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

Gmeeoorh for organ by Xenakis is sensational

Some really powerful and surprising music there. Thanks! I always found Xenakis' acoustic music more appealing than his electronic music. Do you know who the organist is?

On a softer note, today I was really enjoying "Sunday Song Set" performed by David Starobin (guitar) and Patrick Mason (baritone). It's an arrangement (by Michael Starobin) of selections from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George. (I haven't seen the musical.) Energetic, striking, and attractive with great intricate guitaristic orchestration and dazzling playing.

Christoph Maria Moosmann, sir.

Thanks!

That organ piece made me want to put on "Metastasis" - the first Xenakis I ever heard, actually. The guy could get seriously intense.

(Also, I see now that the organist's name is on the linked page. Sorry about that.)

It's ok. Are you familiar with Jonchaies?

For 109 (!) musicians. The strings are so amazing.

The best moments in his music are where there's just gigantic blocks of sound and you can't really tell what's going on internally.

No. I'll look for that one. Agreed re blocks of sound. "Xas" was important to me too.

'along with seventy strings massed against the wind and percussion...'

Turanga, that's amazing! Is that from Mode Records' Xenakis series?

Glad you liked! That 'Jonchaies' is from this release, conducted by Arturo Tamayo. Probably my favorite recording I've heard of that piece so far.

Lately I have been obsessed with Håkon Austbø's recording of Janáček's 'In the mists' - <3

I like the Firkusny recordings all right but this is on another level imo.

I'm listening to Andrew Staniland tonight. Nice stuff.

Austbo is a very talented dude and has recorded even more rep than most ppl know (he has stuff only on Scandinavian labels like a complete Debussy series)

Is In The Mists the set that includes 'The Barn Owl Has Not Flown Away!'?

No, that would be 'On An Overgrown Path' which is also beautiful.

Austbø's 'Vingt regards' is actually my favorite btw.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517D6SRSg7L.jpg

never heard this but i like the cover

Slight resemblance to trolololo guy!

(mash-up idea?)

alfie schnittke feat eduard khil, 'a soviet artist's response to just criticsm: the musical'

i'm not sure how it wd work tbh

Use trolololo tune the same way Schnittke uses 19th century pastoral tune in last movement of that piano quintet. 'I am so happy to be going back to limbo'

Schnittke and son:

http://img3.photographersdirect.com/img/262/wm/pd649560.jpg

haha why am I not surprised that the kid's all gothy?

i have a weakness for janacek's piano music.

That's because it's gorgeous. :)

Bought the Brilliant Classics boxed set of Alfred Brendel's early recordings some months ago. Been listening to his Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22: very impressive.

WcB, is that a box of his Vanguard recordings or his Vox recordings?

I'm not that well versed in his Vanguard period but his first cycle of Beethoven sonatas on Vox is dynamite. There are a few sonatas in there which he didn't surpass in his later cycles (I'm thinking in particular of the Waldstein, Les Adieux and Hammerklavier).

I'm a huge fan of Brendel and have spent time on the classical newsgroup defending his ass. Ppl who are are highly wedded to the notion that great pianism = a 'singing tone' often abhor Brendel with a passion.

Actually, as I understand it, the box contains both his Vanguard and Vox recordings. His entire first Beethoven cycle is in there, anyway - haven't gotten to it yet (besides a couple of runs through the Hammerklavier) but definitely looking forward...

Listening lately:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Vr%2BhdiwXL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Very good post-70s-thaw Babbitt (both pieces are from the 80s). It'd be wrong to say that Babbitt has ever "mellowed out" but relatively speaking (compared to the pieces from the 50s and 60s) that's how it seems. There's more lingering over chord associations and attention paid to homophonic texture than the spiky counterpoint of the earlier pieces. The PC has a wonderfully dramatic scope and some winks at tonality (at one section the soloist and orchestra play tutti an almost Beethovenian chord) and beautiful orchestral textures (B. really is a great orchestrator), and The Head of the Bed has a great dreamlike clarity of textual image and instrumental interplay.

