an attempt at a general "What are you currently digging re. classical music" thread

Okay so this is really just an excuse for me to pontificate on composers I'm enjoying at the moment, as I usually listen to just one exclusively for a week or two to get a good feeling for their style.

I've been listening to this set of orchestral pieces by Hindemith:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4131GR7WV9L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Lots of fun. Only occasionally does he bog down in "let's see how much I can milk from this single theme" stylistic exercises, but several pieces (Nobilissima Visione, the Op. 50 Konzertmusik) are very near being great. Even when the musical material is slightly less-inspiring his orchestration and unique harmonic language (tonal afaik, but extremely extended) at least make it *sound* interesting.

Mathis der Maler symphony is great.

Nearly everything by Arthur Kreiger.
This is the best currently available collection; a few other pieces are scattered across compilations.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41K5W0FG79L._SS500_.jpg
Meeting Places

This recent collection of pieces by David Rakowski.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51EqHtb8DfL._SS500_.jpg
Winged Contraption

I've been digging Ligeti's Chamber Concerto, Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte and Purcell odes.

On the radio I heard Verdi's string quartet, and I thought that was really good.

i just keep listening to more and more brahms. like a crazy person or something.

i was gonna start a rolling classical thread. glad someone did it. cheers!

Paul, the samples on that Rakowski disc sound really interesting. I'd never heard of him until now.

I have been listening to Winterreise a lot lately.

I've been listening to Xenakis a fair bit. Planning on going on a Messaien kick.

bought a ton of records for the store and ended up with, like, a couple hundred albums that are all classical piano. really been enjoying them. i'll post here when i hear things i really like.

Kancheli - Abii Ne Viderem
Ligeti - Piano Etudes

Rebecca Clarke / Sonata for viola & piano
Schubert / Piano Quintet in A major (Trout)
Schnittke / Concerto grosso no. 3
Florence Price / Mississippi River Suite
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich / 'Lament' for solo piano
Sylvie Bodorová / Terezín Ghetto Requiem

+1 on those Ligeti Piano Etudes.

Just spent a month with Sibelius Symphonies and their scores. Unbearable to see how simple his writing really is... so precise.

I'm really happy people are actually responding to this thread btw.

Owen, which is your favorite? I keep vacillating between the 4th and the 6th. Both are arguably his "darkest" pieces. I won't say much about him other than I want The Oceanides played at my funeral.

I forgot:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51BZTYJ2MPL._SS400_.jpg

Gurdjieff/de Hartmann: Music for the Piano, Vol. 2: Music of the Sayyids and the Dervishes

and also, the symphonies of Antanas Rekašius.

I'm not sure this classifies as "classical" in the sense you mean, but in fall -- winter, I listen to Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego's version of The Sinking Of The Titanic all the time.

I had an adolescent crush on #1 so that will forever be my favourite, but as a study piece I thought 4th was crazily informative.

Talk to me about Rekašius. I heard one thing once and it sounded like clarinetists warming up.

Mm, Villa-Lobos's been capturing my senses lots, lately. Yeah sure, Bachianas Brasileiras, mainly, but also some other chamber music pieces of his...

Ligeti - last night, CD 5 of The Ligeti Project series (Tledec/ Warner): Aventures, Nouvelles Aventures, Artikulation for tape, Eight pieces from "Musica ricercata", etc.

Also the recently-relseased-on-ReR ondes Martenot-piano music album: pieces by Messiaen , Charpentier, Murail.

Sibelius is my favorite composer for orchestra. Of the symphonies 4, 6, and 7 share favorite status about equally, along with Tapiola, the Tempest music, and the so-called 'Lemminkainen Suite'.

When I first listened to the 6th and Tapiola abt 13 years ago there was an intense sens of recognition like 'this is my music. I can live here.'

Scott I am glad you are on a brahms jag. I go on those, usually within the inexhaustible realm of his chamber music. And please do post about your new solo piano trove. That's probably my biggest area of concentration in classical music.

xpost you must hear the series of Choros!!! A set of these has been recently been completed on the BIS label. Especially in the longer Choros installments, Villa-Lobos really goes nuts, some of the craziest folk-modernist composing I've ever heard.

Re: Rakowski, glad to have introduced his music to someone. He's a Boston-based composer with a great sense of rhythm and sonority. His Piano Etudes (which currently outnumber Ligeti's) are also recommended.

brahms killing me most recently: complete trios for piano,violin,cello (isotomin-stern-rose trio. vinyl set.) (i find myself saying: um, did i just play the first side of this record five times in a row? maybe i should try the other side!)

Digging all the classical samples mentioned in this blog post. Odd things -- e.g., interviews, movie soundtracks -- function as gateways into classical music for me.

xpost The trios are soooooo awesome. Have a listen to the Supraphon recordings by the Suk Trio if you come across them.

ive realised just how brilliant the brahms symphonies are recently. took me a good long while (except for no 4 which i have loved for years).

xpost Alan Gilbert seems cool. I heard him conduct Mahler's 1st in Central Park during the summer and I liked his interpretation a lot. The final movement got rained/lightninged out but you can hardly complain about the 'storm' movement of a symphony summoning a real storm. Will probably get his Stockholm Mahler 9th from emusic soon.

I'm still stuck on Brahms 1st whenever I reach for symphonic Brahms. Such a great opening. I hear clear pre-echoes of Mahler in this piece (even though Mahler claimed to have no use whatsoever for Brahms).

xpost. re: Villa-Lobos "choros" - yeah thanks for the reminder, Elric/Jon. Must listen to that, certainly. Havn't so far.

okay, in honor of this thread i just threw on some liszt piano stuff. dgg boxed set of annees de pelerinage. never heard it before. (lazar berman on piano.)

with all that piano stuff i bought came a buttload of rachmaninoff. never really listened to the rach that much, but i think i own just about everything he ever wrote now!

I've said on more than one occasion that the Brahms Piano Trio No. 1 (in its revised version) is my "favorite tonal piece". The best recorded performance in my view is Isaac Stern / Pablo Casals / Dame Myra Hess -- although the slower tempos can take some getting used to.

Re: Rakowski, glad to have introduced his music to someone. He's a Boston-based composer with a great sense of rhythm and sonority. His Piano Etudes (which currently outnumber Ligeti's) are also recommended.

― Monophonic Spree (Paul in Santa Cruz), Thursday, December 3, 2009 10:53 PM (25 minutes ago)

I know a 30-second sample isn't exactly representative, but I immediately thought "Boulez" when I heard it. P'raps you can verify/debunk this.

Allclassical.org

This is the only radio I listen to while driving. I've heard so many great pieces on there.

They ran a fantastic Ravel Daphne & Chloe the other night.

This one: http://www.amazon.com/Johannes-Brahms-Sextet-Piano-Trio/dp/B0000029LE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1259882547&sr=8-1

xpost

I think the Rakowski <-> Boulez association is a bit misleading. Rakowski has closer ties to American post-serialists like Martino and Imbrie, with a clearer sense of pulse and syncopations that make some contact with jazz (versus the metrical obscurity of some Boulez). You don't find things like Boulez's radically volatile dynamics (variation between loud and soft on a note-by-note basis) or the sometimes pointillistic textures, or the resistance to melody-plus-accompaniment textures. But Rakowski's harmonic sense is as refined as Boulez, and he has a similar knack for effective orchestration.

Scott I am a molelike obsessive when it comes to Liszt's ocean-sized piano oeuvre. So so much to discover with him. That Lazar Berman box is a good intro to the Annees De Pelerinage. Berman is especially good in 'Year One'. In Year Two I like Brendel a little more. Follow up Year One with Year Three if you want to hear the stark difference between wide-eyed young philosopher Liszt and weird, bitter yet beatific late Liszt.

There's another not-uncommon Lazar Berman 2LP on Columbia/Melodiya of Liszt's famous 'Transcendental Etudes'-- quite a raging roaring performance if you want to hear the hyper-virtuoso flip side of the Liszt coin.

T**t-- start with the longer Choros first (can't remember which numbers in the series exactly) if you wanna hear the wildest stuff.

They're on emusic, FYI.

'key! Thanx. :)

Oh-also: Bach pieces arranged by John Lewis, for MJQ, I've enjoyed greatly too. Think that counts as classicak, too. At least partly.

("classickal", was wot i meant)

I think the Rakowski <-> Boulez association is a bit misleading. Rakowski has closer ties to American post-serialists like Martino and Imbrie, with a clearer sense of pulse and syncopations that make some contact with jazz (versus the metrical obscurity of some Boulez). You don't find things like Boulez's radically volatile dynamics (variation between loud and soft on a note-by-note basis) or the sometimes pointillistic textures, or the resistance to melody-plus-accompaniment textures. But Rakowski's harmonic sense is as refined as Boulez, and he has a similar knack for effective orchestration.

― Monophonic Spree (Paul in Santa Cruz), Thursday, December 3, 2009 11:29 PM

Ah okay thanks. I'm actually bent on exploring that generation of US composers (Carter, Babbitt, Martino, Shapey, maybe Wuorinen should be included, et al) at the mo'. One hears this stuff called "academic" and "dry" all the time so I take it as a challenge to prove them wrong.

AFA Boulez goes I tend to like his sensory overload early-mid pieces (that would fit your description) like Structures and le marteau more than his friendlier new stuff like Répons (though "explosante-fixe" might be my absolute favorite Boulez).

Pangs of regret dept-- There was an all-Kajia Saariaho concert at Columbia's Miller Theater a couple weeks ago in their Composer Portraits series and I couldn't go. So bummed. I think she's my favorite working composer right now (of those I've heard). Any fans of Saariaho up in this piece?

xpost explosante-fixe is v v beautiful.

Big fan of those same American composer you mention! Mel Powell is especially bright star in the same constellation. (And I sort of lump Wolpe in, too, although he's sort of European?)

And my Boulez picks are pretty much the same as yours -- with a soft spot especially for the first two piano sonatas.

My fave Saariaho is Lichtbogen, although I've just now realised I haven't heard a note she's written since 2000. Any recently highlights I should seek out?

As seldom as I get the urge to actually throw on any of my Boulez discs, I would go see a performance of any of his big pieces in a hot minnit. Also, I really want to see the guy conduct before he can't any longer...

xpost I really like Graal-Theatre, which I THINK is after 2000...

Owen, re: Rekašius. Haha I think what you heard might have been "Still not enough" (Saxophone concerto) which mostly fits that description and is of course awesome. Here's an okayish rip of his 7th Symphony, which is one of my favorites, esp. the 3rd movement:

Symphony No. 7, Op. 31 (1987) 'In Memoriam' (perf. by The Lithuanian Philharmonic Orchestra, Juozas Domarkas conducting)

A weirdly translated interview:
http://www.bruceduffie.com/rekasius.html

Here's a very sad article on his death:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3168842.stm

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41W5z6LJetL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Really enjoying Sergio Fiorentino right now.

Also, I really want to see the guy conduct before he can't any longer...

I really regret that I won't be moving to Chicago in time to see him do The Firebird. I just hope there's a "next time". :\

"There's another not-uncommon Lazar Berman 2LP on Columbia/Melodiya of Liszt's famous 'Transcendental Etudes'"

i have this! haven't played it yet. i'll play it tommorow at the store.

hope nobody minds if i occasionally babble about the sonics/sound of my vinyl. i've got about a thousand classical albums and every once in a while i'll pull something out that has me slack-jawed and drooling. right now that is a columbia 360 sound stereo pressing of bernstein/stern doiing bartok's two rhapsodies for violin and orchestra and berg's violin concerto. not only is the music amazing, but gaaaaaaaaaaaaaa the recording is just staggering. the brightness of stern's violin in tandem with the new york phil...if you ever wonder why people still shell out big bucks for vinyl, well, here ya go. and its not a big bucks album. but its worth its weight in gold.

That's interesting cuz those 60s ny phil columbia recordings took a looong time (i.e. many remastering iterations) before sounding good on CD. As recently as like 2000 they were still putting out newly-remastered bernstein/nypo CDs which did not sound great.

The early generation CDs (like mid 80s) of classical Columbia stuff are some of the worst sounding classical CDs imo.

go to the source! the berg is friggin' transcendent!

who DID know how to transfer analog recordings to digital successfully in the 80's anyway? maybe the japanese...

I got interested in the '30s and '40s music by Gian Francesco Malipiero and bought one of the Naxos CDs that has a couple of his symphonies from that period on it (<a href="http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.570879";>this one, with Symphonies 1 & 2</a>).

Also bought old Nonesuch LP with madrigals from Monteverdi's Book VIII a week or so ago.

I left a lot of classical vinyl behind when i moved from the South to NYC in '03, sigh...

Anyway, haha I knew you would have that Transcendental Etudes 2LP! Yeah bump that shit in your store. It will annoy people! Filling out Side 4 on that is the Rhapsodie Espagnole, an absolutely preposterous, outrageous barnstormer in Liszt's best freakout mode, and that recording of it is one of the most notorious.

Berman died a couple of years ago... he never really recorded regularly after the 70s when he was first let loose from the USSR and was an exciting novelty in the west.

xp I fuking love monteverdi Book 8. that's some of the best vocal music ever.

Scott no one did it awesomely in the 80s but i feel like Sony/CBS were among the worst.

Sorry my link didn't work. It's this:

http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.570879

Gian Francisco Malipiero

Discovered his six string quartets earlier this year and found them enjoyable if not really memorable. Oddly the biggest influence I heard in those pieces was Debussy (odd b/c of his reputation as one of the "back to Bach" composers). I will have to give them a relisten this week.

I'm so ignorant of 20c italian composers. I know Busoni and that's about it. Well, Berio...

