Rolling Classical 2017

Following up from 2016 Rolling Classical Listening Thread

I just got into Nathan Shubert tonight, after "Folds" was linked on the textura blog. I bought this little EP on Bandcamp. It's just very pleasant minimalism with some mild preparations on the piano (felt on the strings I believe), recorded very hot. While it's not worlds away from Boomkat-classical-thread music, something about it connects with me: probably the sparseness, the prepared sound, the more evident debt to Reich.

New-to-me raves so far this year:

Daniel-Lesur - Symphony of Dances - stunning mid century french post-stravinsky but v v original

Frank Martin - Mass (thank you DJP for your advocacy of this ravishing piece), Der Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets (crazy lengthy modernist voice + orchestra piece on Rilke texts)

Schumann-Fantasie (Hans Zender's freewheeling orchestral explosion of the Schumann solo piano masterpiece)

Ernst Toch - The Chinese Flute (a more skeletal das lied von der erde for midcentury modernists - fucking great)

on deck and excited to hear - sund4r alert - Faisceaux-Diffractions by the french composer Eloy, for electric guitars and large ensemble, written in 1970

http://www.eloyjeanclaude.com/PressFaisceauxEng.html

Ha, I tried listening to the 1975 song from the ILM eoy poll and, yep, Eloy is definitely more my speed so far. Sounding great 6m in.

That kicked ass. Thanks for the tip. Are there recordings other than this one?

that's the one I got a vinyl rip of. If there are no others, it would seem ripe for a new recording on BMOP or Canteloupe or something

OK I've listened now too. What a great piece. I didn't know one of the two guitars was gonna be a very sixties sounding bass, giving me a welcome Amok Time vibe. I love the brushstrokes the organ is filling in.

Was looking around online, looks like the only CDs in print of Eloy stuff are from his own private label. He seems to have done a lot of more purely electronic work in recent times.

I finally found this essential LP (Julian Bream - 20th Century Guitar) at a great price! I have this CD but, as you can see, it leaves out the Britten, which was the piece I wanted the second-most, after the Brindle, which is all-time for me. Listening now, it was definitely worth it to get this on vinyl: such clarity and warmth. Music from that era so often sounds better on LP imo.

Also picked up this 1982 compilation of modernist composers from the greater Boston area. I picked up Vol. 1, from 1980 some months back and quite enjoy it.

Going to buy Meredith Monk tickets this weekend!

i'm just a classical dilettante but i wanted to share that i love this johannes monno album of bach works for lute - just v chill and relaxing music which to me is generally most important regarding classical music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmAegf4Q5uw

Oh wow, thanks. Fugues for guitar are my thing. I listen quite a bit to Heiki Matlik's disc of the Bach lute works. I'd be eager to hear a new set and this sounds good.

I listened to the first act of the Met's current production of La Traviata on WCNY/WJNY while driving today. Not only was that the most I've ever enjoyed Italian opera but it somehow really all clicked today and felt incredibly beautiful. Not sure exactly why. (Maybe something to do with listening to a lot of dissonant emo this week?)

seeing traviata in april, hoping it's better than the last met opera i saw which was flatly terribly staged

the met operas I've seen since I moved here are a real hodgepodge basically governed by my policy of always saying yes to any free opera ticket I'm offerred, while remaining too broke to actually purchase tickets to my favorite operas (Pelleas, etc)

yep yep which means G'LUCK

Gluck, father of modern opera? Have yet to see one of his.

I'm listening to this guitarist today: https://soundcloud.com/carlos-bojarski
The Carter and (especially) Henze sound really good imo. Might interest Evan.

I'm spending an evening with my complete Celibidache-does-Bruckner edition, which means "one symphony from the set." Went with 4. people give Sergiu a hard time for the liberties he takes with tempo but honestly the scherzo is downright spritely! when my hearing's truly gone this is some of the music I'll miss most

My colleague is a leading Bruckner scholar. It's one thing I've never gotten into but I should address that.

Bruckner strikes me as one of the hardest symphonists to get right, and not just because of the editing challenges. I'm averse to Karajan for the usual reasons, but his Bruckner, much like his Strauss, is the only one that could make a true convert out of me. A shame that his second set (for DG) has yet to be properly remastered. Sometimes I reach for Barenboim's with the Berlin Philharmonic but the thoroughness and fluidity I hear in Karajan's versions are almost nowhere to be found. As for Celibidache, he preaches to the choir, doesn't he?

I love celibidache in bruckner (I have him doing #4, 5 and 7)

My bruckner collection is very omnivorous. I don't know any one conductor who lights them all up for me -- I like klemperer for #6, jochum for #9, Boulez for #8, etc.

Just got two interesting-looking CDs in the mail:

- the Nash Ensemble performing two string quartets and a string octet (a format I've never encountered before) by Max Bruch, a composer with whom I am also entirely unfamiliar;
- the Goldner String Quartet and pianist Piers Lane performing a piano quintet, a cello sonata, and a string quartet by Alexander Borodin.

Both on the Hyperion label.

The music on both of those is terra incognita to me too. I do have a few discs I like by the Nash Ensemble, but dating back to their days on Virgin Classics. Piers Lane did a great disc on Hyperion of all the Scriabin etudes.

I'm partial to the Borodin quartets as played by… the Borodin Quartet.

