If you, like me, ever made the mistake of avoiding Vaughan Williams, judging "flat weeping strings and nothing else," go check out his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Thallis. It somehow achieves not only its famed cathedral-like grandeur (it's rather like the Art of Fugue in that respect, with its slow, imperial buildup), but a child's sense of wonder and mystery. Moved me to tears when I heard it for the first time today.
So this week, rooting around YouTube, I discovered a beautifully unorthodox recording of two Chopin mazurkas made by Ignaz Friedman. I read that he actually danced mazurkas with the peasants, which seems to be reflected in the playing. Gone is the usual aristocracy of the music, replaced with a bold, personal touch and irreverence. Was rather disappointed when I discovered that not all Friedman's mazurkas recordings are as richly coloured.
I'd long resisted the temptation to read yet another Thomas Hardy, having already devoured four, but couldn't resist buying The Return of the Native when I saw it in a bookshop earlier this week. The plot, to be honest, feels a little flat- or maybe I've just read too much Hardy, and am tired of his usual subjects- but to be honest at this point I'm just here for that rich, chocolate-cake like prose, shrewd characterisation and observation of human nature. Hardy, like George Eliot, had a gift that way; talking of Eliot, if you haven't read Middlemarch or Daniel Deronda yet, they're both experiences of a lifetime, especially Middlemarch, which seems to exhaust the vagaries of human nature.
But anyway, getting back to Hardy, my favourite quotation from the book so far is 'In respect of character a face may make certain admissions by its outline; but it fully confesses only in its changes.'
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