Monday, September 24

The BFG by Roald Dahl is about a Big Friendly Giant who catches dreams and catalogs them in jars before distributing them to sleepers. In this passage (pp. 97-98), our young heroine Sophie is grilling the BFG on the process:

"Can you really and truly tell what sort of a dream it's going to be simply by listening to it?" Sophie asked.
"I can," the BFG said, not looking up.
"But how? Is it by the way it hums and buzzes?"
"You is less or more right," the BFG said. "Every dream in the world is making a different sort of buzzy-hum music. And these grand swashboggling ears of mine is able to read that music."
"By music, do you mean tunes?"
"I is not meaning tunes."
"Then what do you mean?"
"Human beans is having their own music, right or left?"
"Right," Sophie said. "Lots of music."
"And sometimes human beans is very overcome when they is hearing wonderous music. They is getting shivers down their spindels. Right or left?"
"Right," Sophie said.
"So the music is saying something to them. It is sending a message.
I do not think the human beans is knowing what that message is, but they is loving it just the same."
"That's about right," Sophie said.

Human beans of listener land, I is hoping you will be similarly overcome with shivers down your spindels as you hear the wonderous pieces on Midday Music. Today's discs are new releases, and all but one come from EMI Classics:



11 AM

• Mendelssohn: Ruy Blas Overture. New Philharmonia Orch, Atzmon (EMI 81888)
• Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2. David Oistrakh, Philharmonia Orch, Galliera (EMI 81487)
• Rosza: Duo for Violin and Piano, Op. 7. Philippe Quint, William Wolfram (Naxos 8.570190)

12 N

• Glazunov: Melodie, Op. 20/1. Han-Na Chang, Orch of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, Pappano (EMI 82390)
• Hadyn: Symphony No. 101, "The Clock." English Chamber Orch, Tate (EMI 88666)
• Saint-Saens: Clarinet Sonata in E-flat, Op. 167. Sabine Meyer, Oleg Maisenberg (EMI 79787)

1 PM

• Taneyev: Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 30. Lilya Zilberstein and friends at the Lugano Festival 2006 (EMI 89241)