Carousel Waltz (Richard Rodgers, 1945)

I have always loved the Carousel Waltz, and sifted through YouTube to try to find a good version. I found several - and then this one, and I wondered what piece of music I was listening to. It COULDN'T be the same one! It was like wandering around in a very familiar setting - a circus, maybe, or a carnival - but seeing everything startlingly new, the veils ripped away, as if I were hearing it all for the very first time. 

It's just the way the musicians attack the piece, the way they don't pussyfoot around but just dive right in. And make no mistake, this IS circus music, dark, sometimes dissonant, with thumping bass drums and blasting tubas, dreamily romantic (OH THOSE VIOLAS!), with sparkly carnival effects charmingly reproduced by crisp percussion and those big bald men blowing tiny little piccolos. 

This is a glorious piece of music which has beckoned and pulled me in again, after too long away from music, too much distraction, too many things pulling me in different directions. This is so perfect and encompasses so much, with a glittering cinematic quality and a kind of primal sophistication. And the tempo couldn't be more perfect - bad tempi being my all-time-worst pet peeve in music. For that, you must thank the conductor - and this is without a doubt some of the most glorious conducting I've ever heard. The musicians play this with focus, joy and gusto, but also with the requisite fierceness that is all a part of a beloved musical which, for a popular Broadway show, is exceptionally dark.

And because I just thought of it, here's another favorite piece I keep coming back to - another dance in 3/4 time, Khatchaturian's magnificent Masquerade Waltz, (sometimes called Dark Waltz), with the same primal, inscrutable melancholy lurking under a great bumptious cymbal-crashing piece of circus music. Call it My Armenian Cousin.