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

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 always tell people to start by thinking about what kind of instrumentation they feel the most instinctively attracted to. Solo piano? String quartets/chamber combos? Orchestral? Vocal + orchestra? Vocal + piano? Go with your gut and fuck around in that area for awhile, checking out stuff from different centuries - composers of every era from the 18th c to today have worked in these more or less stable formats (well an “orchestra” for Mozart and an “orchestra” for Lutoslawski are quite different in scale and variety but you know what I mean)

Also for beginners I am a big fan of Michael Steinberg’s two books The Symphony and The Concerto - he does a wonderful job of writing you through a piece without getting too technical but without resorting to lame ass poetics either.

Calzino- Thanks

For the record, the stuff I did get into was Bach organ stuff, first disc in the big Mahler box (might have benefitted from having long breaks between listens), Havergal Brian's Gothic. Enjoying bits of Delius right now.

Surely Glen Branca's Ascension doesn't count? Just felt like enjoying a rock album to me.

4 out of 15 is a pretty good hitting percentage! do you like a quarter of the rock albums you listen to?

anyway, if you listen to something 20 times and don't like it you should probably take a break from that recording. it's taken me 25 years to get into classical, that's the beauty of it, you can take your time with it.

What got me into classical in my late teens was program music or pieces that had a strong association with movies or books, or evoked pictures in my mind of historical periods and cultural scenes. So like, the Clockwork Orange soundtrack got me into Beethoven's Ninth, then other Beethoven symphonies, then Schubert, Brahms and so on. Meanwhile, Wendy Carlos led me to Bach keyboard works and the Brandenburgs, then Scarlatti, Vivaldi and them boys.

At no time was I seeking this stuff out in a conscious effort to appreciate classical music. It all just sounded good to me in spite my instinctive rock music bias.

A few of the more obvious starting points that I was drawn to along these lines: Symphonie Fantastique, Scheherazade, Peer Gynt and Holberg Suites, Also Sprach Zarathustra, The Planets, La Mer, Le Tombeau de Couperin, Rite of Spring. I soon moved beyond a need for any programmatic tie-in. That's the last type of thing I go for anymore, or when I do, it's not for the pictures or storylines it is meant to conjure up.

Based on what you're already liking, most of this could seem a bit unsophisticated. Yeah, well...

I actually do like most of my rock purchases. Funnily enough I cant think of many albums I've actively disliked. But I comprehend most of them well.

I forgot to mention the role that weed played in my listening. People are right that it can take patience. Sometimes a little smoking helps to crack into these things. Not to be a bad influence, mind you.

Surely Glen Branca's Ascension doesn't count? Just felt like enjoying a rock album to me.

At the last job, my late 20th century music students thought that even Branca's 13th symphony just sounded like a rock band without the singing.

I've also got Branca's Symphony 1 which sounds a lot more like classical to me and I didn't dig it quite as much.

it helps to branch out from music you already like, e.g. I loved Aphex Twin and loads of other synth music and naturally explored the history of it, going back to the first academic experiments from modern classical composers, which led to classical music that might not be electronic but showcases some elements like Messiaen, Kagel, Berio etc. which led to exploring music of the previous generations, and so on

I'm a big fan of symphonic prog and metal, so symphonies seems natural. Also pipe organs, so Bach.

the bartok string quartets are pretty metal.

for symphonies try prokofiev. start with the 3rd.

I would recommend 'Weather' by Michael Gordon, it's pretty symphonic and brooding.

mahler's 6th is a really good un. not really metal but so full of tragedy and bombastic apocalyptic doom, apparently he was quite astutely feeling that very bad times were coming back for European Jewry and I think one of his children was dying when he composed it.

^^^ Based on what RAG has said I think that’s an excellent recommendation. The most visceral thing GM did

And a real example of catharsis in abstract music

Extremely basic stuff everyone knows here, but I'm currently listening to this 1926 recording of The Planets by the LSO conducted by Holst himself, and it is really very good.

https://youtu.be/lsBdREh9UEw

TBH classical warhorses fucking rule for the most part. There’s a reason they’re warhorses; it’s not good to condescend to them. (particularly the planets which is both a warhorse and a masterwork)

I'm a big fan of symphonic prog and metal, so symphonies seems natural. Also pipe organs, so Bach.

― Robert Adam Gilmour

seconding the bartok string quartet suggestion, last movement of the fourth string quartet is a key influence on "larks tongues in aspic ii"

if you like pipe organ you need to hear widor's fifth symphony ("symphony" in pipe organ terms doesn't mean the same thing as "symphony" for orchestra, it's just pipe organ)

Also the big Liszt organ pieces: Ad Nos, the variations on BACH, the wienen klagen sorgen zagen variations, and the transcription of Orpheus

Hunnenschlacht also has a fun organ part.

