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

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'.

Hahaha OTM unless we're talking about Der Rosenkavalier or something-- but even that is so gnarly that 'ah beauty' can hardly be the takeaway.

Frankiemachine, I commend you as the first non-fan of LvB I have encountered who does not turn it into an aggressive and challops-y stance. In fact your articulation of your unenthusiasm is v interesting to me.

I agree that LvB was not about any kind of common ideal of beauty. His music is so often redolent of contradictions, struggle, surprise, and sardonic humor that the scenes of straight-up beauty feel like just another part of the grammar. Eventually he comes to a kind of uncontextualizable beauty which is unlike any foregoing concept of beauty and seems to have been stolen from the sky somewhere (the last 3 piano sonatas, the lyrical episode in the latter part of the Diabelli Variations, the late quartets). I agree that his symphonies inspire much less awe than the sonatas and chamber music-- I love his symphonies and concertos deeply but they do spring far more from the conventions of the time.

I find it endlessly fascinating the diverse ways the generation after him came to grips with the Beethoven Problem (basically 'what the fuck to do next?). Schumann's solution is the most interesting and exciting to me in that it is at once the most subversive and reverent. I'm talking here about what Schumann is up to in his solo piano music and lieder, not his symphonies (which are v addictive and quirky but not ahem Great Works).

Re: Brahms, I have felt for a long time that the heart of what we was about is in the chamber music.

Re: Brahms, I have felt for a long time that the heart of what he was about is in the chamber music.

as a kid, one of the first things i ever fell in love with was brahms 4th symphony. its a warhorse, a chestnut, and beloved by old ladies, but i still love hearing it. its as catchy as pop music and i got no problem with the whole beauty thing. brahms did beauty up right! but one thing that i've learned is he was not one thing and one thing only. he still surprises me. i love the chamber stuff too. and the piano pieces. man, there is much richness and goodness there.

There's a particular review writer for Fanfare who has insisted repeatedly and at length that the 4th is a march to death, a depiction of utter annihilation and disaster. I haven't heard this in it myself, but I haven't spent that much time with the 4th-- still preoccupied with the 1st with its proto-mahlerian feel in the first movement...

i was hooked on the double concerto for awhile. kept playing it for weeks.

hey, now i'm playing vivaldi concertos. maybe i am an old lady...

Right this moment, I'm listening to some contemporary Serbian music linked to from Kyle Gann's blog and I am enjoying it enough to want to point it out (I'm on the first file linked to from this post): http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2010/04/every_29_years_saturn.html

That photo of Gann and the Serbian composers at dinner together makes me want to be civilized (if it's not too late).

Messiaen's ‘Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus’ from Quatuor pour la fin du temps arranged for choir ensemble (!!!!)

performed & arranged by Hans-Christoph Rademann & Dresdner Kammerchor

Must give that one a listen later.

Really enjoying In Moto Propio for Woodwinds and what sounds like a bunch of processed cat-squealing vocals: a powerful and at the same time humorous contrast.

Picked up his Orchestra ages back. Will give it a listen later.

that's rly good xp

http://www.sequenza21.com/Turabgalila_Symph.jpg

:O

Since the above Beethoven discussion I've been to the Wigmore Hall to hear the Auryn Quartet play Beethoven SQs 7 and 15. I loved these especially 15 (although I had the advantage of recognising most of it from some forgotten past listening, while I only knew the opening theme from the 7th). Definitely something to follow up. It seemed to confirm it's only Beethoven's orchestral music I find tedious, although presumably the structural principles are fairly closely linked. I've never played classical music but I used to play in a jazz quartet (drums/bass/piano/sax) and although SQ playing is obviously massively different there are some similarities in the way the players interact that makes SQ playing easier for me to identify with than orchestral. I thought the Auryn's were superb, authoritative, elegant, precise, clear - but I'm no great connoisseur - I noticed that the following night's performance (more Beethoven) was lukewarmly reviewed in The Times.

I've been listening a lot to the Shostakovich Cello Concertos, Britten's Death in Venice, Strauss's Don Quixote, various other stuff. The Shostakovich I know well, the others are new to me.

La création du monde, Op. 81a by Darius Milhaud

Beautiful.

That performance of Turangalila I have, but have not yet given it due attention. However, Antoni Wit and the PNRSO are a hidden treasure-- their series of complete Lutoslawski orchestral works on Naxos is one of the best things that label has ever done.

Yes!

I strongly urge you to listen to this version of Turangalila which imo is, if not the best, way up there. I think I prefer this over the Myung-Whun Chung version!

I've been listening mainly to more "standard" material as my CD collection has been 1000+ miles away from Chicago in Florida -- though not for long, I'm now in Florida and about to drive back with a jeepful of my crap, mostly books and CDs.

Right now on the listening agenda:

Brahms/Beethoven - Violin Concertos
Mendelssohn - Symphony No. 4
Prokofiev - Alexander Nevsky/Scythian Suite
Janáček - Katya Kabanova
Mussorgsky - Sunless/The Nursery/Songs and Dances of Death
Beethoven - Op. 2 Piano Sonatas

Love LvB Op. 2. He was already fucking incredible.

LOL @ your nickname

Is this a reference to Xasthur going 'lite' aka John Williamsy? lol

Naw, it's a reference to Mark 'My Cousin My Gastroenterologist' Leyner's first novel, 'I Smell Esther Williams'. But I like your parsing of it.

trying to investigate grieg's piano music having been reminded of his folksy genius on this recital by thomas ades

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2000/dec00/ades.htm

there's quite a lot of it

There is indeed a lot of piano music by Grieg. Uneven stuff, but the best of it is great. In addition to Ades' picks, I recommend the Op. 54 set, which includes the well-known Notturno and the extraordinary Glockengeläute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24shW29Hv_A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtSbLHjW_8o

For starters, I would recommend the Lyric Pieces from Op. 43 and 54 (I think i'm remembering those numbers correctly) and the Slatter Op. 72. Leif Ove Andsnes is excellent in this rep. Or, there's a huge complete series played by Eva Knardahl on the BIS label. The individual volumes are cheap on amazon mp3, and Knardahl is even better than Andsnes.

Anybody got a recommendation for a recording of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10?

My two favorites: Mravinsky/Leningrad SO on the Erato label. I think Erato may have been folded into Warner but this is still easy to find. Paavo Berglund/Bournemouth SO on EMI.

I'm willing to bet Mark Wigglesworth on BIS is also excellent.

If you're thinking of the Shostakovich 10 and don't already have most of the symphonies it may be worth bearing in mind that there are some very decent complete cycles out there for around the price of a couple of standard price cds.

thanks for the grieg recommendations

karajan's shostakovich #10 is good iirc, nice lugubrious string sounds.....

Yeah Karajan is good too. Plenty of tension. IIRC you want the 'Karajan Gold' edition (he recorded it twice).

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's recordings of Debussy's préludes & 'Estampes' sounding so magical today.

Also, Alla Pavlova's Symphony No. 3 is a thing of beauty.

LOL couldn't disagree more with this review

The Symphony no.3, composed six years later, might have been by a different composer. It's written in a kind of pastiche nineteenth-century style, complete with faux-Spanish exotic syncopations, melody and harmony (falling tetrachords, augmented seconds). Some traces remain of the earlier technique - for example, both symphonies feature passacaglia, but where no.1 uses it subtly and sparingly, allowing it to hover latent in the background, no.3 does it to death.

Though I do agree that Symphony No. 1 is amazing.