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

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

Absolutely!

first Bruckner to click for me was the Fifth. But I would recommend the Ninth for starters. It's unfinished (three movements complete, finale unfinished and usually omitted) so the length is less intimidating, and it is super urgent and immediate, with the most face-stomping of his many face-stomping landler movements.

bruckner is just amazing. it's a cliche about his music but listening to him as a composer-organist synthesizing bach's horizontal harmony with wagner's vertical harmony and architectonics his music begins to make sense (ime anyway)

It's a good cliche. Also to think of it being made of terraced slabs each slab being of a particular affect, like in baroque music.

thanks for the recommendations. have got kurt mazur bringing the ruckus to symphony no 7 lined up for later. gonna see if headphones get me inside that wall of sound

that masur/bruckner joint was plain garbage btw and gone straight into the get-rid-of pile. sound quality was nonsense, just this interminable blaring stream of sound - sometimes quieter, sometimes louder - but impossible to follow any sort of logic as to why. found a rosbaud recording of the same piece and at least I could differentiate the instruments on that, though I'm still kind of perplexed by it tbh. and then yesterday i got old bertie von k belting out symphony no 4 and wow, a penny has dropped - this is something else entirely. fearsome fucking wall-shaking brass on that thing, and a good level of tension in some of the quieter interludes too, completely exhilarating stuff

IMO:

Sym 7 - steinberg
Sym 4 - Klemperer

I just finished my replays of Havergal Brian's Gothic symphony and it's precisely the sort of monster I was looking for in this thread.
It's the Hyperion label, BBC proms Martyn Brabbins performance, over 800 people in the orchestra! It's a notoriously difficult symphony to pull off.
Over 1 hour and 45 minutes of incredible visions, sometimes there's so much choral stuff going on its hard to take it all in. Monumental.
At first I was disappointed it wasn't all that dark for most of the duration because there's so much heavenly brightness from the singers and even odd whimsical bits. But it's totally amazing.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 12 November 2014

From my Epic Grandeur thread.

Link to thred?

Most EPIC GRANDEUR music of all time!

that sounds pretty crazy! only havergal brian i have are symphonies 6 & 16 which have both got some good doomy passages in them

I only discovered Brian and his Gothic symphony because I caught a bit of Curse Of The Gothic Symphony on Sky Arts. I'd like to see the whole thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfVg9vn4jCc

I don't know much about classical music but it's weird that this piece can be done with 600 or 800 people. I'm glad I got the bigger performance version.

I'm also a bit sceptical that this is the biggest or most difficult symphony there is.

guessing that mahlers 8th has been performed by the titular 1000 at some stage?

Currently digging Beethoven's early string quartets, specifically the six that make up Opus 18.

I know it's the late ones that are supposed to be the real hot potatoes, but they're as yet a bit too impenetrable for a novice like myself.

all the beethoven SQs are brilliant. esp love the rasumovsky quartets and the "serioso" and "harp" (which seem of a pair to me)

Early beethoven quartets and sonatas are amazing, no qualifiers.

Just watched Ken Russell's ABC Of British Music on youtube, it's all over the place but there were quite a few things that really impressed me.
He lists loads of neglected and forgotten composers and he makes a long list of music critics he hates.

Of the neglected composers, Elizabeth Maconchy stuck out the most.
I was pleased he liked Havergal Brian so much.

He gives a preview of Thomas Dolby playing music for Russell's Gothic, which sounded way better than I remembered.

A real standout was Nigel Kennedy performing part of his collaboration with David Heath. It has mixtures of electronic and rock. I looked for the track on youtube and David Heath has uploaded that whole album, but in a new mix that the record company wasn't interested in reissuing(he was unhappy with his original mix). Great stuff.

But the thing that really bowled me over was a clip of Cornelius Cardew. Wow! If only I can find that piece easily enough. I hope.

Here's a long but incomplete list of the things covered in the documentary.
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1025804/synopsis.html

Along with his freakout Liszt and Tchaikovsky movies, Russell made biopics of Debussy and Delius, both of whom are all time top 10 composers for me.

I haven't heard Dolby's Gothic score in decades. I remember being disappointed; I was a massive t dolb fan then.