Mephisto Waltz

I have found much of Bach to be just a little boring, although the toccata and fugue played on a big organ is very good. I wonder is toccata and fugue played on a big organ, a title for a porn movie?

I very much enjoy Handel Water Music stars off slow and just gets better as it goes along. 

www.bing.com/videos/search?q=handle+water+music&view=detail&mid=F934F53BAEDE2E0E59F9F934F53BAEDE2E0E59F9&FORM=VIRE

Handel was a contemporary of Bach, and just as talented. The difference was that Handel was friendlier to melody than Johann Sebastian was. 

I have a number of albums bookmarked on Apple Music by Hillary Hahn, including an album of Bach violin concertos. Also of note is Angele Dubeau who (with La Pieta) have a wonderful album called "Infernal Violins."




Rachel Podger also does some nice bow work on a few albums.


But as I've commented before, some of Bach's violin stuff has me thinking of lumberjacks. He seemed to want to saw the violin in half.

Here is the most famous bit of his most famous music, "The Messiah." This is traditionally performed at Christmas time every year around the world.  My college choir performed it once while I was there. I would be in the first tenors. The piece gives me the tingles. I listened to a couple of renditions, and found the tempo of this one to be best. 

The Messiah

In one of the books it mentions The Messiah. The very first performance may have been in Ireland. But when performed in England for the first time, the King rose to his feet during the hallelujah chorus…as one would stand when a greater has entered the room. Apparently this has been a tradition ever since.

There's a nice scene where Oskar and Max are at the opera (Tristan and Isolde) and Oskar has brought some very expensive pralines into their box. One can imagine they might have looked like this:



There was also mention of a plum flan. "...a slab of moist pastry covered in crescents of purple fruit and sprinkled with icing sugar." Perhaps it looked something like this:



Overall, Vienna Twilight was a decent enough book. You certainly are immersed in Freudian psychology. The author gives psychoanalysis more than the benefit of the doubt. And by the end of this fifth book, Max has turned into a kind of Freudian superhero savant, able to leap tall buildings in a single analysis. It got to be a bit much at times.

But despite the weirdness of some of this, the story lines were interesting to follow.

On the other hand, Rheinhardt might have gone directly to the Konditorei in Vienna and bought his pralines individually. The place would look something like this. 



or these




But never such a small box. 

You will recognize these then. 

Hebrides   


And  


Wedding March