The only one I really listen to is Scelsi. ._.

okay, here is my project for the year. i have a book entitled *The Collector's 20th-Century Music In The Western Hemisphere* by Arthur Cohn. It came out in 1961. anyway, every chapter is devoted to a composer and MANY of them i've never heard. so, i'm gonna try and look out for the stuff i've never heard this year. here is the full list in the book of composers that cohn feels are important:

samuel barber (i'm a fan.)

ernest bloch (have some stuff, but need to listen more.)

elliott carter (i'm a fan.)

carlos chavez (???)

aaron copland (dig him.)

henry cowell (dig him.)

paul creston (???)

norman dello joio (have a record that i like of his stuff. but not really familiar.)

irving fine (???)

lukas foss (dig him a bunch.)

alberto ginastera (???)

howard hanson (have a symphony i like a lot. but that's it.)

roy harris (???)

alan hovhaness (big fan! one of my big discoveries of recent years. always need more.)

charles ives (charles ives/youth of today/bunnybrains my danbury connecticut holy trinity.)

leon kirchner (???)

gian-carlo menotti (only know the music appreciation stuff like the medium.)

walter piston (???)

silvestre revueltas (???)

wallingford riegger (???)

william schuman (???)

roger sessions (heard him, but...???)

harold shapero (???)

virgil thomson (dig him.)

edgar varese (big fan.)

heitor villa-lobos (dig him lots.)

ben weber (???)

so, if you have anything to say about any of my question marks, go right ahead! or anything about any of them if you feel like it.

Ginastera — I know two ballets and two piano concertos. The ballets (Panambi, Estancia) are brash, opulently orchestrated, but maybe owe a bit too much to Ravel/Stravinsky.

The first PC was made semi-famous by Emerson Lake and Palmer who did a version of the Toccata movement. Neither PC is IMO very memorable, but I pretty much dislike piano concertos as a rule.

I predict that Revueltas will be the most fun of those question marks to explore. Mexican mid-century modernist, one-of-a-kind.

I know folks who will rep for the Harris symphonies; they're skillfully written, and the guy had a flair for long, flowing melodies, but they don't appeal to me all that much. The Schuman symphonies do a bit more for me, although I haven't listened in ages -- along the lines of more abstract Copland. Meat and potatoes music.

I associate Riegger with the Crawford/Seeger/Ruggles/Becker group. He was not very prolific, mainly because he died an early death (bizzare cause: he was caught in the middle of a fight between two leashed dogs).

I feel like there's no point in commenting on the rest -- I don't have strong opinions and Arthur Cohn presumably does!

Re: Revueltas, "Ocho por radio" is a good place to start

Re: Composers who died bizarre deaths, sorry to drift off topic, but three stick in my mind together: along with Riegger there's Charles Alkan (crushed by a falling coat rack) and Ernst Chausson (lost control of his bicycle on a steep hill)

Claude Vivier being murdered by a male prostitute is pretty bizarre.

Indeed! Adding him to my mental list...

What about composers who killed other people? All I can think of is Gesualdo.

Scriabin (died of an infected zit on his lip)

Berlioz was all set to kill his mistress and her lover, then decided not to go through with it. If you believe Berlioz on the matter...

Oh and of course one of the most tragic of these unusual deaths is Anton Webern, who stepped out onto his porch after curfew for a smoke and was shot by an American soldier. Which brings me back on topic a bit. I had always ignored the two late cantatas of Webern but have recently fallen in love with both. I only know them from the Boulez/Sony box set recordings, which seem fine. Still haven't studied the scores.

Yes, I've been giving the late opus numbers another try after thinking them dry hitherto. I especially like the string trio and the Op. 28 quartet. At first the relative rhythmic stodginess put me off, but now I see it as just another attribute rather than a failing. It's almost like an aural equivalent of those Klee paintings that are just regular grids of colors with varying hues and brightnesses.

"I feel like there's no point in commenting on the rest -- I don't have strong opinions and Arthur Cohn presumably does!"

felt like that's what was interesting about the book. how many of those guys would be in a similar book about 20th century composers today? like, half? and the other half would be...um, glass, crumb, feldman, cage, uh, i'm blanking on popular late-20th century north american types, but stuff like that.

lots of arvo part lately, esp 'fratres' and 'alina'
i picked up a valentin silvestri cd the other day
gorecki's 'miserere'

speaking of 20th century north american types, i need more lou harrison in my life. i haven't heard enough. i dig his stuff.

@Daruton - that's a very good analogy with Klee. It does for him what it does for Webern, foregrounding (visual or harmonic) color and pattern. I've always like this quality in the first movement of the Variations for Piano, and the first Cantata has passages that seem to work very similarly. But the second cantata, like the Variations for Orchestra immediately before it, is leaner and more fragmented again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4LN_AF8r7s

With Harrison, my favorite recorded pieces are scattered across various CDs. Also, there is a tendency for every Harrison CD to be a compilation of pieces in very different styles, off from completely different phases in his career (e.g., a 1940s percussion piece, a semi-traditional piece for symphony and oratorio, and a piece for microtonal guitar). I wish there were more recordings where like material was grouped with like material, because I don't remotely like all his sub-styles equally. Maybe there are now, I haven't been keeping track. I'm at work, but from what little I listened to it with the volume way down, that live recording you just posted sounds lovely, Paul.

scott, you have or have heard "Three Pieces for Gamelan," I assume? That was on a CRI compilation. "Perilous Chapel" is good, esp. the version of an Albion records compilation. Also Rhymes with Silver is good overall. I can't remember in detail what I like and don't like about it, but it works better as a listen straight through than most of the other Harrison collections I have.

i've heard gamelan stuff, but not sure of the title? sounded very cool. i will definitely look for the cri album. found this online and might download tomorrow:

http://vaubu.blogspot.com/2009/03/lou-harrison.html

I think I have that first collection of compositions on a different compilation (not sure if they're the same recordings). I don't care for them quite as much as "Three Pieces for Gamelan" (I don't know if that's the actual composition title--I don't think so--or if they were just put out like that as an EP (?) so to speak.)

i have a great record of concertos for violin and percussion and organ and percussion. like that a lot. later compositions, i think. i'm guessing he was big on the + percussion combo. guitar and percussion. flute and percussion. which is cool, cuz i'm big on that combo too! (what can i say? i'm a rockhead.)

Percussionists = by far the biggest beneficiaries of 20th century classical composing. There have to have been hundreds of pieces with prominent/wild/unusual percussion parts written in the last 100 years.

(My fave max-out-on-the-percussion composer is Crumb).

It's a Brahms chamber music thanks to Skot. Piano Quartet #1 (Tamas Vasary/members Berlin Phil/DG) followed by the Clarinet Quintet (Thea King et al/Hyperion). These are both nearly ideal performances of these pieces I gotta say. Skot I'll bet you have this set of thr Piano Quartets on vinyl!

So I have never heard this album but this orchestra is conducted by a good acquaintance/occasional boss and was just nominated for a Grammy so I am totally pimping it here:

http://www.hbdirect.com/album_detail.php?pid=1043361

BMOP has gotten nothing but rave reviews that I've seen (mostly in Fanfare mag).

'Wilde- a symphony for Baritone and Orchestra'. Sounds intriguing. I'll check the samples out on eMusic.

Just ordered this:

http://www.mdt.co.uk/public/pictures/products/standard/BISCD1767-68.jpg

I've been wanting to hear these forever without stooping to downloading but the individual discs were going for $20, but the whole set is only ~$30 from the UK. Can't wait.

Mm. Impressive. I have a couple of them stii on ol' Melodiya vinyl, I think.

Is that all-new recordings?

BIS is on eMusic and priced at a straight 1 credit per track so the set could be pretty affordable from them (albeit in non-physical format).

I think it's the same old recordings. Would be nice if they also contained the "filler" pieces from the original discs but I'm not getting my hopes up.

BIS' symphonic box sets are generally awesome. I recommend the shit out of their Holmboe- Complete Symphonies box.

I really want to hear that but would find it hard to justify spending $60 on a composer I'm not even sure I'll like (even though there's a very high probability that I will).

I take it you don't do purchased downloads? (eMusic is VBR 192kbps, Amazon MP3 is 256kbps).

That's how I buy lots of BIS releases these days.

Not really. I feel weird paying for downloads when I can just pirate a FLAC rip online.

Mainly I do it for Robert Von Bahr (BIS owner) cuz he is such an awesome dude and I want him to keep doing stuff through emusic.

Does anyone know anything about Ligeti's 3 Fantasies After Holderlin for choir? What time period do these come from?

listening to brahms' german requiem. dgg box with von karajan and the choir that premiered the requiem: the weiner singverein. lovely stuff but i'm not feeling all that requiem-ish right now. karajan has always been my go-to dude when it comes to brahms symphonies, but i feel like i need to branch out and listen to some other takes. karajan was just so...german. which is cool, don't get me wrong. but i want to hear someone open brahms up for me a little more. not be so rigid. (opera singer gundula janowitz on this requiem though, man, what a dream. so beautiful.) this box also includes variations on a theme by haydn, but i think i'll save it for another day.

cuz i'm curious about this album of piano stuff i have with pieces by people i've never heard before. charles griffes! dane rudhyar! ben weber! all very mod. the record is from the late 50's. and i actually have heard the pianist playing this stuff, william masselos.

I've heard of Rudhyar mentioned as one of the early American "ultramodernists" like Ruggles, Crawford-Seeger and Cowell. I'll definitely be interested hear your thoughts.

This thread is fantastique.

Scott-- Try Charles Mackerras conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in the Brahms symphonies. This was recorded in the digital age so it's not on vinyl, but recorded very well by Telarc and the performances are nimble, vivid and fresh.

Also there's a new Brahms 1st from Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra on Channel Classics which is getting raves. Fischer and the Budapest are kind of the team to beat right now. Their recent Mahler recordings have been stupendous, as have their not as recent Bartok series.

Guys why doesn't anyone here talk about Mieczysław Weinberg (Moisei Vainberg)? His 18th Symphony is seriously one of the most beautiful things ever. But he was so prolific! Any Weinberg fans here?

Never heard of him! Will investigate...

I have this:

http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/61U6a5x%2BagL._SS500_.jpg

I'll have to give it a listen once my Hindemith marathon is over. Thanks for reminding me. :)

:D His piano quintet is amazing.

Also, what do we all think of Gloria Coates? GLISSANDI/CLUSTERS madness. The 5th String Quartet is still so unsettling and gorgeous.

"I've heard of Rudhyar mentioned as one of the early American "ultramodernists" like Ruggles, Crawford-Seeger and Cowell. I'll definitely be interested hear your thoughts."

very cool. and yes way ultramod. all the true hepcats must have dug him. cuz he was one of those mystical jungian ancient-non-western-music-loving deep thinkers. i want to hear more. and i need to listen to this piece again. it's called *Granites*. he wrote a book called *Art As Release Of Power*. he wrote more than one book. he wanted to transform society with his music. there is a very cool and far out short article written by rudhyar on the back of this album. he sounds stoned.

here's a piece called "yearning" from a larger work that should give you an idea of where he was coming from:

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

and this site, yowza, see for yourself:

http://www.khaldea.com/rudhyar/

you can read everything he wrote about music on that site and some of it is really interesting. i am definitely an ultramod sympathizer and support their fight against the stranglehold of the western note!

"Be it as it may, the spectacle of this group of French composers is a sad one for whomsoever loves the truly progressive life, and is trying to feel the great pulse of humanity as it vibrates toward a deeper and more intrinsically realization of the essence of a conscious, free, sincere and spontaneous Manhood and womanhood, toward universal compassion and international brotherhood. The music of Milhaud and of his friends is a denial of the dearest aspirations, of the most vibrant hopes, which a Scriabin, for instance, had roused. It "goes back" to Mozart and Mendelssohn — what more to say! It is cold, heartless, superficial, artificial, unmoving, chauvinistic. We must recognize that it is supremely clever, well made, well orchestrated; that it generates new and striking effects, that its technic is masterly. But it is dead, spiritually, ethically, emotionally."

Charles Alkan (crushed by a falling coat rack)

The going story for a while IIRC was that he was crushed by a bookshelf as he reached for a volume of the Talmud, but this was later proven to be apocryphal - I don't think he was actually crushed at all.

But strange death aside, Alkan's totally fascinating and a fucking virtuoso. Contemporary and friend of tons of well-regarded composers, underappreciated until recently (and imo still underappreciated). Marc-Andre Hamelin's three albums of Alkan material are all Classic, but if you haven't heard anything of his before, the one to hear is Le Festin D'Esope (No. 12).

Gah. Five days and already so many amazing sounding recommendations to catch up on.

Cosign on Hamelin's Alkan discs. Each one's a gem. (My preference as a dyed-in-the-wool Dionysian is still with Liszt, but Alkan's knife-edge sangfroid makes for great listening).

Today and yesterday-- a couple of live radio broadcasts captured to good MP3 by a friend-- an old german radio one of Kubelik leading his Bavarian orchestra in Messiaen's colossal La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jesus Christ (which I think I like better than the commerical recording I have of the piece) and one from this year on Radio France with Nicholas Angelich and the Capucon brothers playing all three Brahms trios in one concert (huge, snorting romantic performances with lots of rubato, totally great).

Now bumping Villa-Lobos' Forest Of The Amazons on Delos Records. Should have mentioned this alongside the Choros the other day. Big raucous sentimental craziness with birds, rivers, natives, a soprano. I think this was born out of a film score?

Cannot stop listening to The Sparrow and the Gentle Dove by Purcell (Hyperion recording).

Good to see Brahms being mentioned a lot - his alto rhapsody (Ferrier I think, although I quite like the Klemperer as well) and his first symphony.

Constant Lambert's Prize Fight is quite a good alternative getting ready to go out music.

John Ireland's Mai Dun and The Legend are, as they were intended to be, the perfect accompaniment to my Arthur Machen kick a while ago - mixture of pastoral mysticism and ancient English militarism.

I would think Delius would also go well with Machen...

digging Bruckner Symphonie No. 4, "Romantic"

which version should i hear? and what others?

I don't have a million Bruckner 4s, but my favorite now is the Klemperer on EMI. Klemps and Bruckner a perfect match to my ears.

I'd recommend proceeding to the 5th, then the 9th, then the mighty 8th.

thanks jon. i've got two versions of 4, but can't remember either at the moment, but i don't think i've got Klemperer. will seek this and the others.

BTW, lots of ppl also swear by the karl Bohm Bruckner 4 most recently reissued in the Decca Legends series. I haven't heard it though.

