Mark's Tracks Top 10 of 2015 - #10, #9, #8, #7

No.10: Calvin Harris & Disciples - How Deep is your Love? (Released 17 October 2015)
AUS#1, BEL#1, BUL#1, GRE#1, HUN#1, ISR#1, MEX#1, NL#1, RUS#1, UK#2, FR#2, IRL#2, NZ#2, ESP#3, CZK#4, CH#4, DE#4, FIN#4, LEB#4, RSA#4, AUT#5, DEN#5, POL#5, SWE#6, SVK#8, NOR#9, IT#10, CAN#16, US#27, BRZ#79

Lyrics:

I want you to breathe me in
Let me be your air
Let me roam your body freely
No inhibition, no fear

How deep is your love?
Is it like the ocean?
What devotion? Are you?
How deep is your love?
Is it like nirvana?
Hit me harder, again
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
Is it like the ocean?
Pull me closer, again
How deep is your love?

How deep is your love?

Open up my eyes and
Tell me who I am
Let me in on all your secrets
No inhibition, no sin

How deep is your love?
Is it like the ocean?
What devotion? Are you?
How deep is your love?
Is it like nirvana?
Hit me harder, again
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
Is it like the ocean?
Pull me closer, again
How deep is your love?

How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?

So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?
So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?
So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?
So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?
(How deep is your love?)
So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?
So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?
(How deep is your love?)
So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?
(Pull me closer, again)
So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?
How deep is your love?

How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?

So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?
So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?
(How deep is your love?)
So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?
So tell me how deep is your love could it go deeper?


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No.9 Robert Mellin - The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe - Played by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra (Released 1964 & again 2011)

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No.8: Sean Finn feat. Tinka - Summer Days - Ben Delay Remix - (Released 6 December 2013)

Lyrics:

Open your eyes, oh open your eyes babe

Summer days passed by my love
It turned summer what I'm dreaming of
Sandy summer, sunny May, it's forever

Early days, coming upon
I'm filling ... running and waiting for
Sandy summer, sunny May, it's forever

Summer days passed by my love
It turned summer what I'm dreaming of
Sandy summer, sunny May, it's forever

Open your eyes, oh open your eyes babe

Open up your mind (x4)

Summer day passed by my love
It turned summer what I'm dreaming of
Sandy summer, sunny May, forever

Early days, coming upon
I'm filling ... running and waiting for
Sandy summer, sunny May, it's forever

Open your eyes, oh open your eyes babe


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No.7: Blonde feat. Melissa Steel - I Loved You (Released 21 November 2014)
BEL#2, UK#7, POL#16, DE#25, CZK#42, SVK#55, CH#56, AUT#60, IRL#98

Lyrics:

I loved you, loved you
I loved you, loved you
I loved you, loved you

Just another day of not being in your way
So I'm all alone,
all alone ooh yeah
Just another week, we don't know how this'd be
But I'm holding on
Stop treating me so wrong!

Give me your loving
give your mind
Give your kissing
give me some time
'Cause I can't live a lie if my heart walks out your life

Give me your loving
give some easy
Give me your kissing
give me a reason
To make me wanna stay
Wanna go back to the day I loved you!

More (we hand our money)
More, but I say I loved you more
Baby all I needed is more time and more money
More, everyday was sunny
More, if I think about it more
Baby all I needed is more time and more money
More, and more

If you want to stay a little me will be ok
Walk out the door, ooh
I think it's time I find that guy not gonna lie for day and night
Be by my side baby, be a romance to his lady

Give me your lovin', give your mind
Give your kissin', give me some time
'Cause I can't live a lie if my heart walks out your life
Give me your lovin', give some easy
Give me your kissin', give me a reason
To make me wanna stay
Wanna go back to the day I loved you!

