a sketchy wander around sketchy climes in still-seedy parts of LIC. i scored some pictures of a destroyed car that i have seen frequently for years, but i’ve never gotten close to it. it’s in a parking lot at a housing project that has proven to never be on my way to anywhere until today, when i ambled past and happened to remember that mental note-to-self made many times over to return one day and get good photos of the gutted-out car that looks like it might have been found in rural Alabama but is, in fact, right here in this magnificent metropolis. i have a newly-minted appreciation for interesting vehicles, be they immaculate vintage restorations or decimated piles of worthless junk, as per today’s sighting.
yesterday saw the arrival of a large order of piano music scores, including the Busoni Concerto in C, Op. 39, a score I have wanted to score (haha) since high school. At about $180 it was alwyays prohibitively expensive, but i recently found some spending loot to use on random things, and the Busoni score is partly where it went. The concerto is a pompous monstrosity, “pure frosting”, as a friend once described it, but I think it is a genuine attempt by the composer to crown the era of the romantic piano concerto with some hearty, epic pomp.
For years the only recording of the piece was John Ogdon’s, and that was the LP set which I must have listened to over 100 times while at Oberlin. I don’t remember the score being available at the music library, and I don’t remember ever seeing the score until i found a poorly-scanned PDF for free download on some villanous website of illegal copyright-infringement frenzy. the scan was so bad i could hardly make sense of it, but it was sitll strangely illuminating to see the notes for a piece of music i only knew by sound for so many years. i have frequently had that moment of mental clench, or lightning, when seeing a score for a piece of music i had heard but never seen. the code makes sense, and comes alive in visceral ways. seeing the score for the concerto was like finding evidence, or proof, that these melodies and passages that have haunted my memory for so many years actually exist. of course i know they exist, the score and the parts. now i see them beautifully notated, beautifully engraved, and it brings to me a level of mental joy and affirmation to the sound.
the other scores include Boulez’s 2nd Piano Sonata, which i’ve heard many times but i could never hum a tune from it.