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

latest thing i've been really enjoying are various recordings of guitar compositions by manuel maria ponce, henze, brouwer, cornelius cardew and some others - julian bream's '20th century guitar' got me started down that path. one really nice one i just picked up for cheap that i'd never heard before is nikita koshkin's 'the prince's toys' played by some guy called vladimir mikulka, which has got a fair amount of banging and harmonics and stuff on it and kind of reminds me of a cross between bream and steffen basho junghans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2qDpUqkjJo

^ this is good fun

So much Sibelius the last couple of months. Not news, he's still my favorite of them all. His Sixth is the apex for me these days; Dominique I'm taken aback by your divergent reactions to the 7th and Tapiola. They are v much twins IMO. Wish I could go to Finland for the 150th bday festivities next year.

this is very old, but i enjoyed watching this stravinsky documentary today, no modern bullshit just all excellent archival footage:

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

igor cracking up when someone reads aloud shostakovich's criticism of him for being too avant garde is so wonderful

well Jon don't be! I need to listen more.

That Strauss box is a good buy. Also, the beloved old EMI box of Strauss' non-operatic work (rudolf kempe/Dresden staatskapelle) has been newly remastered for the first time since the early 90s and reissued cheaply under Warner's aegis. Supposed to sound great. I guess the new remastering was done a few years ago for Japan CM boffins market and now gets general release. So weird to have warner logos on classic EMI stuff tho.

My stravinsky of the month is Persephone, as already noted in the waiting for spring thread. About the only recording I don't have is the Stravinsky-craft one. (Is that in the 22 cd budget box?)

have been going mad over cage yet again, delving into the pieces i haven't heard, esp. the number pieces.

listened to that same schumann quartet for the first time the other day. the imitation of bagpipes in the last (?) movement was surprising!

yes jon - the last disc in the box is craft conducting various pieces under stravinsky's supervision

Heh Dominique before I came to this thread, I just read your thoughts on Liszt in the piano thread, and vaguely recalled someone writing something vaguely similar about Sibelius: the notes/harmonies not really doing what they are *supposed* to do in the expected context; a sort of "modernism" in form, not necessarily idiom, if that's at all possible.

I've had some problems with Sibelius. It may be related to the above; JS has generally given me an indeterminate feeling of seasickness, or something. (Similar to a thing I get (about 20 times stronger) with J Adams.) However, I stumbled upon symph 3 some months ago, which I find great catchy fun (POWER CHORD!), and recently have also found myself playing the string quartet more and more often.

(Also I realized I've actually totally disregarded Liszt as a composer in a way that is probably very unfair. A partial excuse is that I *really* do not care for the sound of the piano that much.)

Aha! An analogy for my Sibelius thing just occurred to me (you must excuse me, I've had a few beers tonight): for me, his stuff is probably in the Uncanny Valley, unlike Bach and Haydn and Brahms and Webern and Prokofiev and Babbitt and etc etc.

Went up to Bard and saw Peter Serkin play the Bartok Piano Concerto 3 with the Bard Conservatory Orchestra. Really great, and I was impressed with their student orchestra. I'm listening to the Dinu Lipatti recording of it now, anyone know a good more contemporary version? Lipatti is the man but I'd like to hear a better recording.

Geza Anda is great and the recording is very good early stereo. I also really like the Jando recording on Naxos. It's easy to take him for granted because he recorded so much for them but some of his discs are wonderful. Kocsis with Ivan Fischer is also really great but idk if it's available anymore.

good rec on geza anda thx, listening to it on youtube now. The Lipatti is just a little too poor sound quality for me, even has some strange blips on it.

listening to a lot of "second-tier" 19th c russian music, v enjoyable stuff

The Bard orchestra also did a Martinu piece, and I need to check out more Martinu I think. Where to start?

I spent a lot of time with Martinu last year and these are my faves:

Concerto for Double Timpanis
Symphony no 4 - especially in the utterly bewitching performance conducted by Turnovksy
Symphony no 6
Frescoes

There's a Mackerras disc with the concerto and the frescoes both

martinu seems very performance sensitive, if the playing is heavy or sluggish he just dies.

cto for double string orchestra
can also vouch for the symphonies, they're all worthy but 6 is v unique

martinu had the same problem as stravinsky and milhaud in that they wrote music with such facility that a lot of it is quite ephemeral. in that respect they are similar to the classical-era composers in that there isn't so much focus on the "masterwork" as there is in simply making work.

or the baroque even more so

i like to think of film score composers as the baroque super-prolific hired guns of the 20c and 21c but that's another convo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfA61_noOQQ&feature=youtu.be

I was just introduced to the music of this young local composer/cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne. I especially like this project, which might fall slightly out of the purview of this thread: http://thevisit1.bandcamp.com/ They describe this duo as a synthesis of Middle Eastern and Persian music, contemporary chamber music, and metal.

