2016 Rolling Classical Listening Thread

I'm listening to Douglas Lilburn's Symphony no. 2. I've never listened to his stuff before. He's from all the way over in New Zealand, and that's a long way from me. I'm waiting to a hear a little kiwi flavour....though this CD does include his Aotearoa Overture, maybe i'll find it there.

“I want to plead with you the necessity of having a music of our own, a living tradition of music created in this country, a music that will satisfy those parts of our being that cannot be satisfied by the music of other nations.” (1946)

With that in mind, these recent pieces might be the Kiwi-est music possible:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/concert/programmes/upbeat/audio/201758203/phil-brownlee-and-adriana-tikao-concerto-for-taonga-puoro

https://soundcloud.com/philbrownlee/te-hau-o-tawhirimatea

^ Phil Brownlee and Ariana Tikao – "Ko te Tātai Whētu" ("The Constellation"*), concerto for taonga pūoro and orchestra, 2015
& Brownlee – "Te Hau o Tāwhirimātea" ("The Wind of Tāwhirimātea"*) (Richard Nunns - taonga pūoro, Bridget Douglas - flutes), 2010

Taonga pūoro are traditional instruments – in the concerto, Ariana Tikao plays among others pūtātara (conch shell trumpet), pūtōrino (a flute-trumpet), and pahu pounamu, "a gong made of South Island greenstone", as well as singing. The premiere was in 2015, by the CSO in Christchurch. It harks back to Māori myths and legends: "A big part of the concerto was based around a waiata [song] concerning the story of Hinetitama and Tāne, who lived as husband and wife. Hinetitama discovers Tāne is also her father and leaves him to reside in the underworld. When Tāne comes after her, she tells him to go back to raise their children and to take the stars to adorn the cloak of Raki, the Sky Father."

The pieces themselves are quite lilting and steady. Bear in mind, this is music written to suit these instruments and these stories, and not westernized expectations – so, me expecting a big crescendo finish? Not very reasonable. The hybrid form of western and traditional Māori music is especially new, and full of possibilities. Taonga pūoro have been revived only in recent decades after almost dying out, and it seems likely they'll appear in more popular music here as time goes on.

Interview with Phil Brownlee And Ariana Tikao here:
http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/upbt/upbt-20150612-1440-phil_brownlee_and_adriana_tikao_concerto_for_taonga_p_oro-064.mp3

And some more info about the concerto:
http://www.cso.co.nz/news/1433903220-worlds-first-taonga-puoro-concerto

Gillian Whitehead's music has definite Kiwi flavour, although I'm not too familiar with it yet.

Likewise I should listen to more Lilburn, he sounds pretty cool. (The quote above is from him, from this article about his 100th anniversary.) The Aotearoa overture is great, but it sounds to me more "Europa" than "Aotearoa". Not his fault – the country was extremely Anglicized at the time he wrote it (still is, in many quarters). Even using that title in 1940 was quite forward-thinking, 35 years before Māori was recognized as a national language.

* my translation, so prob not great

Branca's Hallucination City was finally released officially a few days ago

*47 years, duh (xp)

I am finally getting around to hearing the Christine Goerke/Jamie Barton "E un aeterna!" duet at last year's Richard Tucker Gala:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFR1OqT64js

...holy shit

WTG Julia Wolfe

i didn't see her name on the list; good for her!

I just saw this programme: http://worcesterchambermusic.org/into-the-abyss

I was expecting to like the Messiaen but I was actually surprised by the Schulhoff and Copland pieces, which I didn't know before. The Copland is a serial work from 1950 and great!

I've just started really spending time with Copland, like just these past couple of days. It's an exciting prospect -- large body of work, a lot of interesting phases, super interesting to read about

I am shocked and incredibly bummed at the news that Zoltan Kocsis, indisputably one of the most talented and distinctive pianists playing, has died in his early 60s.

I don't know how much of his large Philips discography is in print right now and thus on Spotify etc but his massive unparalleled solo Bartok cycle, Bartok Two-piano Sonata with Dezso Ranki, Debussy Images and Estampes, and Liszt transcription of Wagner's Parsifal are huge peaks in piano history.