I've never heard the Goldner Quartet, but Piers Lane has always struck me as overly genteel in his approach. His Scriabin Etudes lack the daemonic qualities I hear in Alexander Melnikov, Yevgeny Sudbin and Maria Lettberg, to name but these three (the latter recorded the Etudes as a whole, as part of her astonishing box set comprising all of Scriabin's solo piano works!). Perhaps Lane fares better in the Borodin, but I can't say my curiosity's piqued.

And speaking of Alexander-who-tried-to-bring-about-the-end-of-the-world, Roger Woodward's recording of the late piano works is something else entirely. Here's his Vers la flamme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TApC9RDA0hs

Yeah I have that Woodward album, it's great stuff

Yeah, that's sounding good.

I'm really enjoying this recent BIS disc, featuring works for string trio by living Nordic composers:

http://bis.se/shop/17115/art15/h8999/4998999-origpic-77f4d9.jpg

Bent Sørensen's Gondole comes across as a distant tribute to Liszt's late works, i.e. some of the most genuinely ghost-ridden music I've ever heard, meshing quite well with Sørensen's own neo-decadent aesthetic. Nørgård's Strings, for string trio, and Tjampuan: 'Where the Rivers Meet' for violin and cello, are both from 1992, around the time he began to synthesize his infinity series and the kookier, Wölfli-inspired style that followed in the 1980's—intense stuff, especially the trio. The quality of Saariaho's output has been on the wane since L'Amour de loin (I prefer her textures to her melodies), but Cloud Trio is quite evocative, and at times it unexpectedly gestures towards Bartók's quartets. As for Henrik Hellstenius, his name was unfamiliar to me, but he apparently studied with Gérard Grisey in the early 1990's. I hear precious little spectralism in Rift, which brings to mind a more expressionist Nørgård. Regardless, I'd say it's a highlight, and now I'm curious to hear more of Hellstenius's music.

And since I mentioned Sørensen, his latest Dacapo disc, featuring works for piano and chamber orchestra, strikes me as one of his finest so far, assuming you're on board with his 'decaying daguerreotype' shtick (I personally adore it). As a bonus, last year ECM put out a disc by Frode Haltli, which also contains some top-tier Sørensen material (It Is Pain Flowing Down Slowly on a White Wall, for accordion and string orchestra), as well as some characteristically pieces by Hans Abrahamsen, including the marvellous Three Little Nocturnes, played by Haltli and the Arditti Quartet.

that looks great, thanks for the note. My eMusic credits have refreshed and I'll at least get the Sorensen and Saariaho tracks. I'm a sucker for a late Liszt homage and still a Saariaho fanboy. BTW, have you ever heard Heinz Holliger's orchestral arrangements of two of the late Liszt pieces (Nuages Gris and Unstern)? They are fucking incredible. They were recorded on an extinct el cheapo Arte Nova CD which can still be found used, and done live by Rattle/Berlin which was broadcast and is on torrents.

I haven't, and I worship Holliger, so I really appreciate the heads up. Thanks!

By the way, assuming you're unfamiliar with it, Marko Nikodijević's orchestral 'remix' of La lugubre gondola, cvetić, kućica…, is also worth hearing. Here's a live recording from YT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3cwskeACV0

Seth Colter Walls has a really good writeup on Glenn Gould's two recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations on Pitchfork today. I just bought A State of Wonder, which combines both recordings, plus a third disc of outtakes from 1955 and an interview with Gould.

My choir is currently singing Ildebrando Pizzettis Requiem from 1923, I think. Lovely music, most of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_GW9O7Qhr0

Also Max Reger. Whom I like less and less, honestly.

Du Yun wins the pulitzer, over Ashley Fure and Kate Soper. And I'm wondering if this is the first time all three nominees were women. For, like, any music prize in the world ever...

A lot of the current composers I enjoy the most are women. I'd include Soper in that number but I don't know the nominated piece. I'll listen to all three of these. Thanks.

ILM's 2017 Rolling Classical Thread Spotify Playlist

So glad you're doing this, ulysses. And extra glad you didn't put a choral composition by Reger on there, because I hate them at this point :)

Do we have a thread to discuss women composers?

Not afaik. I think most of the classical music discussion on ILM happens on this thread (except for the Boomkat-classical thing)?

Oh, "Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say" has become a movement of the Soper work that was nominated? I really love that piece (now a movement)!

https://soundcloud.com/michael-pisaro/lucretius-alap

Lucretius Alap, Michael Pisaro, 2009-12

String Quartet:
Lorenz Gamma, violin 1
Min Lee, violin 2
Mark Menzies, viola
Mona Tian, cello

Been feeling this..

https://soundcloud.com/leheron_idletones/1-01-half-sleep-beings

also, the first track of the Michael Pisaro/Reinier van Houdt 3XCD, the earth and the sky

I look forward to hearing Du Yun, Ashley Fure and Kate Soper's music.

In the meantime, I've been relistening to Helena Tulve's first release, Sula, and the title composition, a tone painting of a glacier's gradual thaw, is as overwhelming as ever:

https://soundcloud.com/helena_tulve/helena-tulve-sula-thaw

Ulysses, I get it could easily be a hassle, but would it be possible to request a movement for the spotify list? The Agnus Dei of the Pizzetti Requiem is lovely, and only takes two minutes :)

I also ask, because a new cd with my choir singing translated Danish songs will be out in a few weeks, and I know what my favorite tidbits are :) Langgaard, Holten, Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (RIP). Good stuff!

np, added.

it's lovely!

