Rolling Classical 2019

I've been fascinated with Fausto Romitelli's music since I first heard Professor Bad Trip, an unusually successful attempt at spectralist psychedelia. Romitelli studied under Gérard Grisey and Hugues Dufourt, but he was no less a pupil of Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. As a result, he is – to my knowledge – one of the few noted European composers of his generation (1963-2004) to have cast the electric guitar in a leading role. I've often listened to the solo Trash TV Trance, which has spawned a remarkable amount of performances on YouTube (of which I think I like this one the best) but wasn't familiar with his output for acoustic guitar, which was recently recorded for the Italian Stradivarius label alongside Trash TV Trance and two other works (one for flute and guitar, the second for solo flute). There's even a Highway to Hell from 1984 which, while more subdued than his later material for the electric guitar, gives a good sense of his overall intentions.

I have 12 nominations left for the ILM poll if anyone has used up their noms and wants more classical (or jazz or avant stuff) on the ballot.

If you've ever wondered what a YT-ready video of contemporary notated music might look like, this is pretty cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFEGSLRvV9U

Enjoyed the piece a lot.

Listening to ILX Listen: 2019

i'm iffy on spectralism as a whole (well, grisey mostly), but i did like professor bad trip!

Happy to hear it! If you're in the mood for more, his disc of orchestral works, Audiodrome (with Peter Rundel conducting), is also very much worth delving into.

Rebecca Saunders wins this year's Ernst von Siemens prize. Undoubtedly well-deserved!

https://www.rhinegold.co.uk/classical_music/ernst-von-siemens-prize-awarded-rebecca-saunders/

Ah yes, was gonna ask, afaik I have never heard a note of hers, is anyone up to suggesting a primer C60 or Rough Guide or something of Spotify-available Saunders?

Re: electric guitar in new music, Pierluigi Billone is another composer. Two recordings of electric guitar works on Kairos.

I'm not much of a playlist guy, unfortunately, but I do think Saunders's first monograph for Kairos – QUARTET, Into the Blue, Molly's Song 3 – shades of crimson, dichroic seventeen, all played by musikFabrik – makes for a fine introduction. It should be available on Spotify.

Readymade playlist is more than fine; thanks, pomenitul! :-)

Nice to see the latest cd from Danish String Quartet got nominated in the album poll. Prism I, the first of five albums which will each include a late Beethoven quartet, and something else related to it. On the first it's Shostakovich Quartet no 15, and it's pretty amazing. Great album, snuck into the lower part of my ballot.

I liked Wood Works a lot less than I thought I would but I love the Danish String Quartet. They used to call themselves the Young Danish String Quartet, right? Their Nielsen recordings are almost definitive as far as I'm concerned.

Speaking of Nielsen, it's such a shame that Thomas Dausgaard never officially recorded Nielsen's six symphonies with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra during his tenure. He started a cycle with the Seattle Symphony a couple of years ago but either he's run out of ideas or the orchestra has little feel for the music (admittedly a bit of an acquired taste) because I found his 3rd and 4th surprisingly listless.

I liked Wood Works a lot less than I thought I would but I love the Danish String Quartet. They used to call themselves the Young Danish String Quartet, right? Their Nielsen recordings are almost definitive as far as I'm concerned.

― pomenitul, 18. januar 2019 15:52 (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, they were called the Young Danish String Quartet when they were younger. When the old Danish String Quartet retired they took over the name.

Full concert - Terry Riley live at Koerner Hall in Toronto's Royal Conservatory, with Tracy Silverman and his son Gyan. Really good show, based on this: https://livestream.com/accounts/3811338/events/8517853/videos/186015720

(Posted to post-minimalist thread as well)

Barbara Hannigan awarded the Sonning Award for 2020! I'd really thought she'd miss it, as they gave it to Hans Abrahamsen in 2019 and made Hannigan and 'Let Me Tell You' the centerpiece of the galla concert, but nope. So incredibly deserving!

Excellent news! Every bit of praise lavished upon her is utterly deserved.

Guys are there two of these threads or is my hangover psychosis worse than I thought?

Also yes great win

I've been clamouring for the gods mods to delete the duplicate but they've yet to respond to my bootless pleas.

what's the other one? might as well use it while i got it.

found it, got it.

Barbara Hannigan awarded the Sonning Award for 2020!

― Frederik B

this is cool but unfortunately thanks to ilx i will always believe in the back of my mind that the Sonning Award is given for outstanding performance in a twitter beef

lol

On Saturday I heard Jonathan Biss and the Seattle Symphony play Caroline Shaw's new piano concerto Watermarks, which was sort of playfully and delightfully in stylistic tension between the romantic and the contemporary. Highlights include a theme for the soloist in the second movement that almost but not quite resolves into the sound of a pop melody and a recurring gag in the third movement. Part of Biss' project to commission new concerti in response to those of Beethoven.

Sounds interesting. I've been disappointed by a lot of Shaw other than Partita but I'd definitely be interested to hear it.

man, i wish i were free for this tonight and recommend it strongly to New Yorkers who are:
http://roulette.org/event/the-voices-of-erin-gee/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbVIUt-YtaM

Holy shit:

https://youtu.be/gzodB0Sp6ZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzodB0Sp6ZI

Aargh! I've seen that shared easily over 10 times in the past week. It annoys me tbh. The idea is cute and a lot of work probably went into it but the ol' atonal music was NOT about favouring intellect over emotion. (Maybe some postwar serialist music was but Schoenberg and Berg certainly weren't.) Cage's 4'33" isn't really what I think of as an atonal composition, either, although you could possibly make a case.

I completely agree with you (there's nothing even remotely unemotional about Schoenberg's 2nd quartet or Berg's Lyric Suite, to say the least), but my expectations when it comes to pop culture discourse about this stuff are so low as to be nonexistent.

That said, if his dad really was a composer of 12 tone music and it's not just a fictive spin on country tropes, he should definitely know better.

Yeah I enjoyed the song and video but my mind was screaming foul at all the inaccuracies and generalizations

Cage's 4'33" isn't really what I think of as an atonal composition, either, although you could possibly make a case.

I somehow doubt he is trying to be historically accurate.

I really liked that atonal solo in the middle of it. Its just nerdy internet stuff but I'd like to think passers by might be horrified/mystified and curious enough to check it out.

The solo really clinches it. Wouldn't be a worthwhile meme otherwise.

No point to this kind of thing if it's not well-informed imo. Otherwise, it comes closer to being a put-down (of something that probably doesn't need to be taken down).

(Solo is the best part.)

To be fair, this is how most people perceive it. I've taken friends/relatives to several such concerts, made them listen to recordings and 'cold, forbidding complexity' remains their takeaway to this day. I frankly gave up a long time ago.

Even early 20th century abstract painting elicits less incomprehension, no doubt because it's less time-consuming.

Yeah, that's sort of why I dislike this.

I don't imagine that modern literature fans would eagerly share a comedy song about pining for the emotionless, incomprehensible writing of modern authors like Joyce, Woolf, Beckett, and cummings (but maybe they would).

I probably would tbh. But I've abandoned all hope of ever turning more than a pinch of people on to 'modernist' art. And when it does happen, it's usually an accident.

It would have to be a comedy short story

Even early 20th century abstract painting elicits less incomprehension, no doubt because it's less time-consuming.

There's a whole book about this phenomenon - the subtitle is something like Why Do People Like Rothko But Not Schoenberg? I've always meant to read it.

Here it is; it's called Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen

That sounds interesting. I'd need to be convinced of the premise first, though.

I'll have to check it out, thanks. Too bad there's no matching phenomenon for poetry (haikus notwithstanding).

xp

The book is an OK read. Idk if it really arrives at a satisfying answer to that question and it turns into a kind of historical overview. Hard to deny that more people know Picasso and Dali than Schoenberg and Cage, at the least. I used to have my late 20th c avant-garde classes debate the question. Alex Ross and Philip Ball have also written about it (taking v different positions).xp

Just looking at the blurb, I'm not sure that this indicates much about popular enthusiasm for modern paintings; it's more about the extravagant amounts of money being moved around: "Works by 20th century abstract artists like Mark Rothko are selling for record breaking sums at auction, while the millions commanded by works by Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon make headline news."

The three reasons he arrives at in his conclusion are i) The Original (the cachet and financial value of original paintings - as you note) ii) The Distress ('difficult' music asks more of the listener than 'difficult' visual art asks of the viewer since the former is a time-based medium and you need to e.g. sit through Hymnen for two hours to even hear the piece, while you can look at a Rothko in a minute - as pomenitul notes) iii) The Corporation (wealthy corporations are more likely to sponsor modern art exhibitions than modern music concerts or recordings - although I don't think he did a great job of interrogating the reasons why this might be true).

lol at alison brown up there

The idea is cute and a lot of work probably went into it but the ol' atonal music was NOT about favouring intellect over emotion.

there is a scene in the marlon brando version of island of dr moreau which also makes this incorrect point (Moreau plays serialism on piano, animal men get restive, Moreau plays Gershwin on piano, animal men get all happy)

Atonal music (incl. 12-tone) is too broad and has too many different possible approaches to really make a thesis like Stubbs's thesis stick for me. Rothko/Stockhausen is a false dichotomy imo-- Rothko's musical equivalent is Ligeti's Requiem et al., which is very easy for any listener of any level of experience or age to appreciate.

