Loving Life ! Mahler 5 Petrenko RLPO, Orchestral Wolf

 

Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra are a great combination, truly major league. More's the pity we don't get to hear them  more often down south.  So hearing them on BBC Radio 3 was a treat, especially with a strong programme of Hugo Wolf orchestral music and Mahler Symphony no 5.  Full marks to Petrenko and his players but nul points to whoever wrote the script for the BBC presenter. "Mahler's Fifth is almost as popular as Beethoven's Fifth"?  Wolf was told shouldn't be doing music. And who cares whether Mahler 5 is a TV theme tune?  Even local radio would be shamed.  "Reaching out" is all very well, but top-notch musicians like this attract audiences who know what they're doing. Quality sells itself.  Liverpudlians are not oafs!   Thank goodness for Petrenko himself,  a good communicator who makes sense without dumbing down. 

Hugo Wolf wrote quite a bit of orchestral and chamber music, like the Italian Serenade, and his songs are among the finest ever written.  Aged only 17, he completed what would have been his first Symphony but lost the manuscript, though he rewrote the Scherzo and Finale.  Frank Walker, Wolf's biographer, described the Scherzo as "novel and arresting". "Over an ostinato figure on the drums a tiny germ motive enters canonically nine times, or, if we include the further shortened entries, twelve time  on flutes, oboes, bassoons and strings - all within the first four bars". This is augmented by "rising pizzicati strings" and "downward leaping staccato figures" on woodwind, developed over eighty six bars the germ motive recurring almost as many times.  A sturdy rustic trio and a "sudden rapid downward rush" of the violins introduces a triple canon.  Mercurial high jinks with a plaintive kick -  Wolf's voice is already distinctive. The Finale is a Rondo Capriccio, inventive but feels incomplete, as if Wolf's ever-impatient mind was eager for new adventures.

Wolf was an able orchestrator,  but here we heard Mahler's arrangement of the Vorspiel to Wolf's opera Der Corregidor.  The Prelude is brief, only 5 minutes, but includes an expansive figure that "lifts the curtain" to the drama. Mahler didn't change much.

The trumpet solo that marks the start of Mahler's Fifth gleamed brightly. Although the Trauermarch is a mourning procession, its steady pace is broken by sudden flarings-up and gentler passages, which often, in Mahler, signify pastoral images.  Yet the trumpet continues calling: the Stürmisch bewegt section here alert and lucid, the mysterious slow passage in this instance very well defined. Though the orchestra is huge, what Mahler had in mind was "Kammermusikton", not chaos, observant listening, as if in a chamber ensemble. We hear, for example, the quiet plucking of a single violin.  . Well defined contrasts,  keeping up the momentum. Petrenko's approach also highlighted the chorale-like patterns and contrasts of tempo and mood.  Yet sensitivity is of the essence, which the RLPO do with great finesse : how well those violins shimmered, tenderly surrounding the harp.  The Rondo Finale felt richer and more fulsome after that Adagietto.  Often I think this is where the "love agenda" really lies in this symphony, for the music surges invigorated For what is love if it doesn't enhance life  Mahler very nearly died of a rupture while the symphony was in gestation.  Perhaps the warmth in this movement represents the vital life force which animates so much of Mahler's entire output.  The coda was triumphant, but cheerful, the RLPO rushing exuberantly to the brisk conclusion. 

François-Xavier Roth LSO Wagner Berg Mahler 5 Barbican

François-Xavier Roth conducted the London Symphony Orchestra  in Wagner, Berg and Mahler at the Barbican, London,. All music is "modern": Monteverdi was new in his time, and Bach, and Wagner. Anyone who genuinely knows Roth's innovative work will know better than to expect  cliché.   This time Roth challenges assumptions in a short series the LSO calls "Beyond Romanticism: New Languages". Thus, this concert was a chance to hear Wagner, Berg and Mahler from new perspectives.