I know, right! It's just hard to get that chord around 1:00 perfect. Out of three tries we got it absolutely perfect once! Oh well, still one try left.

Speaking of Helena Tulve, Simon Cummings's retelling of this year's Estonian Music Days really makes me wish I'd been there:

http://5against4.com/2017/04/12/estonian-music-days-2017-part-2/

^^^ 5 against 4 blog is a GREAT resource for downloads of new music broadcasts

I've been exploring black metal and its precipitates and it brought me back to the 'classical' work that helped me overcome my longstanding aversion to 'cookie monster' vocals, Raphaël Cendo's Introduction aux ténèbres. Here's part I—

https://soundcloud.com/rapha-l-cendo/introduction-aux-tenebres2009-chant1-pour-baryton-contrebasse-solo-ensemble-et-electronique

This is cool. When I was in undergrad, my friend and I sometimes talked about how sometimes the vocals on Makrokosmos Vol 2 were a bit metal.

TORA TORA TORA

I strongly recommend hearing the whole thing for full effect (it's on Donaueschinger Musiktage 2009, Vol. 2). Cendo's music in general is worth seeking out, especially if you're interested in his 'overdrive' principle.

For those who know French, he explains it quite well here: http://brahms.ircam.fr/documents/document/21512/

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.

calzino got me on a marimba kick. this is the last track of a really good recent cello record by michael samis (not in this version, obviously).

https://vimeo.com/82713733

Angela Hewitt was magic! Such a good concert experience. It was the first time I brought scores to a concert and followed along while listening and watching, which I found very helpful. I think she is my favourite Bach interpreter: she brings out and connects the lines so clearly and sensitively imo.

John Luther Adams has made a grand choral work. Right up my ally. Canticles of the Holy Wind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JeFaMpucVg

I brought scores to a concert and followed along while listening

I was talking to a friend last night, who thought it was lolsome that I did this the week after seeing Migos at Bluesfest. Maybe this is why I need ilx.

xp I've listened to most of Canticles and liked it very much so far. On the to-buy list.

Yeah I'm buying Canticles this week when my emusic credits refresh.

There's a concert in NYC next month with a new work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir plus a Pauline oliveros piece; I'm totally going

Also a staging of hans zender's explosion of Winterreise with Ian Bostridge. Going.

I want to sing this, or something like this. Just to figure out how it works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9mY5tvd-lM

Going to see Penderecki String Quartet tonight. I went to all three of these new music concerts on Monday, which were mostly very good. The Chan Ka Nin string quartet was probably my favourite piece of them all, integrating Chinese folk-derived melodies with the gamut of contemporary string techniques. I will definitely be listening to more Brian Current. The Palej songs were lovely, too!

The string quartet concert was wonderful. I'd never seen P's 3rd live before and it was startlingly intense and powerful. The Murphy is a new piece that was commissioned for the quartet's 30th anniversary. I always enjoy her work and suspect that if she lived in NYC or Boston and knew the right people, she'd be a lot more famous. (Her aesthetic makes me think of something like a contemporary take on Bartok, with much more use of extended techniques/timbral exploration, with a lot of rhythmic energy.) It was also really nice to see the Mozart! A breath of fresh air in a week of new music.

I picked up this CD, which seems v good so far.

Anyone who has seen Andrew Norman's Play live? The piece won the Grawemeyer award this year, and it sounds fun on spotify, like the symphonic orchestral version of a lot of the stuff we've been talking about with Caroline Shaw and Kate Soper, and apparently it's amazing to see the way the musicians are playing it.

BBC Proms, going to three this week: Schubert 8 + Mahler 10 this Saturday.

My newest recent discoveries are Gesualdo's madrigals and Tenebrae, and Shostakovich's preludfes and fugues played by Tatiana Nikoleyevana.

Shostakovich's preludfes and fugues played by Tatiana Nikoleyevana

I love this set! Essential 20th century piano music imo.

Still catching up with downloaded recordings from this years proms. Dug the Julian Anderson premiere bookended by two neglected and excellent Liszt poems (cond. Volkov)

Anyone into Maurice Ohana? I've been checking out his 10-string guitar music recently, since I'm working on a piece for that instrument. Some very good stuff, with a lot of space and drama to it. "Cadran lunaire" is lovely. Evan, this might appeal to you.

I'm listening to Graham Anthony Devine's recording on Naxos.

I don't know anything about Julian Anderson btw. I should look into that.

This isn't the most novel observation but it's something I've been reminded of and thinking about a lot recently, after seeing Hewitt and the Chamberfest concerts: the audience for classical music, at least in the US and Canada, seems to be so overwhelmingly, well, old. I might estimate the median age to be over 60, even at new music events. (This doesn't really apply to electroacoustic or improv ime, but does seem to be the case for notated acoustic music.) I don't exactly know if it's because there was more of a mainstream classical audience before the poptimism of the 60s and 70s or because there's something about the music that appeals more to people as they age, but the former seems far more likely, which is more concerning, since it would suggest that there will be almost no audience in a couple of decades (unless young people decide to take it up in rebellion against their decadent parents). In a real way, the Western art music tradition is arguably a foreign cultural tradition in the US and Canada so I suspect that things might be different in e.g. Germany or Italy?