I'm trying to think of any analogs I've privately drawn between visual artist and composer and, like:

Glass = Motherwell
Boulez = ??
Cage = Pollock
Stockhausen = god I don't know.. Paul McCarthy?

Or Rothko = Feldman, duh

Heh, the fact that you thought both of Ligeti and Feldman as sonic translations of Rothko is quite interesting. Analogies between the Muses are fraught with approximations, which doesn't mean that they're useless or merely fanciful or random.

For Boulez, it's tempting to say Paul Klee, because Pierre himself said so, but it wouldn't have automatically sprung to mind otherwise.

Fwiw, Stubbs does not limit himself to atonal notated music specifically but discusses "avant-garde music" defined more broadly. Iirc, he actually spends a lot of time on free improv as well as on Hendrix, Eno, postpunk stuff like PiL, and avant electronica like Aphex Twin and Scanner, along with modern composers, which makes the thesis pretty dubious.

Ooh OK that does sound interesting

And also, duh, of course Boulez = Klee, or even more so: Kandinsky

But I mean, isn't it true that more people buy prints of Rothko for their dorm room, or would go to a Rothko exhibit, than would buy an album of Ligeti compositions or attend a Ligeti concert? (Not sure if people enjoying films that use Ligeti in the soundtrack quite counts.) Even a noticeable segment of the paying BSO audience were unappreciative of the Violin Concerto last year. xp

I would agree with that. Ligeti's popular aura is inseparable from Kubrick's visuals, whereas Rothko copycats litter the walls of countless hotels – their success is partly predicated on how easy they are to ignore.

I always come back to Pascal Quignard's quip in The Hatred of Music: 'Ears have no (eye)lids.'

He wrote that in the context of auditory torture (Auschwitz, Guantanamo, etc.), which I suppose leads to a broader point about music's greater potential for immediate, overwhelming and uncontrollable affect.

Sund4r I think 2001's enduring popularity is enormously due to the enormous power and wide-spread appeal of Ligeti's Lontano and Requiem, and the dorm-room ubiquity of both that movie (at least, in my generation) and Rothko's prints make the two of them comparable under this examination

The reason why the BSO didn't like Ligeti's Violin Concerto is because, as I've stated before: it's a bad, bad, bad, bad piece

(I actually like the Violin Concerto fine but it lacks the thesis-forward approach of my favourite-favourites of Ligeti's work-- Clocks And Clouds, Atmospheres, Lontano, Requiem, piano pieces, Continuum, organ drone-y works. Le Grand Macabre remains the only non-micropolytonal work of Ligeti's that I've heard and really adore)

*micropolyphonal, ugh I always get the word wrong

Ligeti's is the Derrida of violin concertos. Gawriloff/Boulez's take sounds off (or it doesn't get its off-soundingness right) but Zimmermann/de Leeuw's is pitch-(im)perfect. Do you also dislike the viola sonata?

I was just listening to a live Isabelle Faust take of the ligeti. I’m really into Isabelle Faust rn.

FGTI what about the horn trio? It is thesisy yet not micropolyphonic

Lutoslawski = Kandinsky
Crumb = Joseph Cornell

I really need to hear that live recording! Isabelle Faust is incredible.

You'll laugh but it was originally mediafired to me by a classical maven pen pal who passed away in 2010 and who always had the disclaimer 'please do not redistribute' with his links (he was an inveterate broadcast-capturer). The crazy thing is his mediafire account and links are still live after all these years...! Would good old Manuel care if I shared some of his stuff at this point?

Most of the rest of my live Faust holdings are from the very active SymphonyShare google group which you must join if you haven't already. This Faust jag was kicked off by an incredible performance of the Schoenberg concerto that was shared there (her + Daniel Harding)

Thanks, I'll look into it. There's always a way...

Oh god no I love the viola sonata. I think I got into some condescending rabbit hole like five years ago trying to express that I don't think alternate tuning stuff was "good composition" unless there was some kind of payoff for the performer/listener, it's like the 3D glasses of composing, like, if you're going to go there, please make it necessary, and the first movement of the Ligeti is the ne plus ultra for what I think is good writing in this regard, it's a 10/10

The rest of the sonata is basically just Bartok to me but I like it more than the Bartok solo violin sonata, so... good work Gyorgy

The horn trio I only heard once and it's fine

I agree w you about alt tunings

Speaking of which I am about to introduce myself to the Haas String Quartet #3 “iij. Noct.” Wish me luck!

Not really the right thread for it maybe but I was offered a small fee to score a documentary and I got it in my head that I might write a continuous piece of music for string quartet as the score, did so, everybody's happy, going to record it on Thursday, so yay I guess I wrote a string quartet

Also I just spoke to a woman yesterday who may or may not be related somehow to ulysses but she reported that my commission for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus is a real humdinger and they're happy with it. The libretto is hilarious and has the kids singing threateningly conservative jargonism at the audience interspersed with quotes from Cyclops's angry speech to Odysseus prior to eating a couple of his men (taken from three different sources)

Anyway it's on March 21 if anybody lives in NYC and cares to attend

The libretto is hilarious and has the kids singing threateningly conservative jargonism at the audience interspersed with quotes from Cyclops's angry speech to Odysseus prior to eating a couple of his men (taken from three different sources)

Whoa!

Ya there's a part where they sing "Satyr! Give me whey! Gulping, gaping bowls of whey!" which is literally Homer and Huntychan at the same time

Hope the kids like it

my understanding is that the kids are finding it very amusing

i am amused that "the woman who may or may not be related somehow to ulysses" is communicating about a speech from the cyclops to odysseus; shit has gotten epic

(my connect over there is named L3ah; i imagine you're in touch with D1an3?)

Yep that's right

cool, i'm looking forward to hearing this.

that song is terrible beyond belief but i don't feel validated every time somebody name-checks John Cage ymmv

In my experience, most anglophones are familiar with John Cage (4'33 in particular) and some have vaguely heard of Schoenberg and, to a lesser degree, Berg.

Webern, on the other hand…

I'm beating a dead fun-hating horse at this point but fwiw, with regards to:

I somehow doubt he is trying to be historically accurate.

I understand that most of his videos ARE meant to be accurate and educational in their comedy (they're usually about economics rather than music): "Merle loves for his music to be used in the classroom. "

In my uni teaching experience, I couldn't really expect students to come in familiar with any modern composers of notated music, btw.

Congrats on the new performances, fgti.

This is my dad's composition. I'm so fucking proud.

https://youtu.be/mzohsaDtTQg?t=213

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzohsaDtTQg&feature=youtu.be&t=211

(starts around 3:30)

Ok let's try that one more time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzohsaDtTQg

mazel

Wonderful this is beautiful

:)

I was there. 200 people on stage, 800-1000 in the audience I think, with relatively minimal promotion. Mix of American U. and pros in the orchestra and chorus (plus a children's chorus). Text is an english translation of poems of medieval poet Judah HaLevi about his sea pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Going to perform Morten Lauridsens six Madrigali in a month. Lauridsen is normally pure candyfloss, but I really like this. The first five a pretty challenging in different ways, and then the final one is pure sugar again. Like a band performing all their new stuff at first, then playing the hit as an encore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPxQnnVKqu8

Michael Gielen has died. A tremendous working life.

I don't know anything about classical music however I found this interesting.
The #1 album of 2019 according to Rate Your Music is a classical five-CD box set.

Nature Denatured and Found Again
by Michael Pisaro

http://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4246156871_16.jpg

https://michaelpisaro.bandcamp.com/album/nature-denatured-and-found-again

The piece is derived from field recordings made along the Grosse Mühl River, Neufelden, Austria, from 2011 to 2015 (during the flussaufwärts project created by Joachim Eckl, Marcus Kaiser and Michael Pisaro). Alongside the recordings of the river as it flows down from Neufelden to the Danube, are performances by Antoine Beuger, Jürg Frey, Marcus Kaiser, Radu Malfatti, André Möller, and Kathryn Pisaro. Pisaro has been working on the piece since 2011 and we are very happy to have it finally see the light of day.

Disc 1: Fissures in Green (2011)
Disc 2: Pathsplitter (Yellow-Red) (2012)
Disc 3: Landscape in Black and Grey (2013)
Disc 4: White Light Under the Door (2014)
Disc 5: Hellgrün (Small New World) (2015)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vUJDLqMrHM4/W9duBKrm5rI/AAAAAAAACfc/1YQ_vDHo5t0P86cFfGXZcn0TqhnSKFcYQCLcBGAs/s1600/Flussphoto.jpg

http://michaelpisaro.blogspot.com/2018/10/nature-denatured-and-found-again-gw-016.html

I was going to stream it but it's not on Spotify and there are only two songs that are streamable on the Bandcamp link above. It's probably not my thing but it's quite an anomaly to see a classical box set atop that particular website's rankings for the year, even though it's only March!

The featured tracks on Bandcamp were pretty nice and intriguing.

Np the art of fugue - Zoltán Kocsis

I miss him. :(

As for Michael Pisaro, I must admit I've never been too keen on the Wandelweiser aesthetic, no more than once or twice a year tbh.

love it

Kocsis was turning out to be such an awesome conductor and I really wanted him to record more orchestral Liszt or at least broadcast more of it - especially the arrangements he was making of the late piano music.