I would think Delius would also go well with Machen...

Definitely. Delius was buried in a churchyard near where I grew up in fact, although the only material effect this had on my musical taste was that every time I cycled or walked past the church and remembered Delius was buried there, I would break out into 'Delia's Gone' by Johnny Cash.

I will remedy this.

For the darkling magical side of Delius try 'Song Of The High Hills' and 'North Country Sketches' imo.

"which version should i hear? and what others?"

if you want to make your head spin, listen to bruckner's massive 8th symphony and then put on some of his motets which are these brilliant miniature masterpieces of church music. so beautiful.

I've never heard the Motets!

Oh shit, really?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8no8t0saHI

actually this a better boychoir rendition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWK4sF84M1I&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSC5Kjq4aIw

listening to arturo benedetti michelangeli play haydn piano concertos in d & g (with zurich chamber orchestra). kinda jaw-dropping if you are into piano shredders. he didn't record a ton of stuff apparently. cuz he was such a prefectionist. thrilling really to hear.

here is him and some beethoven:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z8VxIxZVOI

definitely recommend the recording (on angel) if you like haydn or piano or great pianists or just great performances.

i don't know what bruckner motet recordings to recommend on cd. there are probably a bunch. i have old vinyl recordings and can't think of any specific favorites.

Yeah Michelangeli was the ultimate perfectionist piano hermit really. Listening to his studio Debussy (Images book i and ii and Children's Corner) feels almost hallucinatory, everything is so perfectly placed and shimmering.

It's funny re: the perfectionist thing, Michelangeli's most notorious recording, Ravel's Gaspard De La Nuit, is live-in-studio for radio and in not-great sound quality.

Pianists playing today who bring this kind of 'hallucinatory clarity' are Zimerman, Kocsis, and especially Ivan Moravec. Thankfully none of them are quite as restricted in their repertoire as ABM.

An interesting bit of trivia abt Arturo is that he was chronically obsessed with The Master And Margarita...

great thread, and thanks for all the good Bruckner recommendations

This book looks very interesting (to me). Not in any local library yet. May blind-order.

Joseph Straus - Twelve-tone Music in America
http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521899550

I'm experimenting with listening to classical music while doing other things (reading web forums, walking, etc.) When I first started getting into CM I would do the same but noticed eventually that I was retaining very little of what I heard, and started listening as an exclusive activity — but now I seem to be able to appreciate it (mostly tonal music, not anything hyper-complex).

Just wondering what percentage of everyone's listening is exclusive v. while doing other things, what music works for what, etc.

I'm listening to the Beethoven SQs (Alban Berg) and frankly wondering why I listen to anything else.

Hearing a Rubinstein recording from the '30s has, I think, made sense of Chopin's Scherzo No. 4 for me.

the only photo of chopin. the year he died. has tim roth played him yet?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Chopin1849opt02.jpg

so much chopin i still need to hear. there's a lotta mazurkas out there! been listening to claudio arrau and maurizio pollini play chopin and they are supposed to be top-notch old-school interpreters. i've got some great rubinstein recordings too. speaking of top-notch old-school.

This is the album:

http://www.lala.com/#album/1009369266561368272/Artur_Rubinstein,_Frédéric_Chopin/CHOPIN:_Nocturnes_and_Scherzi_(Rubinstein)_(1936-1937)

8:14 version of Scherzo No. 2 as compared with a 9:40 interpretation on an early '70s or so LP I have by Philippe Entremont.

Sorry again, my link got broken up.

Rubinstein's 30s recordings are radically different to his mono LP and stereo LP recordings-- in the 30s he was a wildman with his Chopin, those Scherzi are like no others I've heard. His 30s polonaises are also straight fire from what I've listened to. By the end of the 78 era he had revised his approach to a much more reflective place.

I think my favorite modern recording of the 4 Scherzi is the Ivan Moravec one on Dorian Recordings. Moravec is pretty much the greatest living/still-playing Chopinist at this point. I wish he had a full set of the Mazurkas, but he has done 20 or so scattered across his several Chopin discs.

I'm experimenting with listening to classical music while doing other things (reading web forums, walking, etc.) When I first started getting into CM I would do the same but noticed eventually that I was retaining very little of what I heard, and started listening as an exclusive activity — but now I seem to be able to appreciate it (mostly tonal music, not anything hyper-complex).

Just wondering what percentage of everyone's listening is exclusive v. while doing other things, what music works for what, etc.

...no one?

Exclusively, or while walking (iPod), or while driving (if the dynamic range is narrow enough).

le-awsh yan-nah-chek

Anyone into Baroque organ music? Listening to recordings of Frescobaldi's Book II, Twelve Toccatas, from 1627. Some are played on the harpsichord and some on the organ. A few of the organ pieces seem like they're right on the cusp before functional tonality took over. Contrapuntal texture is very thin and they seem to be very much about the progression of harmonies. They're really beautiful.

Yan-nah-chek rules ofc. :3

Love Janacek. Especially in chamber music. Mad at myself for not making it to the Met production of From The House Of The Dead that just ended.

Friday night I was uncharacteristically early leaving work so I was able to make it to Academy Records before closing. Found two used Szymanowski things which have been on my want list for quite awhile: the complete Mazurkas for piano on the polish Dux label and the complete Songs on 4CDs from Channel Classics. Looking forward to digging into these today.

Classical record reviewers should still write like they did in 1956, y/n?

"Mozart: Concertos for Violin and Orchestra: No. 4, in D, K. 218; No.
5, in A ("Turkish"), K. 219

"Mischa Elman, violin; New Symphony Orchestra, Josef Krips, cond.
London LL 1271. 12-in.

"No one who can bring himself to listen to this record will deny Mr.
Elman's ownership of a few seraphim, whom he keeps in his violin. Not
to argue a cause already won, let it be admitted briefly that this
fiddler has more sweet unction in his strings than any other of our
times. All his records are anointed with it, particularly this one,
engineered to catch delicately every lambent hemi-demi-semi-quaver.

"The stylization suggests a sure grounding in Coleridge-Taylor. It
is the work of a free man, a little dazed. (Freedom sometimes cannot
be borne.) The pace is languid, inclined to swoon, the phrase
unshaped, as if stuck in molasses on the bow. In this independence of
spirit Concerto No. 5 is a hymn to melting butter, an apotheosis of
goo. This originality is not sustained during No. 4, which in many
places sounds like Mozart. In both the orchestra is tame, we may guess
from sheepishness. C. G. B."

Concerto No. 5 is a hymn to melting butter, an apotheosis of
goo. mmmm...

"Just wondering what percentage of everyone's listening is exclusive v. while doing other things, what music works for what, etc."

i listen to music all day in my store, so that's a good time to listen to just about anything. but i like having the time to be at home on the couch reading liner-notes and really absorbing what i'm hearing. i make an effort at home to so some deep listening, because so much classical music is unfamiliar to me. and that includes things that i've heard more than once. i'm a simpleton and a rockhead, so it definitely benefits me to be attentive. as it is, i probably only absorb and retain about 5% of the liner-notes i read. and the music doesn't always stick either without repeated listening. (though, don't get me wrong, there is plenty of easy/immediate pleasure to a lot of the classical music i listen to.) so i re-read them. and re-listen. i think it's fun though. and rewarding. i am the opposite of an expert and instead of this scaring me, it instead encourages me to go in over my head. to listen to too much stuff from too many different eras and not worry too much about a coherent approach to my scattershot autodidactic education. it's kinda how i've always listened/read/learned anyway, so it's a little late now to change. i'm thinking in 30 or 40 years i'll have some grasp of western music and its history. then i'll tackle asia.

oh and i don't have an ipod or listen to music in the car much. the last time i had a walkman was 15 years ago.

so i re-read them. and re-listen. i think it's fun though. and rewarding. i am the opposite of an expert and instead of this scaring me, it instead encourages me to go in over my head. to listen to too much stuff from too many different eras and not worry too much about a coherent approach to my scattershot autodidactic education.

OTM x 1000 this is my classical music listening career in a nutshell. (not so much with liner notes, but i read Fanfare magazine every issue and digest a few heavy composer biographies a year)

it's not categorized precisely as classical, but right now i'm listening to sylvain chauveau's 'nuage' album and it's really working for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZPG7ZwQru4

Big hit of the day for me is this Szymanowski songs collection. If you dig Debussy's songs or Scriabin's solo piano stuff, you should check out Szymanowksi's voice w/piano stuff. He's decadent, he's devilish, he's orientalist (Songs Of The Infatuated Muezzin and such).

Speaking of decadent/symbolist intoxication, went back to Charles Mackerras' recordings of Delius short pieces and was sound-drunk all over again.

I'm enjoying a a performance of La Traviata with Maria Callas from the 50s. Also Mahler's 6th (Mariss Jansons) and 9th (Kettle). The Andante Moderato movement from the former is beyond delicious.

Anyone into Baroque organ music? Listening to recordings of Frescobaldi's Book II, Twelve Toccatas, from 1627. Some are played on the harpsichord and some on the organ. A few of the organ pieces seem like they're right on the cusp before functional tonality took over. Contrapuntal texture is very thin and they seem to be very much about the progression of harmonies. They're really beautiful

oh yeah i love baroque organ music, and i love hearing the variety of tones and sounds in dutch and belgian organs of the time. seems to me that 1627 is just before the great age of baroque organ composition (buxtehude was born in 1637) so that's interesting what you say about contrapuntal texture.

re Daruton's q. i just let it as i live it; music is an everpresent constant for me, and just exists alongside the busyness of whatever i have to do, and if that means i don't do deep listening as i would wish to, i don't mind; i find memory does its job here, and retains or recalls things at other times so i become acquainted with pieces in a conveniant way, and they thrill me whether they're in the air around me or in my head (can't listn on headphones, sadly). the length and structure of most classioal pieces mean they are best enjoyed/made for the concert hall, in one go, note after note from the beginning right to the end, and listening to them on record is a most unnatural way of experiencing them, but as i can't be there most of the time, i accept this and allow myself to listen to them piecemeal, skipping to movements, my mind on something else etc. my playlists have loads of things queued up and i often just stick them on shuffle and get a taste of several centuries in a couple of hours.
however if im able to listen to the full evening concerts on radio 3 i will. which reminds me of the george crumb concert from the other night that i must listen to.

anyone like brian fernyhough? really loving his etudes transcendantales atm

Yes I like Brian Ferneyhough, and I think Etudes Transcendantales is the pinnacle of his work.

Went to the Wigmore Hall the other day -
Dvorjak: Sonatina for Violin and Piano in G op.100;
Shostakovich: Piano Trio in E minor op.67;
Tchaikovsky: Piano Trio in A minor op.50.

Utterly fantastic - the dusky bohemian sentimentality of the Dvorjak, the funereal passion of the Shostakovich, with the ethereal opening and closing strokes of the violin and tumultuous and rippling piano sections. The Tchaikovsky was a curiosity; a sweet opening theme, followed by a series of variations (one short one was very memorable - a tinkling music box theme) and a final section that starts off with the gaudy vivacity that seems characteristic (the gaudiness of his emotions that is) and which I like so much, before yet more funereal solemnity - dying, weeping piano notes and violin & cello strokes, reminiscent slightly of the final movement of his amazing sixth symphony.

An evening well spent, and ended up in the pub afterwards, where there was a chap playing the piano, a delightful coda, one that a composer like Constant Lambert, who loved pub and popular music (not faux pub folk stuff like Warlock) would have appreciated.

I've been on a Shostakovich kick lately; his Bach-inspired cycle of 24 preludes and fugues is some of my favorite solo piano ever. the string quartets are great too, but a bit demanding/overwhelming for the kind of casual listening I tend to engage in.

that sounds like a great night gatalie, who was the trio?

i am reading 'music ho!' by lambert. it is a riot tbqh.

you mentioning dvorak reminds me of this bit:

The 'nineties themselves had no music, properly speaking, and the writers of that period were consequently driven to desperate similies when trying to add appropriate musical touches. Poor Wilde in his search for the 'curiously coloured scarlet music' that his soul desired could find nothing better than the piano pieces of Dvorak...

Frogman-- tell me more about this George Crumb broadcast concert--?

'tis here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p8hp7

Echoes of Time and the River; Little suite for Christmas AD 1979 for piano; Star Child

still havent listened to it, ive been maxing out on ferneyhough all day

Wow his orchestral pieces are very rare in performance. I'll have to listen to that!

Henry, do you know the music of Jason Eckhardt? I suspect you'll get a kick out of his stuff if you're into Ferneyhough.

Frogman - It was the Razumovsky ensemble - not a permanent set of members I think, but a changing group of musicians who like chamber music.

Music Ho! is great, isn't it? A very good read.

The 'nineties themselves had no music, properly speaking, and the writers of that period were consequently driven to desperate similies when trying to add appropriate musical touches. Poor Wilde in his search for the 'curiously coloured scarlet music' that his soul desired could find nothing better than the piano pieces of Dvorak...

The 90s were weird. A lot of stuff which would soon give Wilde all the colors he could possibly need was just bubbling under. All of Europe was still transfixed by Wagner, but young composers were finally appearing who were stubborn and prickly enough to take what they wanted from Wagner at the same time as rejecting him.

Debussy's 'Faune' appeared, where luxuriance and stasis and ambiguity finally becomes an end in itself, and Mahler's earliest symphonies (if Wagner took Beethovenian symphonism to the opera, Mahler took Wagnerian mega-symphonism back to the concert hall, adding a much needed dose of irony and humor).

Meanwhile Satie on the piano had already shown the way out the side-door of the Wagner dilemma. The sardonic and crepuscular piano epigrams of Liszt's late years (1870s to his death in the mid 80s) had already cast figures of Schoenberg and Scriabin, but nobody heard Liszt's late visions until long after Schoenberg et al had done their thing...

hey I just want you kind thread regulars to know I bought a Sibelius symphony box set (Deutsche Grammaphon, Berlin Philharmonic, Karajan & Kamu) cause I lurk here. thanks for the informed discussion.

