Alex Ross posts a peachy list of his top ten glissandos today, an end to Xenakis week at Unquiet Thoughts. Check them out!
(I've got a recording of Die Seejungfrau, though not Chailly's, and I will have to pull it.)
My favorite didn't make the list: the mysteriously sliding strings that open Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Click the first link of samples ("Introduction"), which unfortunately doesn't contain the full intro. My second favorite? The clarinet glissandos somewhere in the middle of Magnus Lindberg's Clarinet Concerto.
The one from Le Sacre is definitely up there for me. Shostakovich had some great eerie string glissandi. And I'm pleased that Ross mentioned "A Day in the Life" in one of his earlier posts.
ReplyDelete"The Miraculous Mandarin" has some of the best trombone glissandi anywhere. There's also a good trombone gliss in "The Firebird."
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