The Open Ears Project - Episode One: On Resetting Your Day transcript
[Music - Etude No. 2 by Philip Glass]
CLEMENCY BURTON-HILL: Welcome to the Open Ears Project. I’m Clemmie Burton-Hill and every day for 30 days we’re going to hear from people, all sorts of people, who share an intimate story about the classical music that gets them through their lives. Part mixtape, part a sonic love-letter, you can consider this as a sort of musical journey into the lives of others. Hopefully by the end of it we’ll not only hear classical music differently, but each other too. So, here we go. This is day one.
[Music - Adagio from Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian]
ALEC BALDWIN: Umm… I am… I'll say it again... This is Alec Baldwin. I'm the host of WNYC's podcast "Here's the Thing", and I am the announcer on WQXR for The New York Philharmonic.
And the piece I've chosen for Open Ears is Aram Khachaturian's Ballet Suite from "Spartacus".
This is a piece that never fails to revive me. This is a piece that never fails to change my mood.
And I love a range of things. But there's one piece, that when I put it on, in my car, it never ceases to lift my spirits and it's Khachaturian's Ballet Suite from "Spartacus" and I just love that piece. Among thousands of others. And I think that the Khachaturian is simple in some ways. But that simplicity allows it to get inside you, and I can only think of a very clichéd word, which is soaring. You listen to this music and this music is soaring.
By the time this piece is over you are revived.
I find that my path with classical music is like a path in the woods that you just keep going down and down and down.
There's just so much profound, boundless creativity and artistry onstage. When I watch the Philharmonic, I cry. The tears just come rolling down my eyes, every time. I go, "Look at these people, look at them".
I'm often disappointed when I'm in the movies. I'm sometimes disappointed when I go to the theater and I'm never disappointed when I go to the Symphony. Never. Never, never, never.
When I was younger I had limitless energy. When I was younger, into my thirties and forties and rolling toward fifty, I had limitless energy. And you'd come to me and say, "We want you to come do this". And nearly all the time my answer was a ‘yes’. And the big difference is I have a lot of children now, it's just that my energy belongs somewhere else now. And I just find that in the way that there's a moment in the day where I need to just reset myself, what better way to reset yourself than the Khachaturian?
And it works like a charm, it's beautiful. And I just fell in love with it.
[Music - Etude No. 2 by Philip Glass]
CBH: Alec chose the Adagio from Khachaturian’s Spartacus Suite and if you can give yourself the next ten minutes or so just to reset and indulge in the whole soaring thing, then it’s coming right up. If not, we’re going to be providing the full tracks of all the music that we hear on Open Ears: just head to openearsproject.org to find out more. I’ll see you tomorrow.
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