More (we hand our money)
More, but I say I loved you more
Baby all I needed is more time and more money
More, everyday was sunny
More, if I think about it more
Baby all I needed is more time and more money

I-I-I could walk away, turn my back
But I can't do that, oh
No I can't do that
I loved you more than just what's in the pack
And that's a fact
And that's a fact

Let it go,
When you'll be home give me your heart
Give me your soul,
Like we used to be
You used to make me happy,
Oh, give me your trust, give me your passion
Give me your love
To make me wanna stay,
I wanna go back to the day I loved you

More (we hand our money)
More, but I say I loved you more
Baby all I needed is more time and more money
More, everyday was sunny
More, if I think about it more
Baby all I needed is more time and more money

More (we hand our money)
More, but I say I loved you more
Baby all I needed is more time and more money
More, everyday was sunny
More, if I think about it more
Baby all I needed is more time and more money

Clean Bandit - Rather Be (2014)

Clean Bandit - Rather Be (2014)
UK#1, BE#1, IRL#1, ISR#1, EuroHot100#1, FIN#1, LUX#1, NL#1, NOR#1, AUS#2, CH#2, IT#2, SWE#2, DE#3, HUN#3, NZ#3, FR#4, ES#5, DK#7, AT#8, SVK#9, POL#11, CZK#16, US#16, JPN#44

2Cellos - AC/DC 'Thunderstruck' (2014)

2Cellos are Luka Sulic (right) & Stjepan Hauser (left) - they are hailing from Croatia

Antonio Vivaldi - Winter: The Four Seasons (1723)

Antonio Vivaldi - Winter (The Four Seasons - 1723)

John Francis Wade - O Come, All Ye Faithful (1743)

John Francis Wade - O Come, All Ye Faithful (1743)


Text:

O come, all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him,
Born the King of angels;

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

God of God,
Light of Light,
Lo, He abhors not the Virgin’s womb;
Very God,
Begotten not created;

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,v Christ the Lord.

See how the shepherds,
Summoned to His cradle,
Leaving their flocks, draw nigh to gaze;
We too will thither
Bend our joyful footsteps;

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

Lo! star-led chieftains,
Magi, Christ adoring,
Offer Him incense, gold, and myrrh;
We to the Christ Child
Bring our hearts’ oblations.

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

Child, for us sinners
Poor and in the manger,
We would embrace Thee, with love and awe;
Who would not love Thee,
Loving us so dearly?

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

There shall we see Him,
His Eternal Father's
Everlasting Brightness now veiled under flesh;
We find there,
A Babe in infant clothing;

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,v Christ the Lord.

Sing, choirs of angels,
Sing in exultation;
Sing, all ye citizens of heaven above!
Glory to God
In the highest;

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

Yea, Lord, we greet Thee,
Born this happy morning;
Jesus, to Thee be glory given;
Word of the Father,
Now in flesh appearing.

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

Antonio Vivaldi - Autumn (1723)

Bedřich Smetana - Vltava / Die Moldau (1874)

Bedřich Smetana is a heroic figure in Czech culture, and even today is accorded higher public esteem in his own country than better-known composers such as Dvorák. The son of a Bohemian brewer, he is seen as the founder of a Czech national school of music: Operas as 'Libuse' and 'The Bartered Bride' are staples of the Czech repertoire and his cycle of symphonic poems Má Vlast (My Country/Fatherland) is performed annually at the Prague Spring, the national cultural festival. But it takes away nothing of Smetana’s significance in his own country to point out that his major works, and particularly Má Vlast, are remarkable and very original achievements in their own right. Nationalism is not everything in Smetana’s music – he was brought up speaking German and is not known to have written a word of Czech before the age of 32. In the Austrian Empire, of which the modern Czech Republic was a part until 1918, a background of this sort was perfectly consistent with a passionate Czech patriotism. Likewise, Má Vlast is an unquestionably patriotic work, but it uses the common musical language of the Central European tradition (with a particular debt to Smetana’s friend Liszt) and does so in a remarkably innovative way. The idea of composing an 80-minute suite of symphonic poems was wholly new when Smetana began Má Vlast in 1872, and the six individual works that make up the cycle all deal successfully with the problem – then one of the hottest subjects of musical controversy – of writing programatic music with true symphonic integrity.