That set should serve u pretty well as a starter. Do know that Karajan prioritizes sweep and atmosphere and a kind of impressionist pallet in these works and you can check out others later if you want hyper-detail or mythic grunt. I don't think there are any dud performances in that set.

Some of you, I'm sure, know the Candide label LPs from the '70s. If you ever get a chance to hear the Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli album they put out in 1973, it's really something.

"Karajan is the only man who really understands my music."
— Jean Sibelius

Sibelius said things like that about Beecham too, and Robert Kajanus-- he was basically super psyched whenever someone recorded his music well and could be a bit of a quote whore (I seem to recall Messiaen was a bit like this as well)?

I wasn't denigrating Karajan's Sibelius in any way-- his take is v distinctive and strong; there's no one 'correct' angle on Sibelius.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/12/22/arts/music/22met1/articleInline.jpg

I can never resist a good James Levine photo.

Whoa where's his traditional sweat-towel?

haha yes re: Messiaen being a quote whore, too.

Been neglecting this thread as of late, as I haven't really been left alone long enough to listen to anything with any degree of attention. :\

Lately I've been breaking my usual habit with CM and listening to the Mozart symphonies (Pinnock/English Consort), for the first time in fact! No. 40 is played to death but still beautiful, 41 is very impressive (esp. the final movement), but so far I've enjoyed No. 38 the most. The slow movement is especially gorgeous. I love the "shiny" timbre of the HIP ensemble.

Daruton, one of my favorite classical discs of the year was a Profil disc of Sawallisch and the Bavarian Radio SO performing symphonies 35 and 41, a live radio broadcast performance. These are not HIP performances, of course, but exciting high-energy modern orchestra renditions that somehow just sound totally right. Finally a recording of the 'Haffner' symphony that I can totally get with (I am a bit obsessed with #35).

I have a lot to say but I just thought I'd chime in that Villa-Lobos' "Etude 11" may be my favourite piece to play on guitar. The Ginastera Sonata for Guitar is essential, of course.

I'm studying the Mozart piano sonatas at the moment. (Analysing, not playing.)

Stream from my tumblr: http://themagiclantern.tumblr.com/post/286006568

Leoš Janáček - String Quartet No. 2, ‘Intimate Letters’ - II. Adagio, performed by the Talich Quartet

:D

lately i've been digging on toru takemitsu - why cant other modern composers make dissonance and otherwordly melodies that are actually pleasant to listen to?

I know what you mean, but... a lot of them have!

Have been just blown away by my discovery of Prokofiev's 3rd Symphony (Muti/Philadelphia). I had avoided him before due to a bad experience with his piano concertos, but this is just amazing.

xxp Late Feldman? Rautavaara? Ligeti? Messiaen?

speaking of Rautavaara, I have a couple naxos discs (the one with Cantus Arcticus and the one with Angels and Visitations) that I bought a few years ago and never really got into, but I was listening to his Piano Concerto No. 1 the other day, and man does that thing cook! don't know how I never noticed it before.

I know what you mean, but... a lot of them have!

i suspected as much, but i rarely come across any - suggestions for more pleasant dissonance then?

Late Feldman? Rautavaara? Ligeti? Messiaen?

tbh i've never even heard of these guys - i'm not a complete noob when it comes to classical but there are huge gaps in my knowledge to be sure...

haha, it's cool; I followed a pretty similar trajectory, actually. I first heard of Takemitsu thru a piece that Leo Brouwer (really good cuban guitar composer) dedicated to him, and then basically followed Amazon.com recommendations to find other 20th century stuff I dug.

btw, not to belabor the point, but seriously, this is great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjMtX1GLkTc

Have been just blown away by my discovery of Prokofiev's 3rd Symphony (Muti/Philadelphia). I had avoided him before due to a bad experience with his piano concertos, but this is just amazing.

― You give me falun gong, four in the morning (Daruton), Tuesday, December 29, 2009 3:49 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

Prokofiev is easy: stay away from the early work. He went from being the Worst, most Unidiomatic composer (age 10-28, basically everything before the Classical Symphony) to being the poster child for idiomatic writing. His woodwind writing in Romeo & Juliet and Cinderella is so, so great.

Listening a lot to Britten's Turn of The Screw. I think it's the Britten/Pears version but I copied it to mp3 ages ago and lost track of some details so not 100% sure. In any case I prefer it to the Daniel Harding/Ian Bostridge version on Virgin, which I've been comparing it with. The kids' singing is more childlike in the Harding, thin and slightly insecure treble voices, which may be more authentic but I find them a bit irritating. Also Gergiev's cycle of Prokofiev symphonies, especially, by coincidence, the 3rd which is less familiar to me than 1,5 or 6. Quatuor Ebene's recordings of the Ravel/Debussy/Faure SQs - even if you think the first two of these in particular are overfamiliar it's worth checking out these revelatory performances.

I was lucky enough to see Turn Of The Screw performed in Seattle ~15 years ago; so eerie and awesome. It was my first live opera. I don't have the Britten/Pears or the Harding/Bostridge but the one on Collins Records with Langridge and Bedford conducting.

Prokofiev's 3rd symphony is tremendous fire-breating modernism. I think it's my favorite thing he did for orchestra (though I also stan for Romeo, Cinderella, the 2nd symphony and the succulent fairy-tale Violin Concertos. Like daruton, I have not had good mileage from his piano concertos, BUT BUT BUT as a solo piano composer he is one of the century's finest.

i suspected as much, but i rarely come across any - suggestions for more pleasant dissonance then?

George Crumb and Kajia Saariaho. Both utterly uncompromising, both intensely beautiful in an almost palpable way.

I can never resist a good James Levine photo.

― .gif of the magpie (Jon Lewis), Monday, December 21, 2009 9:32 PM

Saw him in action a few times this year, most recently when he returned from his post-surgical convalescence to conduct Tales of Hoffmann. That was a lot of fun.

messiahwannabe, you should check out Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," Ligeti's Violin Concerto, Schnittke's Piano Quintet, Shostakovich's string quartets (all of them, really), String Quartet No. 4 by Peteris Vasks, Dutilleux's 'Ainsi la nuit' string quartet...

The textures of "La création du monde" by Darius Milhaud are so gorgeous.

@snowy, Thanks for posting the Rautavaara concerto; there's a composer I've always ignored & will now check out...

@messiahwannabe meanwhile, another noteworthy purveyor of "dissonance and otherwordly melodies that are actually pleasant to listen to" is Henri Dutilleux

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEYsu6xXWWQ

In addition to that quartet, favorites from Dutilleux include Tout un monde lointain (a cello concerto); L'arbre des songes (a violin concerto); Metaboles; and especially Timbres, espace, mouvement (go for the revision with the Interlude for cello ensemble)... I'm unfamiliar with the solo piano music.

I gave Rautavaara's Angel of Light symphony a few listens last year and thought it sounded too much like movie music with "modern" sounds tacked on (glissandi, Ligeti-style "sound clouds", etc.). FWIW I find Takemitsu pretty boring also.

Oops, apologies to Turangalila for totally missing his mention of Dutilleux a few posts before mine! Glad I'm not the only fan here...

I love my disc with the 2nd Symphony and Shadows of Time, but haven't explored anything else yet.

Been listening to some Haydn string quartets. Really liked a couple of the slow movements (one being the second movement from the Quartet in G, Op. 77, No. 1).

listening to mozart. the four flute quartets. all very lovely and spritely and all that. i could go for some haydn right about now. mozart and haydn used to jam together. they had a jam band.

what are the best classical mags w/r/t quality and trustworthy recommendations?

For me it's been Smetana - Ma Vlast and Grieg - Sigurd Jorsalfar.

now playing: william byrd - music for voice and viols (i could listen to this all day long.)

it's opera time. listening to rossini's il turco in italia. dramma buffo in two acts. sounds great. maria callas in the house.

Woah! I just learned that Charles Wuorinen is composing an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain". The composer's own website confirms that Proulx herself is contributing the libretto.

(the parser is warning me of a BBcode error, but I can't see anything wrong, so clicking "Submit")

no yeah no yeah no what r we typing 4 no no no by no

http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/photos/2008/06/dvp_empty_tall_01.jpg

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42299000/gif/_42299570_bye_416x300.gif

Been (somewhat grudgingly) admitting to myself lately that Fauré's chamber music (not including solo piano, I can't completely take that stuff yet) is Really Rather Good, e.g. piano quartets.

And have dvded a couple of "minor operas" for quiztraining purposes as well, lots of fun! Händel's Tamerlano and Rossini's Comte d'Ory, to name a couple. The DVD of the former (T. Pinnock) has the coolest "subtitling" feature I've ever seen in an opera DVD, transparent overlay of the score at all times!

It's almost like an aural equivalent of those Klee paintings that are just regular grids of colors with varying hues and brightnesses.

Loving this comment abt late Webern.

Also loving thread!

Fauré's late chamber music is fucking genius! Seek ye the 2nd violin sonata, the string quartet (one of my favorite pieces ever, period) and the two piano quintets (the quartets are weak in comparison imo). Some of the most magical and pleasantly unpredictable music I know.

listening to Bruckner's 7th symphony (on naxos) a lot. My first Bruckner. I got the 8th too but it hasn't clicked with me.

Mozart's String Quartet No. 19, K. 465 (the last of the "Haydn Quartets") is incredible.

I second Daruton's Faure SQ & Piano Quintet reccs. Gorgeous music.

That arpeggiated intro in the 1st piano quintet is :O

can anyone give me a yes/no on a Beethoven symphony box with George Szell/Cleveland Symphony? Columbia/RCA pressing I think.

xxxxxpost to Omar Little-- the only classical mag I spend money on every time is Fanfare. It's bi-monthly and very thick. Layout is totally basic and zine-like. It's invaluable for its massive review section, which takes up about 80% of every issue-- the articles at the front are relatively lightweight. But the reviewers are not kept on any leash at all in terms of tone, style or review length, and they range from brilliant to douchebag. You can subscribe to just the online version for a little less than a print subscription, and that includes the online archive of the last 10 years of reviews.

sleeve-- I blow hot and cold on Szell in classical-era music. He can sometimes be too tight-assed whipcrack in Beethoven and Mozart. The further you get into Romantic, late-romantic and early modern stuff, the better Szell's recordings are. He's amazing in Schumann and Strauss and Mahler, for instance. But if the price on that box is not too high then buy it.

SPEAKING OF MAHLER I just listened to a download of a captured radio broadcast of Mahler's 1st with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orch led by their new conductor Manfred Honeck. HOLY SHIT this is a crushingly powerful, shit-hot performance of this piece. Do a little googling for Honeck Mahler R@p1dsh@re and you'll find the DL link for this. It will blow you away. An audiophile Japanese CD is available of the same concert, and the broadcast version was so good I just went on Amazon and spent 30 bucks on that.

Coincidentally, I see Honeck/Pittsburgh will be playing this symphony in NYC soon-- I'll probably have to go.

Listening to the Boulez Conducts Stravinsky box set. I've heard some of these performances before but it really adds to the impact getting all of the Boulez performances together in one box. Wonderful stuff.

It's a box of all his Sony stravinsky or all his DG?

It's the DG stuff. Amazon UK link here.

http://tinyurl.com/yb8suyn

can anyone give me a yes/no on a Beethoven symphony box with George Szell/Cleveland Symphony? Columbia/RCA pressing I think.

I would go for this btw

I meanwhile am listening to this a lot and it is one of the most remarkable performances and recordings - just unbelievable. I got it blind offa emusic, didn't know anything about it except new Bach concert on Telmarc, sounds cool, turns out Dinnerstein is kind of a from-nowhere superstar about whom some commentators are suspicious because of the backstory that's getting pushed ("she produces her own records!") but seriously what an incredible ear for Bach she has.

Shostakovich Piano Trio No 2 - Beaux Arts Trio. Very beautiful. Bartok String Quartets - Vermeer Quartet. I have to be in the right mood, otherwise they're too intense. I also need a new version because I'm creeped out by the audible breathing on the Vermeer's recording. The music is already eerily unsettling and then you get some guy breathing in your ear.

ah! i would hate that.

heh. i find that can sometimes add something to the music...especially on viol music, as that kind of feels like breathing to me anyway. actually a lot of seventeenth century chamber music reminds me of breathing.

second timellison's love for the mozart 'haydn' quartets. they are truly incredible. dissonance qt ftw possibly.

currently digging: ligeti's piano violin and horn concertos by boulez and ensemble intercontemporain. undoubtedly the best ligeti i've heard so far (i've ha some trouble appreciating elements of the chamber music i've heard so far, packed with interest though it is, and i'm afraid i found the elektronische Komposition's difficult to enjoy).
Beethoven's late piano sonatas by Schnabel....good god. does it get more exciting than this?
Manchicourt's Missa and Motets...I've liked Manichicourt's horn music before so thought I'd try this. Overriding purpleness of texture...

I've got this MHS label box of Boccherini symphonies. Realized how much I liked it the last time I was listening to it, but just heard Symphony No. 5 on the radio - really great.

Handel's Op. 3 Concerti Grossi. Five of the six are fairly early pieces from the 1710s. Don't have a recording of the Op. 6 set (written in 1739).

Listening to Igumnov's mesmerising recordings of Tchaikovsky's Seasons. YouTube here.

Going to see the Takács quartet play some Beethoven late string quartets tonight, including I think (I hope) the wonderful A Minor (15).

^ ha, i'll be there!

and yes it is op.132, no 15. other two works are two from the 0p.18 set

Scelsi, Radulescu, Saariaho, Dumitrescu, James Tenney... and Feldman. always Feldman.

Bein' digged currently, by me, a Toru Takemitsu CD, Quotation of Dream.
Compos's from 1985-1993. Deutsche Grammophon. London Sinfonietta, Oliver Knussen. & Paul Crossley, Peter Serkin, pianos.

Takács Beethoven was good - although strongly feel that a concert hall is too big for chamber music, also their interpretation seemed a little glib at times I guess, cd've done with a bit more Sturm und Drang for me, tho I'm an ignorant peasant.

Henri, how was it for you?