Gielen festival in here this past week - Zimmerman requiem for a young poet, Liszt Dante symphony, stuff I’ve never heard before by Jorge Lopez, Strauss Metamorphosen from his Cincinnati days, and his amazing haensler studio recording of Mahler’s 7th.

I forgot to reply to your Gielen post upthread (I mentioned it on ILX's rolling obituary thread amidst the usual indifference) but yeah, what a giant of a man. I've never heard a recording of his that I didn't like. The pre-box set Mahler discs for Hänssler, padded with a cornucopia of modernist works, is a thing of beauty – and it's instructive, to boot.

In general, the guys who held longtime posts with german radio orchestras were just fucking great, not only gielen but hans zender, ernest bour, i guess hans rosbaud was kind of the prototype. They and their bands could do EVERYTHING effectively, and did, and were almost always recorded doing it.

Otm. A shame that said orchestras are apparently underfunded these days – even Germany is giving up on classical music.

The libretto is hilarious and has the kids singing threateningly conservative jargonism at the audience interspersed with quotes from Cyclops's angry speech to Odysseus prior to eating a couple of his men (taken from three different sources)

dammit i should have marked my calendar

tbh was less excited about seeing them play with wye oak; that choir is a nuanced artist unto itself and i don't care much for people using them as an effect to sing over.

Eric Le Sage, one of my favourite living pianists, recently released his take on Gabriel Fauré's Nocturnes. I'd been waiting for this disc, as Le Sage's recordings of Fauré's chamber music were superlative and he has just the right tone for this music: a kind of Romantic detachment (if that makes sense?). Most pianists either overemphasize the pathos, which is alien to the more forbidding late-period works, or seek to neuter melody as much as possible (a far preferable approach in my opinion, but it has its limits). Le Sage gets the Nocturnes' ambiguity just right, and it suits them throughout, from 1875 to 1921. Rediscovering these pieces through his playing is a pleasure.

The Pulitzer winners are out. Ellen Reid wins for her opera 'Prism' about sexual assault. Heard a few excerpts, sounds really good! Other nominees were Andrew Norman for 'Sustain' which Alex Ross absolutely loved, and James Romig for 'Still' which can be heard here, and which is pretty cool and Feldman-like: http://www.jamesromig.com/still.html A lot of the chord-changes are pretty jarring.

I'm going to admit that I haven't heard of any of them but will dig in.

Did the jury have something against Invasion of Privacy?

The new Maja S. K. Ratkje album, featuring a modified pump organ, may be my favourite thing I've heard by her so far. Incidentally, I don't know if this is the most appropriate thread for it, but eh, who cares.

Oh wow, I saw her in 2013 and really liked it. I like the old Tzadik album (River Mouth Echoes??) so I should listen to this.

I quite liked River Mouth Echoes as well. I'd say this one is more approachable and consistent: it's a continuous single piece (a ballet score, in fact, inspired by Knut Hamsun's Hunger) born of a series of live improvisations for voice and prepared pump organ, rather than a showcase of works penned for different forces. Really beautiful stuff, I think you'll enjoy it.

Is it streaming anywhere?

It's on Apple Music. And Spotify as well, based on a cursory search.

On YT, as well, although the sound quality is bound to be iffy (I haven't tested it):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_illXigaX4

Oh, I see it now. It's under "Maja S. K. Ratkje" and didn't turn up when I looked on the Spotify artist page for "Maja Ratkje" but it came up when I searched for "Sult".

That first clip from Reid's Prism is amazing! It actually made me think a bit of the Knife's Tomorrow in a Year for some reason. Listening to the Soundcloud excerpts now and this is nice so far. xp

This is what the augmented pump organ looks like btw:

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0022742f170547419c40f92ead99adeb82234e09/0_503_6000_3600/master/6000.jpg?width=1920&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=c347381a765208f808986fe96692b067

<3

The Ratkje album is really nice. I still don't pay for Spotify so the commercials spoiled the mood a little but the pieces were often more beautiful than I expect from her, and, you're right, it works as a consistent album.

Yeah, this one's got actual songs. She's a remarkably versatile artist, as a composer and performer both.

On the more traditional end of things, I'm finding Bomsori Kim and Rafał Blechacz's DG recital for violin and piano to be most enjoyable. It includes Fauré's first sonata, Debussy's lone effort in the genre and an early attempt (from 1904) by Szymanowski. The Fauré and Debussy are stunningly well played, as is the Szymanowski, but the work itself doesn't do it for me at all. I suspect my tolerance for late Romantic histrionics is higher than most people's, but the piece falls apart almost as soon as it begins, devolving into a catalogue of emotive fin de siècle clichés. Szymanowski appears to have only really hit his stride around 1914.

Put on the video of Still while making and eating breakfast. It started out sounding beautiful and sparse, then started driving me bonkers in the lack of development, and now (28m in), I'm just getting engrossed in the spaces and slight variations.

I quite like Still so far. It's eternally unfolding somewhere between Feldman's Triadic Memories and Pärt's Für Alina.

I haven't managed to find a recording of Andrew Norman's Sustain, alas. I might give Ellen Reid's opera a shot, but it's a genre I tend to dislike almost systematically, so I'll probably just skip it.

I don't think Sustain has been recorded at all, but if you want to hear Norman I'd say give Play a play or two. It's pretty great.

this maja s.k. ratkje record is lovely, thanks

Ratkje gave an incredible performance at the Rune Grammofon anniversary concerts in Oslo in December, and I love organ music, so I'm definitely gonna check this album out.

another thanks for the Ratkje; sizzles on first contact.

Glad you guys like it!

Went to the Hans Abrahamsen Leonie Sonning Award concert yesterday. Sat at fourth row and heard Barbara Hannigan sing Let Me Tell You. One of the biggest concert experiences I've had in a while. The program also consisted of Abrahamsens orchestrations of six Debussy pieces and his concert for left-handed piano called Left, Alone. Second half was good as well, but it was the first half that was awe-inspiring.

Abrahamsen has finished his first opera, based on the fairy tale The Snow Queen (or as it's known nowadays, Frozen) and in his version the snow queen character will be portrayed by a bass singer.

Jelly.

xp

Which Debussy pieces did he orchestrate and have they been recorded?

I won’t have money to go to this year’s Hannigan-led Ojai festival. I really wanted to.

Children's Corner. You might be able to stream the whole thing here? https://www.dr.dk/radio/p2/p2-koncerten/p2-koncerten-hans-abrahamsen-leonie-sonnings-musikpris-2019 If not, then I think the concert is broadcast in every EBU member, so it might show up someday :)

early warning for NYCers to add this to their calendar (looking at you jon)
July 25 – ICE plays Ashley Fure and Anna Thorvaldsdottir
http://www.lincolncenter.org/mostly-mozart-festival/show/fure-and-thorvaldsdottir

That's my birthday :D

Definitely want to go

Nice! And free! Gonna have to try and get to that.

I have little sympathy for what Michel Houellebecq has become (or revealed himself to be) in recent years, but I often think back on his simple description of Liszt's late music in The Map and the Territory (Houellebecq's best novel imho):

There is perhaps no music that expresses better than Franz Liszt’s last pieces of chamber music that funereal and gentle feeling of the old man whose friends are all dead, who in some way already belongs to the past and who in turn feels death approaching, who sees it as a sister, a friend, the promise of a return to the childhood home.

With this in mind, I've been listening to Cédric Tiberghien's recent recital for Hyperion, showcasing the third and last year of Liszt's Années de pèlerinage, as well as a smattering of pieces from the 1870s-1880s including the notorious Bagatelle sans tonalité, said to foreshadow Schoenberg. It's all wonderfully bleak for the most part, and played just right – a shame Tiberghien didn't record Nuages gris, however, although I suppose the disc's running time wouldn't have permitted it.

Oh, that sounds worth checkimg out.

*checking

i am obsessed with late liszt, not just the pieces houllebecq is referring to there but also the strange and whimsical dances (valses oubliees, mephisto waltzes, the bagatelle) which are just as resignedly forward-pushing as the laments

The late pieces sound especially great on a fortepiano - search out Andrea Bonatta's disc on Arcana. For the late dances, I am head over heels for Olivia Sham's Liszt recital 'The Art Of Remembering'. Brendel is incredible in the selection of late pieces he recorded. For 'Nuages Gris', Krystian Zimerman is almost hallucinatory.

There's a great disc of late liszt arranged for wind ensemble by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and a disc on BMC of late liszt orchestral adaptations by a hungarian composer. Finally, Heinz Holliger made two incredible orchestrations which were recorded on an old Arte Nova disc.

Liszt himself did very little for orchestra at this point in his life BUT his final symphonic poem From the Cradle to the Grave is a stunning exception.

I'm with you, Jon: those bizarre dance-like pieces are just as fascinating as the dirges (incidentally, Tiberghien's recital includes the fourth Mephisto Waltz).

I must admit I'm not too keen on Bonatta's disc, however, due to a blind spot more than anything – I've never really warmed up to the sound of premodern pianos. But Zimerman's Liszt recital is an absolute favourite of mine and I love all things Holliger.

I'll check out the arrangements for wind instruments – I had no idea, so thanks for the tip. And yes, From the Cradle to the Grave, despite its short length, dwarfs the Dante and Faust symphonies both.

