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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M9BvpikuAk

For the first time really in my life, I've been diving headlong into Romantic-era symphonic music the past few weeks. I played tuba quite seriously for eight years when I was a student, so these aren't completely uncharted waters for me. But I'm in a much different place now, and I think my ability to appreciate these works has deepened considerably.

Mahler's 9th has been a particular obsession. I recall being floored by a performance of it by the Virginia All-State Orchestra (a bunch of high school kids!) when I was in the All-Virginia Band back in 1998, and rediscovering it has re-lit fires in my brain. This is all classical fan 101 stuff I realize, but just hearing how different conductor/orchestra combinations can bring out such different emotional, structural, textural, etc., nuances from the piece is astonishing. The one I keep coming back to is Carlo Maria Giulini's recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1977; there's something meditative and ethereal about it. In fact, I adore all the Giulini I've found--Bruckner's 9th, Brahms's 4th, and Beethoven's 7th.

I've also been digesting Mahler 9's from Otto Klemperer/New Philharmonia, Bruno Walter/Vienna (1938 version), and Georg Solti/London. This stuff sounds incredible on LP (maybe just because my cartridge cost twice what my CD player did!), and it's kind of amazing how much classical is out there on vinyl for the taking--and not for very much money. This is such a rich and involving piece that every performance--even if it's not my personal favorite--brings out things that others don't.

I'm rambling, but man does digging into these long, involving, deep works ever remind one of the finitude and scarcity of free time. I feel like I could pick four or five symphonies I really love and spend years and years just digesting all the different renditions. But then I'd miss out on so much! It's all so anxiety-inducing. Anyhow, in addition to Mahler's 9th (and 3rd, 5th, and 6th), I've also been loving Bruckner's 8th and 9th, Sibelius's 4th, Brahms's 1st and 4th (how had I never listened to Brahms before?!)... And I'm trying to figure out who to dive into next.

Such a great feeling - have been on a similar roll since the end of last year, albeit with different emphases. Enjoy!

http://bangonacan.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/BIG/death-speaks-front-cover.jpg

try the nielsen syms clarke, partic 4 and 5

Bought a Musical Heritage Society album of Purcell overtures on cassette at a thrift store today to listen to in the car.

Played Khachaturian's "Violin Concerto in Dm" a coupla weeks ago.

Atembogen and Five pieces for Organ and tape are frieghteningly good.

Available here off this double set: http://www.schott-music.com/shop/resources/598610.jpg

Great youtube clip of Heinz playing Mozart's Concerto for Oboe, must've been the hottest ticket in town...assuming he doesn't play anymore.

Clouds, thanks... I found a David Zinman/Rotterdam Orchestra recording of Nielsen's 5th on LP yesterday, and will spin it today.

Derp, that was my Janacek Sinfonietta I was thinking of; I mean Horenstein/New Philharmonia on the Nielsen.

There's really nothing like Mahler, is there? I mean, his has to be some of the strangest music ever composed. I find myself constantly asking, "How did he take it THERE from where it was? How did he think to overlay those instruments, those rhythms? What is this texture he's created? What is the emotional content of this? Is he joking with this?" The music moves and breathes and pulsates as if one single organism rather than a bunch of interlocking parts driving toward a resolution, but not in that drift-minimalism way I'm so used to. I cannot get my head all the way around it, but I love it.

Very interested to get into Mahler.

I feel like I could pick four or five symphonies I really love and spend years and years just digesting all the different renditions.

I couldn't do that (my ear wouldn't be that discerning) but there are certain pieces I could just spend lifetimes on. They provide immersion like little else.

Am on a good run:

Alban Berg - Pieces for Clarinet and Piano together w/ several pieces by Bernd-Alois Zimmermann (Canto di Speranza, Cello Concerto, Metamorphose, Presence, Sonata for solo viola and Tempus Loquendi (flutes)). Both stand perfectly alongise one another: they are hyper-expressive and both undercut with bits of music not from classical (jazz, 'film music', cabaret). This invites BAD WRITING as people will talk how postmodernist it all is.

Kevin Volans White Man Sleeps, Mbira, She Who Sleeps, Leaping Dance.. Really like this, it sounds careful about what its inferring (years earlier than Paul Simon's Graceland if you're looking for an example within pop) but it doesn't let that care strangle the potential for expression and expansion. A great fusion.