Quotation of Dream is gamazing. another great one is I Can Hear the Water Dreaming (or something like that)

now playing: Messiaen - Petites Liturgies De La Presence Divine

loving it. i'm a fan. onde martenot! love olivier's all caps liner notes too. BIRD SONG HELPED HIM TO RESIST EVIL.

i've been enjoying some kickass Vivaldi lately! again, i'm a fan. i have this album...it's at home. but man does it rule. can't remember now what all is on it. i'll report back.

can i have some classical recommendations? i wanna listen to some, but i have no clue what to listen to

listen to some bach. any old bach. bach was the shit.

listen to bach's cello suites. no, really, any bach. just find some.

xxpost OMG scott Trois Petites... is one of my favorite pieces *ever* :D

I've been digging Mieczysław Weinberg's string quartets and chamber music in general. Hugely overlooked composer tbh.

are any of you Hildegard von Bingen fans?

i dig her. i had a GREAT cd that i found at a thrift store and i was playing it in my store and someone wanted to buy it. so i sold it. but i miss it. hard to find on vinyl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irxG-GCV5Es

Can I join in the "Trois Petites Liturgies" group hug? I love how, in Messiaen's world, birdsong is a percussion idiom.

Listening to a bootleg of Mieczyslaw Weinberg's recently premiered (!!!) Requiem. I've always found his vocal writing so piercing & shamelessly beautiful. Here's someone who knew how to orchestrate.

Criminally underperformed/recorded, this guy.

>"Trois Petites Liturgies"

the fucking BEST

dropped the 6/8 third movement into an uptempo 4/4 dance set once. a few seconds of confusion, but once the chorus kicked in everyone kept dancing

Martha Argerich|Nelson Freire- "Salzburg" (Brahms, Schubert et al played live with absolute sweetness, synchronization and poise)

xp haha Milton that's amazing, you are my hero

Haven't been around lately but have been continuing my traversal of the Sony Stravinsky box set. Loving the Violin Concerto and the Basle Concerto.

Also starting a four-disc set of music by André Jolivet. The second Cello Concerto is really impressive.

I've been listening to Jolivet's orchestral Cinq Danses Rituelles a lot lately. Awesome.

André Jolivet : Cinq danses rituelles
directeur d'orchestre:
Jolivet, André
interprète:
Orchestre National de l'ORTF ; Navarra, André

if a renaissance neophyte rly likes the tomas de victoria requiem then where else should they look?

Allegri's "Miserere", "Missa Susanne un jour" by Orlande de Lassus, "Spem in Alium" by Thomas Tallis

silvestrov - requiem for larissa

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31XWmTZIVLL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Don't think I've seen this thread before (must read later), there is a really good concert on tonight at King's Place (near Kings's cross):

Date: Monday 8 February
Time: 20:00
Venue: Hall Two
Price: £9.50

Part of Out Hear at Kings Place

Curated by ELISION

Peter Veale oboe
Richard Haynes clarinet in B-flat, bass clarinet
Tristram Williams piccolo trumpet, trumpet, flügelhorn
Benjamin Marks alto and tenor trombones
Daryl Buckley electric guitar
Richard Barrett live electronics
Séverine Ballon violoncello

Timothy McCormack disfix (2008)
For clarinets, piccolo trumpet/flugelhorn, trombone

Klaus K Hubler Cercar (1983)
For solo trombone

Liza Lim Invisibility (2009)
For solo violoncello

Richard Barrett Aurora (2010)
For flugelhorn and trombone

Roger Redgate Tehom (2009)
For bass clarinet, violoncello and trombone

Evan Johnson Apostrophe 2 (pressing down on my sternum) (2009)
for quarter-tone flugelhorn and alto tromboner-

James Dillon Crossing Over (1978)
For Bb clarinet

Richard Barrett Codex X1
For oboe, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, electric guitar, cello and live electronics

just got a huge stack of 70's/80's New World Records vinyl. looking forward to digging in. 20th century americana up the wazoo. gonna start with William Parker (baritone) (with piano and string quartet) doing the vocal works of Ernest Bacon, Robert Evett, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Lee Hoiby, John Jacob Niles, and Ned Rorem.

Wish I could go to that Elision concert! *jealous*

now playing: Frank Lewin - Innocence and Experience (a cycle of songs from poems by william blake)

soprano and chamber ensemble. don't think i've ever heard any Lewin before. or i don't remember hearing any.

(the other side of this record is music for the new family of violins. you know, those violins made by carleen hutchins.)

(oh and i like this blake thing. seems properly blakeian.)

been constantly playing khachaturian's adgio from gayane (as heard in 2001). so damn beautiful. i could listen to this every hour for the rest of my life

Have kind of burned out on the Stravinsky box set for the time being, so decided to switch it up:

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/10/f3/7f4592c008a0ae53b0cda010.L.jpg

Brilliant music that seems to spring from the symphonic tradition that goes from Beethoven to Sibelius and Nielsen. It's complex, emotional, classicist, and has an inexorable logic overriding all the musical material.

arvo part - Music for Unaccompanied Choir (amazing)

andriessen/california ear unit - zilver

Brahms - Violin Concerto (Itzhak Perlman/Barenboim)
Webern - Complete String Trios and Quartets (Arditti String Quartet)

You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

I cannot emphasize this man's greatness enough

@subversive time travel (FACK) re:can i have some classical recommendations? i wanna listen to some, but i have no clue what to listen to:

classical 101, first weeks listening assignments:

http://www.amazon.com/Pachelbels-Canon-Favorites-Johann-Pachelbel/dp/B0000025TV/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1267516347&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.com/Lute-Suites-1-Essential-Classics/dp/B000069JK1/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1267516388&sr=1-6
http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Requiem-Augér-Bartoli-Wiener/dp/B0000041ZS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1267516502&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Holst-Planets-Gustav/dp/B0000041S7/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1267516550&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Puccini-Pavarotti-Harwood-Karajan-Highlights/dp/B0000041TR/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1267516644&sr=1-4

@helpful "dissonant but pleasant" suggestions: thanks, searching now for several of those atm

@everyone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Boccherini i've been digging onto a collected works comp a cd or 2 at a time and it's all good; this guy's not especially innovative but his works are v easy on the ears

rock and roll, stick it to the record companies moment circa 1761:

"In 1761 Boccherini went to Madrid, where he was employed by Infante Luis Antonio of Spain, younger brother of King Charles III. There he flourished under royal patronage, until one day when the King expressed his disapproval at a passage in a new trio, and ordered Boccherini to change it. The composer, no doubt irritated with this intrusion into his art, doubled the passage instead, leading to his immediate dismissal"

How is Sibelius' 4th so impossibly beautiful?

Tonight, I am obsessed with Hans Krasá's "children's opera" 'Brundibar'. It's so lovely.

Never even heard of the guy, ty! Will investigate.

Is he 20th century Czech?

btw one thing I'd really like (that I have no idea whether exists) is a service/rssfeed/infocentral/whatevs that informs on premiere ie first-time recordings of "classical" works.

Of course, I want info on new works properly CD-recorded first and foremost, but also interwar archivism, (1/2/3)-viennese-school revisionism, minor scores showing up in attics, diggings-ups in Renaissance music, or whatever. It is a bit silly, but I loves the importance/triviality stuff that comes with first recordings. :-D

xpost re: Sibelius' 4th--

Because even though it is obsessively based on tritones and whole tone melodies it isn't all 'ooooh scary kids!' about it? It's like music from a world where tritones and whole tone scales are simply right and natural.

So many moments in the 4th when I just have to stop whatever I'm doing and close my eyes. And what a fucking ending.

anatol that would be really cool. Fanfare should add a tag to that effect in their online review archive. Maybe I'll write to them suggesting it.

Then again, sometimes it can be so hard for a writer to say for sure something hasn't been recorded before. There were a shit-ton of weird indie classical labels already in the 1950s...

Good point about not really knowing, but "first on CD" should be close to verifiable, possible and doable. And if someone turns up and says "hey no we actually released this on CD in 1989 you are not first ner ner", then is anyone the worse off? No.

My wishes about this was really about newly-written works; thing is (sorry to drag anyone into my own obsessions) I have deep deep worries abt the academization of the classical ("classical") tradition; new major ("major") works of eg poetry appear in academic press, to be read by academics in exactly same positions at other institutions... I wouldn't like the COUGH COUGH ivory tower model to carry the day or something. Am very conflicted, cannot deny the might of Boulez or Stockhausen or Berio or those guys, but I feel like clearing the air in my head and just sometimes... listen to music without having a 16-ton weight of Tradition or Non-Tradition (aka fucking Ideology) above my head.

Heheh, I've had a few glasses, as you will notice. Want want want info on new stuff.

New works written in the last decade which do not require 16 ton weight:

Kalevi Aho, last few symphonies on BIS label, especially the most recent disc titled 'Rituals'.

Kajia Saariaho, Graal-Theatre for violin and ensemble (multiple recordings available already)(or anything else by Saariaho!)

Per Norgard, 6th symphony on Danacord label.

These are certainly contemporary composers, with all that implies, BUT you can approach their works purely instinctively.

All of the above are from Scandinavia/the Baltic-- that wasn't on purpose--!

does anyone here like milton babbitt's 'transfigured notes'

Hurrah mr Gibbon Man! Will try. Have pre-softened spot for Saariaho already; Nørgård & Aho I know by name only so far.

Is he 20th century Czech?

Jewish origin but yes, lived/died in Prague. The opera was... "written first in 1938 and revised
in the Nazi transit camp Terezín (or Theresienstadt in German), for children’s choir with ten solo vocal roles and a chamber ensemble of strings, percussion, piano, and guitar." You can hear Akt 1, scene 1here.

Re: Sibelius 4th

Because even though it is obsessively based on tritones and whole tone melodies it isn't all 'ooooh scary kids!' about it? It's like music from a world where tritones and whole tone scales are simply right and natural.

Yesssssssssss. It's so magical.

-

Anyhow, speaking of Terezín, I'm kind of obsessed with Sylvie Bodorova's Terezin Ghetto Requiem for Baritone and String Quartet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5TjPMb9Ovk&feature=related

does anyone here like milton babbitt's 'transfigured notes'
*raises hand*

(but not as much as the solo and chamber pieces, generally)

it's most unlike anything else of his i know and more obviously alluring than his earlier fundie serialism stuff, some of which makes early stockhausen sound like saint saens

Maybe. The only commercial recording is so full of wrong notes, it's hard to say for sure...

they had to find chamber players because orchestral players found it too taxing iirc? can't imagine it will be improved upon any time soon so who knows

any other recommendations within that american serialist sort of vein?

xfigured notes history: commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, but rejected by them as "unplayable." Gunther Schuller collects a group of freelance string players, schedules 12 rehearsals and two performances, all at his own expense. The recording is pieced together from the best bits of the two live performances. It is possibly the most accurate recording of any orchestral work by Babbitt, although the bar is low. Schuller's liner notes are rather touching actually:

... there was little chance that the resultant performances would be technically letter-perfect... Herewith then, GM Recordings presents the results of [this] "valiant effort", less-than-perfect though they may be. (A little honesty in liner notes is, I think, not a bad idea! Everything can't be "the greatest".) The performance of the Babbitt is, at least, very 'representative' of the work, in mood and character, and in all its polyphonic, rhythmic/metric and structrual splendor. To boot, it has the drama and excitement of a live performance -- coughs and a creaking podium and all.

I should give the piece another chance, hadn't thought about it in years. If the lyrical, subliminally Romantic side of Babbitt appeals to you most, I would also recommend his chamber pieces Groupwise and Consortini.

I've said more here and here (focusing on Carter)

My how I love low-register reeds!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYQYT2F_gwY

I'll look for "Transfigured Notes". "Soli e Duettini" for flute and guitar is an almost surprisingly lyrical Babbitt piece. I also really like "For Brass". A lot of intensity to that.

Oh, obviously, "Philomel" is my favourite!

I'm listening to "Transfigured Notes" now though (on Youtube!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATtsF8Hr9gU&feature=PlayList&p=73890135EECBD3F1&index=0&playnext=1) and it is almost shocking that this is the same composer.

Listened now to David Starobin's performance of "Sheer Pluck", which is kind of exhilarating to a geek like me.

man, i kinda overdosed the last couple of weeks on the big stash of New World Records albums that came into the store. all from the 70's and 80's. like, a zillion american composers i'd never heard. i should have taken notes. some stuff was good, but there was a lot of not very memorable stuff.

i'm going ancient this week. waaaaaay ancient.

Wish I could go to that Elision concert! *jealous*

― Enoki Doki (Paul in Santa Cruz), Monday, February 8, 2010 Bookmark

There is another one at King's Place tomorrow night - a timely revival.

This is late but I'll say here that last month's was welcome for the Lim and Hubler pieces alone. It was a mixed affair though. The Barrett was exasperating, the more I see combinations for instruments and electronics the more I feel these are incompatible. I Know there is plenty out there that does work. The Evan Johnson was the best of the ones I hadn't heard before.