There's also an old Hungaroton disc featuring Liszt's works for harmonium (including an arrangement of the lovely Angelus, which also kicks off year three of the Années de pèlerinage), as well as cello & piano versions of Romance oubliée, La lugubre gondola and the two late Elegies. With Miklós Perényi, no less.

Speaking of which, I always come back to Alexis Descharmes and Sébastian Vichard's recordings of the works for cello & piano (all of them, including Tristia for piano trio, an 1880 transcription of an early work, which makes for a fascinating juxtaposition). It's a clichéd thing to say, but Liszt was such an incredible arranger, an undersung craft if ever there was one.

Saw this with Jon at The Stone and STRONGLY recommend it... Jon, you wanna go again on the 21?
https://roulette.org/event/travis-laplante-yarn-wire-inner-garden/

I was gonna ask you about that today! Yes I want to see it again man.

Great, hit me by email and let's get you a ticket.

http://5against4.com/2019/03/05/quatuor-bozzini-phill-niblock-baobab/

Quatuor Bozzini – Phill Niblock: Baobab

2 pieces of "uppercase ambient" from the impressive experimental string quartet that the reviewer says is a recording that recreates the brilliance of the live experience they encountered of them at the Hudds music festival.

https://quatuorbozzini-actuellecd.bandcamp.com/

and another:
Simon Martin : Musique d’art

Yes, but is it true ambient?

Kidding aside, I'll be sure to check them both of them out, thanks.

“There are no waves, there is only the ocean.” or something like that!

Confession: while listening to András Schiff's second volume of Schubert pieces and sonatas played on a 1820 fortepiano, I once again came to the conclusion that pre-20th century pianos are an exercise in frustration. I can't recall a single recording where I preferred the prototype to its modern equivalent.

I like Bach on historical keyboards, modern pianos, and Wendy Carlos's Moog. I like how harpsichords and clavichords can rip in a way that pianos don't. Not sure about early fortepianos, though: haven't listened to a lot of that tbh.

Period performance Bach is right up my alley and I love the harpsichord's tone. It's really just the fortepiano I struggle with, perhaps because I like my Romanticism to be forward-looking.

Just listened to this and enjoyed it on first listen. It will be played here on Sunday, although I will have to miss it, unfortunately:
https://vimeo.com/332029867/35f6f43258

For English ilxors, my choir, Lille Muko, is going on a small tour this summer. We're singing July 11th in Ely, 13th in Norwich, and 14th in Cambridge. We're singing only 20th century Danish choral music on this tour.
http://cambridgesummermusic.co.uk/the-university-choir-lille-muko/?fbclid=IwAR2x5xxwiV1GewmvutAIw6Ua5xhrWzKAKZrjzZ-e5TG2ueuytyfWahpDNtg
I'm the third guy from the right, btw. I was very, very hungover the day the photo was taken.

your hairstyle is quite indecorous

Classical controversy shockah:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/04/the-guardian-view-on-classical-music-art-or-status-symbol

i think we tutted about that in the Graun thread. i assume they let a work experience kid write it.

Ah, I only just got wind of it through a series of rebuttals.

In any case, lol @ the undying and undead notion that live classical music is somehow egregiously more expensive to consume than other genres.

it's impressive in the number of wrong sentences it packs in.

A few responses:

Here is a screen grab of @RichmoMusic’s Times rebutal of the Guardian’s ‘state of classical music’ editorial. pic.twitter.com/YZBajW3yM1

— Petroc Trelawny (@PetrocTrelawny) July 9, 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/07/classical-music-and-the-dreaded-elite-tag

yep, attacking the proms as conspicuous commercialism or whatever stupid term they used in that garbage piece was spectacularly missing the point - seeing as it is probably the only major event in London doing six quid tickets!

https://johnlutheradams.bandcamp.com/album/become-desert

this is beautiful.

Indeed it is. More oceanic (again) than desert-like but I'm not keeping a tally.

yep, attacking the proms as conspicuous commercialism or whatever stupid term they used in that garbage piece was spectacularly missing the point - seeing as it is probably the only major event in London doing six quid tickets!

Also many of the seats cost less than a tenner. Ive booked 5 concerts and 2 of those are under ten, in the circle

This is rather… unexpected given HWH's politics:

The opening of Hans Werner Henze's 'Allegra e Boris', the violin & viola duet he wrote for Boris Johnson's marriage to Allegra Mostyn-Owen in 1987 pic.twitter.com/4ETeBgCGuY

— Tom Coult (@tomcoult) July 21, 2019

Odd. There has to be some context for that?

Ana Sokolović was a name familiar to me for geographical reasons but I'd never been tempted to check out her music because program notes tend to emphasize its purported 'humour', which is not a quality I seek outside of, well, film and day-to-day life. So I've only just gotten around to her latest disc for ATMA, Sirènes, which features a smattering of vocal works (one for a cappella choir and two short song cycles), as well as a violin concerto, none of which I found very funny (to my great relief).

As it turns out, her penchant for humour is sporadical and of the mildly surrealist, late Ligeti-esque variety, i.e. tempered by darker hues and a feel for the mysterious macabre. Her writing for voices clearly leans on Claude Vivier's, and parts of Evta (for violin and orchestra) hearken back to Gubaidulina's string concertos, so she stylistically brings together no less than three of my absolute favourite composers, on top of her own personal touches, which highlight her Serbian heritage. Although I catch myself wishing she'd make more of this (lesser known) cultural baggage, her polystylism is of a highly competent and seamless sort, far removed from, say, Osvaldo Golijov's. There's a sense of poetry (a meaningless, meaningless word, I know) throughout, and it stems from the music itself, beyond her settings of Francisco Tanzer and others.

Anyhow, I'm glad to have finally gotten acquainted with her work.

Someone else I never looked into. You do make it sound good.

I don't want to oversell it as I'm not wholly bowled over (structurally, she does meander a little too much at times), but if you're a fan of her touchstones, I'd say it's worth your while.

I'll have to check out her other discs – there are way more of them than I expected.

RIP Anner Bylsma (1934-2019).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD4CnTbjkSA

Microtonalist Ben Johnston as well

RIP

I'm not as familiar with his work. I'll have to remedy that.

I just saw Quatuor Danel play Shostakovich 8; first time I've seen it live. Goosebumps p much the whole time. Weinberg after intermission.

I have their Shostakovich cycle - they’re great.

Recently enjoyed Boris Giltburg’s solo piano transcription of that piece

Yeah, I'll look for that set (their intégral of Shostakovich, as the host of tonight's concert described it in good Ottawan franglais). I thought it was supposed to be available for sale here but I couldn't find it so bought a glass of rosé instead.

Could be the rosé talking but I really liked Weinberg 6, which I'd tbh never heard before.

Jelly, Sund4r!

The Danels studied under the Borodins (and Fyodor Druzhinin) and it really shows. Theirs is by a significant margin my favourite post-Soviet Shostakovich SQ cycle. All of their recordings are good tbh – I think the only one I was disappointed with was their Debussy, which was a little too wiry.

And yeah, Weinberg's music is a treasure trove. I need to dig into it further. Speaking of which, there have been two important releases devoted to him this year, which I've yet to hear: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21 (he was quite prolific) with the KREMERata Baltica, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, and his 24 Preludes for solo cello arranged for violin (and played) by the indefatigable Gidon Kremer.

http://www.anothertimbre.com/beissel.html

Klaus Lang & Golden Fur - ‘Beissel’

this an incredible recording imo done in a church and based the work of Johann Conrad Beissel, the 18th century religious leader who travelled to America to found a utopian religious community.
"who developed his own compositional system which he said was given to him by angels, and which has been described as a very early pre-cursor of serialism."

Sounds cool, I'll check it out.

Sad to have missed the Shostakovich. I'm enjoying revisiting the Ravel Sonatine from the other night.

this may be old hat to y'all but i thought it was fascinating
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/21/opinion/editorials/errol-morris-lobster-sviatoslav-richter.html

I'm enjoying revisiting the Ravel Sonatine from the other night.

I should revisit some of the pieces from the Janina Fialkowska concert as well.

Not quite done catching up with my 2019 classical list, but… for those (and they are no doubt few) who dream of a nearly depoliticized, covertly Lutheranized Luigi Nono and Helmut Lachenmann, with an aural palette reminiscent of Cy Twombly's frescoes, Mark Andre's latest Wergo disc, hij is worth your while.

Also really enjoying the Riot Ensemble's Speak, Be Silent, an album that got funded through Kickstarter (!!!), featuring works by five contemporary women composers, almost all of whom I count among my favourites:

https://www.nmcrec.co.uk/huddersfield-contemporary-records/speak-be-silent

(May be of special interest to calz for regional reasons.)

hey i'm an internationalist, pal! but am always very glad when the Huddersfield Music Festival and related releases help raise my appreciation of some more fine music and will have a listen. Much preferable than the region just being just known for grim old satanic textile mills, 70's Smash advert and patrick fucking stewart!

Can't argue with that, calz.

Last one… a cello-based 'rencontre' between Robert Schumann and Tristan Murail. It sets Schumann's more-or-less canonical Fünf Stücke im Volkston and the Fantasiestücke alongside two works for solo cello and one duet for flute and cello (Une lettre de Vincent, i.e. Van Gogh) by Murail. The 'encounter' itself consists of Murail 'rereading' (his term) Schumann's Kinderszenen by freely rearranging them for flute, cello and piano. It all comes together beautifully.

