Consider This the “I Don’t Know Much About Music But I Know What I Like” moment of your day.
I am working on some more substantive new stuff for the blog (oh really? — ed.), but for just because I love you, here’s a little amuse bouche. Check out the video at this link. Then tell me your hand doesn’t hurt.
I can’t count as fast as that man plays the violin.
Image: “Violin” See here for copyright info.
Explore posts in the same categories: Cool Video, Music, pop culture, The Way We Live NowTags: Violins, Why Do People Do What They Do, World Records
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October 18, 2010 at 11:21 pm
You know, when I went to get my undergraduate degree in music performance, people warned me that it would ruin my ability to enjoy music as others do.
Maybe they were right.
I gotta say, that neo-cubist fiddle image from Wikipedia is nice, isn’t it? Even if it isn’t Picasso or Braque — my visual appreciation is still intact.
But that BBC performance of Bumblebee was shit on ice, amirite? I mean, I’m as sympathetic as the next guy to late Romantic virtuoso show pieces, but that was just dreadful, wadn’it? I mean, tell me I’m not mad.
De gustibus, blah, blah, blah.
October 19, 2010 at 6:00 am
Of course it’s shite. Record setters are different from you and me; what they want is their name next to something, anything, in the Guinness Bible. So art ain’t in it.
Which makes this not a Cartier-Bresson moment, but a Diane Arbus one.
(BTW — my sister, who is the head of the music department at a very good college out west, agrees with you entirely, writing an email to me that read, in part, “Woof! Too bad it sucked…”
October 19, 2010 at 8:10 am
I don’t think he wants his name next to anything – he’s an accomplished violinist who, I imagine, saw the chance to do something that’d be fun on a children’s TV show. His artistic reputation ought not to suffer. This appears to be him playing it without record-setting motivation at a leisurely 1 min 34 sec. (I don’t actually have audio on the machine I’m sitting at but I’ll hazard a guess that it’s better).
PS. The picture’s a cello.
October 19, 2010 at 6:21 am
I don’t hink it should count as a record, in some places he was so off key it was painful! I prefer Jennifer Batten.
October 19, 2010 at 9:46 am
At the risk of seeming cynical or mean spirited, this feat impresses me in the same way that inscribing the Constitution on the head of a pin does. Would anyone want to listen to a recording at this frenetic pace more than once?