Wagner Parsifal in a concert hall, for example, and the Overture thereof, rather than a concert performance of the full opera. This was an opportunity to hear Wagner as symphonist, examining his music close-up, revealing its innate beauty.  The music seemed illuminated, as if glowing from within, the textures so transparent and so subtle that I thought of Debussy, whose credentials as a master of the modern are as great as that of the Second Viennese School.   Roth's approach suggests the "New Language" Wagner was creating in Parsifal, which also reflects the new beginnings Parsifal will bring to revive the Grail community.   Over the years, Parsifal has attracted pseudo-religious baggage. Please see my article Religion versus Religiosity.  Do we really want to end up like the monks whose fetish for ritual blinds them to the enlightenment that is Parsifal's mission   Roth's luminous textures might not please traditionalists, but his reading was perceptive , and absolutely true to the spirit of the opera.

Roth built his career on the firm foundations of the French baroque tradition. We forget that, in their time, Lully  was "new" and Rameau perceived as a dangerous radical. The connections between the baroque and the modern are very strong indeed, as are the implications for performance practice. Hence the inner discipline of Roth's style, reflecting an aesthetic that stems from Voltaire and Descartes.  It's not for nothing that Roth is the most intuitive interpreter of Pierre Boulez.  This intelligence informed this performance of Alban Berg's Seven Early Songs.  Camilla Tilling, the soloist, was one of Benjamin Zander's discoveries. She gave a good enough performance here, if a bit too  subdued. This wasn't a problem because the songs are so well known, we can live with hearing them as orchestral pieces for a change. Even though  there were infelicities in the playing at times, the LSO gave a thoughtful account, throwing emphasis on the orchestration.

Although Mahler Symphony no 5 is ubiquitous, that doesn't necessarily mean that we really know it. The better a piece is, the more open it is to fresh thinking.  Roth and the LSO began with an explosive, exuberant start, emphasizing the boldness of Mahler's concept. The trumpets sounded exuberantly, as if they were marching into battle. But that's part of the inner meaning of the symphony. It's scored for huge forces to lull the literal minded into thinking it's all excitement .  The real excitement, though, lies in its contradictions.

This symphony is not all blast and fanfare. Indeed, Mahler premiered it in Vienna’s Kleinen Musikvereinsaal, to emphasize its “Kammermusikton”. Thus Roth observed the changes of dynamic, from loud and forceful, to quiet but equally potent. It's chamber music, on a big scale, but chamber music in the importance of detail.  Mahler embeds within this symphony different units which function like miniature chamber ensembles. There are interlocking dialogues, between trumpet and horn, between horn and flute, solo violin and strings. The trumpet part is important, but it weaves in and out throughout, leading and tantalizing,  The timpani provide much of the low, rumbling undercurrent that flows throughout the symphony, but isn’t always appreciated, especially as they are played extremely quietly, easily lost in the mass of noisy performance.  The "storm" theme was well articulated, the low brass and winds working  together to  create the image of distant thunder, or a murmur of something undefined and imperceptible.

It's significant that Mahler nearly died in 1901, while this symphony was in gestation. Indeed, the symphony was first performed with the Rückert setting, Um Mitternacht. In the silence of the night the poet hears his heart and realizes its beat separates life from death. Rückert places his faith in God, but for Mahler, more deist than true believer, it’s more complex. The Trauermarsch in this symphony is counterbalanced by the passionate Adagietto and Finale, music of positive energy.   There was some rough abandon in the playing, but all to the good, I thought, since it underlined the contrasts.  Roth's conducting style is energetic - he has conducted Lully with a staff - and this gives his performances an earthy punchiness that's quite distinctive.  Not that he moves a lot - he conducts with both hands, as Boulez did. Anyone can read Roth's CV off Google, but he's a very individual conductor who has to be experienced live for full effect.

Legendary Mahler 5 released - Horenstein

At last, a remastered release of  the legendary Jascha Horenstein  Mahler Symphony no 5, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra recorded at the Edinburgh Festival in 1961. It's available for digital download from  Pristine Classical, the specialist supplier.