I feel like the Proms with its significant focus on big new works that are frequently pretty damn challenging could never ever exist here. Idk I think the situation outside North America is just not as dire. But that's not first hand knowledge on my part.

I LOVE Ohana. He was on my ilx ballot! He has a great guitar concerto btw, Trois Graphiques, which was recorded by Narciso Yepes and the LSO in the LP era. Any of Ohana's stuff mixing voices and instrumentation (e.g. Office des Oracles) is fantastic.

Definitely my favorite of the composers I've stumbled onto in the last five years. I'm hoping to find some literature on him.

Premiere of La Boheme yesterday, that's one of the funniest things I've ever done. That second act is absolutely great, that is one of the greatest things ever, kinda. Apparently, it's famous amongst real opera choir singers as one of the most difficult things in the repertoire, because it's so illogical, which is fascinating to me. Absolutely fascinating, the way the mass of the people is interwoven with the soloists.

I might be slightly drunk still... You know what's awesome? Going to a bar with a piano with an opera crew and having Rodolpho sing Nessun Dorma.

Reposting from experimental thread:

This is pretty cool: https://neuguitars.com/2017/08/14/video-dai-fujikura-sparking-orbit-for-electric-guitar-and-electronics-on-neuguitars-blog/

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Monday, 14 August 2017 12:57 (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(A piece for electric guitar and electronic signal processing, with some actually lyrical and beautiful moments)

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Monday, 14 August 2017 13:14 (0 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Booklet here: https://www.kairos-music.com/sites/default/files/downloads/0013302KAI.pdf

I'll look into the Ohana pieces you mention, Jon.

I'm on a huge Schoenberg kick these days, in part because I'm reading Adorno but it just feels right for the times somehow.

This seems like a good place to start for data on the aging audience btw: http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2011/03/age_of_the_audience.html
The NEA studies can be Googled fairly easily.

I was at the Schoenberg Gurrelieder conducted by Simon Rattle last night, and yeah, it was spectacular. Great structuring, but masses of detail too. If you can listen on BBC iplayer, check it out!

Good to hear you're keeping up with the proms, Jon. I agree, the commisioned pieces are a treat.

I'm streaming it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/em9whn/play/amnn5v/b091w7fy

So far, wow. It's not like the Schoenberg I listen to the most but it's p impressive so far.

HI DERE. Been meaning to say I saw some Mexican classical guitarist play in my neighborhood last Sunday and it was pretty good. And her name was... Zaira Meneses.

Got a great CD in the mail recently that I'll be reviewing; it's called Dowland & Benjamin: Seven Tears Upon Silence. It's by a group called Sit Fast who are five violists, joined here by a mezzo-soprano and a flautist. They perform John Dowland's Lachrimae or Seaven Teares, which is from 1600 or so, followed by George Benjamin's Upon Silence for mezzo-soprano and five viols, which is from 1990. It's really beautiful. It's on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/72XsbQNnP6NAr0IQipSK73

The classical label Ablaze has brought out a new music comp called The Pierrot Ensemble Vol. 1. About a half dozen composers on there. Assuming it is what it looks like, great idea.

I remember DG doing an online-only album of pieces inspired by Debussy's trio instrumentation years ago. I like this kind of thing.

There's a concert in NYC next month with a new work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir plus a Pauline oliveros piece; I'm totally going

I went to this! Were you there jon? I thought the Thorvaldsdottir piece was nice; the rest was emperor's new clothes.

btw, I've fixed up the playlist.

ILM's Rolling Classical Thread 2017 Spotify Playlist

No I couldn't go and I'm still bitter about it. Let's just say I found myself with not enough money in my bank account to buy a ticket and leave it at that :(

I'm sure the Thorvaldsdottir piece will get recorded soon.

Finally got that new John Luther Adams Canticles album. Staggeringly good, cannot wait to listen again.

Wanted to quickly tell fans of late Scriabin to check out Jolivet's Danses Rituelles for solo piano.

Enjoying this classical guitar sonata, apparently written in 1989. Second and third movements are especially lovely. Might actually appeal to some of the post-Fahey crowd?: https://soundcloud.com/carlos-bojarski/sets/carlos-bojarski-guitar-john-zammitpace-classical-guitar-sonata-op-88-no-1 . Something about the last movement made me think a bit of 70s Rush in a weird way.

I mean, partly I just really enjoy Carlos's sound and playing. Piece is contemporary return-to-tonality stuff but it's pretty.

I'm gonna loudly ring the tuomas frederick b and djp alarm here for Andre Caplet's Le Miroir de Jesus, a new acquisition for me. Almost an hour of ravishing spellbinding choir-with-instrumental-ensemble ritualizing.