Here's a YT teaser (I'm still astounded that this has become a thing in recent years… pourquoi pas?):

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

Xposts I’m a richter fan but I’ve run out of free NYT articles for the month :(

You may find this useful.

Not a connoisseur by any means and I usually just drop by here for the recs, this is rather a big coincidence. Just yesterday I was listening to Marie Ythier's 'Une Recontre' (found via this label*). It's so beautiful.

*Coincidentally, a Barnsley label!

Will def check out 'Speak, Be Silent', ta!

Well

I was just introduced to Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg-- I'm staying with a violinist who was trained by her-- and I've always hated the Tchaikovsky concerto with a passion until I heard Nadja do it like this, it's like pure comedy, she makes it sound like a Looney Tunes soundtrack and I'm so so into it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQRuH3G-N0I

Not a big fan of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto either (or most of his works, really), although I've managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from it thanks to Vadim Repin's sprightlier-and-gruffer-than-usual performance with Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra. I'll look into Salerno-Sonnenberg's version.

Do you like Sibelius's violin concerto, fgti? To me it sounds like what the Tchaikovsky should have been all along.

Tchaikovsky I love without qualm:
Symphony 1!!!
Symphony 4 if performed fire-spittingly enough
All three Shakespeare tone poems (Romeo, tempest, hamlet)
Sleeping beauty esp if conducted by monteux

I just saw this concert by the Rolston String Quartet at Chamberfest. It was great: I've been a fan of Schafer's 2nd string quartet (with rhythms based on the times intervals between crests of ocean waves on both coasts) since I was given the LP as an undergrad. It was really powerful to see live. Actually got a standing ovation from part of the decent-sized audience. I didn't actually know Beethoven's 7th quartet before but it was really satisfying as well, and nice to close off with some tonal music.

Planning to see Continuum play contemporary pieces combining acoustic and electronic sound tonight: https://www.chamberfest.com/concerts/2019-0804-06/
and three new music concerts tomorrow:
https://www.chamberfest.com/concerts/2019-0805-02/
https://www.chamberfest.com/concerts/2019-0805-03/
https://www.chamberfest.com/concerts/2019-0805-06/

I’m gonna look for an LP rip of that schaefer quartet!

Beethoven #7 is the first “razumovsky” quartet right?

Yes.

This is the LP I have with the Schafer: https://www.discogs.com/Orford-String-Quartet-New-Music-Series-15/release/9356575
There were a bunch of old LPs and cassettes of modern Canadian music lying around in the computer music studio (99 or 00). The prof saw me looking at them with interest and said I could have them. At the time, I was incredulous that people would just give away all this great music. It was also how I got this Viver LP: https://www.discogs.com/fr/Claude-Vivier-Shiraz-Pulau-Dewata-Lonely-Child/release/2390406

R Murray Schafer!
I thought you meant Pierre Schaefer haha
I know next to nothing about either of them, so my interest level is unaffected

Oh ha, did Pierre Schaefer write string quartets??

I picked up the Quatuor Molinari's recording of Schafer's quartets 1-7 back in the early 2000s and never got much out of it. I suspect I was too immature at the time to really tune into his conception of music, which seemed at odds with mine (drama! despair! catharsis!). It's time I revisited them all.

Idk if I do exactly tune into his conception of music as such but I do love this piece. "Requiems for the Party Girl" is cool too.

So, Emmanuel Nunes. I've never quite understood his music, which strikes me as generically forbidding European structuralism, very much unlike that of Claude Vivier, who also studied under Stockhausen but whose every piece exudes invention (to say nothing of fellow pupils such as Grisey, Lachenmann, Rădulescu or Rihm). Still, new Wergo releases are almost always worthwhile, so I decided to give Minnesang (for a capella choir, from 1976) and Musivus (for orchestra, from 2001) a chance. I'm not sure I've cracked the latter, whose mostly impenetrable process-oriented writing is technically flawless but no less trying for it – perhaps because it seeks to impel an experience of spatial disorientation, Gruppen-style – but the former piece, inspired as it is by German medieval troubadours and Stockhausen's proto-New Age Stimmung, is unusually gorgeous, and does in fact bring to mind a less idiosyncratic Vivier, or even Per Nørgård's experiments with the 'infinity series' around the time of his ecstatic Third Symphony, which happens to be more or less contemporaneous (1972-1975) with Minnesang.

been listening to this recently after not being familiar with the pieces. Surprisingly dark at times -- approaching Shostakovich territory.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91J8SY-dIDL._SL1500_.jpg

I really love prokofiev's violin concertos 1 + 2 as well, don't know why i've never round to this one yet.

not really modern, but was listening to a performance of Biber's Rosemary sonatas on R3 earlier from Edinburgh and losing myself in it.

Biber's Rosemary sonatas

Never really thought of him as a cook, but it all makes sense now.

lol can't even blame auto-correct there, am in front of a decent qwerty rn!

i've been listening to Saint-Saëns' Piano Concertos No 3-5 as performed by Alexandre Kantorow w/the Tapiola Sinfonietta. Moments of great beauty and virtuoso playing -- i had heard a piece from it played on the local classical station and immediately had to pull over and SHAZAM it.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81ypYWmQIRL._SS500_.jpg

I also got to see Joshua Bell do the Dvorak concerto at Tanglewood and it just kinda confirmed my feeling that he doesn't really stack up with the other greats of today.

I got to be a fan of saint-saens 5th pno cto recently due to good old public radio. I have no problem with warhorses long as they kick.

Hyperion has released a cd of some neglected piece of mystical exotica by him - can’t remember the piece’s title now but heard that also on MPR and it’s on my to get list

Some good stuff at the New Music Now marathon yesterday: premiere of a new song cycle by Kelly-Marie Murphy, with text drawn from Ethel Rosenberg's letters. I always find her work satisfyingly well-structured. This one packs an emotional punch. Emili Losier seems like a really strong singer: she had to bring out a pretty wide dynamic range with some sustained vibrato pitches in a very high register. I also really enjoyed James Rolfe's raW, another Ottawa composer but one I was unfamiliar with. Reminded me a bit of Andriessen. I picked up this CD: http://www.jamesrolfe.ca/discography/raw-chamber-music-by-james-rolfe/ . Some creative new works from young composers in the first set. Mathilde Cote's piece was probably the standout for me there.

Thanks, I'll look into them. My knowledge of Canadian contemporary music is wanting, alas.

Btw Sund4r (and others), this disc of Estonian works for (electric) guitar(s) and choir is pretty cool:

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2019/May/Estonian_incantations_v1_TOCN0002.htm

Listening to it on Naxos Online now, thanks.

Coming to value Pletnev (as pianist) more and more lately. I’m not sure if he just 100% conducts now but he is absolutely top echelon among modern practitioners imo, right up there with kocsis, moravec, argerich, anyone.

I overdosed on the Russian piano school a while back and haven't revisited it since, but your points of comparison make him seem appealing, to say the least. Which of his recitals have you been listening to?

Live stuff - the Carnegie hall 2cd and an unofficial Wigmore Hall that was doing the file sharing rounds a few years back (Debussy preludes book 1 plus Brahms Handel variations). Also his spectacular studio discs of CPE Bach and Scarlatti.

Added them to my list, thanks.

Btw Sund4r (and others), this disc of Estonian works for (electric) guitar(s) and choir is pretty cool:

This album is beautiful.

Yep. And it's a genuinely unusual mix – I can't think of any other such pieces.

Ha, I actually did play digitally processed electric guitar with the University of Regina choir one time, on a Gregorian chant; it was the conductor's idea. It was fun.

It's on Youtube, though it might not really be a competitor to Estonian Incantations.

many xp

The Sibelius Violin Concerto is unbearably difficult and extremely lovely, yes

I get parts of "Requiem For A Party Girl" in my head like once a week, he said, leaning forward and expaAAAAAaanding his head as he did so

Unfortunately the Tchaik performance I posted (Nadja S-S) was not the version I was thinking of. Me and my friend (violinist Eoin Andersen) were snorting up a lot of Nadja and then he played me this magical version of Tchaik and it wasn't Nadja, I'm still waiting to hear back from him about who it actually was, it was crazy, it sounded like Looney Tunes and it redeemed (for me) a work I've never previously enjoyed

I get parts of "Requiem For A Party Girl" in my head like once a week, he said, leaning forward and expaAAAAAaanding his head as he did so

Actually, this is a good one if you're looking for drama/despair/catharsis.

OK, here's the comedy rendition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kbdy5Ldeo70&app=desktop

I am suddenly the biggest fan of this concerto

Link doesn't work on my end. :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kbdy5Ldeo70

Really guys

Listen to this

Ahhh, yes! I actually have heard this version and it's fucking awesome. I love all musicians involved.

I KNEW it was going to be kopatchinskaja after that last post of yours!