"And so it came to pass that on the night of 31st August, 1961, somebody, somewhere, was listening to the radio broadcast that evening, live from the annual Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, with tape reels loaded up, poised and ready to press record as the BBC announcer began his introduction to the evening's main concert attraction: Jascha Horenstein would be conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony.  Perhaps the unknown sound recordist was already aware of Horenstein's reputation in this field. Perhaps he was simply excited to hear a performance of this then-somewhat-neglected composer's symphonic work. Perhaps he was merely curious. I don't have any clues on this front. But the tape survived and, fifty-something years later, a copy arrived in the hands of the conductor's cousin, Misha Horenstein, who has dedicated a good part of his life's energies into collecting together as comprehensive an archive of Jascha's work as is possible." writes Andrew Rose, head of Pristine Classical

Horenstein's "renown in the works of Mahler is legendary. Yet two major symphonies have eluded us and for many years were believed unrecorded: the second remains in this limbo (though who knows?...); the fifth is now known to exist in no less than three concert recordings, all unreleased. This week we finally fill that gap in Jascha Horenstein's catalogue with the most brilliant, electrifying performance of those three, a performance with the Berlin Philharmonic which easily demonstrates the conductor's abilities as one of the great Mahlerian's of all time, a performance that all involved would surely be proud of."

"Sometimes mythical, lost recordings turn up, then fail to quite live up to expectations. It's as if they sounded better in the imagination than in reality. That is not the case here - indeed, I suspect for many this will exceed their expectations, and then some."

As Mischa Horenstein, cousin of the conductor, writes "I listened to the whole symphony and compliment you on a grand job. You have successfully managed that compromise between cleaning up a pretty miserable recording and maintaining good sound, no, improving it tremendously, so that's terrific. The sound is very similar to what I remember from the JH concerts I attended, big orchestra, wide dynamic range, powerful bass line. Bravo!"

Please click HERE for a link to purchase Click HERE for a review

Lachenmann Mahler Arditti Nott Bamberg Prom 5

Lachenmann and Mahler at BBC Prom 5, with The Arditti Quartet,and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jaonathan Nott.

"A musical negativa", Hans Werner Henze called Helmut Lachenmann. Henze, though not a Darmstadt devotee or theory hardliner, was innovative in his own way, so his views carry weight. In any case, Lachenmann thrived in the attention Henze generated, rather like Birtwistle thrived on the "Bad Boy" image created by the unsubstantiated story about Britten walking out of Birtwistle. Britten could read scores, and wouldn't have invited Birtwistle to Aldeburgh in the first place if he hadn't thought him worthwhile. You don't have to "like" music to appreciate its worth.

Lachenmann's Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied (1980) was an excellent choice for BBC Prom 5, whose audiences range from new music devotees to generalists who just go the Proms for a rousing night out. Even audiences with no idea who Lachenmann is will recognize the snatches of Bach, Handel, Haydn and the wacky waltzes and jazz riffs. These serve as landmarks, giving direction to a long work. Indeed, I think they're one of Lachenmann's jokes, since there is a lot more to the piece than a merry dance through German music history.

The Arditti Quartet can play even the most difficult works,with myriad virtuoso techniques. Modern music just wouldn't be possible without them. They made possible the modern revival of string quartet repertoire. I remember Irvine Arditti demonstrating the difference bretween pppp and pppppp.

One of the criticisms of Lachenmann is that he has a thing for gymnastic technical displays , sometimes for their own sake, which is why I've always preferred his more condensed chamber music to his larger scale works. Hearing Xenakis's  Pithoprakta, (1955-6) together with Lachernmann's Schreiben (2003) didn't do Lachenmann any favours. Tanzsuite for Deutschandlied works beautifully for me because at its core is a string quartet, the orchestra adding commentary and special effects, like the imaginative piano passages, magnificent percussion rolls, and sudden interjections from the brass.The long, barely audible introduction, the silences, the flurries of different pizzicato and percussive techniques  sudden swoons across the keyboard, a single chord on piano : immensely satisfying as a meditative zen sort of experience.

The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra is very good and enjoys a considerable reputation. The town is gorgeous though small, but the musicians are well served by the local community and university. The orchestra was playing Mahler in the 1960's under Joseph Keilberth. About ten years ago, Jonathan Nott recorded a series of Mahler symphonies with them where each symphony was paired with a modern work, including Henze. I liked Nott's Mahler 5 at the time, but less so on repeat hearings. This Proms performance was good enough and the Bambergers are always worth hearing.  Today I listened to the pre concert talk. Is that the level the BBC expect from their audiences? .

