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

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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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Also listening to this week:

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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)

oh shit I would be ALL OVER that concert

the Allegri piece alone is worth it

Yep, I'm seriously thinking of going if there are any tickets left. Might have to work late tomorrow tho so I'm having to hold off for the mo.

I've sung the Tallis, Allegri and Lauridsen pieces (I've been the baritone in the quartet for the Allegri quartet every time I've done it ^_^)

Today I am listening to this disc of music by Tristan Murail:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51nfU2OBp4L._SS500_.jpg

So far my favorite is "Attracteurs étranges" for solo cello. Incredibly colorful.

Not new to me, but I just want to bring this to everyone's attention because I was just listening to it:

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The short (6 minute) piece "Interlude" is just a gem — an extremely atmospheric weave of hazy consonance like the "Farben" movement from Schoenberg's 5 Pieces for Orch. Chain II and Partita are both unabashedly virtuosic, the harmony Funeral Music (might be his most famous piece) is amazingly dense and contrapuntally complex, and the 4th symphony (his masterpiece imo) is wonderfully dark and tightly argued. This is a top ten disc for me.

NP:

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Continuing my trip through the Xenakis orch. works — about to give this a first listen:

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xenakis' shaar is great

i don't think i've heard any of those

need to revisit the orch clasics like metastasis/pithoprakta (sp?)

Shaar is great. Jonchaies is still probably my favorite piece by him — just an elemental power. So far on first listening Synaphaï is the standout piece. Kyania is kind of boring and rhythmically square, like some of late Xenakis I've heard.

Change of gears:

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So beautiful. I've listened to this disc close to a dozen times and yet for some reason still have not explored his other organ works. There are just so many of them, I don't know where to start — though maybe I should just assume (probably correctly) that they're all good.

I just made a command decision that I need to explore Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Where to start? I prefer dense, dark, and dramatic.

there's a rly nice xenakis piece for organ, gmeeoorh

shostakovich....well those adjectives will fit a lot of his work, espcially symphonic

#7 and #10 especially but i like the last (#15) which is quite strange and parodic and grim

I strongly recommend Shostakovich's 8th string quartet.

Also the second piano trio.

But enough about Shostakovich. I'm a much bigger fan of Prokofiev and would recommend the following in particular:

Third, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies
Romeo and Juliet
Second piano concerto
Second violin concerto <-- good place to start

Piano Sonatas: Nos. 3, 6, 7, 8, 9

Less "dense, dark, and dramatic," but equally great:

First Symphony ("Classical")
Lt. Kije
Flute and piano sonata (there's a later version for violin and piano)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fVoUQScW5s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knqsx6_Ku1Q

And a much younger Gilels playing the same work

I don't know much Prokofiev so I couldn't say much other than echoing the recommendations of the others — as for Shostakovich, I'd recommend his Piano Quintet and the String Quartets (all of them from 3 on. I'd start with the trilogy of 7, 8 and 9).

Thanks for the recommendations guys! :)

Be sure to post here once you've listened to them. :)

Now playing on LP: Handel Recorder Sonatas, Op. 1 (Gustav Leonhardt, August Wenzinger, Hans-Martin Linde)

NP:

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I used to work in that building!

Where is it?

It's the Renzo Piano tower at IRCAM (Paris).

(And I only worked there for about six months way back in 2001.)