A recording of Alberto Posadas's Sombras (Shadows) will be released tomorrow (or today if you're across the pond). I was bowled over by his Liturgia fractal for string quartet so I'm curious to hear how he negotiates the addition of a soprano and a clarinet. Here's an excerpt featuring the incredible Sarah Maria Sun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1SADwo8IEU

As a side note, I'm glad to see Romanian is gaining traction as a language worth setting to 'serious' music. La tentación de las sombras is based on Emil Cioran's Cartea amăgirilor (The Book of Delusions) and a few years back György Kurtág's Colindă-Baladă, for tenor, choir and orchestra, took its verbal and musical cues from Romanian folk songs.

Has that kurtag piece been recorded?

Yep, ECM released it this summer as part of Kurtág's Complete Works for Ensemble and Choir, which is a bit of a misnomer – quite a few of the compositions therein are for solo vocalist and ensemble. It's a great set, though occasionally a little too languid when compared to the old Hungaroton recordings:

https://www.ecmrecords.com/catalogue/1484665725/gyorgy-kurtag-complete-works-for-ensemble-and-choir-asko-schonberg-netherlands-radio-choir-reinbert-de-leeuw

oh my god, cioran no longer just for black metal then, eh?

I've never heard of Posadas before but that piece is really good! I will definitely investigate further.

I bought Unbound by the Jasper String Quartet recently and have been listening a fair bit. Pieces by big-name mostly NYC/NJ-based composers. The Gosfield piece is by far the best but the Lang and Shaw are really enjoyable too.

Was listening to various recordings of Saariaho's NoaNoa today while prepping tomorrow's lecture. It's really a remarkable sensuous piece. Based on recordings, I think I might even like the Macbook versions more than the old IRCAM version.

Ha, Emma Resmini is 17.

Yeah, NoaNoa is absolutely amazing, though nowadays it brings to mind, by way of contrast, the tedium of most of Saariaho's postmillenial output.

A piece on Claude Vivier in the NYT today!

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/arts/music/review-claude-vivier-canada.html?emc=edit_th_20171030&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=5939657

Wow, will read. On the topic of Canadian music, this new release by the Victoria Guitar Trio, consisting entirely of works by contemporary BC composers, is really enjoyable. I'm planning to buy it. The Nobles pieces make good use of the microtonality that is afforded by the use of harmonics. Some nice interplay between percussive techniques and rhythmic pitched material in the Godin. Sharman also uses a lot of harmonics to bring out pleasant melodic material in "Suspended Waltz". "The Nagual's Dream" is a cool thing for guitar trio + a recorded part made from processed guitar samples.

Thanks for the NYT piece, JNJ, I look forward to reading it!

I'll be sure to check out that album, sund4r. I'm awfully, hopelessly Eurocentric when it comes to so-called 'classical' music and hence consistently struggle with North American composers, barring a few names (Claude Vivier, Aaron Cassidy, Joshua Fineberg, for instance, all of whom have/had close ties to European institutions). Canadian music (and, frankly, culture) remains a blind spot for me despite having spent the better part of my life in this country.

Ha, I have a lot of inchoate thoughts about those matters that I should probably sort through before posting them on the Internet. I'll just note that I'm almost the opposite wrt contemporary music. (Obv, everyone is Eurocentric about pre-WW2 art music.)

Inchoate though they may be, I'd be curious to read them.

Anyhow, one necessarily reductive way of looking at the divide is that I find contemporary North American art music to be more easy-going, perhaps because it is less awed by past models. I do not share this relative lack of anxiety, alas, and thus prefer the strenuous sublimity of contemporary European art music.

Having written this just now, I can think of innumerably many objections, but I'll let it stand for what it is.

For what it's worth, I very much enjoyed Concentric Rings (the James Nobles piece). It favourably reminded me of Per Nørgård's output for guitar, especially his late 1960s/early to mid 1970s 'infinity series' period (echoes of Takemitsu, too, which is always a plus). Temporal Waves strikes me as marginally less successful, perhaps because I'm wary of its NYC arpeggios. Godin's On Poetics is insufferable – the worst kind of faux-theatrical genre-hopping, drenched in superfluous irony. Suspended Waltz is genuinely pretty and September's reminiscences of a detuned harpsichord made me want to acquaint myself further with Sharman's music (I later remembered that two of his piano transcriptions were featured on a CD recital by Ortwin Stürmer, who notably recorded Horațiu Rădulescu's 'Lao Tsu' sonatas). I found The Nagual's Dream to be conceptually promising but ultimately tedious in its execution and Roark's work irritated me only slightly less than Godin's. Still, I'm glad I listened to the whole thing and would love to hear more stuff by Sharman.

I agree with you that "Concentric Rings" and the Sharman pieces are the best but I also have a higher tolerance for NYC arpeggios and flighty genre-hopping.

Outside of guitar repertoire, the first contemporary composers I really loved as a youth before knowing much of anything were Cage, Branca, and the minimalists (+ Zappa if he counts). I ended up going to the States for my PhD and, ironically, it seemed like most people in that programme revered European composers and European festivals and institutes. (4aron C4ssidy graduated a year or two before I started. I never knew him.) That world just somehow felt/feels a bit distant and impenetrable and idk if it's somewhere I could ever find a place (UK possibly excepted), but tbh, I really don't know much about it and haven't kept up. It's probably just a matter of being (very ambivalenty) a minor part of one (problematic in its own way) scene and not even really having a read on how things work in continental Europe. Occasionally, I'll check out what a former colleague has been doing since moving to France or Germany.

