really picked up for his career in 2002, when he debuted at the Met unexpectedly, substituting for Pavarotti as Cavaradossi in Tosca after the ailing legend cancelled at the last minute. He passed away this September 5th after a motor-scooter accident in Sicily that left him lingering in a coma for several days. Our condolences to his family, friends, and many colleagues, who mourn the tragic loss of a singer who has been dubbed "the New Pavarotti," and a tenor "worthy of the great Italian tradition."

Our next most recent passage was that in 2007 of Norwegian alt-country artist Saint Thomas, who died as a result of an unfortunate deadly combination of prescription drugs, at the age of 31. He was another artist who'd only recently begun to achieve international attention, touring with Lambchop in Europe and Of Montreal in the U.S. during the mid-00s.

On a brighter note, our long-awaited major Mahler conductor has finally shown up, in the form of Sir Georg Solti, whose tenure at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra rivalled those of the legendary Frederick Stock and Fritz Reiner years. An energetic conductor of both concert music and opera, his Wagner Ring cycle (with the Vienna Philharmonic) and Mahler symphony cycles are treasured by many, if not to everyone's taste. But pretty much everyone agrees that his Mahler 8th from 1971, with its superb roster of vocal soloists, is one of the very best available... (Read more below)