Yeah, was going to recommend Bartok's 4th string quartet. Fwiw, liking the style of rock music descibed as 'symphonic prog' does not necessarily mean you will prefer symphonies to chamber or solo works imo. A rock band, even a progressive one, is arguably more like a chamber group. Have you looked into much guitar repertoire btw? The Ginastera Sonata for Guitar and Villa-Lobos's Douze Etudes are good places to start for 'rocking' modern guitar music.

TBH classical warhorses fucking rule for the most part. There’s a reason they’re warhorses; it’s not good to condescend to them. (particularly the planets which is both a warhorse and a masterwork)

Actually can I hijack the thread slightly to ask if anyone has any good reccomendations of classical recordings from the early electronic recording era, say 1926-1938?

Elgar’s own recordings of his symphonies

hmmm, what do i have from that era

the cortot, thibaud, casals trio is great, i have their recording of beethoven's "archduke" and schubert's piano trio no. 1

the early recordings of rhapsody in blue are nice (if abbreviated) - i prefer the acoustic version to the subsequent electric version though

haven't heard elgar conducting his symphonies, but the violin concerto with yehudi menuhin from 1932 is great

pushing bast '38, but schonberg's recording of pierrot lunaire and stravinsky's second rite of spring (both from 1940) are great shit

gieseking's first recording of the emperor concerto (i think it's from '35?) is nice

RAG, are you a fan of Sunn O)))? If yes, I recommend Anna Thorvaldsdottir, a living composer whose albums Aerial, In The Light Of Air and Aequa are all amazing. They don't sound like "classical music" in the Bugs Bunny sense at all; at times they remind me of Autechre or Einstürzende Neubauten.

https://burningambulance.com/2018/12/28/anna-thorvaldsdottir-2/

https://burningambulance.com/2015/09/08/anna-thorvaldsdottir/

willem mengelberg's beethoven symphonies are fantastic (for old recordings)

i've only heard aequa but it rules

Thanks for all the recs.

I really think Havergal Brian's Gothic and Mahler's Das Klagende Lied fit into my "prog rock epic" orifice very nicely. They have that dramatic panoramic quality, big awesome landscapes traversed in exciting ways.

Bartok has long been on my list, Art Zoyd comparisons helped that along.

Went to a performance of Mahler's 9th last night. It was incredible and worth checking out. Surprised how lengthy it was and how fast it blew by.

1st movement of Mahler 9 is about as good as music gets imo

the first person i ever read repping for Mahler was C Bukowski!

Are there many "show must go on" stories like this one?

Five weeks after the outbreak of the Gulf War, 23.2.1991, the audience filled the Jerusalem Theatre: Jewish-American violinist Isaac Stern arrived in Israel as an act of solidarity with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Zubin Mehta.

A deafening alarm sounded in the hall, disrupting Mozart's Concerto No. 3 for violin and orchestra. The orchestra players went offstage to wear their masks, and Stern stepped off the stage, too, wanting to continue with the concert, but it was impossible to continue playing the concerto while the musicians wore masks. He decided to play the Adagio from Bach's Sonata Violin No. 1 in Bach Minor, with the alarm still wailing in the background, and the audience stood up and burst into applause, which was accompanied by a siren. Stern wore no mask. He later said that he did not believe that Saddam Hussein would launch Scud missiles at Jerusalem, its mosques and the extensive Arab population
– (Jerusalem Theatre)

The concert was filmed – while he plays, many of the audience are in gas masks, so it's slightly disturbing to watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZFWV0UIuNM

Another famous concert in adversity was Shostakovich's 7th symphony in 1942.

keep coming back to kyle gann's hyperchromatica

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW_ZBcqe5KQ

was listening to DJ Rupture/Julius Eastman Memory Depot the other day - sick album.

I’ve gotten obsessed with Ştefanu Nicolescu since hearing Ison II on a BBC Radio 3 concert and made my own YouTube playlist since so little is officially available to stream

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjXRMRMaO8qd5234s3IZiQHy35gVGPR3j&si=CXA7QZkslXvxcewG

wow, this certainly justifies your enthusiasm

soooo many ads tho

https://kamdzhalov.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/G%C3%B3recki_Symphony_No_3-bigger-grey-1080x675.jpg

This is a good, if mournful, listen. Lisa's voice is pretty understated in this recording, no doubt in service to the material.