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

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'.