New year first listening...

The Power of Music is something which always surprises me... it's like Time and Space can be dressed, sumptuosly, yet misteriously dressed, by Music...

A mood - positive or negative - can be exagerated or enhanced with the wrong or the right music.

It has the strength to let you feel "cool" (i.e. - Miles Davis' Bitches Brew) or beautifully "down" (i.e. Nick Drake's Pink Moon) in few seconds...

It goes down, down, well deep in the memory - also universal humankind, DNA memories - to give a sountrack to an afternoon or... a life.

I'm right now "grooving" on a superb Deutsche Gramophone Tulip-label of Prokofieff's "Quintet fur Oboe, Klarinette, Violine, Viola u. Kontrabass Op. 39".

It's a great, six movements composition written in 1924 as a ballet score.

I had to read the always interesting liner notes to be sure Prokofieff wasn't thinking to... Brasilia!

... yes, folks... to me, Op. 39 is the ideal soundtrack to Niemeyer's masterpiece in the Amazonas Jungle.

I visited Brasilia in 2006 during a trip to Brasil... after - still in my teens - falling in love for it as I saw some black & white pictures of the recently built Brasil's new capital... those pure shapes, the broad, empty roads, the huge plazas, the monuments.

Prokofieff's music - in my mind - hint to the Power of Man, the Will, the need to build, to go ahead, further... that double-bass lines, so powerful, it's like I see an ant city being built in a night...

... and the clarinet gives a dignity to the newly built city under the dawn sunlight... like Nature be surprised by the alien beauty of the man-ufact...

It's positive music, like Kraftwerk from 1924 - i.e. the pulse of creating... would be more appropriate hinting to St. Petersburg or the like... but I cannot do otherwise listening to Op. 39 and "seeing", "dreaming" about "the idea of Niemeyer's architecture".

The idea, which is purer than truth, as when I visited Brasilia, the white of marbles and monuments and buildings was discolored and stained and marred by decades of heavy rains...

So, that's the power of music... it keeps the beauty of your ideal and, romantically, gives immortality to memories, like when you think about your mom, who's always young and beautiful, music carves its own space in our minds and lively frozen images, sooo beautifully...

... do you want more?

... Khachaturian's "Swords Dance" from Spartacus was my personal sountrack - when maybe five years old - for me playing "bicycles races";-))) around and around the kitchen table.

Still remember I used - with some help - my mom cherished Decca's (I realized this when, decades after, I purchased my copy of SXL 6000 pressing with that beautiful cover...) on turntable, running around and around the kitchen table...

I guess this matching between music and memory will always be like it is for yours truly.

Strange, isnt't it?

How could I live without music?