IT'S CRAZY

Slowly but surely catching up with my 2019 list before making my way back to everyone's suggestions upthread… Today I've got:

1. Wilhelmina Smith, works for solo cello by Kaija Saariaho and Esa-Pekka Salonen. I still consider myself a Saariaho fan despite how underwhelming most of her postmillennial output has been. With the exception of Dreaming Chaconne (paraphrasing Giuseppe Colombi's baroque Chiacona, also included here), Smith draws on Saariaho's overtly spectral mid-period (Petals, Sept Papillons, Spins and Spells), which makes for ever-fascinating listening. Salonen, on the other hand, whom I generally appreciate as a conductor, has never impressed me as a composer and none of the pieces on display here strike me as memorable in any way, shape or form: structurally they're easier to keep up with than those of Saariaho, but their neo-classical clarity only serves to underscore how utterly bland and middle-of-the-road the writing is. Nor does setting them beside Saariaho's do Salonen any favours. Ultimately, while Smith is a persuasive musician, I see no reason to pick up this disc over Alexis Descharmes's complete recital or, better yet, Anssi Karttunen's performances, disseminated across several Saariaho monographs.

2. Filigree, chamber music by Hannah Lash, with the composer herself (a harpist) and the JACK Quartet. I got wind of this one because the latter are ever-reliable guides when it comes to contemporary classical. I should probably spend more time with it before dishing out an amateur verdict, but overall I found these pieces quite intriguing. The controlled awkwardness of Frayed, for string quartet, brings to mind John Cage's String Quartet in Four Parts, whereas the Suite (Remembered and Imagined), also for string quartet, is a somewhat eccentric pastiche of polystylism (a pastiche of pastiche?) that variously evokes baroque music, Ligeti, Berg, Shostakovich, Julian Anderson (with whom she studied), and (of course) a pinch of Schnittke, minus the hopeless chaos. Then we have a final work for the JACK Quartet, Pulse-Space, a disquieting, expressionist take on minimalism that brings the disc's emotional heft out into the open. Lastly, Filigree in Textile, a quintet for harp and string quartet, borrows its melodic contours from medieval music. Tapestry metaphorically informs her writing throughout, reminding one of Morton Feldman, but Lash's impulses remain rooted – broadly speaking – in Romanticism: even when the work is at its most gnomic (the second movement, played pizzicato), a yarn is being spun into narrative rather than into an endlessly self-proliferating non-human object that appears to be subject to its own enigmatic laws. Anyhow, I very much enjoyed this and would love to hear more stuff by her.

3. Influences, a highly personal piano recital by the discreet and undersung Tamara Stefanovich (who is married to Pierre-Laurent Aimard, incidentally), featuring works by Bach, Ives, Bartók and Messiaen. As much as I admire Aimard's playing, which is unimpeachably idiomatic in Messiaen and Ligeti (among others), Stefanovich exhibits just as much precision and transparency without giving the impression that she's on the outside looking in. Her playing is a paradox (just the way I like it): ardent and dispassionate, mystical and analytical, Stoic and Epicurean, etc. This works especially well in Ives's First Sonata, which I'd never quite gotten before hearing her perform it, but Bartók's Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, Messiaen's Cantéyodjayâ and Bach's Aria variata alla maniera italiana also benefit from her impossible sense of synthesis. She makes the strongest possible case for these lesser-known works by well-known composers.

I really like Lash's Sonata for Harp, released on Bandcamp in 2016. I think we talked about it a bit at the time in the context of 'neo-Romanticism'. Just a well-crafted composition written solidly in a traditional form using a modern but tonal harmonic language and some asymmetrical metres, without any of the bombast that usually comes with 'neo-Romanticism'; she played it sensitively and the recording sounded beautiful. I'll definitely look out for this collaboration with JACK. Sounds like she might be pushing the envelope a little more with some of this stuff.

You're right, I'd completely forgotten. I'll have to listen to the Sonata for Harp again in light of the disc with the JACK Quartet.

Speaking of which, Saariaho's Harp Concerto is quite good. It's on a recent Ondine disc with True Fire, a decent song cycle for baritone and orchestra she wrote for the great Gerald Finley, and Ciel d'hiver, a rather more featureless tone poem that exemplifies most of what I dislike about her late style.

Oh, and on the subject of canonical contemporary Nordic composers, Whirl's World, Per Nørgård's latest Dacapo disc, showcasing four chamber works, including the Suite he drew from Babette's Feast, is top drawer stuff. But then again I love his music almost indiscriminately.

Listening to Jean Barraqué's Piano Sonata again for the nth time. I still have no idea why this work is supposed to be so compelling and important.

This is the Saariaho harp concerto?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0LbM7Y9P6Y
https://saariaho.org/works/trans/

Yep.

As expected, Aki Takahashi's recording of Morton Feldman's For Bunita Marcus is perfectly idiomatic.

Oh, I've seen that piece performed live at the Music Gallery in Toronto in the early to mid-00s. (Don't remember the pianist.) I remember it being a lovely, meditative experience.

I saw Takahashi perform it in New York in the early 2000s sometime. It was pretty amazing.

A quick ilx search revealed who the pianist was:

I just got back from seeing Brigitte Poulin play Morton Feldman's For Bunita Marcus at the Music Gallery. It was a very serene 90 minutes contemplating the complexities of life while picking out patterns of light and shade in the stained glass in my doped-up haze while the sparse piano tones rang into each other. I listened to a Derek Bailey/Evan Parker concert from 1980 too today BTW. Also Sonny Sharrock, the Beatles, Funkadelic, De La Soul, and Beck
― sund4r subramanian (sund4r), samedi 24 mai 2003 21:20 (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sund4r, what do you make of this stuff? I'm curious…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBaXl3xuumE

I''ll listen tonight!

I liked that a lot. Pretty impressive how they managed to sustain my interest over 18 and a half minutes of noise. I found Prins's sounds really appealing and there was a lot of very effective variation and development in timbre, texture, and dynamics. Dramatic. Interesting that, judging by how intently they seem to be reading their scores, I'm guessing it's fairly strictly notated? I'd be interested to know more about what the score is like and what sorts of processing are going on. Looks like Deutsch might be using the same Behringer MIDI foot controller I have.

I'll give it another shot then. I listened to it yesterday as part of Prins's Kairos monograph and while I really admire his sense of texture, I struggled to make out even the least iota of a continuous form, although I wasn't listening very intently, either. I don't get that as much with, say, Richard Barrett, of whom he reminds me in some ways.

Continuous form = rockist

Seriously, if I hadn't seen them reading sheet music, I would have guessed it was a free improvisation (and I enjoy a lot of free improv). It definitely doesn't have the kind of evident sectional form that you find in Barrett's transmission (which, possibly ironically, does include improvised sections). However, I felt like the guitar and live electronic parts were conversing effectively. I also have a pretty high tolerance for guitar/electronics, though.

lol then this can only mean one thing: Stefan Prins is an arch-poptimist.

Speaking of music for guitar, you may also be interested in this album (which I haven't heard yet):

http://hundredyearsgallery.co.uk/refracted-resonance/

Oh, thanks. Tellur is a great piece.

I take it back. Not I was really compelling the second time around, no less than the rest of that Kairos disc. I need to watch the accompanying DVD as well.

Started reading Marilyn Nonken’s The Spectral Piano. Really good so far.

That sounds interesting.

I'm still listening to Gann's Hyperchromatica all the time in the van. It's starting to turn into comfort food.

Thanks for the heads up, Jon. I've added it to my reading list.

As expected, Aki Takahashi's recording of Morton Feldman's For Bunita Marcus is perfectly idiomatic.

― pomenitul, Thursday, August 15, 2019 11:00 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

really love this, thanks.

apparently my jam is lengthy motionless piano works

Check out Musica Callada by Mompou in that case

cosign!

wow otm. I uh, might have to try n play some of these.

On the topic of Spanish composers, I saw an interesting and provocative talk by Stephen Goss on Sunday titled "The Guitar and the Politics of Nostalgia: the mutability of history through an
Arcadian retrotopia." He began by talking about how right-wing political movements (MAGA, "Taking Back Control") often construct myths of a glorious past (an "Arcadian retrotopia") and then connected this "politics of nostalgia" to the history of the classical guitar: first, its anachronistic presence in 19th c English and French literary and artistic depictions of medieval Spain (apparently weirdly regarded as exotic, 'Oriental', and primitive at the time) and then, the way it became reappropriated as a symbol of Spanish nationalist identity in the 20th century, especially in the Franco regime after the Civil War. Rodrigo in particular was discussed as a (hyper-conservative, neo-Romantic) composer whose work was used this way. The whole Segovia project was also examined: the way he virtually constructed a 'classical' repertoire for the instrument by commissioning this stable of conservative Spanish (sometimes Latin American) composers to write neo-Romantic music, in which he was highly interventionist, and commissioned transcriptions of canonical works for other instruments. A quick search afterwards did reveal that we now know Segovia to have privately been a strong supporter of Franco, something I might have figured out if I'd thought about it for 10 minutes: https://books.google.ca/books?id=ORsxDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA92&dq=andres%20segovia%20politics%20franco&hl=fr&pg=PA92#v=onepage&q=andres%20segovia%20politics%20franco&f=false

Speaking of reactionary neo-Romantics, I tried listening to Rolf Martinsson's latest BIS monograph, Into Eternity, and was tempted to post about it in the rolling worst 2019 music thread. Tbf, the works themselves range from 2012 to 2015 and Martinsson studied under Brian Ferneyhough – neither of which you'd guess based on the sub-Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer orchestral writing and programmatic attempt at erasing the 20th century from living memory (except for Strauss and Mahler and maybe Florent Schmitt). I'd be curious to hear some of his earlier works, which are reportedly arch-modernist in idiom.