12/12/12 Jurowski LPO Grisey Quatre Chants Mahler 5

Vladimir Jurowski conducts the LPO in Mahler's Symphony no 5  on 12/12/12. We'll never see dates like that again. Some could deduce  Portents of Doom but maybe we're safe, as the concert doesn't start at 12 past 12.

Even though music is abstract, listening is a subjective experience.  Music itself is neutral, but we would not be human if we did not respond emotionally and carry unconscious connotations into the process. We might read Portents of Doom into this symphony since Mahler nearly died while writing it. However, the thought of haemorrhoids should stop excess sentimentality.

Jurowski is no fool. He's programmed Mahler with Gérard Grisey's Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil.  As Mahler said,"music is more than just the notes". When we listen, can we think how our responses are being channeled?  For me this is one of the truly great song cycles of the last 50 years. In the last 6 years,  it's been heard live in London at least 4 times, twice I think with Barbara Hannigan. Jurowski's soloist is Alison Bell. The classic recording is Catherine Dubosc, with Cambreling.

Grisey was interested in "psychoacoustics", which sounds terrible, but what that means is intense awareness of how what we hear affects how the brain rocesses what comes through our ears, and vice versa. A lot of his music seems attuned to natural body rhythms, so you hear tiny nuances. It's surprisingly therapeutic without actually being designed to be that way. This is not waffly New Age stuff.   It's mentally challenging because it needs careful attention, but somehow it connects to your pulse, as natural as breathing. Often I play this music on continuous loop, so it "evolves" like it's alive.

 Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil. refers to the idea of "crossing the threshold", between life and death, between struggle and sublimation, a flux between levels of consciousness. It works like deep meditation, releasing the soul so it can be free. Shortly after it was completed Grisey died suddenly but that's pure coincidence. There's nothing spooky about that at all, even though Grisey's  title comes from a line in Claude Vivier's Glaubst du, an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele? That earlier piece refers to being stabbed and crossing over into the unknown. Shortly after, Vivier (ironic name) was murdered by a casual stranger in almost exactly the same circumstances. (Lots about Vivier elsewhere on this site.)

Grisey's Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil.starts with long semi-silence then suddenly waving chords enter, not discordant, but disjointed, This isn't firm ground but exploratory. "De....qui....se....doit....." sings the soprano, vertical sounds over the hazy horizontals around her. Gradually the patterns merge, the Voice part disintegrates and reforms in abstract, transcended form, soaring like an arc, stretching outwards into space. Then the incantation, based on sacred Egyptian texts instructing the soul on its journey from death to immortality. The texts are fragmented, and the music hovers as if intuiting the gaps in the transmission. Each stage in the ritual is numbered and intoned, for what's even more important than the detail is the sense of inexorable forward movement. "Laisse moi passer, laisse moi passer"....then "formule pour être un dieu"'.

More wonderfully shaped moving sound, deep timbred instruments like contrabass clarinet, muted tubas and trumpet, contrasted with the high voice. "Le voix s'épand dans l'ombre". Only the rumble of drums like distant thunder and barely perceptible rustling, hurrying sounds like wind. We're crossing something..... Circular arching trumpet sounds, more rustling, speeding up, punctuated by sharp thwacks on percussion and harp. Then waddling tuba and screeching (but harmonic! ) saxophones and clarinets. We enter a new place, vivid with clear light. The soprano's singing text from the Epic of Gilgamesh. This is the "death of civilization". Human bodies have turned into a vast sea of clay, but to the prophet, it's a terrace open onto an endless horizon. The violin part is painfully beautiful, and there's a steady hum vibrating in the background. Of the final Berceuse, Grisey said it's not a lullaby but "music to the dawning of humanity finally liberated of its nightmare".

Prom 69 Rihm Mahler Pittsburgh Honeck

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's two BBC Proms 68 and 69 dovetailed nicely, again proving the adage, "Music should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed".