He was full steam into a second act career as a conductor and orchestrator in Hungary which was yielding great recordings and I thought we'd get much more from him.

Kocsis came up through the Hungarian scholastic great-pianist machine at the same time as Ranki, Schiff, and Jando, all of whom are still playing; his musicianship probably resembles Ranki the most out of those, kind of an impossible to dissect blend of control and wildness.

This is a pretty cool recent sax quartet: https://battletrance.bandcamp.com/album/blade-of-love

brilliant album and no doubt the best sax quartet in the world right now, well the only other existing one I've heard was the Chicago Reed Quartet the other year.

neetelbaers posts all this great classical stuff on dime and i long ago gave up trying to keep up with it, but today i'm listening to his recording from yesterday's semi-finals of the august-everding percussion contest. helping me get a better understanding of contemporary solo percussion repertoire (the oldest stuff here is scelsi).

that battle trance recording is pretty dope

First performance of a recently rediscovered early Stravinsky piece
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/dec/03/stravinsky-funeral-song-valery-gergiev-maryinsky-st-petersburg

Listened to the first disc of this (Symphonies 1 & 4) today:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51BJpWdCHgL._SS500.jpg

Followed by the first disc of this (Quartets 1, 2 & 3):

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51byLeWSQQL._SS500.jpg

What'd you think of Sibelius 4? (If this was ur first hearing of it)

Oh, I've had the set for a few years. Great stuff.

I was just pointed to this today. Kepler Quartet's recent recording of three of Ben Johnston's microtonal string quartets. They sound amazing imo.

xposted from the bach thread, but this is so fucking good

http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2330767.1440681924!/image/image.jpg

Ha, so, apparently, the set I linked was recorded in 2011. It's still awesome! They recorded #s 6-8 this year.

any more recommendations with age of elegance harpsichord compositions or classical Spanish baroque guitar would be welcome. ^^^ That xp Freiburger/Bach recording is really hitting the spot for me tonight. I was listening to some 18th century classical Spanish guitar whilst quite drunk last week and thinking it almost sounded like fusion in places.

Do you remember what composers or guitarists you were listening to?

It was ensemble kapsberger - santiago de murcia codex. I think these compositions were only discovered in the 40's and might have been a bit out there for the 18th century.

Started listening on Spotify. From what I understand of the AMG review, it seems to suggest that they took a lot of liberties with the compositions, essentially creating a modern ensemble orchestration, so that might explain the fusion feel.

I noticed AMG didn't like it from google, but I'm one of those ad-block babies who ignores ad ridden sites. I suppose that does add some shade, but wasn't this some lost work that turned up in the 40's? i can't remember if I made that bit up. But it does seem fair to interpret a work how you feel does justice to it best is not an approach that should be completely discouraged.

No, you didn't make it up. Pauley and Koonce confirm that it was discovered by Saldivar in 1943 and identified by Lorimer ≈ 40 years later.

By the way, I wasn't passing judgment on the musicians (and I'm finding the recording enjoyable), just saying that the fusion quality (which I also hear) was probably not entirely due to de Murcia being ahead of his time.

You dig any other classical Spanish guitar recordings? I haven't really gone beyond random slsk/youtube searches, it is something I feel would be worth delving into much further.

Well, I'm more of a modern guy but the obvious Classical composer I really like is Sor. I like Sor a lot; "Marche Funebre" is one of my favourite pieces to play. You could try Duro's recording here? There are also the seven pieces on this disc that I've owned for a long time. The Giuliani concerto here is the recording I own. I should pull it out again. It's a recording I've listened to a lot. For the Baroque era, I mostly like Bach tbh.

That's all standard repertoire, though, and doesn't quite sound like the Kapsberger/de Murcia recording.

for baroque harpsichord, pancrace royer's stuff fucking kills. i'm not sure i'd describe it as "elegant" per se, but it's monstrously awesome. rameau does good harpsichord stuff too.