On long drives along straight roads with nothing interesting to look at, I like listening to music to avoid zoning out. Radio is the first, obvious solution, and I’m willing to listen to boring pop music while driving that I wouldn’t choose at home, but the long ad breaks get really annoying. So now it’s Spotify through a Bluetooth speaker that we bought especially for the car. (And that lives in the car and stays in the car and doesn’t get borrowed for any reason, because that’s how its predecessor vanished.)

There’s plenty of music that sounds good at home but doesn’t work in the car. Some frequencies become inaudible, while others sound unpleasantly sharp. Guitar-dominated rock music is right out. Drums and vocals work well, so sometimes I’ve picked some random Latino or afro playlist from Spotify. On this trip I realized that musicals and Disney movie soundtracks work great. We got through the entirety of the original Broadway recording of Hamilton on our way from Tartu to Tallinn to Stockholm. (Followed by the soundtracks for Moana and Encanto on the back and forth trip to Uppsala to drop off my brother.)

Hamilton is still as awesome as ever. Seeing it live in London was an incredible experience, but even hearing it through a pint-sized Bluetooth speaker while driving sends shivers down my spine. Ingenious rhymes, catchy melodies, great voices, punchy delivery. I’m starting to think of maybe going back to see it live again.

For Eric’s birthday, I bought tickets for an online concert. Eric shares his birthday with Johann Sebastian Bach, so there is an Early Music Day on this day.

It was an odd experience. Live but not live. It was a live concert but it didn’t really feel like it.

The music was lovely. The production, not so much. Odd camera angles where our view of the musician’s face was blocked by a microphone stand; weird cuts from one camera to another; a sound mix that wasn’t adjusted when the musician switched instruments. Either it was done on a shoestring budget, or by people who are used to very different kinds of concerts and out of their depth here. Our guys at tretton37 produce much better live streams.

On the plus side, in a real live concert I would never have gotten a live view of the harpsichord player’s hands.

Random observation: my brain noticed the harpsichord much more when the view switched to his hands. Objectively I knew there was no change in the music, but as soon as I could see him play, my brain picked up the harpsichord so much more clearly.

I was extra pleased to note an ad in this morning’s newspaper for a promising organ concert, given my disappointment on Thursday. BachiStan is a project/grouping/something that will play all of Bach’s works for organ during 2020, with concerts taking place every other weekend, starting today. Were I retired and free, perhaps I would try to attend all of them. I’ll be happy even if this is the only one I hear, but I really hope that it won’t be.

On the programme: a prelude, two duets, and a number of chorals.

I enjoyed every moment of this concert. It was so much more to my taste than Thursday’s. Firstly, it was Bach and not Reger. Despite its name, baroque music is restrained and disciplined and almost “easy listening” compared to Reger. Secondly, it was played on relatively modest-sized church organs instead of what I’m beginning to think of as the grandiose monstrosity at Konserthuset.

The German Church has two organs, and both were used today. I arrived relatively late but since I was alone I found a great seat right in the middle. If I sat facing forward, the Juno organ was straight behind me. If I turned to the right, the Düben organ was straight in front of me. So I got perfect sound from both.

There was a speech, not quite a sermon, towards the end of the concert, about why we are here. Why are we listening to this music? Why did Bach write this music? In this telling, it all goes back to Luther and his belief that music brings us closer to God.

And I realized in a flash of insight – I can’t believe I haven’t realized this before! – that my most perfect music listening experiences are those that turn into meditations. The times when I am subsumed by the music and all other senses and thoughts disappear. I am aware of each note as happens, it is almost as if it was happening within me. This takes music of a very different kind than what’s usually labelled as “meditation music” – relaxing, unassuming and bland music that sort of just tinkles along in the background. Meditating to music, not meditating while listening to music.

This second photo is of the collections chest at the German Church. I went looking for it after the concert, because I thought this experience deserved at least the price of a concert ticket. Stuffing my banknote down this ancient opening was a bonus experience.

The third in a series of five lunchtime organ concerts at Konserthuset.

Today’s concert was fully dedicated to Max Reger. When Ulf Norberg, the resident organist at Konserthuset, introduced the concert, he said Reger was his favourite composer. Well, de gustibus non est disputandum, but I personally found Reger nearly unlistenable. I enjoyed no part, no aspect of this concert.

There was just so much stuff in this music. It was bombastic, blaring, overdone. All registers booming, then near silence. It was like an ad for the organ at Konserthuset, one of Europe’s largest apparently – look at what it can be made to do! But I could discern no melody or rhythm in this. It was just unstructured sound to my ears.