When Anne Sophie Mutter plays Wolfgang Rihm's Gesungene Zeit (Time Chant) she brings out its profound spirituality. Rihm wrote the piece for her 20 years ago, specifically attuned to her strengths and to the violin she prefers. It is one of her signature pieces. She's recorded it twice, first with Levine and more recently with Alan Gilbert (new release on DG here).  In twenty years much has happened to Mutter - and to us - so hearing the piece again in this context is deeply moving. Mutter showed how music can lift us to emotional and spiritual levels which transcend the ordinary grind of life.

Knowing how high profile this Prom would be, Mutter seemed charged with supernatural intensity.  The exceedingly high tessitura seemed to defy gravity, soaring into a stratosphere few dare explore. Her technique is so perfect that she can create pitch so high it's almost beyond the threshold of human hearing. This is the aria of an angel. No human voice could sustain legato that long and at that pitch. The music seems to float in the air, untrammelled by normal constraints. At times it swoops gently down towards the other instruments, lifting them upwards too. Two glorious tumults, when all seem to be singing together. Dark murmuring chorale (listen to the contrabassoona and low winds), col legno meeting tapping in the percussion.  Mutter's line sweeps upwards and hovers. One last low-flying farewell to the orchestra and then back into the stratosphere, beyond mortal realm.

It would be tempting to draw parallels between Rihm's Gesungene Zeit and Mahler's Symphony no 5, but Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra wisely stick to what's in the score. Mahler's views on the chamber-like nature of the piece are fairly clear. The Adagietto has acquired a lachrymose reputation through its use in movies and such things as Compilations for Valentine's Day and so on, but the symphony itself is much greater than popular myth. (There is a long story attached to how this developed, but I won't go into that here). Honeck respects the structural logic of the symphony, so this a fiull bodied, solid reading, satisfying though not specially spectacular.

But why start the Prom with the Prelude to Lohengrin Act 1? It's a grand opening, but listeners automatically go into Wagner-mode, thinking of what will follow in the opera. The days of "bleeding chunks" are long gone, since  nowadays, we're more accustomed to more integrated and demanding programmes. Lohengrin always sounds wonderful, but it might have been better to concentrate on Rihm and Mahler.

Please read about Prom  68 where Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony played Beethoven Tchaikovsky but not Braunfels. There's more on Braunfels on this site than anywhere other than the Braunfels website itself. There's also plenty more about Wolfgang Rihm on this site. Like Braunfels, Rihm's not known to millions, but to tens of thousands, as he's probably one of the most important European composers of our time. Mutter is no fool artistically, she knows why she likes playing Rihm.
photo copyright : Harald Hoffmann

Mahler Rudolf Barshai 1924-2010

Rudolf Barshai died Tuesday. He was a violist, who founded chamber ensembles and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. As a conductor, he was prominent enough to premiere Shostakovich's 14th Symphony in 1969. Despite his status in Russia, Barshai emigrated to Israel in 1976.

I didn't discover him until 1999, when a recording he'd made for an extremely obscure independent label started getting attention. Laurel Record, not Laurel Records, note, that's how small-time it was.  Barshai conducted Mahler's 5th Symphony with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie. It was a word of mouth success because Laurel didn't have marketing clout or even proper distribution. In many ways this rarity value added to its mystique because there was no Amazon in those days.  Also, the idea of youth orchestras was relatively new, too, not like now when they're everywhere and praised for emotive reasons, regardless of how they actually play. So in 1999, we adored Barshai's Mahler 5 because it was so fresh and different.

It's a live recording, and the players are above average. Some have gone on to bigger things. But what's good about it is that Barshai manages to combine youthful enthusiasm with sensitivity and discipline. Not rough and tumble hyper emotionalism, but an understanding of form. Barshai's background as a soloist and chamber musician helped him understand the sophistication in this symphony, while inspiring the young musicians to play with intense passion. As the years have passed, there have been better M5's but this one has an innocence that's still appealing. Barshai also went on to write a performing version of Mahler's 10th Symphony which is less rounded than Cooke 3, which is now standard. Both were issued as a set by ultra cheap Brilliant Classics in 2002.  (They also issued the complete Shostakovich Symphonies – a box for under £10). Time has tempered my enthusiasm but they're still worth hearing because they're fun and a reminder of simpler times.

