Some musico-video relief from darker matters.
First, from On an Overgrown Path:
Here is the Zurich Chamber Orchestra putting the usual YouTube offerings to shame. The full screen version is even better.
Path also led me to nice piece on the Wall St. Journal on Anna-Sophie Mutter. To my ear, only Gidon Kremer comes close in wielding seemingly unlimited chops with a broad and deep music intelligence.
So what the heck. For video of Mutter & Kremer playing (separately), go below the jump:
Mutter:
Kremer. I've played the first four parts of this Bach piece (nothing like Kremer does). My violin teacher says of Bach's sonatas and partittas that "Whenever you play them seriously, at whatever stage of your life, you must bnring to them everything you have -- everything; and everything you have and are, and everything you don't have and aren't, will be expressed in what you play." The tension and emotion this generates internally is almost unbearable. You see it -- the tiniest fraction of it -- in Kremer's face.