Kin-iro no Corda by Yuki Kure is a Japanese Manga about a student at a music conservatory who gets a magic violin from a fairy and plays her way to success and popularity. Like its predecessor のだめカンタ-ビレ, it is cringe-worthy cute and teenyboppy, with a large following in Japan and Taiwan. This one is also based on a video game, apparently (I confess I'd like to play it--just once).
It must be doing wonders for music education when storylines introduce so much repertoire. At a school music competition, the students gasp when the top violinist busts out Beethoven's Romance No. 2 instead of Paganini, his more usual fare. These comics are silly but they are doing important work in terms of developing classical music appreciation among young people. From what I hear, CD sales of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue soared after it was featured on the のだめカンタ-ビレ TV-series.
This kind of thing would never work in the USA. Can you picture anyone from Glee singing Verdi or Wagner? The day Sue Silvester compliments Mr. Shuster on his hair would come sooner.
The Fata (music fairy) tells the girl that the magic violin "will take care of all the technical aspects. But the emotional element... I mean really letting the violin sing... that's all up to the musician."
ReplyDeleteThe girl wonders if she is “cheating” by playing a magic violin in her school’s music competition, but then she feels mollified upon discovering that Fritz Kreisler was a “fraud” for passing off his own compositions as long-lost masterpieces. Too funny...
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