Gergiev Mahler 4 & 5 Prom 26

When Gergiev conducted Mahler's Fourth symphony at the Barbican in 2008, my friend and I were seated across the aisle from each other. At first we were numb. Then, spontaneously, we looked at each other in horror. "The worst experience of my concert-going life," said my friend, who has been listening for over six decades. Would Prom 26 be better?

This time Gergiev conducted the World Orchestra for Peace, founded by George Solti in 1995. There are lots of summer season orchestras like these. Some, like the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, really are astounding, attracting the best musicians in the world, fired by intense musical passion. Others, like Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, are genuinely "orchestras for peace", where the players risk their lives to participate. They don't have money to train, travel, etc. so it's a real an act of faith when they come together. Musically, they're pretty good, considering. But pulling together musicians from all over doesn't automatically ensure anything.

Perhaps Gergiev has learned from the débacle of his Mahler cycler in 2008. This Mahler 4 was less self indulgent, but also without character. The LSO musicians then looked shocked, but at least that gave the performance tension since Gergiev wanted them to go one way, and they, with their extensive experience, didn't.  This time, everyone was on best behaviour but the result was curiously inert. When music is basically as good as this, there always will be people who enjoy it. But separating performance from the music itself  is another matter. There were some nice details, as to be expected, but overall there wasn't much coherence. Nothing offensive, but nothing of insight. Not even in the cataclysm at the end of the third movement, which marks the passage from death to the afterlife.

At least this time round Gergiev had a decent soloist who  realizes that Das himmlische Leben isn't a West End show tune. On the other hand, there's more to it than feast after famine. Camilla Tilling was one of Ben Zander's discoveries years ago, and has matured. Good move to choose her, she delivered well.

In theory an extremely good conductor could carry off Mahler 4 and 5 in the same programme. There are links, but it would take a real Mahler specialist to bring them out.  The Fifth can be played with chamber-like lucidity, reflecting the grace of the Fourth . But here they don't connect. The Fifth is popular when it's loud so no doubt there will have been many who enjoyed this more than I could, though I tried..
Please  listen to the Orchestre de Paris Mahler cycle online. It's wonderful, a fabulous resource, and links to Henry-Louis de La Grange talk too.

Mahler plays Mahler piano

Who's that pianist? Gustav Mahler himself playing Mahler in piano transcription. This is the first movement of Symphony no 5.  It's a historic moment though it might not have seemed so at the time. A German company called Welte Mignon invented a new process for recording sound, that was much better anything else at the time. To publicise their new system, they got famous composers to play their own music. So on 9th November 1905, Mahler sits down and does his thing.

He recorded four pieces, Mahler 5/1, Mahler 4/4, and two songs, Ging heut morgen übers Feld and the early Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald.  Before radio and recordings, many people did music at home, so piano transcriptions of everything were standard practice.  Do it Yourself Wagner, for example. People bought scores like they buy MP3s today . That's how composers and publishers made money, and how music spread outside the concert hall or opera stage.  If you play your own, you learn the tunes. Transcriptions were important teaching tools, too, because musicians had to analyze what make a piece work in its essentials.

I've picked M5/1 because it shows how Mahler focuses on a clean, direct line, darkening the tone to suggest the larger forces in an orchestra. Oddly enough, it makes me think of some of his earliest songs, like Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz. Here he is coming out of the Wunderhorn phase, but are Wunderhorn settings so far from his mind?

His tempi are fast, but that's because he's trying to squeeze each piece into the short time frame the technology was limited to.  It's completely wrong to assume that these are any indication of how he wanted the symphonies to sound. What he was doing here was experimenting with technology, not setting down a sacred template for performance practice. He's very free because it's a one-off experiment.

What's also interesting is what it tells us about Mahler. No Luddite, no technophobe. Here he is playing "new" music, written only 3 years before,  for people with the very latest new invention. He was the man who followed up on Freud, took an interest in leftish politics, read about Eastern philosophy, and saw Schoenberg's potential.  Not a backward thinker, but someone who cared about the past because it informed the future.

Welte Mignon folded for many reasons, and recording went back to more primitive methods, which is why recordings of the 1920's and 30's often sound horrible. But Welte Mignon captured a moment, like a snapshot in time. Obviously, copyright has long expired, which is why these pieces keep popping up on CD.