Tbh, I'm thinking now that maybe a lot of what I was exposed to was American composers or players who had moved to Europe or Europeans who had moved to the US more than Europeans from Europe.

It's also a matter of background. In my case, I never studied music formally so I haven't been in touch with local institutions that would have otherwise shaped my tastes. I also come from a European country so the desire to explore 'my' history was perhaps greater, if founded on an illusion. Anyhow, one thing that I simultaneously like and dislike about the North American approach is that there appears to be less of a dichotomy between so-called serious art and pop culture (in the broadest sense of the term). I listen to a lot of classical, but it's no substitute for metal, jazz, electronic, folk, pop, ambient, etc., and I feel like this is viewed as an incontrovertible fact on this side of the Atlantic. That being said, I generally find 'crossover' attempts, more prevalent in North America as a result of this ethos, to be rather uninteresting – they merely make me yearn to hear each individual component in isolation. This is hardly an absolute rule, though. It just shows how difficult it is to synthesize wildly divergent strands. For instance, I think of Fausto Romitelli as someone who successfully bridged the gap between Grisey and psych rock but very few names ultimately come to mind.

I find contemporary North American art music to be more easy-going, perhaps because it is less awed by past models

there appears to be less of a dichotomy between so-called serious art and pop culture (in the broadest sense of the term). I listen to a lot of classical, but it's no substitute for metal, jazz, electronic, folk, pop, ambient, etc., and I feel like this is viewed as an incontrovertible fact on this side of the Atlantic.

Yes, these are my main impressions of the key differences as well. Are there Euro equivalents of e.g. Eric Whitacre or even John Luther Adams or, say, Caroline Shaw? Would someone like Hauschka or Fennesz ever play a 'new music' festival in Germany or Austria? Maybe they would?

I saw the concert listed here today, which included a few premieres. I wasn't familiar with any of the composers beforehand but enjoyed much of it. The Gary Nash piece is listed incorrectly: Sui Generis Bastion is the title; this piece was my favourite. Made me think of Bartok at times; just really good varied solo viola writing with a nice balance of techniques and memorable motifs to hang on to. The Holland pieces were also good, especially Synchrony, which combined recorded speech with instrumental writing (including some inside-the-piano stuff).

I've been listening to Sonata for Harp by young-ish Yale composer Hannah Lash a lot after buying it a couple of days ago. I find I get more out of it the more I listen. It's satisfying to hear a contemporary (and musically modern) piece that makes effective use of a classical form like this, without being neo-Romantic schlock. I think of Debussy at some moments and, oddly, even a bit of Chopin during the second movement. (If only neo-Romanticism actually sounded like that more often.) Kind of gets me on the edge of my seat sometimes.

Not bad. Still too neo-Romantic for me – some melodic turns of phrase even brought Joseph Kosma to mind – but its unpretentiousness is welcome.

I don't know Kosma that well tbh. (Obv, "Autumn Leaves" is a classic.) Ime, though, in an American context, 'neo-Romanticism' usually refers to a sort of bombastic syrupy orchestral music that has little to do with what I love in Schubert or Chopin. (I don't even necessarily have something against bombast and syrup per se but this style of orchestral writing just doesn't speak to me.)

I love the Romantic era and any contemporary music that successfully captures its spirit is a wonder to behold. You're right, though, too much of it is, to quote Boulez's diss against Shostakovich (which I vehemently disagree with, by the way) a 'second, or even third, pressing of Mahler'.

A thread dedicated to exploring awesome neo-Romantic music would be nice, though we'd have to determine what 'neo-Romanticism' stands for in the first place.

We could probably do that here. I've given my one nomination (idk awesome but satisfying).

On the more traditional end of things, I'm rather fond of Pēteris Vasks's concerto for violin and string orchestra, Distant Light. For a less literal take on the neo-Romantic aesthetic, I'd nominate Jörg Widmann's Messe.

Still need to check those out. A couple of nights ago, I saw this concert by NYC's Tak Ensemble (soprano/flute/clarinet/percussion). It was lovely: I was surprised that they opened with Soper's Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say: Charlotte Mundy's take on the vocal part was a bit softer and less intense than the versions I've seen before but really brought out a neurotic, humorous quality to the piece. Other highlights were Matthew Ricketts' Ms Speaker and Jen McLachlen's new piece. David Bird's Series Imposture was cool, too.

A thread dedicated to exploring awesome neo-Romantic music would be nice, though we'd have to determine what 'neo-Romanticism' stands for in the first place.

― pomenitul

one of the most frustrating things about contemporary classical music to me is this hyper-factionalization, this separation of anything left of the "western classical" tradition into mutually exclusive enclaves in a way that, honestly, reflects everyday life in 2017 but is _not_ reflective from the way i experience all other forms of music. this feeds a little bit into the _most_ frustrating thing about contemporary classical music, which is the apparent impossibility of keeping up with what's happening in it, hearing new compositions other than by happenstance.

i also am frequently stymied by my ignorance of so much of the classical music of the past; i have a hard time (in any field of music) confining myself to talking about what's going on now when most of what i listen to is new-to-me older stuff.

one of the most frustrating things about contemporary classical music to me is this hyper-factionalization, this separation of anything left of the "western classical" tradition into mutually exclusive enclaves in a way that, honestly, reflects everyday life in 2017 but is _not_ reflective from the way i experience all other forms of music.

