Rolling Classical 2017

So I've been trying to catch up with the Pulitzer nominees and I must say I wish Ashley Fure had received the prize over Du Yun, perhaps because Fure studied under Chaya Czernowin, whose music I've long admired. I'm a sucker for polystylism when it's done right, but the Du works I listened to via Soundcloud often failed to its avoid its classic pitfalls: a superficial incongruity and a sense of 'so whatness' that Schnittke almost never fell prey to. Still, I am curious to hear what comes next.

Have you heard the entire Soper work?

Not yet, actually, in part due to this description:

'Ipsa Dixit is an evening-length work of theatrical chamber music by American composer Kate Soper. Exploring the intersection of music, language, and meaning, the piece blends elements of monodrama, Greek theater, and screwball comedy to skewer the treachery of language and the questionable authenticity of artistic expression. Each of the piece’s six movements draw on texts by thinkers such as Aristotle, Plato, Freud, Wittgenstein, Jenny Holtzer, and Lydia Davis, delivering ideas from the linguistic disciplines of poetics, rhetoric, and metaphysics through extended vocal techniques and blistering ensemble virtuosity.'

I enjoy all of these things separately to varying degrees, but not so much when they're set to music. And I'm frankly tired of the whole 'critique of authenticity' shtick, it's preaching to the choir.

It sounds quite a bit like Caroline Shaw's Partita. Which I love! Anywhere to listen to it / excerpts from it?

Here's the first movement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zTqwkD28NA

Yeah, that's a bit... overcooked.

It's not like Partita, from what I know it. This movement was around as a standalone work for a couple of years, and I rate it pretty highly:
https://vimeo.com/55881666

"know of it"

I don't care that much about most of the things described in that blurb but I like what she does with the voice.

bbc proms: i will be going to simon rattle's gurrelieder, the monterverdi vespers, shostakovich's 11th symphony. Otherwise i do find the pickings slim this year. Last year was loads of boulez and other interesting stuff.

Musorgsky's Khovanshchina as well.

I haven't found either Ashley Fure's Bound to the Bow or Du Yun's Angel's Bone, but here are two other instances of their respective styles, if you're curious:

https://soundcloud.com/duyun/quatrain-slow-portraits-iii

https://soundcloud.com/ashley_fure/ashley-fure-something-to-hunt

I don't care that much about most of the things described in that blurb but I like what she does with the voice.

― My Body's Made of Crushed Little Evening Stars (Sund4r), Wednesday, May 10, 2017 11:29 AM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seconded. I'd love to hear her sing Claude Vivier's Lonely Child.

The score and recording of Bound to the Bow are here: http://www.ashleyfure.com/new-page-5/

Thanks, much appreciated. Google is less omnipotent than I thought.

ipsa dixit lost me when it started with someone asking, with impeccable diction, "what is art?"

Lonely Child is one of my favourite pieces every btw!

ever

Same here!

I'm thoroughly enjoying Bound to the Bow, btw. It further consolidates my preference for Fure over Du and Soper. Hopefully a CD of her music is in the works.

The Caroline Shaw Partita is something I just got into recently. I know a guy who's the cellist in an up and coming young quartet and they did an all-Shaw concert (which I only found out about talking to him later on)... he told me the partita is currently his favorite piece of music in the world so I bought it on emusic. I'm still coming to grips with it tbrr.

Today's listening highlights were Humphrey Searle's dodecaphonic rager Labyrinth and a wonderful new orchestral arrangement of Liszt's choral obscurity Les Quatre Elements (the original being for choir and piano; Liszt later overhauled it into the warhorse tone poem Les Preludes)

Now I remember where I know Du Yun from -- I heard her piece Kraken. It was okay but kind of a bag of tricks... have not felt the urge to hear again.

I was listening to Shaw's Partita all the time for a while tbh. Getting ready in the morning, exercising, etc.

