waltondammerung

Thank you, Apple.

I was practicing the violin today, and I decided to take a stab at Bruch's Concert No. 1 in G minor. I started working on it during the few remaining weeks of school after my final college recital, and, needless to say, I never got very far. Anyway, the Bruch is, um, what you might call "difficult", and I thought it would be nice to find a recording of someone who knows what he's doing playing it. I hopped on iTunes, and within 2 minutes, I'd chosen between about 5 different violinists' recordings, downloaded Jascha Heifetz playing all three movements for only $2.97, and started broadcasting it through my stereo directly from my laptop.

"That's no big deal," you may think. And it's not a big deal any more, really. But it reminded me of a time in high school when my teacher told me I needed a recording of Bach's sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin, since I was working on a few of them myself. I have trouble imagining Bach's own mother kicking back and enjoying a good performance of all of the sonatas and partitas, let alone your typical American plebeian. They're the kinds of tidbits that violinists play to impress other violinists--not exactly something you'd go grab at Borders. My mom and I had to drive all the way to Columbus to even begin our search. Columbus is an hour's drive from Mt. Vernon. I don't remember how many stores we looked in, but we finally found the CD set for something like $25. Think of all the time and money spent finding what I can now get at the touch of a button, and with an unheard of smorgasboard of options--there are at least four different violinists' recordings of the sonatas and partitas available on iTunes! I wouldn't even have to buy all of the stupid sonatas and partitas at this point. If I wanted, I could even buy all of them but the Gavotte en Rondo from Partita No. 3. Take that Bach's mom. I never liked that movement anyway. HaHA!