2016 Rolling Classical Listening Thread

i'm in the 17th century. was kinda uninspired by the Schutz i was listening to (double choir motets), but the Lully i'm playing (pieces de symphonie) is properly rousing what with all the fanfares and the like.

Np, Evan. I didn't know the Yupanqui piece, actually, so thanks for the link. A couple more recommendations:

For a young trio doing more contemporary American music, I like these guys. Last Light is a nice album. You can hear some of it here.

The Assad Brothers: this was a nice disc of Piazolla. Just really virtuosic, beautiful playing.

Also, for contemporary music, William Beauvais! Traces was an album I loved. (Full disclosure: I studied with him about a decade ago.)

Does anyone have any classical guitar recommendations?

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0003/185/MI0003185725.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Does anyone have any classical guitar recommendations?

This is one I keep coming back to.
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0001/143/MI0001143905.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Thanks, all! I can never get enough of it. I'll just have to devise a way to have it constantly be playing all day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCfhqh0u20c

I listened to a bit of the Mesirca/Casseus and it sounds right up my alley. (I see now that he was Marc Ribot's teacher!) I will definitely look for the whole album.

*Casseus was Ribot's teacher, not Mesirca.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chEH-zl0uHs

Mesirca plays Ribot

listening to Webern and i don't think it ever occurred to me that half the dramatic movie music scores i've ever listened to were based on his stuff. or it feels like it right now anyway. those strings!

Ok now THAT is a fresh take.

i'd never actually thought that before! but maybe i've just listened to a ton of old soundtracks since the last time i listened to webern.

webern i was playing was von karajan doing passacaglia/5 movements for string orchestra op.5/6 pieces for orchestra op.6/symphony op.20.

Jerry goldsmith definitely had a few Webern + modular synths moments in the late 60s

Leonard Rosenman in the "fantastic voyage" OST as well.

Mostly though I get the silver age soundtrack vibe from Bartok, Stravinsky and mid period Schoenberg. And Britten.

Mahlerian moments less common in film score than you would expect (there's an early Elmer Bernstein score for Drango that has a real mahlerian flavor...)

goldsmith's music to poltergeist linked to webern here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=NkJFKUEweskC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=webern+jerry+goldsmith&source=bl&ots=EVKO7zS5bG&sig=zzkj3qJCCsPgoRUN0Sg74rLYuCo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmjYG_vLvKAhXCcT4KHUWJDtMQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=webern%20jerry%20goldsmith&f=false

now i wanna hear his Freud soundtrack:

"An utterly brilliant score, Freud gave Goldsmith the opportunity to psychologically probe the human mind. He merged his own musical style with the Vienna school of Berg, Webern and Schoenberg to produce an agitated and thoroughly captivating work."

stefan wolpe taught elmer bernstein composition and stefan wolpe was taught by...........you guessed it.

Freud is great great great. Varese Sarabande released the actual film score several years back (maybe still in print?) but there was also an LP in the 60s iirc.

Cues from Freud tracked into some scenes of Alien by Ridley Scott over goldsmith's objections (jerry of course wanted the stuff he wrote for Alien to be the music for Alien).

My webern with modular synths comment had jerry's Illustrated Man score in mind specif

both webern and bernard herrmann were huge Ives fans in the 30's. it was actually herrmann i was thinking of when listening today. stabby strings and general foreboding feeling. i think i need more webern in my life.

i like the Complete Webern remake boulez recorded for DG more than his complete Sony set. on the DG set he makes it gorgeous.

reading a review now of karajan doing berg and webern and they mention Psycho...

the disc where James Levine conducts sets of orch pieces by Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg is considered all-time by almost everyone

i'm always leery of von k. his aesthetic is too glutinous and blended for me.

i am really liking karajan for my beloved brahms these days cuz he gives him more bite than other people do. i don't like my brahms toothless!

I do like his brahms 1st a lot. I agree with you that orchestral brahms needs high impact. In the chamber music that can go too far though - I've heard the piano quintet as an all out assault and it's too much.

His shostakovich 10th is great too.

such a weird weird guy karajan.

enjoying leonard slatkin and st. lou symph doing barber right now. symphony no.1 and piano concerto. does not sound like movie music.

best hair though. karajan.

http://img2-ak.lst.fm/i/u/770x0/151d735b334244eaa491b860523ee78b.jpg

oh hell yeah you know he never ventured out his door without that thing sculpted to perfection.

