Pictures - Boston Cello Quartet

It was via library book that I came to this album, and in it is probably the most famous piece of classical music I'd never heard of.

I give you: Albinoni's 'Adagio G Minor' performed by the Boston Cello Quartet. 

I like libraries. They have been my places of solace in the different towns and countries I've lived in. Familiar books would seem to follow me around, welcoming me to new places like old friends, even the academic library of my university in Austria. They had string of art installations there (my favourite was the squashed watering cans) but there was one, I kid you not, constructed partly from old Australian Yellow Pages telephone books.

There's a library near my house. I've spent a bit of time in there these past few weeks, reacquainting myself with my somewhat neglected library card and pushing myself back into the habit of reading by making and taking a little time between the school run and grocery shopping (oh, I lead such a glamorous life right now!) to simply pick a book. Sometimes it will be a recommendation from a friend, media or podcast, and sometimes it will be a book whose title or cover catches my eye - yes, that's right. I totally judge books by their covers. Bite me :-) "The Cellist of Sarajevo" was one of the latter.

The titular character and central story line are loosely based on a real cellist and real events - Vedran Smailović and the Siege of Sarajevo. Smailović played his cello (performing many things, including the Adagio) in ruined buildings and for funerals during the war.

Despite its common name, the Adagio was not actually written by Albinoni. The story goes that musicologist and Albinoni biographer, Remo Giazotto, claimed to have discovered a fragment of a larger work by Albinoni in Dresden and that he wrote the Adagio based on what was on that scrap of manuscript. So really, I suppose the Adagio is to Albinoni as Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree is to Men at Work - Only Albinoni's people haven't sued Giazotto's people for copyright infringement. Yet.

Google tells me the Adagio has been used in approximately 37 bazillion movies, TV shows and advertisements, and yet, as I said at the top, I'd never heard it before looking it up after finishing the book. Go figure.

Though Giazotto's original work was for organ and strings, I like the Boston Cello Quartet's version better. It's funny when you think about it. Orchestras and chamber ensembles are often really just cover and tribute bands. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, as an ensemble, probably doesn't write as much of its own music as it performs and interprets the music of others.

About the Adagio itself, I think it's sadly beautiful. Lots has been written about it; I don't think there is anything I can add. Have a listen, it will literally take just a few minutes :-)

The rest of the album is a little mixed bag of famous tunes, classical standards, interesting melodies, inoffensive elevator music, and one Oh So 80's kitschy 'Hooked on Classics' (which I will confess to owning – hey, on vinyl at least!) style thing to finish off with. Most of pieces I've heard, some I've even played. My favourites are: La Muerte del Angels, by Piazzolla (more random trivia, a clarinet quartet arrangement of his fabulous 'Nightclub 1960' is my ring tone) and The Barber of Seville Overture, by Rossini - because I can't listen to it without singing along with the Bugs Bunny version lyrics.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vckzusg3ebvnd00/Boston%20Cello%20Quartet.zip?dl=0