Andriessen - Die Staat and Workers Union. Love the ending of the latter, could be Neil Young...he's so much better than Glass or Reich, really my idea of minimalism, its full of politics.

Oh man, if you're into Berg you should definitely check out Mahler's 9th and 10th. As you can see from the above, I'm deeply enamored of the 9th, especially the outside movements. He's really pushing against the limits of tonality, but not at all in a dry or forced manner--it's just gorgeous, flowing, and unpredictable but uncannily right-feeling. Need to investigate Andriessen myself.

#9 is as good as late romanticism gets, there's a late karajan digital recording i like a lot

I'm tempted to say it's as good as symphonic writing gets, period! I haven't heard a Karajan version of it yet--I should. I have mixed feelings about Karajan, but I think the Bruckner of his I've heard is unstoppable. I just got a used CD of Eliahu Inbal and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra doing M9, and it's really, really good--a somewhat emotionally restrained reading, but the tempos are perfect and the production sound is just incredible.

XXXXXXXXXXXXP = Saw a performance of Death Speaks at the weekend w/ Nico Muhly and Nadia Sirota, was ace.

MareNest - were you at the Barbican thing?

I'm still mulling on the Philip Glass études from last night. Overall of the three concerts I saw over the weekend, it was a bit hit and miss. Some of the good bits were very good, but then there was some really dull bits too.

Yea, I went to the Friday and Sunday evening sessions. I agree about the etudes, I dug the couple of more complex and splattery ones, I was getting Einstein/Train vibes from one especially. Did you go to the Friday gig? The Prestini Opera was baaaaad.

Yeah, it didn't really make much sense at all (although I discovered afterwards that the opera in its full form is double the length, so maybe some of the key story bits got cut out).though that wasn't as bad as sitting through Villagers and Glen Hansard the next night.

The two things I've got out the weekend though are:
1) I really want to see So Percussion perform in a non-seated venue
2) Timo Andres (tempted to see him at the Wigmore Hall tomorrow night)

Berg's Wozzeck at the ENO, anyone seen it?

XP - Timo Andres was a machine, incredible to watch, Muhly is good, but you can tell he's at the limit of this capabilities (no surprise as he's a composer, not a concert pianist) but Timo almost had a big neon sign above him with COULD PLAY BOULEZ' SECOND SONATA AT TEN YRS OLD

Anyone into Finnissy? I was listening to "Ulpirra" today and it kind of made me feel like a kid discovering new music again.

Admittedly, it could be because my listening was saturated with the Sonic Youth discography for the past week and a half or so.

Sund4r - this is awesome news. Finnissy is just one of my very favourite composers. Plenty of things said (possibly by me) upthread. Certainly you should hear his piano music (English Countr Tunes is the obvious place), and then get onto Red Earth.

I'm listening to a few bits and pieces from John Cage (

Oops pressed too early: The City Wears a Slouch Hat. Its a quaint little piece.

Then I also feel like I'm really getting into Elliott Carter for the first time, even though I've been listening to a piece or two now and again for a few years, but this feels a bit more sustained. Mostly works from the 80s. I like the little duo combinations. I can't get used to the English operatic voice so In Thunder isn't something I'll be returning too.

Wonder how much he was listening to Franco Donatoni (or vice-versa). Triple Duo sounds p/good in that sense.

d/l more works by Bruno Maderna and Charles Ives too.

Wow, I just listened to Finnissy's 3 Preludes and am now listening to Kierkegaards (perf Laurence Crane). This is not what I expected! Somehow I'd thought he was a new complexity guy but this stuff sounds more like accessible post-minimal post-Satie mood music. It's definitely nice though!

Ha, OK, I just started the Youtube of English Country Tunes that you linked upthread: this is more what I expected.

OK, I'm a moron. The first recording I was listening to was of Finnissy PLAYING pieces by Laurence Crane. It's still early!

On This Church now. This seems like the most accessible 'New Complexity' music I've ever heard, lyrical even. I can't say I understand yet how it's all put together but it mostly sounds great.

Ah, I see Ben Watson made a Britten comparison. I thought of Britten as well.