Chamber Music Albuquerque took out an ad a year or two back with the caption: "You go with him to the ball game. He should go with you to chamber music." I thought that was pretty awful on at least two levels: (1) the idea of making it into some guilt-trip chore (2) the kind of weird gender assumptions (are younger females--and it's a young female portrayed in the photo--really more interested in chamber music than young men?). And maybe she goes with him to the baseball game because she likes it. Is it fair to expect him to do something he doesn't like in return?

Women only listen to music for illicit reasons in my experience.

jk

Listening to the Tzadik disc with Wuorinen's Time's Encomium, New York Notes, etc — my first listen to this composer. Very impressive.

Yeah that disc, esp New York notes is great iirc

For anyone interested:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61XBBYK2HVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Charles Wuorinen - Lepton

This is what I am currently digging:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GOTbbxFSL._SS500_.jpg

Have so far listened to the first disc with Syms. 1 and 6. The 1st I know pretty well but this is a nice, rather slowly-paced take — the 6th is new to me, but what a great slab of concrete and steel this symphony is! Apparently it was written at the height of the Soviet crackdown on artists, and he got into deep shit. The crushingly loud and dissonant chord at the end of the final movement is an awesome (in the original sense) moment.

I am about to be digging this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41HR4ZMH59L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

i am currently digging:

the aeolian quartet playing haydn

the emerson quartet playing webern

currently:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BE3JD2VFL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

beautiful. essentially the precise sort of classical music i enjoy.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41nhIGhw4UL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

a particularly moving work, i think. even the title is moving in its directness!

Do love the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Remember a particularly intense moment listening to the Ierusalem section while walking through London, thinking about its frequent mystical reconfigurations as the New Jerusalem.

At the moment really enjoying John Ireland's 'London Pieces' for the piano. Two of them anyway - Chelsea Reach, appropriately Londonish (a bit like French impressionism crossed with music hall) and very attractively melancholy, and Month's Mind. The other two, particularly Ragamuffin, I find slightly mawkish, but that's a risk you run with John Ireland.

Spotify link here.

lauridsen - lux aeterna

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

I've been listening to the DG disc of Arvo Pärt's Fratres, Tabula Rasa and the 3rd Sym but I'm finding it a little dull. Does his music warrant exploring more?

http://images.emusic.com/music/images/album/279/111/560/11156011/300x300.jpg

Love the Schnittke - my first discovery of him.

I've been listening to the DG disc of Arvo Pärt's Fratres, Tabula Rasa and the 3rd Sym but I'm finding it a little dull. Does his music warrant exploring more?

I don't have that one but I do have the ECM disc of Fratres and Tabula Rasa and I have to say it's my favourite of all Part's works that I've heard.

Oh okay. I dunno, it's probably the music and not so much the performance. However, I'm listening to this right now and it's hitting the sweet spot:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41s6xTR7WAL._SS500_.jpg

Also listening to this week:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61iAA2BtVEL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

The gamelan-like fugal passage after the initial stabs in Jonchaies is some of the most gorgeous music I've heard, srsly.

it seems like you would maybe prefer part's choral works. i would suggest checking out de profundis w/the theater of voices and berliner messe/magnificat/summa w/the elora festival orchestra.

Cool, will do, thanks.

I'm also investigating his early work that predates the tonal stuff. I have a feeling it might give me a better understanding of how he arrived at (what I assume to be) his mature style. For me it seems a bit inscrutable and I feel like there must be something "there" underneath the glassy surface.

dear london-based currently digging classical dudes: the Rodolfus Choir are doing a concert of polyphonic music at St Dunstan's-in-the-West on Thursday and it sounds amazing. tbh I would go for Spem in Alium alone but there's Pärt and Tavener and Palestrina as well! pretty pumped tbh.

I'd go but I'd fall asleep (due to tiredness, not through breaching any boredom threshold by attending, that is)