From what I've heard, Weinroth-Browne's own 'solo' compositions, which definitely fall under the purview of this thread, are very good too in my opinion. They're on the 'accessible' side of contemporary art music, occasionally verging into film music territory, but there's something emotive and gripping about them. The writing and orchestration are strong and the rhythmic ideas can be quite complex and sophisticated, probably owing to his love of progressive extreme metal. I enjoy these pieces:

https://raphaelweinroth-browne.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmQJ-fBc6Vo

I don't know whether newly composed music belongs here, but have you guys heard the new release of Become Ocean by John Luther Adams? It's seriously lovely. Alex Ross was overwhelmed last year: http://www.therestisnoise.com/2013/07/jlas-become-ocean.html

Important quote: Anyone who has secretly wished, during the swirling stasis that opens the Ring, that the music would go on like that forever will find much to love in Become Ocean. Yeah, that's pretty much me. It's on spotify, at least danish spotify.

Newly composed music definitely belongs here. I'm a relative novice re JL Adams but I just got Inuksuit which on first listen was amazing.

alex ross is a wasteman

After a big binge of Glenn Gould I am loving Angela Hewitt playing Bach. Feel like she solved the problem of how to get the clarity and precision Bach calls for without the coldness of Gould.

Unfortunately all Spotify has very little of her -- she is on the "Rough Guide to Bach" doing a few diff things and then there's a recording of her playing a couple Bach piano concertos.

unfortunately her recording of faure's piano music is not on spotify either

There seem to be some videos of her on youtube. I think she's playing at Poisson Rouge soon with a vocalist, or maybe already did?

thinking of faure's piano music reminded me of the piano duet "dolly" which is just wonderful -- which reminded me of milhaud's "scaramouche" which i'd never heard before now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM0jAvY3MmU

("reminded" meaning reminded me of its existence)

Hyperion is not on spotify, or emusic. They are on the iTunes Store though.

I like Hewitt in the Well Tempered Clavier. Hurting, if you come across sergey schepkin's bach recordings, he's great and another one who takes on board the Gould influence but comes from a more romantic place

Scaramouche is so much fun to play!

Oh, I should get the Hewitt recordings of WTC (esp since she is an alumna of my current workplace!). Tbh, while Gould is great, I am sometimes frustrated by his performances of a couple of the fugues. I think it is mainly a tempo issue. Maybe my brain is too slow but I find the voices and thematic relationships much easier to follow (esp for teaching purposes) in slower performances. Only in a couple of cases.

this is kind of absurd but also kind of charming: http://www.amoeba.com/blog/2014/11/amoeba-music/dip-your-toes-into-classical-music-with-our-handy-conversion-chart.html

IF YOU LOVE: Laura Nyro
CHECK OUT: Toru Takemitsu, composer

makes me want to give laura nyro another shot tbh

what is the best way in to bruckner? i keep trying with this guy and it basically just puts me to sleep every time, so if anyone has any suggestions regarding specific pieces or performances or elements to pay attention to or even just ideal listening conditions, then i'm all ears

last one i tried was celibidache conducting symphony no. 3 fwiw

i dont have an answer to your question my liege, but i did want to ask if anybody here had checked out the laurence crane release from a few months ago. almost unbearably... modern at times but i do feel it hits it out of the park in terms of pure beautiful irreverent tonality

http://www.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=Vf2BQtMQNgs

just my $0.02

i got into bruckner thru obsessive listening to the 8th and 7th syms. (gunther wand conducting); no special conditions, just headphones and no distractions.

I heard a bunch of bruckner choral music at a concert a few years back and got really into that stuff for a short while, then burned out on it. It's a little too hollywood angelic choir for me at times, but it has its surprises.

I was gonna say I only know Bruckner for his choral music but "Locus iste" and "Os justi meditabitur" are gorgeous

Yeah those are v pretty

^ i like to stagger those w/ some bach motets

my man

btw if anyone is interested in a Spotify playlist made up of many of my favorite pieces of choral music, check here:

http://open.spotify.com/user/djperry1973/playlist/6bWnlWmCk45LxCffWeTSpR