Partita is pure joy. I think there are some similarity with Soper, which I can't really explain, but her reading about Poetics reminds me of the 'the detail of the pattern is movement' part of Allemande. Spoken word, 'innovative' - mostly rediscovered old - singing techniques. It's almost primordial, reducing choral music to it's essence - sounds of voices - and rebuilding on top of that. It's like the choral version of Merce Cunningham, which probably just means it's inspired by Meredith Monk, I don't know? But Partita knows that if you rebuild choral music from scratch, it would only take a short while until you're joyously shouting 'ah-ah-AH-ah' at the top of your lung.

On a non-Pulitzer note, I finally bought this Stefan Östersjö album of modern(ist) guitar music with an iTunes gift card after streaming it on Spotify for a while and am very impressed and satisfied. (A lot of it seems to have been recorded 20 years ago.) Murail's Tellur is the biggest draw for me; I've been wanting a good recording of it for a long time. Such a remarkable piece. But it's great to have good recordings of Carter's Changes, Dillon's Shrouded Mirrors, and Donatoni's Algo 1 and Algo 2 in one place. I didn't know Kent Olofsson's work before I got into these recordings but his Treccia and Garden of Earthly Delights (for guitar, ensemble, and tape) are really cool too. I'll be digesting this for a while.

The Caroline Shaw Partita is something I just got into recently.

An interesting article from VAN about Deutsche Grammophon.

Sums it up pretty well, though DG hasn't completely lost its touch: this year, they also put out Barenboim's Hommage à Boulez, Rachmaninov's trios with Gidon Kremer, Blechacz's Bach and Chopin's late works by Pollini. Still, the decline is palpable.

There was supposed to be a free premiere performance of John Luther Adams new Ten Thousand Birds in Morningside Park (NYC) today but they've cancelled it doe to the weather forecast >:[

On the other hand, there's still an afternoon performance of Become Ocean scheduled for Thursday...

Huh. I would not have guessed this guy was the drummer for Dawn of Midi.

https://qasimnaqvi.bandcamp.com/album/fjoloy

Wow, some interesting and sometimes arresting stuff there, yeah, thanks. I'll probably buy it. I'd like to know more about what exactly he was doing in terms of the intonation. Dawn of MIDI is a jazz fusion thing?

The "Gloppedalsura"s are standing out for me.

dawn of midi came across to me as post-rock, but i guess there's room for disagreement about what exactly they are. some people say "dance music", they showed up on a mojo "dream pop" compilation.

While doing a little research on the technique of singing while playing woodwinds, I came across this piece, where the clarinettist does this on every note. Interesting and enjoyable piece. Roche's blog can be pretty interesting as well: https://heatherroche.net/

ooh thanks!

Crumb uses this in his chamber works for flute also

not gonna mention tull though

Ha, I think you just did. I like both of those examples, for sure, and Kirk; I just found this piece notable in terms of how in-depth it goes with that technique. And also find it expressive and appealing. (I just finished writing something that uses the technique but kept it much simpler than this.)

that's neat

Just picked up tickets for Angela Hewitt at the National Arts Centre. I've never seen her before! She's not playing anything from Well-Tempered Clavier but we're thinking of yelling out a request: "Fugue in C minor!"

I'm in the choir for a version of La Boheme this august. Second act is kinda some amazing proto-Ives stuff. I remember seeing the opera years ago, and liking it a lot, but delving deeper into it, it's really quite incredible.

thanks for mentioning it. been meaning to listen more closely to puccini for quite awhile. Playing the famous Decca boheme recording now.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5193lUu%2BU%2BL._SR600%2C315_PIWhiteStrip%2CBottomLeft%2C0%2C35_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CKD585

The samples on here from the latest Kuniko Kato album Bach: Solo Works For Marimba sound beautiful. I loved her previous Reich + Arvo Part recordings.

These classical labels do take the piss though. £18 for a flac download, £12 for mp3 - gtf !

Hyperion are about 10 usd through the iTunes Store

I'd almost be tempted at that price, Jon. But my massive aversion to Apple + iTunes and having their horrible software on my pc is too strong.

There's another UK website based one with similar pricing from which I've bought Chandos before... name escaping me atm...

Check presto classical, I've bought reasonably priced downloads from them before

Lots of Birtwistle this week, mostly downloaded recordings from this year's and prior years' Proms. His stuff is finally starting to break for me.

I remember liking Panic a lot.