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

Yeah, Ravel has a pretty miniscule but potent oeuruever.

Sounds dirty.

Sorry, a sexual interpretation of that phrase is just very amusing to me for some reason. More immature for 2013.

My first draft called Ravel's "whole" "small and tight."

there's a lurid anecdote involving jean barraqué and a stiletto heel which google, for better or worse, is refusing to reveal

stuff i've been playing and enjoying at the store:

debussy - string quartet in g minor/ravel - string quartet in f major - drolc quartet (dg)

prokofieff - lieutenant kije suite/scythian suite - chicago/abbado (dg) (appreciating warhorses that might show up in a beef or cotton commercial important in my opinion. hearing new things in old chestnuts. plus, this recording is awesome.)

brahms - piano quartet no.2 in a major/mahler - piano quartet movement - domus (virgin classics digital) (big fan of the 80's virgin classic metal mastered stuff on vinyl. they sound amazing.)

dvorak - complete piano trios - suk trio (supraphon)

francois joseph fetis - first symphony (for organ and orchestra) - orchestre symphonique de la rtbf (koch schwann) (never heard fetis before this - mid 19th century dude - and i have no idea what the orchestre symphonique de la rtbf is but again (with the euro-pressings) i love koch schwann vinyl from the 80's and will check out anything on the label and this is pleasant stuff.)

neilsen - symphony no.5/sibelius - symphony no.5 - knodrashin - concertgebouw orchestra (philips) (2 great tastes that go great together!)

brahms - piano quartet in g minor - gilels and dudes from the amadeus quartet (dg) (one of my faves. pieces and recordings.)

piano music of poulenc - gabriel tacchino (angel)

mozart - six quintets for string quartet and viola - budapest string quartet + one more dude (columbia) (i never listen to mozart but i'm feeling string-y these days and i can't remember if i've ever played this box set.)

piano concertos of muzio clementi and giovanni paisiello - felicja blumental/torino symphony orch (auditorium) (late 60's recording on small geeky u.k. label distributed in the states by the legendary record hunter store in nyc.)

(appreciating warhorses that might show up in a beef or cotton commercial important in my opinion. hearing new things in old chestnuts. plus, this recording is awesome.)

OTM. I have become a sort of defender of warhorses. Most of them are warhorses for a reason, and in most cases the overexposed/culturally saturated bit is no more than a couple of minutes long. Listen to the rest of Also Sprach Zarathustra! It's really fun!

neilsen - symphony no.5/sibelius - symphony no.5 - knodrashin - concertgebouw orchestra (philips)

Had NO idea this recording existed! That sounds potentially awesome.

also full circleness-- I was urging you to hear the Suk Trio Brahms set years back in the enfance of this thread! So good and meaty.

scott: rtbf = Radio Télévision Belge Francophone

have become a big fan of the suk trio. and josef suk! the commposer that is. lucked into a trove of supraphon vinyl a couple of years back.

listening to robert erickson right now. night music/the idea of order at key west/pacific sirens. dismissed tons of academic-type CRI albums years ago cuz they weren't weird enough or didn't include vietnam-era tape hijinx or something (being punk rock or whatever) and then i go back and listen to one and i'm totally in love. and this actually does have cool tape stuff on Pacific Sirens. and weird vocalizing and all kinds of great sounds. he taught subotnick and oliveros when they were just wee little things and he definitely knew what was up.

anyway, this album has become a fave of mine. and i love the small room ambience of Night Music. don't know if any modern chillwavers have discovered Pacific Sirens but they should check it out.

xpost Suk's 'A Summer Tale' symphony tone poem thing rocks my world. The 'blind musicians' and 'phantoms' movements are so moving to me.

in case people have never heard it. set adrift on memory bliss:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omuA2ghnrIY

Re catalogues of manageable sizes: The official work list of Fartein Valen (early Norwegian atonalist) clocks in at about 6 hours, according to a playlist published on Spotify (although a few works seem unrecorded). (The "official" criterion is important here; wikipedia says he also wrote about 25000 (!!) piano etudes, which have obviously not been recorded.)