This Friday there is a lunchtime recital by Ian Pace - Brahms and Lachenmann.

scored big at the thrift store today. everything either mint or near mint. been listening all day.

handel - 12 concerti grossi op.6 - english chamber orchestra/raymond leppard (philips)

jan dismas zelenka - lamentationes jeremiae prophetae - ars redivia/milan munclinger (nonesuch)

heinrich schutz - cantiones sacrae vol. 2 - gachinger kantorei/helmuth rilling (mhs)

dietrich buxtehude - four solo cantatas - bach collegium/helmuth rilling (nonesuch)

schubert - symphony no.7 in e major - radio symphonie orchester berlin/gabriel chmura (schwann/musica mundi)

sibelius - the tempest - royal liverpool philharmonic orchestra/sir.charles groves (emi)

telemann - 3 concerti (trumpet/oboe/recorder) - the telemann society/richard schulze (vox)

telemann - suites d'orchestre (don quichotte/l'mperiale/l'espiegle/la bouffonne) - orchestre de chambre de rouen/albert beaucamp (philips)

telemann - three cantatas (der schulmeister/die landlust/von geliebten augen) - collegium aureum (basf/harmonia mundi)

bach/telemann - actus tragicus/trauerkantate - collegium aureum (basf/harmonia mundi)

telemann - musique de table/tafelmusik - austrian tonkuenstler orchestra/dietfried bernet (mhs)

michel corrette - concertos comiques - antiqua musica/jacques roussel (philips)

mouret/lully - ceremonial music from the court of louis XIV (mhs)

jean-baptiste lully - ballet d'alcidiane et polexandre (excerpts) (mhs)

jean-baptiste lully - te deum (mhs)

frottole - works by mantovano, cara, bartolomeo, tromboncino, pesenti, milanese, and fogliano (candide)

william byrd - madrigals, motets, anthems and keyboard music (mhs)

edward elgar - symphony no.2 in e flat (enigma)

carl maria von weber - der freischutz (basf)

handel - violinsonaten (da camera magna)

baroque flute music - roswitha staege (flute) (odeon)

gavinies/leclair - 18th century french violin concertos (philips)

elgar/williams - enigma variations/fantasia (capitol)

jean gilles - gilles requiem (mhs)

bellini, molique, moscheles, reitz - oboe and flute works played by holliger/nicolet (philips)

vivaldi - five concerti (mhs)

vivaldi - four concerti (mhs)

schumann - compete works for piano vol.1 (mhs)

fanfare - philip jones brass ensemble (argo)

beethoven - incidental music to goethe's egmont (mhs)

16th century court and village dances (cbs)

palestrina - masses and motets (odyssey)

joannes ockeghem - requiem (hnh)

hotteterre - musique de joye (amphion)

jean gilles - requiem (westminster)

schutz - musikalische exequien (vanguard)

jean-noel hamal - in exitu israel (mhs)

andre campra - requiem mass (mhs)

monteverdi - vespers of the blessed virgin mary (vanguard)

carl nielsen - saul & david (unicorn)

joachim/godard - concertos (candide)

wilhelm stenhammar - symphony no.1 in f (bis)

josef foerster - symphony no.4 in c minor (nonesuch)

max reger - string trios (basf)

respighi - trittico botticelliano (argo)

marschner - der vampyr (voce)

glinka - you know, stuff by glinka (vox)

novak/suk - string quartets (crossroads)

nielsen - symphony no.5/saga-drom (nonesuch)

ippolitov-ivanov/glazunov - more stuff (mhs)

babbitt/bavicchi - old stuff (cri)

dvorak/vorisek - czech stuff (philips)

heinrich marschner - hans heiling (melodram)

rachmaninoff - symphony no.1 (philips)

sibelius - the tempest - royal liverpool philharmonic orchestra/sir.charles groves (emi)
I have four or five recordings of this, but not this one. Some of my favorite music by Sibelius, and one of the very last things he wrote. Little swatches of mysterious essence.
schumann - compete works for piano vol.1 (mhs)
Who is this, Jorg Demus? You can find some great performances on these old MHS cheapies.
joannes ockeghem - requiem (hnh)
This should fulfill your 'ancient' agenda. Such strange music. Recommend weed.
monteverdi - vespers of the blessed virgin mary (vanguard)
We were just talking about this on another thread!
nielsen - symphony no.5/saga-drom (nonesuch)
Scott you will love Nielsen's 5th. Unless this is a shitty performance. But even then you'll be able to tell you SHOULD love it.

"wilhelm stenhammar - symphony no.1 in f (bis)"

this is wonderful! never even heard of him.

Stenhammar had one of the best composer names, that's for sure. I've always feared that if I listened to him he wouldn't live up to that name.

Such strange music. Recommend weed.

haha OTM

Let us know what the Reger string trios are like, Scott, when you get a chance to listen.

haha awesome nick, P

:-)

was listening to the short german opera der freischutz - the marksman - and enjoying the overture a lot. i know nothing of carl maria von weber and it makes me think i should look out for some of his orchestral work. there can't be much as it seems he died at the age of 40 (1786-1826). anyway, if you are looking for something REALLY german, this might be for you. break out the schnapps.

"Such strange music. Recommend weed."

i have some records of ancient spanish music that are truly stonerific. i'll have to dig around for titles. hypnotic vocal stuff that 4AD should have reissued when they were at their mock-baroque height.

oh man this french candide pressing of a joachim violin concerto sounds amazing. it would make an analog lover out of anyone. maybe even geir since it is the concerto "a la hongroise". aaron rosand on violin.

Weber didn't do much substantial orchestral stuff outside of his operas. The overtures from his operas stand on their own pretty well though (Freischutz overture = awesome, Oberon and Euryanthe ones also great, can't remember the others). Maybe look out for a Weber Overtures collection. I should do the same!

As a point of trivia, Der Freischutz and Tom Waits- The Black Rider are derived from the same source material.

Also Liszt made a solo piano fantasy out of Der Freischutz which is super fun.

it's a nice day and i have my door open and i'm blasting the mozarabic antiphonary of silos onto main street. nothing says hip happening record store like 7th century spanish monk music!

Tell them its the new Om record.

sometimes its all in the pickin'. put on american string quartet doing dvorak string quartets and...blehhhh. just sounded bleh. by the book bleh.

so now i'm playing lenny bernstein doing ives symphony no.2 instead. so not bleh.

I've been listening a lot to Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen to familiarise myself with it before going to see it in a couple of weeks. Rather slight and quirky but very beautiful in places. Lots of other stuff but the piece that's made the biggest impact has been Berg's Violin Concerto, which I know well from listening repeatedly a few years back but hadn't heard for ages. I caught myself wondering if it isn't the most beautiful modernist work in any genre. Not a very meaningful question, and if push came to shove I'd probably still rate it below a few Stravinsky pieces at least, but it really is astonishingly lovely.

One of the best things about 'modernist' music is that all your ideas of beauty tend to fall apart until you don't know what's beautiful (or not) anymore...so a Beethoven piece could much uglier than certain pieces by Webern.

The 8th Volume of Bridge Records' Music of Elliott Carter is pretty spectacular -- 2 CDs featuring music written since 2002, when the composer turned 94 years old. Several major works (a compact Horn Concerto, a Clarinet Quintet, an Ezra Pound setting, cycles on poems of Ashbery and Zukofsky), several charming shorter works for soloists or small groups, and two remarkable, coloristic orchestral works (Sound Fields for strings, Wind Rose for winds) that, in their stillness and single-mindedness, are like nothing else he's ever written. Highly recommended.

"One of the best things about 'modernist' music is that all your ideas of beauty tend to fall apart until you don't know what's beautiful (or not) anymore...so a Beethoven piece could much uglier than certain pieces by Webern."

I don't really know any Webern but I wouldn't need to like him much to prefer him to Beethoven, at least the orchestral Beethoven. I have a blind (deaf?) spot with Beethoven's orchestral music. I go to concerts with Beethoven on the programme and arrive/leave at the interval so I don't have to sit through the bloody Seventh symphony or whatever again. The only other piece of music I feel like this about is Sibelius's Violin Concerto, but I like Sibelius's symphonies a lot so that's quite different.

I can't explain this. I dislike stuff that sounds heavily Beethovianto me as well (esp Brahms). It might have to do with over exposure when young, but other stuff I heard a lot of when younger
(Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Mahler) I can still enjoy in the right frame of mind.

i think beethoven is a poor choice as a signifier for 'stereotypically beuatiful classical music' because most of his music does sound 'ugly', certainly ungainly and awkward and often grotesque and i think he meant for it to be that way. a better composer to use for that kind of comparison would be, idk, richard strauss, puccini, elgar, rachmaninov. perhaps you could go further back to mendelssohn and schubert.

I suspect my problems with Beethoven have to do with his appropriation of sonata form as a vehicle for something intended to represent or at least be an analogue for serious thought. Music as philosophy. Of course some of that is already there in Mozart or Haydn, but there's always enough lightness to counter any sense that the music is taking itself too seriously. In Beethoven the result too often sounds to me tediously sententious or religiose, and a somehow predictable orchestral palette doesn't help: his influence then becomes pervasive though the Germanic tradition, argumentative structures that I personally find claustrophobic and alienating, and doesn't start to break down until Wagner.

I appreciate that in purely musical terms much of what he was doing was incredibly imaginative, brave and new and that he was a genius by any fair definition of the term. You have to admire that, but it doesn't seem to be enough to make most of his music a pleasurable listen for me.

not even the string quartets? are pleasurable? to you? ever? wait, did you say you you don't like brahms? :(

Thank you for reminding me to listen to Brahms' first symphony. Alto Rhapsody for hangover, first symphony for bein slightly pissed. That 'I send you a thousand greetings!' bit early in the fourth movement gives you a useful surge that stops you sinking into gloomy lethargy. Sure this is why Brahms composed it.

I'm not sure about the string quartets. My listening history is a bit untypical because I heard a lot of predominantly very mainstream classical music as a youngster, then for many years listened to it hardly at all, then 3 or 4 years ago started to re-immerse myself in it by which time predictably enough my taste had changed quite a lot. I found I was bored by Beethoven despite liking him a lot when younger. I'm not being a "critic" - Beethoven's reputation isn't going to be affected by my idiosyncratic taste - just trying to make sense of a personal response.

A couple of years ago I went to a Wigmore Hall concert where the programme included a quartet each by Shostakovich and Prokofiev (the attractions for me) and one of Beethoven's late ones. I was very unexpectedly blown away by the Beethoven. That's the main reason I say that it's his orchestral music I don't get along with. There seems to be a glimmer of something to follow up with the SQs but I've never gotten round to it, just on the basis you can't listen to everything.

I've never much liked Brahms. I've heard well played/conducted live performances of the 3rd symphony and 1st piano concerto in the past year or so without having my prejudices in any way dented. To me it sounds like Beethoven with extra romantic stodge. For personal history reasons I do quite like the Double Concerto.

"think beethoven is a poor choice as a signifier for 'stereotypically beuatiful classical music' because most of his music does sound 'ugly', certainly ungainly and awkward and often grotesque"

Yes you're right...Beethoven and Bach are probably held as quite beautiful by people though...maybe I was thinking of a Geir-esque listener when I said it.

I saw a performance of Brahms alongside Helmut Lachenmann a couple of weeks ago (both piano works) - the connection didn't quite strike me but I'll be listening on.

Man, I do not agree that Strauss works any better as a signifier for 'stereotypically pretty classical music'.

Hahaha OTM unless we're talking about Der Rosenkavalier or something-- but even that is so gnarly that 'ah beauty' can hardly be the takeaway.

Frankiemachine, I commend you as the first non-fan of LvB I have encountered who does not turn it into an aggressive and challops-y stance. In fact your articulation of your unenthusiasm is v interesting to me.

I agree that LvB was not about any kind of common ideal of beauty. His music is so often redolent of contradictions, struggle, surprise, and sardonic humor that the scenes of straight-up beauty feel like just another part of the grammar. Eventually he comes to a kind of uncontextualizable beauty which is unlike any foregoing concept of beauty and seems to have been stolen from the sky somewhere (the last 3 piano sonatas, the lyrical episode in the latter part of the Diabelli Variations, the late quartets). I agree that his symphonies inspire much less awe than the sonatas and chamber music-- I love his symphonies and concertos deeply but they do spring far more from the conventions of the time.

I find it endlessly fascinating the diverse ways the generation after him came to grips with the Beethoven Problem (basically 'what the fuck to do next?). Schumann's solution is the most interesting and exciting to me in that it is at once the most subversive and reverent. I'm talking here about what Schumann is up to in his solo piano music and lieder, not his symphonies (which are v addictive and quirky but not ahem Great Works).

Re: Brahms, I have felt for a long time that the heart of what we was about is in the chamber music.

Re: Brahms, I have felt for a long time that the heart of what he was about is in the chamber music.

as a kid, one of the first things i ever fell in love with was brahms 4th symphony. its a warhorse, a chestnut, and beloved by old ladies, but i still love hearing it. its as catchy as pop music and i got no problem with the whole beauty thing. brahms did beauty up right! but one thing that i've learned is he was not one thing and one thing only. he still surprises me. i love the chamber stuff too. and the piano pieces. man, there is much richness and goodness there.

There's a particular review writer for Fanfare who has insisted repeatedly and at length that the 4th is a march to death, a depiction of utter annihilation and disaster. I haven't heard this in it myself, but I haven't spent that much time with the 4th-- still preoccupied with the 1st with its proto-mahlerian feel in the first movement...

i was hooked on the double concerto for awhile. kept playing it for weeks.

hey, now i'm playing vivaldi concertos. maybe i am an old lady...

Right this moment, I'm listening to some contemporary Serbian music linked to from Kyle Gann's blog and I am enjoying it enough to want to point it out (I'm on the first file linked to from this post): http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2010/04/every_29_years_saturn.html

That photo of Gann and the Serbian composers at dinner together makes me want to be civilized (if it's not too late).

Messiaen's ‘Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus’ from Quatuor pour la fin du temps arranged for choir ensemble (!!!!)

performed & arranged by Hans-Christoph Rademann & Dresdner Kammerchor

Must give that one a listen later.

Really enjoying In Moto Propio for Woodwinds and what sounds like a bunch of processed cat-squealing vocals: a powerful and at the same time humorous contrast.

Picked up his Orchestra ages back. Will give it a listen later.

that's rly good xp

http://www.sequenza21.com/Turabgalila_Symph.jpg

:O

Since the above Beethoven discussion I've been to the Wigmore Hall to hear the Auryn Quartet play Beethoven SQs 7 and 15. I loved these especially 15 (although I had the advantage of recognising most of it from some forgotten past listening, while I only knew the opening theme from the 7th). Definitely something to follow up. It seemed to confirm it's only Beethoven's orchestral music I find tedious, although presumably the structural principles are fairly closely linked. I've never played classical music but I used to play in a jazz quartet (drums/bass/piano/sax) and although SQ playing is obviously massively different there are some similarities in the way the players interact that makes SQ playing easier for me to identify with than orchestral. I thought the Auryn's were superb, authoritative, elegant, precise, clear - but I'm no great connoisseur - I noticed that the following night's performance (more Beethoven) was lukewarmly reviewed in The Times.