I'm somewhat conflicted about this. On the one hand, I'm not sure I agree that this is more true of contemporary classical music in 2017 than of any other style, tbh, unless I'm not understanding you. (Maybe it was true in 1967?) Those Chamberfest concerts I was posting about from the summer were fairly diverse, e.g. the Penderecki String Quartet concert of Mozart, Schumann, Penderecki's 3rd, and Kelly Marie Murphy. I don't think a single concert by most metal or IDM (let alone mainstream pop/rock) groups would be anywhere near that broad. I know a composer/performer who e.g. writes spectral music as well as neo-Romantic Americana and play drums in a jazz fusion group. At the same time, I sometimes DO feel like I don't fit in anywhere as a composer or performer but this might be a function of the diversity and lack of aesthetic direction in today's new music world idk?

The last few albums I posted about here were honestly all things I just found by looking under "contemporary classical" on Bandcamp.

I'm listening to Distant Light now btw. P good so far. I like the folky theme around the 13m mark in the Ondine recording.

So admittedly, this is largely in the vein of the type of neo-Romantic music that I usually avoid but I can see the appeal and will listen some more.

well... i don't think the hyper-factionalization is something that occurs among the musicians themselves. i think it's more a factor of the listening community.

let's take metal for an example. if i want to know what the great metal records of 2017 are, lots of people are going to have opinions on what those are. i may not agree, but at least i know where to start listening!

what are the great compositions of 2017? i can ask you. i can ask pomenitul. i can browse bandcamp, which is a great site but positively stuffed with crossover on the classical side and when one gets away from crossover, prone to tumbleweeds.

it just seems like there's a state of nearly total structural breakdown when it comes to classical music as a form of _communication_.

Oh, yeah, totally. I feel like the problem there has to do with something other than factionalization but it frustrates me too. Maybe it's just a function of how small the audience has become?

Well that + WAM was never a tradition that was built around the release and promotion of recordings. Composers write scores, performers study them, concerts are organized, eventually someone might make a recording, but it is normal for a piece to be written years before a given listener might hear it, usually in the context of a concert where it is played next to pieces from other composers and eras. Then it might take a long time before they ever hear it again.

I think the fact that the culture isn't based around recordings is what makes it difficult. I could point to several important new recordings from the last few years (Hans Abrahamsen - Let Me Tell You, Andrew Norman - Play, John Luther Adams - Become Ocean, Caroline Shaw - Partita) but it only provides a skewed introduction to what's going on. Still, that's as good as it gets, I think, and it's good enough for me.

If you want to be as cutting edge as the rolling metal thread, you probably need to be a musician and/or composer yourself, and even that will only allow you to keep up with what's happening in your neck of the woods due to the privilege still granted to live concerts over recordings, at least in this particular field.

I'm not a journalist so I don't care about being a couple of years late. Does it even matter when it comes to so-called classical music? Even 'contemporary' is taken to mean something like 'the past thirty-odd years' or 'notated music made by living individuals.'

Anyway, relatively old-fashioned methods are still effective as far as I'm concerned: I check out various blogs, newspapers and magazines, as well as the catalogues of specific record labels (Aeon, Neos, Wergo, Kairos, Harmonia Mundi, ECM, Dacapo, BIS, Ondine, DG, HatHut, Mode, etc.). I tend to use Bandcamp when I want to hear more music by composers I'm already familiar with but who are underrepresented on record.

This approach probably wouldn't suffice if I were a professional, but it's good enough for me, especially since I listen to lots of other kinds of music as well.

Aren't we all overwhelmed, though, regardless of the genres we favour? Opening the 2017 end-of-year lists thread is a vertiginous experience for me despite the fact that it narrows the set by focusing primarily on pop music (in the broad sense).

Honestly, the general failure (dotted with myriad specific counterexamples) of "classical culture" to come to terms with the existence of recorded music is a pretty strong argument against the perpetuation of "classical culture" as distinct from "popular culture". At the same time I genuinely love many forms of classical music and would not like to see the classical idiom become a "dead language", particularly now that it finally has the opportunity to be something other than a male dominated nationalist/colonialist enterprise.

That's why I care about being able to know what's going on now. Because "classical music" is going the way of Latin. Only the most elite even know how to read it anymore. Nobody writes it. I love a lot of the different kinds of music that's out there today, but I think that music would be even better if more people knew how to write fugues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZM4yxbE0ZE

Most people don't care about such art forms, especially not in North America. Some things just aren't meant to be popular, and that's okay. It just decreases the likelihood of making a living out of it but that's just a function of late capitalism.

Honestly, the general failure (dotted with myriad specific counterexamples) of "classical culture" to come to terms with the existence of recorded music is a pretty strong argument against the perpetuation of "classical culture" as distinct from "popular culture".

Maybe it's not a failure?

Also, the new music world has definite problems but there's not really a shortage of composers or performers (or even scholars for that matter), unless I'm misunderstanding "only the most elite can read it; no one writes it".

Anyway, I do actually agree that I'd like to have more contemporary classical recordings in my mix, and/or I sometimes wish there was more going on compositionally in a lot of other music, so yeah idk maybe.