My curiosity didn't really last more than 3m into a Youtube of the piece "Into Eternity" (and I like Rodrigo). Listening to the new Hannah Lash now.

I like Rodrigo too btw.

Also on the neo-Romantic end of things and very much within the Vaughan Williams tradition of British pastoralism (although Bryars and Skempton spring to mind as well), for which I usually have little to no patience, Edmund Finnis's The Air, Turning, his debut disc for NMC, is really quite gorgeous, as though Richard Skelton were no longer an outsider, able to thoroughly draw upon the institutional resources that be (a full orchestra, various well-known chamber ensembles, the inexplicably trendy Víkingur Ólafsson, etc.). Late Sibelius also pointedly looms in the background (the UK really has the hots for him, not that I mind), including his less facilely sublime moods (the 7th Symphony, The Tempest, etc.), which I love best. And the solo violin piece Elsewhere wouldn't be out of place on a recital featuring Sciarrino's Sei capricci, all frayed threads and reverberating glissandos, so there's no outright rejection of modernism here, just a single-minded commitment to Beauty via less old-fashioned means. Amping up the tension a wee bit would probably suit my preferences better, but this is a fine beginning.

inexplicably trendy Víkingur Ólafsson

nothing inexplicable, he's a cutie

Heh, fair enough.

Maybe it's just me but Terry Riley's Sun Rings (for the Kronos Quartet) is fucking awful despite its appealing premise. Meaningless gesture after meaningless gesture ad infinitum. At least Salome Dances for Peace had some memorable movements.

Tbf the final two episodes, 'Venus Upstream', played con moto perpetuo, and 'One Earth, One People, One' are at least somewhat salvageable.

Maybe it's just me but Peter Mattei's recording of Winterreise with Lars David Nilsson is fucking incredible.

Gave a good listen at a high enough volume to Lash's "Frayed" from the JACK quartet disc this morning and it sounded really striking.

I like Winterreise a lot so I'll listen to the one you recommend.

I love Winterreise but it's another month or so before I allow myself to listen to it. Bookmarked tho

Mattei's Winterreise isn't the grimmest or most frostbitten (barring a handful of nameless self-parodic attempts, I'm tempted to grant that title to Matthias Goerne's first recording with Graham Johnson) but it's quite theatrical and isn't afraid to go for broke. Mostly I just love Mattei's voice – his disc of Mahler's orchestral Lieder with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra also blew me away when it came out four years ago. But yeah, Winterreise in any way, shape or form just guts you.

I saw Roderick Williams and Christopher Glyn performing an English translation a couple of years ago and altho I have my doubts about lyrics in translation this was really well done, it worked for and Williams is a lovely, intimate singer

I've come around – there's no cause to shoot such attempts down on principle. Looks like a recording is available, so I'll check it out soon.

You're not wrong about Mattei's voice. I'm liking this a lot four tracks in. The recording is also very pleasant-sounding.

Don’t forget Hans Zender’s ‘composed interpretation’ of Winterreise when you really want to flip your wig.

All rankings are worthless and arbitrary, etc., etc., no doubt about it, but it's still an amusing exercise that contemporary classical isn't often afforded:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/12/best-classical-music-works-of-the-21st-century

16 of the 25 greatest classical works of the 21st century were written by anglophone composers. 🤔

I was scrolling through the list getting angrier and angrier that they left off 'Let Me Tell You'... Which of course was also written for, and after an idea by, an anglophone performer.

Thanks: stuff to check out. But omg their critics love vocal music. The top 7 are either operas or song cycles (and I think six of those are operas)!

That might partly explain the anglophone slant (?), although tbf a 64% anglo share is much lower than what you would find on a list of greatest pop or jazz releases in an English-language paper. Tbh, the majority of the contemporary composers I like probably are anglophones, tbh. Always happy to learn more.

But an even greater percentage of the new notated music I see consists primarily of solo or chamber music (or of makeshift versions of larger ensembles, e.g. guitar orchestras). Who tf writes operas??

I think a lot of people write chamber operas? I liked the discussion I saw recently of what was the best long full orchestra piece, 45 min+. It was kinda hard to make a list (though Andrew Normans Play is obviously missing from the Guardian list).

which you'd guess based on the sub-Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer orchestral writing and programmatic attempt at erasing the 20th century from living memory (except for Strauss and Mahler and maybe Florent Schmitt). I'd be curious to hear some of his earlier works, which are reportedly arch-modernist in idiom.

― pomenitul

fucking hell, florent schmitt is about the only composer i'd argue _should_ be erased from living memory (not for artistic reasons, admittedly)

I'd be happy to erase him from living memory and consign his works to anonymity. They would still be played but no one would know who wrote them. One can dream…

The proms had a new choral piece by John Luther Adams, btw. It's for 600+ singers. Not as good as Canticles of the Holy Wind to me, a bit kitschy, but it's also quite beautiful. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00088y5

I'd be happy to erase him from living memory and consign his works to anonymity. They would still be played but no one would know who wrote them. One can dream…

― pomenitul

I actually have been thinking further on him since your mention of him and I have further thoughts, which I don't have time to write up right now. I will attempt later.

Take your time – this is an adagio thread for the most part.

Who tf writes operas?

My inkling is that they're more popular on this side of the pond.

i know a bunch of opera writers but i think that's a lol nyc thing

wait lol the david moss in olga neuwirth's lynch opera is the same david moss who I have demolishing the human throat on an old LP with Tom Cora? Man I totally forgot about him! Downloading!

I wrote something up today during a catastrophic system outage but I feel like leaving it more as background for myself.

I kind of take a different tack towards the issue than you. I think Florent Schmitt, the man, should be remembered, but if given the opportunity I think that I should destroy every note that he ever wrote, as a counter-proposal to the theory that one can "separate the art from the artist".

I'm all for such experiments.

Obv someone is writing these operas but ime most composers don't have as much access to orchestras or operas, especially if they are younger/less-connected/less-conservative, so it's not where I usually see the most activity in new music. I'll freely admit, though, that I don't spend that much time seeking out new operas and mostly prefer solo or chamber music anyway, so my gauge could be off.

In any event, I'm listening to Let Me Tell You for the first time and liking it fairly well so far.

The notion that operas are, well, the magna opera of the classical tradition as a whole irritates me to no end (like when literature is assumed to be synonymous with narrative, at the expense of poetry), so my go-to stance is correctively anti-operatic. Which isn't to say that I dislike the form (I am currently listening to Pascal Dusapin's Penthesilea and am finding it quite excellent so far) but, like you, I tend to prefer solo and chamber music as well.

Seeing Barbara Hannigan sing Let Me Tell You from the third row was one of the bigger musical experiences I've had lately.

Prism II, new ECM from Danish String Quartet, has Well Tempered Clavier, Beethoven's String Quartet #13 and String Quartet #3 by Alfred Schnittke (who i won't pretend I know). seems lovely on first spin

Yeah, it's wonderful. The first instalment is worth hearing as well.

Oh, didn't know it was out yet! Yeah, really looking forward to hearing that. Also, as I'm bragging about concerts I've been to, hearing the last night of the Beethoven cycle the Danish String Quartet did last fall was pretty incredible. Even if 16 is a bit of an anticlimax coming after 14.

Would anyone be up for a poll of the Guardian list, btw? I only really know three of the pieces, but I'd try and check some more of it.

Not crazy about most of their picks tbh but why not? I look forward to Noodle Vague's spinoff.

Yeah, that would definitely be the best part.

Anyways, I'll try and set it up later.

Sounds good. Thanks!

i don't know how i'd go about generating the entries for a spin-off because there's no equivalency to sales, except obviously i'd add Gaz's Quatuor pour la fin du Trumps

Make it all André Rieu, Max Richter and John Williams. Oh, and Sting.

Trans Siberian imo

And “Two Steps to Hell” or whatever those trailer guys call themselves

Number one is clearly Hans Zimmer's soundtrack to Dunkirk.

Yesssss! Two Steps from Hell iirc.

xp

Come to think of it, Jeremy Soule would also be a good fit.

True but not lol enough

You're right, not to mention needlessly edgy in light of recent events.

Top opera = The Black Parade

Here's the crutch we needed:

https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/the-official-biggest-selling-classical-albums-of-the-last-25-years-in-the-uk-revealed__20262/

Maybe too raucous, actually. Not calm and relaxing like classical music is supposed to be. xp

Ah, that chart: that's real music right there.

At a first pass, I'm tempted to go with The Priests.

bingo

Never forget:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVAp7e5zFaM

Oh look, Norman Lebrecht has an opinion again. He disagrees with The Guardian's top 25, which only overlaps with his own top 20 by about 8 composers.

https://slippedisc.com/2019/09/best-works-of-the-21st-century/

Poll: New Cat Power

wtf...

Credit where due, lebrecht’s 20th century music guide was a helpful starting point for me when I started digging in in 1996, but he really is a crank.