Vltava (1874) is the second symphonic poem in Má Vlast, and portrays the river, called the Moldau by German-speaking Czechs such as Smetana, which rises in the _umava forest and flows through the Bohemian countryside and the city of Prague before joining the River Elbe. For Smetana, the course of the river provided a ready-made musical structure; Vltava is a sort of rondo, with the flowing theme of the river recurring in different forms between colourful episodes depicting Bohemian life and folklore along the riverside. Two brooks, portrayed on two flutes, form the sources of the river; these flow into the main stream of the river itself, the surging string melody which Smetana is said to have derived from a Swedish folk-song but which now sounds quintessentially Czech. Hunting horns are heard in the forests, before the river flows past a rustic wedding celebration where the guests are dancing a polka. Smetana led the way (here and in his String Quartet "From my Life") in introducing this light-hearted dance to symphonic music. The next episode portrays moonlight shimmering on the river in magical orchestral colours, and Smetana evokes the legend of the Rusalkas, the water-nymphs who feature prominently in Slav folklore and would later form the subject of Dvorák’s best-known opera. The music accelerates and grows agitated as the river crashes over the Rapids of St. John, above Prague, and finally sweeps through the Czech capital itself. The majestic chorale-theme of Vysehrad, the great rock-fortress that is the symbol of the Czech nation, towers over the closing bars, as the Vltava flows unstoppably onwards to the Elbe.


Bedřich Smetana - Vltava / Die Moldau (1874)

Part 1



Part 2

Guiseppe Verdi-Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves (1842)

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was born 10 Oct 1813 in Le Roncole, a village near Busseto, in the then Duchy of Parma and Piacenza, Italy. The 'Verdi' in his surname he supposedly adapted in honour of Victor Emmanuel II, the first Italian King of a united Italy (V.E.R.D.I. - Victor Emmanuel, Re d'Italia), whom he was an admirer of, perhaps due to his birth place being annexed by French troops for most of his life and him witnessing the occupants kicked out and his Fatherland finally united under his reign.
Guiseppe was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera, and the most influential of the 19th century. Being an atheist, his work has at the time, sometimes been criticized for using a generally diatonic rather than a chromatic musical idiom and for being essentially melodrama during his early years.
Nabucco, which he wrote in 1842, is an opera in four acts, based on the Biblical story and the play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois & Francis Cornue, six years earlier. It was Guiseppe’s third opera and the one which is considered to have permanently established his reputation as a composer. The opera follows the plight of the Jews as they are assaulted, conquered, and subsequently exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian King Nabucco.

The historical events are used as background for a romantic and political plot. It was first performed on 9 Mar 1842 at La Scala in Milan under the original name of Nabucodonosor. It became Nabucco at a performance at the San Giacomo Theatre of Corfu, Greece, in Sep 1844. Guiseppe composed Nabucco at a difficult moment in his life: his wife and children had all just died, and contracted with La Scala. He felt that 'this is the opera with which my artistic career really begins'.
The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves is a chorus from the third act, with words by Temistocle Solera, inspired by the bible Psalm 137.
Much like Germany's Richard Wagner, Guiseppe has often been seen as fuelling nationalism, a claim which was later refuted. True, both Mussolini and Hitler idolised the respective composers, but that occurred a long time after, and under much different circumstances - let alone one of the fellow dictators should have been more than dis-impressed by Guiseppe's works...

Guiseppe Verdi - Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves (1842)



Lyrics:

Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate;
va, ti posa sui clivi, sui colli,
ove olezzano tepide e molli
l'aure dolci del suolo natal!

Del Giordano le rive saluta,
di Sionne le torri atterrate...
Oh mia patria sì bella e perduta!
Oh membranza sì cara e fatal!

Arpa d'or dei fatidici vati,
perché muta dal salice pendi?
Le memorie nel petto raccendi,
ci favella del tempo che fu!

O simile di Sòlima ai fati
traggi un suono di crudo lamento,
o t'ispiri il Signore un concento
che ne infonda al patire virtù

English Translation:

Fly, thought, on wings of gold;
go settle upon the slopes and the hills,
where, soft and mild, the sweet airs
of our native land smell fragrant!

Greet the banks of the Jordan
and Zion's toppled towers...
Oh, my country so beautiful and lost!
Oh, remembrance so dear and so fatal!

Golden harp of the prophetic seers,
why dost thou hang mute upon the willow?
Rekindle our bosom's memories,
and speak to us of times gone by!

Mindful of the fate of Jerusalem,
give forth a sound of crude lamentation,
or may the Lord inspire you a harmony of voices
which may instill virtue to suffering