I wish there had been a way to discreetly leave the concert hall without disturbing anyone, but there wasn’t, so I had to sit there until the end.

The second of five, in a series of lunchtime organ concerts that I’ve booked tickets to. This time we heard Sebastian Johansson, Sweden’s youngest organist. The hall was not packed but the crowd was definitely larger than last time.

Bach, Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major.
Demessieux, Te Deum.
Sebastian Johansson, improvisation on a given theme.
Avicii, Wake Me Up.

For me, much of this concert was “interesting” rather than enjoyable. The sound of organ music can range from delicate to industrial. Much of today’s music ranged towards noise, for my ears – even the Bach prelude. Too many notes at the same time, at too high volume. But the concert was an interesting display of the organ’s versatility.

The improvisation was fun to hear. The theme he was given was the jingle of Hemglass ice cream vans.

Hamilton at the Victoria Palace theatre in London.

I wish I had something intelligent and insightful to say about this performance, but I really don’t. I’ve had little practice; I don’t review musicals very often.

I can only say that it was excellent in all ways. Musically it combined the best of musicals – catchy tunes, memorable chorus lines – with the best of hip hop – witty texts, cool rhymes, infectious energy. It’s energetic, funny and engaging, but also has enough depth of emotion to not feel superficial. Hamilton himself may be young, scrappy and hungry most of the time, but there is also room for Eliza’s sorrow, and thoughtful moments.

The whole performance is so refreshingly modern without overdoing it. The costumes are more or less in the historical style but the only wig in sight sits on the head of George III, clearly marking him as one of the old world. And half the cast are non-white – in a play where a good portion of the personages depicted were slave owners.

Here is an interesting review that does have intelligent things to say about the show.

The first in a series of five lunchtime organ concerts at Stockholm’s concert hall.

Organ and piano. One piece by Dupré, one by Bach/Gounod and one by Rachmaninov.

I’ve already forgotten the names of the other works (a ballade by Dupré, I believe, and something something variations by Rachmaninov). They were nice, but not really to my taste.

But music doesn’t get better than Bach. The Ave Maria with Gounod’s melody (on organ) wandering around a background of Bach (on piano) was magical.

I went to see and hear Philip Glass and his ensemble today. Eric couldn’t come with me because he had some activity planned with his siblings, as a birthday gift.

Imagine my surprise when, as I am sitting in my seat in the concert hall, Eric’s sister suddenly approaches me and says hi. And it turns out that their long-planned activity is this very same concert, and they have seats just a few steps away from mine. And then nobody turns up for the three seats between us, so Eric and the others move, and we end up sitting and enjoying the concert all together.

This concert made me realize just how similar all of Philip Glass’ music is. I got the impression that he has been writing the same thing through his entire career. It hasn’t felt quite this same-ish when I’ve heard it before. Perhaps he just selected pieces of a very similar kind for this evening.

It was very interesting and pleasant at first but towards the end of the concert my head was getting quite tired of it.

We went to see The Real Group in concert. I was thinking we would all love it, and instead we came home quite disappointed.

We saw/heard them live two years ago, together with The Swingles. That concert (which I now see I didn’t write about) was a mixed bag – some songs I really liked, others were unimpressive.

I was hoping we would this time get more of the good stuff. Unfortunately I feel that TRG has moved in the wrong direction since then.

The two best songs today, by far, were two folk songs, one Swedish “gångarlåt” and one Latvian. There was depth and emotion in them. The rest of the repertoire… less so. The songs newly written by members of TRG themselves were the least interesting. Possibly they were technically impressive, but I don’t have the ear or the knowledge to appreciate that. To me, these songs just sounded light-weight, superficially cheery. Tra-la-la, and an hour later I’ve forgotten them already.

For the first time in decades, I went to a song festival. It’s an Estonian tradition going back almost 150 years, and an amazing experience. This year’s event was not the “full” festival but the youth festival, with a particular focus on young composers, conductors and performers. (The full one is a bit larger.) Even so, there was a choir of 10,000+ singers and 50,000 people in the audience. Awe-inspiring, quite literally.

We were a bit late to the venue so we ended up sitting further back that I had hoped, among the trees at the top of the slope, and didn’t quite get the full impact of the ten thousand voices. So we’ll have to attend the next one again and be there earlier, to get an even better experience.

I have vague, distant memories of attending the festival as a small child. Somewhat more strongly I remember the extraordinary (in all senses of the word) “Song of Estonia” festival in 1988, attended according to some claims by a quarter of the population of Estonia. I was a callow child, uninterested in current affairs, but even I could feel history being made on that day.