Titanic is legit the best thing on that linked top 20 (tbh despite some hella cornball opuses Horner was the real deal and certainly makes most film composers working now look like ants)

I really enjoyed this performance of Debussy's Six Epigraphes antiques:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08WYwr4eUsg

Giving concerts this week with some of the best choral music I have ever sung. Or at least, it's some of the most fun to sing ever, I don't know how it feels to listen to. Per Nørgårds Wie Ein Kind. Listen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Lvkc0I4Ak
So much fun. I want to learn it by heart and sing it at bars.

Just listened to the new recording of Aaron Jay Kernis's Flute Concerto, which is pretty fun and energetic. Three of the four movements are based on old dance rhythms (barcarole, pavan, tarantelle) and the other is a pastorale. I'd want to listen more to break down more of what's going on harmonically but it was an enjoyable casual first listen. Kernis credits Jethro Tull as an influence on the fourth movement! Idk how well I heard it.

I just ordered the Philip Thomas 5CD box of Morton Feldman solo piano music from the Another Timbre label and they sent me a download link for a FLAC file of Triadic Memories, which is 90 minutes long and thus split between discs 3 and 4. So they're good folks and I recommend purchasing this set from them if you want one. (It's actually a little cheaper on their website than on Bandcamp.)

It’s excellent, but I think I’m burnt out on Feldman at this point.

https://jessicapavone.bandcamp.com/album/brick-and-mortar

this is a rather beautiful two violins, two violas quartet.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Btw, Hannes Kerschbaumer's first Kairos monograph is thoroughly worth investigating as well:

https://www.kairos-music.com/cds/0015060kai

'Schraffur' is an interesting term and a very apt description of his sound world. I'm not well versed in artistic techniques at all but it apparently means 'hatching' in English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatching

I have no idea why Andris Nelsons is touted as the greatest living conductor, but his Beethoven cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic is a solid return to the MOR approach of the 1960s and 1970s, somewhere between Böhm, Szell and Karajan, I guess, which isn't a bad thing, since it comes with the added benefit of modern engineering.

i saw the pavone quartet live last week; i may be a rube but it was so minimal and muted (and weirdly lit! they played in the dark with only stand lights) that i made at least two "are they done tuning yet?" gag whispers to my plus one. the moments where melody crested up to swirl about a bit and then get sucked back down were quite nice but after forty minutes it didn't offer a lot more than what i heard in the first five.

I'll give that Nelsons set a try; the only Beethoven cycle I own is the Chailly box on Decca, and that gets pretty symphonic power metal at times. I might like something a little more settled.

Yeah, I don't get Chailly's aesthetic at all. Abbado's second (live) BPO set has similar aims and blows it out of the water.

Fun excerpt on how 'out' Bach was in his own time, from Gioia's new book:

“They never learned about Bach pulling a knife on a fellow musician during a street fight. They never heard about his drinking exploits.” https://t.co/4t8HuyaorK

— Jeff Beck (@jeffnbeck) October 16, 2019

Heh, I had no idea.

Cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir is giving a solo performance at Scandinavia House in NYC on Thursday night. I'm thinking about going; I interviewed her back in June, and her album Vernacular is great.

Album was alright, a little too conservative for my money.

Anybody interested in a series of decade-by-decade polls, starting in the 1800s? Just the works, curated by yours truly – we can discuss our preferred recordings as we go along. I was initially planning on doing albums, but it's too much of a hassle in the context of classical music.

Yes me interested

Well, as long as there's two of us… :)

I'll get started on it very soon.

I'll vote as well, if I know the things :)

It'll be chockfull of 19th and early 20th century warhorses. It's gonna get trickier post-1945, but that's just part of the fun.

Starting point? 1820s?

Here for it, mostly to learn

I say we start in the 1800s, lest we miss out on Beethoven’s middle period.

Ballot polls or poll threads?

We did this once, for anyone who missed it: POLLERO!: ILM's Top 100 Notated Pieces of Music Since 1890

Oh, cool, I had no idea. Thanks.

I was thinking poll threads (one per decade), which I assume we haven't done before.

Nice idea. I'm happy to be schooled.

Poll threads sound great. I was a little nervous about doing that many ballot polls. :)

Understandably so! I'm going to do it pfunkboy/Michael B-style, which means there are bound to be some grave omissions, for which I'll profusely apologize in each thread.

I have to say, I mostly know about choral works...

Starting with 1800-1810 is fine by me! Op. 32 is one of my favorite things Beethoven ever did. I was just thinking that once you get to the 1820s you get some Beethoven vs Schubert suspense whereas for the 00s and 10s you've got Beethoven and... everyone else (well Rossini tbf)

You're right, of course. Beethoven will undoubtedly dwarf everyone else in the 00s but papa Haydn was still around (The Seasons, the final two Masses) and some minor masterpieces were penned around that time, such as Boieldieu's Harp Concerto. I'll try my best to make it a little less obvious…

I greatly anticipate this educational experience; I look forward to campaigning heavily for Quartet for the end of time 15 polls in

I suspect there's be a good excuse to listen to the late quartets again. And then I'll definitely vote for Symphonie Fantastique :)

Best 'first symphony' in classical music history tbh

In case you missed it:

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1800s (the decade, that is. Also, this is Totally-Not-a-Middle-Period-Beethoven-Poll)

OK wow I just paid attention to Poulenc for the first time today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V87wGyfUQiQ

the 1810s thread has me digging into augustin hadelich. he's far too "shreddy" for my tastes. the recording of ligeti's violin concerto from this year is not bad- ligeti being a fairly astringent composer anyway - but this new cadenza by thomas ades, what the fuck, it is so bad and not in keeping with the rest of the piece. well i guess one can just stop listening after the fourth movement...

special mention of note has to go out to the really hideous cover art as well

Shreddy, really? I don't get that sense from Hadelich's Paganini at all. If anything, he gives the Caprices their due as proper music, which may or may not be a good thing.

Agree about the Adès cadenza, however. I could do without Adès's music altogether tbh, it's thoroughly mediocre.

love this Henriëtte Bosmans string quartet

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

Oh, thanks. I hadn't heard of her before but that is a nice discovery.

getting unreasonably obsessed with kurt atterberg's piano concerto

I listened to a set of his symphonies a few years ago and found them unmemorably conservative compared to, say, Stenhammar's 2nd, but I'd be curious to hear his Piano Concerto.

it doesn't really do anything novel, just a nice bit of post-romanticism

CBC's favourite Canadian classical albums of 2019: https://www.cbc.ca/music/our-20-favourite-canadian-classical-albums-of-2019-1.5335275?fbclid=IwAR01WQkjnQNtjLetJWsIk4KdMdpEMzChySg1jo8FFg9MWoOiJa0zovIJqjU

I wasn't going to post about Cicchillitti-Cowan since they are friends/colleagues but, yes, the album is really good. The Stafylakis piece actually integrates some metal influences into classical guitar music. Emily Shaw's Vespers and Cowan's Arctic Sonata also v good classical guitar albums from Ottawa/Montreal from this year.

Thanks, I'll check 'em out.

That Lisiecki and Abdrazakov are Canadian is news to me.

Lisiecki is from Calgary. Abdrakazakov seems to be Russian - they're probably counting that one bc of Orchestre Métropolitain?

Oh right, I misread (see ILX discussion about reading comprehension in Quebec).

Haha

RIP Mariss Jansons.

I don’t have a ton of his work in my collection but his LSO Live Mahler 6th is among the very best of that symphony.

His Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff box sets contain some of his very finest recordings – they've helped me gain a newfound appreciation for these two composers, whose music I otherwise find problematic (not in the modern, woke sense, mind you). He was also an excellent accompanist (see the Grieg/Schumann Piano Concertos with Leif Ove Andsnes) and some of his less well-known projects, such as Johan Svendsen's Symphonies 1 & 2 with the Oslo Philharmonic, are as persuasive as it gets. I was never wholly won over by his much-touted way with Shostakovich, however.

Alex Ross's preliminary EOY list:

https://www.therestisnoise.com/2019/11/preliminary-end-of-year-list.html

We don't really see eye to eye (hear ear to ear?) but the Danish Quartet's Prism II and the Riot Ensemble's Speak, Be Silent both deserve to place. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm burnt out on Feldman, found Zosha di Castro's monograph to be full of hotshot smugness and have yet to hear George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence (I'm generally a big fan, even though I'm less interested in his operas).

I’ll definitely plan to hear that Honeck/Pittsburgh Bruckner 9th - I cant think of a better US conductor-orchestra combo on record this decade

NAC in Ottawa commissioning a Philip Glass work in honour of Peter Jennings: https://abcnews.go.com/US/philip-glass-write-orchestral-work-honor-news-anchor/story?id=67679791

shuddering with pleasure at the idea of Philip Glass composing 30 second stingers for news broadcasts

went to the guggenheim last night for Tigue and Roomful of Teeth and Caroline Shaw presented a new piece that was as lovely as anything I've heard all year.

This is how workers at Opéra de Paris go on strike (sound on, please). pic.twitter.com/SN682BM6ze

— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) December 18, 2019

PROMO: The latest cd from my choir is out now: https://open.spotify.com/album/4k1FnvR7AIzP2IQCfrFEoz?si=gqG6dtAaTi-2UpcRWuY6Bw Danish choir music, amateur choir, but the Vagn Holmboe is pretty great, at least.

'Grats! I always have time for more Holmboe.

New thread for a new year: Rolling Classical 2020