Hmm...you learn something new every day, I guess.
I truly had no idea. I still like the circus-of-madness vibe of Alabama Song...the deviant and defiant-sounding oomp paa paa musicality and incantation, but I got to admit, something's changed, my jets have seriously cooled, now that I can no longer consider it a shining example of The Doors' (especially Jim Morrison's) creative genius.
I can, however, always associate it with a particular night in my past: one girl, countless beers until time raced forward, or maybe countless hits until time was standing still, and the frenzied tarantella this song cast the two of us into, visible from the street should anyone have been walking past at that late, late hour.
And those kinds of memories, the kind I'll take as far as I'm allowed to go, will certainly be along for the ride on 1/48/50.
Who knows, maybe it would have been funnier to dance to this, the (definitely) German opera version.
"Show me the way to the next little girl / oh, don't ask why..."
#140) "Hungarian Rhapsody #2 in C-Sharp Minor" by Franz Liszt (perf. by Dieter Goldmann) - There isn't a lot of information out there about the listed performer, Dieter Goldmann; not a lot of Google action, that is. I'm assuming he's a real person, a prodigy, and though this particular piece of piano ambrosia is known and performed far and wide, taking on an almost celebrity status for all the cartoons and movies it's been featured in, and might for that matter be considered a mere grain of sand on the beach of Franz Liszt's brilliance, Goldmann's rendition appeals to me for its crispness and timing.
I tend to wax rhapsodic (no pun intended) over things I like, but Hungarian Rhapsody #2... really is a glorious piece of music. Proof positive what I've been saying for years: I don't know what's more mind boggling, that someone could sit down and write music like this, or that anybody else could sit down and learn how to play it, or compose a cadenza for it, which Liszt generously issued an open invitation for other performers to do.
Or maybe it wasn't so 'generous'; maybe, given the sheer physical and mental challenge playing it presents, Liszt was like, Come on, try to top that muthafucka! ;-)
When it comes to classical music, sometimes the more complicated a piece is, the more sterile it sounds, at least to me. But with #2..., you get a wide range of human emotion, moments of foreboding, relief, revelry, breathlessness, loveliness, mischievousness, silliness (even a little gooniness, which all greatness acknowledges in some measure, or should...). And as the piece crescendos in its transition from lassan to friska, unfolding like the layers of an artichoke...if that artichoke were the size of a boulder....I can't help but wonder how many fingers you actually need to play this. Twelve at least, I'd say, or a third arm....or a Christy Brown-caliber command of your toes.
I was first introduced to this piece in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon when I was eight. I was moved then, and still am, more than thirty years later,
And bonus, I've been practicing....Hungarian Rhapsody #2 has made me a master air pianist!
Which of course should never, ever be mentioned in the same breath as a true pianist, particularly this one, Marc-Andre Hamelin, whose inspired cadenza near the end (approximately 8:15) actually deserves the word 'genius'.
Dare I say, almost as much as the original piece. If Liszt was issuing a cocky challenge, I'd say Hamelin took him to school.