I've been listening a lot to the Shostakovich Cello Concertos, Britten's Death in Venice, Strauss's Don Quixote, various other stuff. The Shostakovich I know well, the others are new to me.

La création du monde, Op. 81a by Darius Milhaud

Beautiful.

That performance of Turangalila I have, but have not yet given it due attention. However, Antoni Wit and the PNRSO are a hidden treasure-- their series of complete Lutoslawski orchestral works on Naxos is one of the best things that label has ever done.

Yes!

I strongly urge you to listen to this version of Turangalila which imo is, if not the best, way up there. I think I prefer this over the Myung-Whun Chung version!

I've been listening mainly to more "standard" material as my CD collection has been 1000+ miles away from Chicago in Florida -- though not for long, I'm now in Florida and about to drive back with a jeepful of my crap, mostly books and CDs.

Right now on the listening agenda:

Brahms/Beethoven - Violin Concertos
Mendelssohn - Symphony No. 4
Prokofiev - Alexander Nevsky/Scythian Suite
Janáček - Katya Kabanova
Mussorgsky - Sunless/The Nursery/Songs and Dances of Death
Beethoven - Op. 2 Piano Sonatas

Love LvB Op. 2. He was already fucking incredible.

LOL @ your nickname

Is this a reference to Xasthur going 'lite' aka John Williamsy? lol

Naw, it's a reference to Mark 'My Cousin My Gastroenterologist' Leyner's first novel, 'I Smell Esther Williams'. But I like your parsing of it.

trying to investigate grieg's piano music having been reminded of his folksy genius on this recital by thomas ades

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2000/dec00/ades.htm

there's quite a lot of it

There is indeed a lot of piano music by Grieg. Uneven stuff, but the best of it is great. In addition to Ades' picks, I recommend the Op. 54 set, which includes the well-known Notturno and the extraordinary Glockengeläute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24shW29Hv_A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtSbLHjW_8o

For starters, I would recommend the Lyric Pieces from Op. 43 and 54 (I think i'm remembering those numbers correctly) and the Slatter Op. 72. Leif Ove Andsnes is excellent in this rep. Or, there's a huge complete series played by Eva Knardahl on the BIS label. The individual volumes are cheap on amazon mp3, and Knardahl is even better than Andsnes.

Anybody got a recommendation for a recording of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10?

My two favorites: Mravinsky/Leningrad SO on the Erato label. I think Erato may have been folded into Warner but this is still easy to find. Paavo Berglund/Bournemouth SO on EMI.

I'm willing to bet Mark Wigglesworth on BIS is also excellent.

If you're thinking of the Shostakovich 10 and don't already have most of the symphonies it may be worth bearing in mind that there are some very decent complete cycles out there for around the price of a couple of standard price cds.

thanks for the grieg recommendations

karajan's shostakovich #10 is good iirc, nice lugubrious string sounds.....

Yeah Karajan is good too. Plenty of tension. IIRC you want the 'Karajan Gold' edition (he recorded it twice).

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's recordings of Debussy's préludes & 'Estampes' sounding so magical today.

Also, Alla Pavlova's Symphony No. 3 is a thing of beauty.

LOL couldn't disagree more with this review

The Symphony no.3, composed six years later, might have been by a different composer. It's written in a kind of pastiche nineteenth-century style, complete with faux-Spanish exotic syncopations, melody and harmony (falling tetrachords, augmented seconds). Some traces remain of the earlier technique - for example, both symphonies feature passacaglia, but where no.1 uses it subtly and sparingly, allowing it to hover latent in the background, no.3 does it to death.

Though I do agree that Symphony No. 1 is amazing.

Gmeeoorh for organ by Xenakis is sensational

Some really powerful and surprising music there. Thanks! I always found Xenakis' acoustic music more appealing than his electronic music. Do you know who the organist is?

On a softer note, today I was really enjoying "Sunday Song Set" performed by David Starobin (guitar) and Patrick Mason (baritone). It's an arrangement (by Michael Starobin) of selections from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George. (I haven't seen the musical.) Energetic, striking, and attractive with great intricate guitaristic orchestration and dazzling playing.

Christoph Maria Moosmann, sir.

Thanks!

That organ piece made me want to put on "Metastasis" - the first Xenakis I ever heard, actually. The guy could get seriously intense.

(Also, I see now that the organist's name is on the linked page. Sorry about that.)

It's ok. Are you familiar with Jonchaies?

For 109 (!) musicians. The strings are so amazing.

The best moments in his music are where there's just gigantic blocks of sound and you can't really tell what's going on internally.

No. I'll look for that one. Agreed re blocks of sound. "Xas" was important to me too.

'along with seventy strings massed against the wind and percussion...'

Turanga, that's amazing! Is that from Mode Records' Xenakis series?

Glad you liked! That 'Jonchaies' is from this release, conducted by Arturo Tamayo. Probably my favorite recording I've heard of that piece so far.

Lately I have been obsessed with Håkon Austbø's recording of Janáček's 'In the mists' - <3

I like the Firkusny recordings all right but this is on another level imo.

I'm listening to Andrew Staniland tonight. Nice stuff.

Austbo is a very talented dude and has recorded even more rep than most ppl know (he has stuff only on Scandinavian labels like a complete Debussy series)

Is In The Mists the set that includes 'The Barn Owl Has Not Flown Away!'?

No, that would be 'On An Overgrown Path' which is also beautiful.

Austbø's 'Vingt regards' is actually my favorite btw.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517D6SRSg7L.jpg

never heard this but i like the cover

Slight resemblance to trolololo guy!

(mash-up idea?)

alfie schnittke feat eduard khil, 'a soviet artist's response to just criticsm: the musical'

i'm not sure how it wd work tbh

Use trolololo tune the same way Schnittke uses 19th century pastoral tune in last movement of that piano quintet. 'I am so happy to be going back to limbo'

Schnittke and son:

http://img3.photographersdirect.com/img/262/wm/pd649560.jpg

haha why am I not surprised that the kid's all gothy?

i have a weakness for janacek's piano music.

That's because it's gorgeous. :)

Bought the Brilliant Classics boxed set of Alfred Brendel's early recordings some months ago. Been listening to his Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22: very impressive.

WcB, is that a box of his Vanguard recordings or his Vox recordings?

I'm not that well versed in his Vanguard period but his first cycle of Beethoven sonatas on Vox is dynamite. There are a few sonatas in there which he didn't surpass in his later cycles (I'm thinking in particular of the Waldstein, Les Adieux and Hammerklavier).

I'm a huge fan of Brendel and have spent time on the classical newsgroup defending his ass. Ppl who are are highly wedded to the notion that great pianism = a 'singing tone' often abhor Brendel with a passion.

Actually, as I understand it, the box contains both his Vanguard and Vox recordings. His entire first Beethoven cycle is in there, anyway - haven't gotten to it yet (besides a couple of runs through the Hammerklavier) but definitely looking forward...

Listening lately:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Vr%2BhdiwXL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Very good post-70s-thaw Babbitt (both pieces are from the 80s). It'd be wrong to say that Babbitt has ever "mellowed out" but relatively speaking (compared to the pieces from the 50s and 60s) that's how it seems. There's more lingering over chord associations and attention paid to homophonic texture than the spiky counterpoint of the earlier pieces. The PC has a wonderfully dramatic scope and some winks at tonality (at one section the soloist and orchestra play tutti an almost Beethovenian chord) and beautiful orchestral textures (B. really is a great orchestrator), and The Head of the Bed has a great dreamlike clarity of textual image and instrumental interplay.

Chamber Music Albuquerque took out an ad a year or two back with the caption: "You go with him to the ball game. He should go with you to chamber music." I thought that was pretty awful on at least two levels: (1) the idea of making it into some guilt-trip chore (2) the kind of weird gender assumptions (are younger females--and it's a young female portrayed in the photo--really more interested in chamber music than young men?). And maybe she goes with him to the baseball game because she likes it. Is it fair to expect him to do something he doesn't like in return?

Women only listen to music for illicit reasons in my experience.

jk

Listening to the Tzadik disc with Wuorinen's Time's Encomium, New York Notes, etc — my first listen to this composer. Very impressive.

Yeah that disc, esp New York notes is great iirc

For anyone interested:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61XBBYK2HVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Charles Wuorinen - Lepton

This is what I am currently digging:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GOTbbxFSL._SS500_.jpg

Have so far listened to the first disc with Syms. 1 and 6. The 1st I know pretty well but this is a nice, rather slowly-paced take — the 6th is new to me, but what a great slab of concrete and steel this symphony is! Apparently it was written at the height of the Soviet crackdown on artists, and he got into deep shit. The crushingly loud and dissonant chord at the end of the final movement is an awesome (in the original sense) moment.

I am about to be digging this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41HR4ZMH59L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

i am currently digging:

the aeolian quartet playing haydn

the emerson quartet playing webern

currently:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BE3JD2VFL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

beautiful. essentially the precise sort of classical music i enjoy.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41nhIGhw4UL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

a particularly moving work, i think. even the title is moving in its directness!

Do love the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Remember a particularly intense moment listening to the Ierusalem section while walking through London, thinking about its frequent mystical reconfigurations as the New Jerusalem.

At the moment really enjoying John Ireland's 'London Pieces' for the piano. Two of them anyway - Chelsea Reach, appropriately Londonish (a bit like French impressionism crossed with music hall) and very attractively melancholy, and Month's Mind. The other two, particularly Ragamuffin, I find slightly mawkish, but that's a risk you run with John Ireland.

Spotify link here.

lauridsen - lux aeterna

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

I've been listening to the DG disc of Arvo Pärt's Fratres, Tabula Rasa and the 3rd Sym but I'm finding it a little dull. Does his music warrant exploring more?

http://images.emusic.com/music/images/album/279/111/560/11156011/300x300.jpg

Love the Schnittke - my first discovery of him.

I've been listening to the DG disc of Arvo Pärt's Fratres, Tabula Rasa and the 3rd Sym but I'm finding it a little dull. Does his music warrant exploring more?

I don't have that one but I do have the ECM disc of Fratres and Tabula Rasa and I have to say it's my favourite of all Part's works that I've heard.

Oh okay. I dunno, it's probably the music and not so much the performance. However, I'm listening to this right now and it's hitting the sweet spot:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41s6xTR7WAL._SS500_.jpg

Also listening to this week:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61iAA2BtVEL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

The gamelan-like fugal passage after the initial stabs in Jonchaies is some of the most gorgeous music I've heard, srsly.

it seems like you would maybe prefer part's choral works. i would suggest checking out de profundis w/the theater of voices and berliner messe/magnificat/summa w/the elora festival orchestra.

Cool, will do, thanks.

I'm also investigating his early work that predates the tonal stuff. I have a feeling it might give me a better understanding of how he arrived at (what I assume to be) his mature style. For me it seems a bit inscrutable and I feel like there must be something "there" underneath the glassy surface.

dear london-based currently digging classical dudes: the Rodolfus Choir are doing a concert of polyphonic music at St Dunstan's-in-the-West on Thursday and it sounds amazing. tbh I would go for Spem in Alium alone but there's Pärt and Tavener and Palestrina as well! pretty pumped tbh.

I'd go but I'd fall asleep (due to tiredness, not through breaching any boredom threshold by attending, that is)

oh shit I would be ALL OVER that concert

the Allegri piece alone is worth it

Yep, I'm seriously thinking of going if there are any tickets left. Might have to work late tomorrow tho so I'm having to hold off for the mo.

I've sung the Tallis, Allegri and Lauridsen pieces (I've been the baritone in the quartet for the Allegri quartet every time I've done it ^_^)

Today I am listening to this disc of music by Tristan Murail:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51nfU2OBp4L._SS500_.jpg

So far my favorite is "Attracteurs étranges" for solo cello. Incredibly colorful.

Not new to me, but I just want to bring this to everyone's attention because I was just listening to it:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51bBAviOEvL._SS500_.jpg

The short (6 minute) piece "Interlude" is just a gem — an extremely atmospheric weave of hazy consonance like the "Farben" movement from Schoenberg's 5 Pieces for Orch. Chain II and Partita are both unabashedly virtuosic, the harmony Funeral Music (might be his most famous piece) is amazingly dense and contrapuntally complex, and the 4th symphony (his masterpiece imo) is wonderfully dark and tightly argued. This is a top ten disc for me.

NP:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61YK9JEG5QL._SS500_.jpg

Continuing my trip through the Xenakis orch. works — about to give this a first listen:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Fmfbqw0EL._SS500_.jpg

xenakis' shaar is great

i don't think i've heard any of those

need to revisit the orch clasics like metastasis/pithoprakta (sp?)

Shaar is great. Jonchaies is still probably my favorite piece by him — just an elemental power. So far on first listening Synaphaï is the standout piece. Kyania is kind of boring and rhythmically square, like some of late Xenakis I've heard.

Change of gears:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61qVqFIGNjL.jpg

So beautiful. I've listened to this disc close to a dozen times and yet for some reason still have not explored his other organ works. There are just so many of them, I don't know where to start — though maybe I should just assume (probably correctly) that they're all good.

I just made a command decision that I need to explore Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Where to start? I prefer dense, dark, and dramatic.

there's a rly nice xenakis piece for organ, gmeeoorh

shostakovich....well those adjectives will fit a lot of his work, espcially symphonic

#7 and #10 especially but i like the last (#15) which is quite strange and parodic and grim

I strongly recommend Shostakovich's 8th string quartet.

Also the second piano trio.

But enough about Shostakovich. I'm a much bigger fan of Prokofiev and would recommend the following in particular:

Third, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies
Romeo and Juliet
Second piano concerto
Second violin concerto <-- good place to start

Piano Sonatas: Nos. 3, 6, 7, 8, 9

Less "dense, dark, and dramatic," but equally great:

First Symphony ("Classical")
Lt. Kije
Flute and piano sonata (there's a later version for violin and piano)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fVoUQScW5s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knqsx6_Ku1Q

And a much younger Gilels playing the same work

I don't know much Prokofiev so I couldn't say much other than echoing the recommendations of the others — as for Shostakovich, I'd recommend his Piano Quintet and the String Quartets (all of them from 3 on. I'd start with the trilogy of 7, 8 and 9).