Lili Boulanger has a tiny catalogue, much of it very beautiful. I've been meaning to recommend her music here. I own two great CDs on the Timpani label:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Melodies-BOULANGER/dp/B000Y1BR7U/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Works-Choir-Orchestra-BOULANGER/dp/B00113EZVK/

The second in particular cuts straight to the heart.

oh yeah

jean cras too. his biography is a fun read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Cras

i really dig this dutch guy. 20th century. didn't write a TON of stuff. i like everything i've heard. pretty sure everything he did could fit on 4 CDs or so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTHz_nA5-qA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC4CTyBwzp4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx7mLcWdJY

I have been savoring Jean Cras' Polypheme opera lately. He's really got the succulent stuff I go for.

Gonna check out his orchestral songs after Polypheme.

19th century composers tended to produce voluminously. For a compact body of work in high Romanticism I would nominate Berlioz, actually. The works themselves are large but there are only a few.

Alkan too, perhaps.

The works themselves are large but there are only a few.

*cough*wagner*cough* ;)

Thanks for Berg recoms, ttajpm!

Re: Brahms trios, say this recording?

http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/71ZDyilc3xL._AA1103_.jpg

Not sure! They may have done them more than once. The one I have is analog, a 2cd set which does include the Horn Trio.

All I could find in the library was the Borodin Trio's set on Chandos, so that will have to do for now!

can somebody who knows Feldman better than I do tell me whether I should get this? The stuff I have of his I love a lot, but it looks as though there's a lot to know about him

If you like the 90 min stuff (esp. Crippled Symmetry, there is an affinity between both works in my mind) and feel like you could listen to this for even hours then yes I would get Philip Guston.

Have the California EAR Unit rec, if that matters.

I have Feldman's String Quartet No. 2 (six hours) and have only listened to it once, but I really like having it.

SQ no. 2 is unlike Feldman's other 'late' music iirc, the last couple of hours are very different, more into repetition..

I haven't dared For Philip Guston yet. My Feldman faves fall into the 30 to 70 minute range, it seems.

My Feldman faves fall into the 30 to 70 minute range, it seems.

Definitely the case with me. I love the Piano & String Quartet (I have the '90s recording w/Kronos and Aki Takahashi), For John Cage (which splits between two CDs but is only about 82 minutes), and For Bunita Marcus (which I saw performed live once).

Definitely get this at any rate: http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=804552

Guston is probably my favourite Feldman piece at the moment. of course it's a listening commitment, but over the course of a quiet evening it inhabits the space and resolves itself into some of MF's most beautiful, transcendent music.

For me, a piece like that is aspirational in a way - I'd buy the CD/box set dreaming that one day I'd have the kind of uncluttered existence where I could devote five hours to a single piece of music.

"uncluttered", "lazy", it's all good :)

listening to a nice 1953 pressing of bruckner's great mass no.3. dig it. maybe christ-y is the way to go for me and old bruckner. and 60 year old records.

That's an interesting era, already recording to tape and releasing LPs but no stereo yet.

Some of the big names did their best work in that in between time. Thomas Beecham for example.

yeah i got no problem with mono. this is the vienna state philharmonia conducted by ferdinand grossman. which doesn't mean much to me. great recording though.

sounds like a pseudonym for a pickup orchestra. There were lots of them back then. The Vienna [something] [something]

i'd much rather hear a newer recording of bruckner, but the dynamic range makes home listening difficult w/out headphones

For Bruckner's sound world I prefer the height of analog: 60s or 70s. Like the recording of #6 by Horst Stein on Decca.

on the opposite end of the recording spectrum, yesterday i was listening to angel digital vinyl of muti and philadelphia doing scriabin symphony no.1. soooooo creamy. and dreamy. and kinda perfect. state of the art if you will. in 1986 anyway.

Creamy is the word for the Philadelphia, especially under Ormandy. Most recently I was getting drunk on their recording of Shostakovich #15. Haven't heard that many of the Muti/Philly era I must admit.

that's a mixed metaphor I guess. You don't get drunk on cream.

muti/philly was what hooked me on prokofiev's 3rd sym

One of the best Schubert piano performances I've ever heard is 5 bucks in Arkiv's January clearance sale:

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=167461

So I haven't been paying close attention to the news for a month or so and it has come to my attention just now on another thread that Charles Rosen has died.

The Romantic Generation is one of the best books I've ever read, fiction or non-fiction, on any topic, and one of those rare books that really affected who I am at least w/r/t all my thoughts about art and artistic effort.

Gonna cue up Schumann's Davidsbundlertanze, one of many keystones I owe Rosen for.

RIP.

He cancelled a gig and lecture here last year. Great writer - he's all over the original Boulez Webern box, an obscure but noteworthy point I didn't see in any of the obituaries.