'New Complexity' is a snappy term for dense, physical, muscular music. but it doesn't describe everything the composers associated with it get up to, and that especially goes for Finnissy who has a wide range of tastes, both as a pianist and composer.

Got this as a birthday present a couple weeks ago on the heels of my first ring cycle attendance. It immediately became one of my favorite piano recordings ever.

http://www.dynaudio.com/records/int/releases_files/cover.jpg

RIP Henri Dutilleux, one of my most beloved composers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22625786

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdNE685GMZc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhfESb2OG2E

Ach Henri was great.

Went through abt a dozen CRI records yesterday and realized I don't like Lou Harrison but I do like Irving Fine
So far, no dazzling standouts. It's been cool to listen to crates of new-to-me-and-OK 20th c stuff tho

i wish i liked lou harrison more. i like the idea of his music more than the actual offerings.

Yes I am never moved to seek more.

At the moment I am quite deeply into Ives: no4/Holidays/a CD worth of songs. And Finnissy is a bit like a latter day Ives, both of whom transform their own folk musics with the exception that Finnissy loves folk musics of every corner of the globe and he's far mroe subtle whereas Charles inserts quotation marks.

Vinko Globokar: Echange and Res - As - Eex - Ins - Pirer, both for trombone solo are quite something. His ensemble works aren't as interesting but I need to know more. His opera had Diamanda Galas in the lead role.

Rediscovering Xenakis' chamber works: Dmaathen, Charisma...Anaktoria has an outstanding ending. So punishing and good!

Berio: some of the sequenzas, esp the one for Recorder, Cello and Voice are p/great. As are the folk songs. I've been stuck into Coro for too long (not exactly a bad thing, it is still possibly his best)

Lachenmann's Accanto, where he drops a tape of Mozart in the middle of fierce concrete instrumentale. Very much like Kagel and Nono...the music that was can never be again. Its not about a notion of march of progress; this isn't necessarily better, but a "we can't repeat" msg is at work. The str trio; Dal Niente for Clarinet.

Berg's Lyric Suite is, in some ways, a counterpart to Accanto.

Birtwistle - Messiaen(ic) screams all round, in Triumph of Time its all delayed and er, well, timed.

A change of pace w/Les Barricades Mysterieuses by Couperin in the v well regarded recordings by Blandine Verdet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntxQHGv6SBs

the 'hexameron' youtube account is so great, full of slightly marginal but wonderful piano repertoire

I just started getting into the composer Örjan Sandred, a Swedish guy who now teaches at University of Manitoba. The album Cracks and Corrosion, which you can stream on Naxos Online, is pretty satisfying imo. "Cracks and Corrosion no. 2", for classical guitar with live electronics, was the initial draw and is still my favourite: some excellent processing, gets pretty intense at times. But the whole album is a good mix, with acoustic pieces opening and closing (piano + clarinet + string trio; flute and harp). In between, you also have "Amanzule Voices" for cello with live electronics, and "The Third Perspective", which is entirely computer-created but based on his analysis of cello sounds.

Some programme notes:
http://sandred.com/texts/amanzule-progr-note.pdf
http://sandred.com/texts/3rdpersp-progr-note.pdf
http://sandred.com/texts/Cracks-and-Corrosion-II.pdf

He actually offers software and Max patch downloads at his website too!

Also getting back into Ben Thigpen, an electronic/EA composer to whom I was exposed a great deal when I was at Buffalo. It's not the same without octatonic surround sound but there are some good samples/excerpts here:
http://thigpen.free.fr/pages/music/paths.html

I'm never sure whether electronic music counts as 'classical', unless it's scored.

How much interest would there be in a ballot poll of either string quartets or chamber music?

SQs would suit my habits of late.

Both would be good.

Actually we should amalgamate into one poll for chamber music that includes str quartets.

I was just thinking yesterday that ILM has never had a proper classical music ballot poll. Since I'm a diletantte when it comes to classical, I'd love to see this happen, so I can get recommendations. But I think the poll should include all of it, not just chamber music... Possibly it could have two different votes, one of chamber music and one for orchestral works? Kinda like the earlier polls have had different votes for singles and albums.

I can't, unfortunately, lend a hand to try and organise due to lack of time but its interesting to try and shape what it would look like. From what I've seen of how these are conducted can we have a top 50 countdown, seems weird to have stuff with a couple of votes in the poll.