Thanks for the recommendations guys! :)

Be sure to post here once you've listened to them. :)

Now playing on LP: Handel Recorder Sonatas, Op. 1 (Gustav Leonhardt, August Wenzinger, Hans-Martin Linde)

NP:

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/fa/01/c109c060ada0dcc09e0fc110.L.png

I used to work in that building!

Where is it?

It's the Renzo Piano tower at IRCAM (Paris).

(And I only worked there for about six months way back in 2001.)

That's really cool though. I really hope to visit IRCAM one day.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41qB4N9j12L._SS500_.jpg

Revisiting this set, my first complete Sib. I'm listening to the disc with syms. 5-7.

This is the best music ever btw.

Buxtehude, baby.

Cool, I don't know much by him other than a few organ pieces that are in the Gustav Leonhardt box set. What do you recommend?

Listening:

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/16/ba/33519833e7a0ab8c18713110.L.jpg

LvB - Große fuge
Conlon Nancarrow - String Quartet No. 3
Ruth Crawford-Seeger - String Quartet
Roger Reynolds - Coconico... A Shattered Landscape
Iannis Xenakis - Tetras

that's a great cd, my fav version of grosse fuge, xenakis and c-s pieces excellent

Yes, and the Nancarrow is a lot of fun and the Reynolds piece was a surprise, I'd never heard him until now.

Tonight saw Cliff Colnot conduct the Civic Orchestra in Sibelius's 4th and the 2nd suite from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloé. Orchestra sounded good but the tempi in the Sib were... weird, but the Ravel went off without a hitch.

I don't even know if William Brittelle's new Television Landscape is even "classical," apart from the fact that the whole thing is notated, but I don't know where else to mention it on ILM. It's really fantastic.

I listened to a bit, would probably say it's pop, but pop in the vein of Van Dyke Parks with really good arrangements. The vocals are a little off-putting.

Went to my first recital in an age last night. Highlight was a piece for violin and piano, played by Tim Parkinson and Angharad Davies.

From the pre-performance intro Tim gave you can conclude that, if it was composed in the 1850s people would have dismissed simply as out of tune, but because of the baggage that history accumulates over time something like this, executed with a straight face, could work. I actually like the violin passages at the end where it was reaching certain frequencies where it sounded so out of tune. The old notes but not in this way.

When a young group gets together for their first gig its their naivety and perhaps their ignorance (and that you know of this) but also enthusiasm that makes anyone listening invest emotions to make up for any gaps in tech. But here you know they are aware of history and that they have a technique. Usually I'd dismiss but there was almost a serious attempt to codify naivety. Except that its the lack of investment on part of your ear that is felt the most.

I guess I wanted to feel cheated, somehow.

Also heard a performance of Earle Brown's December 1952 (piano/saxophone). Made much more of an impression than any recording.

Neat, I went to a similar concert on Sunday held in a loft and put on by a few local musicians — the guy who put it together is a composer/pianist. He played some short piano pieces by a Uruguayan composer whose name I can't remember, a piece by French composer Allain Gaussin (of whom I'd not heard before then) and Feldman's Piano Piece 1956 A. After that a trio played improvisational electroacoustic music with electric guitar, amplified flute and a home-built instrument that had various objects amplified like metal springs, a pewter chalice, hair combs and small pieces of metal that made a sound like a thumb piano. After that a quartet of clarinet, flute, piano and modular synthesizer played some improvisational music with a more structured character.

Listening this week:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41i5lJ%2B1guL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

NP:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51pPp3YFGAL._SS500_.jpg

Martha Argerich playing Bach's Partita no. 2 in C minor and English Suite no. 2 in A minor... beautiful and very brilliant

http://www.musicweb-international.com/film/2001/Aug01/Dekalog.jpg

Re: the Nono I posted above — remarkable stuff. The early Due Esspressioni seems to be an extension of Webern's muted dynamics and constantly shifting instrumental color. There are some really unique instrument doublings in the latter half of the piece.

A Carolo Scarpa is surprisingly Scelsi-like, gravitating around a single tone and alternating stretches of silence with exclamations from the orchestra (with a hefty percussion battery).

Post-Praeludium is scored for tuba and live electronics, but is surprisingly delicate and quite beautiful really. The actions of the player come back as echoes and eventually the lines pile up, weave across and interact with each other. Very ghostly.

"fragmente-stille" is famous. I've heard the Arditti recording but it's been probably four years, so I couldn't compare, but I remember the piece as being extremely static and dull — so funny how our perceptions change. There is so much drama in this piece and I find it excitingly varied and engaging. Need to hear the other recordings.

Or see fragmente-stille live. Saw the Arditti play that with one of Schoenberg's quartet and it works really well!

I hope that I'll be able to in my lifetime! Where did you see the Ardittis?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51r65Ld7cfL._SS500_.jpg

Scando-tonal syms from a composer that died too young (only 64). Neither are incredibly groundbreaking but both are very personal and unique. The 3rd is surprisingly bleak. He eventually wrote a total of 8 syms and 11 string quartets (which I especially want to hear).

Corey - At the QEH in London.

Listening to this week:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51NR6KVZfcL._SS500_.jpg

The Ligeti (from his bizarre-yet-accessible late style) I know and love, but I'm new to the Nørgård pieces. I'm a huge Nørgård fan and think he's one of the greatest composers living today.

Listened:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/411xebUY1CL._SS400_.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knqsx6_Ku1Q

― Gorecki or Go Home (Paul in Santa Cruz), Wednesday, September 15, 2010 4:48 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm foolishly attempting to learn this one. It's probably going to be an all-year affair, and I usually seem to tackle Prokofiev, get halfway through and give up. So we'll see.

I was a fairly serious pianist when much younger, and I worked on Prokofiev 3, but getting halfway and giving up was my speciality, too. But it's a great piece, even though the energetic and lyrical sides seem stitched together awkwardly at a few points. I hope you stick with it! What else are you playing?

Agree about the stitching together aspect, tho it seems that's true of a lot of the Prokofiev I like.

As of right now, this is the only P piece I've managed to make it all the way through (and not, obv, up to speed):

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

Right now, mostly working on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJgku8ssPZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlNfF7be3kY

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYp53nPchp4

If you play a recital I want to be there! Lotus Land is the only Cyril Scott piece I know, thanks to this anthology:

http://assets.sheetmusicplus.com/product/Look-Inside/covers/3603869.jpg

(Which has a much plainer cover design in the edition I own.)

Oy, that I could ever get enough pieces in recital condition at the same time! (What else is in that anthology?)

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/An-Anthology-Of-Piano-Music-Vol-4-The-Twentieth-Century/3603869

Click on the "Song [sic] List" tab, then click "see all..."

It's been so long since I've played Kabalevsky.

This was one of the first songs I remember playing that I remember also liking playing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub872y6IS_g

I guess I have been partial to the Russians from day one.

So cuet! His feet don't even reach the pedals. I never played that one but I did play the Sonatina in the Anthology I mentioned above.

Listening to later today:

http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco2/Rec/Stockhausen/IR05.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do1NJL4SIwE

Musical-score videos of obscure repertoire on Youtube are my favorite thing ever!

Serious LOLs -- the Kapustin Etude at ca. 0:20 is EXACTLY the theme song of The Price is Right.

Haha, a YouTube comment says the same thing. I hear it in the melody, but only fleetingly. (Talk about obscure, this guy's stuff isn't even available to buy in the U.S.)

http://automaticheartbreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/SomeoneWillTakeCare-Cover.jpg

is this disc classical? it's interesting, it feels classical in some ways, and it's on the new amsterdam label (a classical label iirc).

horrible cover, btw.

I think so — I've been following his Twitter for a while. He usually has interesting things to say about queer rights and music. That is a really bad cover though.

Oh, that's a nice discovery for me. Not a million miles away from Owen Pallett's Heartland. (But leaning a bit towards Bang-on-a-Can.)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ciGVdi3SL._SS400_.jpg

Maybe it's poor form to post this, but it's the main reason I haven't been listening to more of other people's music lately. I guess I'm "currently digging" it; at any rate I'm relieved to have finally finished it after two months of pretty intensive work.

MIDI mockup of a new composition for solo piano

I hope maybe some of the folks who hang out in this thread and who enjoy stuff like Carter, Babbitt, Wolpe, Rakowski, and Imbrie will enjoy my work as well.

Not bad form at all. I'm very interested to hear it. I'll have to listen later when I can give it my full attention.

Last night at Northwestern I heard Ensemble Alternance perform new music by Mark André, Raphaël Cendo, Gérard Pesson and Phillipe Leroux, all of whom save André are completely to me. I'll be writing a review and will post it once it's up.

completely *new* to me, that is.

I've always had problems getting soundcloud files to play for me, but when I find a computer/browser that makes it work for me, I'll definitely give it a good listen!

Oh, I didn't realize Soundcloud could be problematic. I wonder if there's a better choice. Bandcamp? (I'm not keen on the Myspace model.)

http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco2/Rec/Stockhausen/IR02.jpg

I'm on a Stockhausen kick.

I got a mailing from ArkivMusic about a bunch of Danish composers, and I'm always curious about composers from outside the usual big-name places (which I think of as Germany, France, England, Austria, and Russia), so I trucked on over to eMusic and got a two-symphony album by Asger Hamerik - his Symphony No. 5 was fine if not spectacular but the No. 6, "Symphonie spirituelle," this is lovely stuff - kind of like less bombastic Elgar maybe? (nb disregard if you hate Elgar, it's not really "Elgarian," just in terms of its mood it reminds me a little.)

btw it looks like another year will pass without me being home long enough to actually properly learn how to play piano again. kind of bummed. I was a decent child pianist, stopped playing in my first act of "you can't tell me what to do"ism, and as a result my left hand is now pretty much only good for chords (and my right isn't much to write home about dynamically). every year I think about finding a teacher but I am in and out of town so much that I never seem to get around to it, and one of my desires is to actually be able to play some of the classical music I love on an instrument instead of just listening.

my first act of "you can't tell me what to do"ism = not learning the piano, ever, despite fervent protestations from various people (i think i was the only kid in my class who didn't play any instruments)

terrible idea

yeah people are always sort of confused when they find out how much I'm into music but that I can't sightread/play any instrument whatsoever

I should just let it go but am going to give this thread one bump in case I can interest anyone in checking out the piano pieces I posted here.

https://sites.google.com/site/pnauert/elegy-2-preview.jpg

yeah i listened to episodes... last week, which i liked

certainly reminded me of a less anguished wolpe and perhaps a bit of carter's piano music

This is beautiful Paul, thank you.

Thanks for listening and commenting guys! Wish me luck persuading a pianist to play this stuff.

Corey, I'd be interest to see your Ensemble Alternance review if it's online somewhere.

Certainly like to hear that piece of yours in a recital, Paul.

Maybe you'd have better luck in Europe? :-)

xp you can find it here

That's a clear and nicely detailed review -- and good for musicweb allowing a generous word count. I know a couple of the composers by name (André, Leroux) but I've heard little or none of their music. (Turns out it's fairly well represented on recordings, so I can explore a bit. The Pesson seems like a good place to start.)

Thanks! I've been meaning to write a review of the concert I saw last week but I've been feeling fairly negative about it and haven't been motivated.

Bach's Orgelbüchlein right now. Put it on because feeling a bit too impatient and scatterbrained to pay attention to an extended work (average subwork length abt 2 minutes here), but am ending up sitting it out, it seems. :D

Exploring the music of Claudio Spies, Chilean-born American composer who was a professor at Princeton for several decades.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61ngI1NY4uL._SS500_.jpg
I suppose Spies music epitomizes "academic twelve-tone" practice, but there's nothing routine or formulaic about it. He has a knack for lean textures, angular but expressive lines, and memorable recurring sonorities, all of which harken back to Stravinsky's late 12-tone music.

oops huge picture

Not too big a picture. Actually "academic twelve-tone" is something that I sorta wanna explore a bit more but names are sorta buried under all the negativity.

Yesterday I saw a chamber recital as part of the Helmut Lachenmann w/e at the South Bank.

1st half: 1st/2nd string quartets played by Arditti who do the usual heroic job they do. 1st is the radical-in-inverted-commas stuff, 2nd had more NOTES and tremolos than the skeletal sounds, that sounded more like exploring the gap between different perceptions of music and a more obvious commentary on the tradition. Tougher and almost certainly shouldn't be programmed together.

Intermission was an interview and then the 2nd half with a few solos then a newly written duo for piano and soprano (first time he was written for voices since his opera). Totally great to hear what you can't on record (and w/Lachenmann's comment in mind). I never quite noticed how fond he is of almost child-like sounds, but there it is on the piano piece (which deconstructs a melody) how much his music is framed by silence (not in the same manner as Feldman but he is deeply attuned to gaps in between sounds), how at times there is a thin line between a mere transference of discoveries to something more substantial (passages from the cello and violin pieces sounded thin to me).

The final piece was really good. I think his writing for the piano does have bite. And with voices he has definitely learned from Kagel.

I liked Lachenmann as a personality. Listen through the thick accent and certain phrases come out. 'Philharmonic thinking' was a good one and it'll be much tougher to use 'interesting music' to describe anything ever again.

I'm always jealous hearing about how much new music is presented in London. Rare to hear an individual piece by Lachenmann in/around San Francisco, so a whole weekend of concerts seems extraordinary. I heard James Avery play a set of piano pieces many years ago and can absolutely see the "child-like" quality in that music. And I know a few things from recordings, like the string quartet "Gran Torso" (which I guess is the "first quartet" that the Ardittis did at your concert).

Sometimes I think Lachenmann is spoiled for me by all the poor imitations his students churn out. Not that a lot of names are popping into my head, just that I've heard several tedious pieces by students referencing his notions of deconstruction and anti-music.

Nice work Paul these are economical and well written for the instrument
There are lots of new music opportunities in North America, but more often than not they've come about by comrades-in-arms from certain institutions getting together and composing, promoting and performing works themselves, see ACME, Bang on a Can in New York, Esprit in Toronto, etc. etc. etc.