We can't get started on conductor hair though, we'll be image bombing this thread all day.

xpost loool

youthful membership in the nazi party? Nevermind that now: pet my hawk

massively successful hairdo right here. though eschenbach is no slouch in the grooming department either.

http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wrti/files/styles/medium/public/201502/KarajanEschenbach.jpg

herbert is almost ian mccullach-like in profile there

i know I'm middle aged bc I can't remember how to spell Echo singer's name anymore.

the more i think about it... all my favorite conductors were bald except Boulez and bernstein

beecham, monteux, ansermet, furtwangler, not a comb between them

[insert crack about knowing you're middle-aged bc you know who Echo & the Bunnymen are]

listening to the 1991 cd reissue of janos starker's famous mercury living presence album of schumann/lalo/saint-saens. man, does it ever sound great. it'll fill your room with awesomeness. viva compact disc!

i looooove the way those are recorded. His mercury cd of the bach cello suites is my favorite one to listen to.

(takes notes)

btw i just posted a huge post abt shostakovich to the star wars 7 spoilers thread

jon, i have to admit, i can't fathom anyone preferring anything over rostropovich's bach cello suites, but each to his own!

i was just listening to yo-yo ma doing them. i dunno, more than one person has done good versions. starker was a beast.

one of my favorite boxed sets of all time is henri honegger doing solo bach on telefunken. but some of that is due to the recordings/vinyl that just make you fall out of your chair they sound so amazing.

Fave cello suites recordings of the ones I know

Starker (Mercury)
Queyras (harmonia mundi)
Cohen (virgin)

I wasn't crazy about the Rostropovich ones. I guess for a heavy breathing type approach I might go for maisky?

Oh and Wispelwey! (Channel Classics)

i can't connect with starker's cell suites, personally. they certainly sound nice but i guess i'm just partial to rostro's colouring

try cohen, he is playing on a historical instrument but using a pretty romantic/expressive style. But generally uptempo.

Anyway: MUST BUY ALERT FOR ALL LISZTIANS

I just got a recent Liszt recital CD on Avie Classics by the Australian pianist Olivia Sham, titled Liszt: The Art Of Remembering. This might be her first CD? IDK.

It is maybe the best Liszt recital recording I have heard of the entire digital era. Run don't walk if you like Liszt solo piano music at all. I think it's on Spotify and iTunes.

The selection of pieces is so smart and impeccable. She has all 4 of the Valses Oubliees (I have been obsessed with these pieces especially the amazing and underrecorded #3) sprinkled across a program that mixes up the grim and dissonant late pieces with a few of the earlier filigree-arabesque nocturnes, three of the Transcendental Etudes, the perkily atonal Bagatelle Sans Tonalite, and Liszt's famous transcription of the satanic finale of Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique (she has a programme for her recital sequence, actually: she wrote the liner notes herself, which are a straight faced remix of the concert notes Berlioz wrote for Symphonie Fantastique except with Berlioz' 'artist' protagonist replaced by Liszt himself. She justifies each piece on the disc with a short paragraph describing its place in the surreal berlioz-style 'story').

The pianos: she performs on two different absolutely beautiful-sounding 19th century pianos, with a few pieces played on a modern Steinway grand. Cool move - it's a playlist of pianos as well as pieces.

The playing: holy crap this pianist has the goods. The swashbuckling flurries, the swooning dreaminess, the strange sideways shifts into twinkling surrealism, the medieval tunefulness, the inconsolable depression, the Debussy-etude-anticipating modernness of the 3rd Valse Oubliee. Always with wonderful rubato even in the most daredevil pieces ('The Wild Hunt', the Berlioz finale) and none of the implacable steely sherman tankness you get from so so many modern pianists who play the difficult Liszt stuff.

I feel bad that I bought this used. I want to vote for this pianist to record more Liszt!

try cohen, he is playing on a historical instrument but using a pretty romantic/expressive style. But generally uptempo.

― major tom's cabin (Jon not Jon), Thursday, January 21, 2016 9:43 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

will do, jon. cheers for the recommendation. the uptempo thing might put me off a bit. we're all so picky, aren't we!

listened to nielsen's symphonies 4 & 5 (blomstedt/san fran) which totally put me in a shoegaze dreamstate.

then i played rossini's stabat mater (pavarotti/kertesz/london symph and chorus) which was totally AWESOME and made me want to build and/or burn a church.

now i'm playing dvorak 1st symphony. cracked open a cd box of kubelik/berlin phil doing all 9 symphonies. which will take me until closing time at the olde recorde shoppe...

from last year's discovery of Music of the Spheres, decided to check out some recent recordings of the Rued Langgaard's string quartets (Nightengale Quartet, Da Capo). Wow, these are lovely, and other than the fact they do seem awfully "retro" in places, it's hard to believe that even in the face of modernist attitudes of the day, they didn't find some kind of audience. His slow movements in particular are gorgeous, and there are passages that he uses repetition in a way that, to my ears, clearly has some kinship with minimalism. Also, his forms can be weirdly simple, in almost a pop song kind of way, so things recur at moments that seem instinctively right to my ears, where they might have seemed different to someone in 1914 or thereabouts. Highly recommended, and the recordings are beautiful to boot.