Well, this years winner of the Grawemeyer award, Bent Sørensens L’Isola della Città, can be heard on NYT. Second Danish winner in three years btw 8)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/arts/music/grawemeyer-award-bent-sorensen.html

Also, the new music world has definite problems but there's not really a shortage of composers or performers (or even scholars for that matter), unless I'm misunderstanding "only the most elite can read it; no one writes it".

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r)

well it seems like there's this very nearly open hostility from some corners towards the notion that people who aren't musicians trained in the classical tradition might want to listen to composed music. i understand that the (continuing) popular rejection of serialism probably hurt many people deeply, but i'm not sure forming essene communities is the best reaction to this.

Congrats to Sørensen! I haven't heard that particular piece yet, but his music never disappoints.

The Sørensen piece sounded good on first (slightly distracted) listen. The integration of contemporary techniques with more Romantic material was satisfying.

Rushomancy, I have a lot more exposure to people who i) desperately want a broader audience and strain to try to find one or ii) have resignedly given up. I really don't come across the "who cares if you listen?" attitude all that much from North American composers and musicians under 45 in the present day. Maybe with some more examples, I'd see what you're talking about. Are you thinking mainly of New Complexity types?

Come to think of it, Sørensen is an excellent example of a living neo-Romantic who doesn't elicit any skepticism on my part.

Rushomancy, I have a lot more exposure to people who i) desperately want a broader audience and strain to try to find one or ii) have resignedly given up.

I mean, also a bunch of iii) people who are happy with the audience they have, regardless of their educational background.

i'm not talking about the composers themselves! i'm talking about the _scene_. so many really great people but at the same time so much scenester bullshit :(

I honestly can't think of a single musical genre for which that statement doesn't hold true.

2018 Classical and Opera Grammy Nominees Spotify Playlist

Meh.

That said, props for listing Barbara Hannigan, György Kurtág and Maria Lettberg.

I wish I could come up with a counter-playlist but I always forget whether the 'classical' stuff I listened to this year came out, well, this year or in times of yore.

Thanks, ulysses! I was planning to listen to a bunch of those. Esp curious about the Higdon piece. Listening to Hannigan's take on the Berio vocal sequenza now.

Her Lulu Suite is equally exquisite. What an incredible musician.

I'll listen to that. There's this famous one, too, of course.

Ugh: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/arts/music/james-levine-sexual-misconduct-met-opera.html

Ugh x2

Rumors have been around forever, knew it was him as soon as I saw the link that was posted in the Weinstein thread.

For awhile a year or two ago, there were a lot of predators being unveiled around the classical and early music world in the UK, most of it was written about on ian pace’s blog. Philip Pickett comes to mind

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/dec/06/sound-of-mega-orgasms-female-composers-london-contemporary-music-festival-new-intimacy

a work by Kajsa Magnarsson “for strap-on and electric guitar”

After watching, I think I preferred Anvil's take on this concept.

“Modernism was about removing the body from art,” says festival director Igor Toronyi-Lalic. “About removing personal identity and prioritising science, abstraction and objectivity.

Also, this is emphatically not what the Second Viennese School did imo.

Yeah that statement does not ring true for me at all

Favorite records of 2017 I should consider checking out before doing my ILM EOY list? Potentials for me are Canticles of the Wind by John Luther Adams, Last Leaf by the Danish String Quartet and Crazy Girl Crazy by Barbara Hannigan.

Ten personal favourites, in no particular order:

Arturo Fuentes - Broken Mirrors; Liquid Crystals; Ice Reflection; Glass Distortion
György Kurtág - Complete Works for Ensemble and Choir
Tõnu Kõrvits - Moorland Elegies
Bent Sørensen - Mignon
Pascal Dusapin - Quatuor VI « Hinterland »; Quatuor VI « OpenTime »
Alberto Posadas - Sombras
Michael Jarrell - …mais les images restent…
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir & Kaspars Putniņš - Schnittke: 'Psalms of Repentance'; Pärt: 'Magnificat' & 'Nunc dimittis'
Quatuor Psophos - Constellations
Chaya Czernowin - Hidden

Shit I need that Kurtag. I keep forgetting.

Noticed the Jarrell on eMusic yesterday. Thinking about it. His orchestration of a few of the Debussy Etudes was brilliant.

Not saying it's aoty but I got this recently and am getting a lot out of it, as more Canadian solo guitar stuff goes (gnarlier than most of the Victoria disc):
http://www.johngordonarmstrong.com/my-new-cd/

really enjoying that Last Leaf album, thanks for that!

For those compiling your year-end lists, this playlist includes all the available tracks on this thread, organized roughly chronologically in order of mention:

ILM's 2017 Rolling Classical Thread Spotify Playlist

it's worth noting that this thread (along with electronic and jazz) is where the spotify catalog gets a bit punchy.

The Danish Quartet (Mk 4) is great, yeah. Also notable is their Carl Nielsen sq cycle (for Dacapo).

Will check that out, thanks!

After James Levine, Charles Dutoit:

http://www.ledevoir.com/culture/musique/515974/allegations-d-inconduite-sexuelle-contre-le-chef-d-orchestre-charles-dutoit

(Link is in French.)

Wow, damn.

I've had "Tjønneblomen" off that Last Leaf album on repeat for like a half hour; what a lovely song