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

http://i.imgur.com/x9De6hn.jpg

Been listening a lot to Faure's songs lately. I've been into his piano and chamber music for a while, but have been falling in love with the songs over the past few weeks, thanks to the four-disc complete recording by Elly Ameling and Gerard Souzay. I feel like Faure has always gotten short shrift, partly because he didn't write a lot of long-form works, and only a few orchestral pieces (mostly short ones), but also partly because of his weird, opaque melodic language. Especially his mid and late-period pieces have these long, evolving unpredictable melodies that modulate constantly but always have their own internal logic. Apparently the word among pianists is this quality makes his music second only to Bach's in its difficulty to memorize.
Anyway, his best songs totally transcend this quality, particularly as sung by Ameling, who has a really warm, unaffected voice. Souzay is a little spottier, apparently this album was recorded toward the end of his career. Check out the song below, or if you're on Spotify the whole set is there, including Le Secret, my favorite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ4Z2sBeWeQ

Heard a selection of Gesualdo's late madrigals yesterday - live, for the first time (though I have been listening I the William Christie and Alan Curtis recordings for years). All from book vi.

Hearing the voices intersect in the air, as it were, was pretty spectacular.

Saw this played live a couple of years ago, now on CD:

http://conviviumrecords.co.uk/c/releases/james-erber-the-traces-cycle-matteo-cesari-flutepiccolo/

Post-Christian Survival Kit (2005) unspecified instruments or instrumental components, unspecified percussion, physical actions which inadvertently produce a sound c. 10'

The complete History of Photography is being played next year:

http://ianpace.com/?event=history-of-photography-in-sound-complete

nx wk: http://cafeoto.co.uk/john-tilbury-plays-samuel-beckett-dave-smith.shtm

Looks like quite a lot of the Harmonia Mundi catalogue has been added to Spotify US sometime in the past couple weeks. There are still a few albums with 10-minute-plus tracks missing, but many more have their long tracks included. Been on a Schubert kick lately, so spent the evening listening to the Arcanto Quartet version of the String Quintet and the Mark Padmore/Paul Lewis Winterreise. Both beautiful, and beautifully recorded. Any recs from the recently added?

Loving Koroliov's The Art of the Fugue at the minute.

The Art of Fugue (or The Art of the Fugue, original German: Die Kunst der Fuge), BWV 1080

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjrR9hPM6OE

^ weird meditation on death and nothingness that the recent bbc elgar documentary introduced me to

What is that? ... Nothing.
A wild thing hurt in the night,
And it cries
In its dread,
Till it lies
Dead at the foot of the tree;
All that can be is said.
What is it? ... Nothing.

that is excellent

did elgar write anything else in that vein

having been digging around but haven't found anything else quite as out there as that. that one is the last song in his 'four part songs' from 1907

will always be a fan of 'where corals lie' though, janet baker version of that is just the dreamiest thing

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/02/277009922/first-listen-augustin-hadelich-sibelius-ad-s-violin-concertos

The Adès piece is lovely! Thanks for the link.

Pretty tempted by this 33-disc complete operas of Strauss at Arkiv.

currently digging Vivaldi, Beethoven, Messiaen and whatever-I-can-find in the dollar bins. Virtually all this shit's basically new to me.

Been really into comparing the Szell, Abbado, Furtwangler and Karajan recordings of various Beethoven symphonies, made easy by Spotify. Also been into revisiting the Reiner recording of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra (an all-time favorite). Also the Hillary Hahn recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, which is super-impressive and unusually unromantic for a very romantic work.

i looked at that same strauss box aero, but figured i personally would be better off just getting decent copies of salome and elektra for now. it is very handsome tho.

mvb that was my strategy too and now i have been totally sucked in... enjoy!

xpost

Have that same Reiner recording on my phone, and I love it.

Lots of Ligeti, specifically his string quartets, piano music and various orchestral pieces. He wrote so much quiet music! Today, I went to look his complete works list, and was surprised (though I shouldn't have been) how his style changed pretty much immediately after hanging with Stockhausen and crew in Darmstadt. I read he considers most of his stuff pre-Cologne and Darmstadt as "juvenile" (though I like a fair amount).

Also, still listening to a lot of Sibelius' Tapiola and The Tempest. I went back to the 7th symphony, but it reminded me too much of what (I already thought) I didn't like about his music, as far as just being too blandly symphonic, and simplistic. Still, there's something about this guy that's interesting, like the notion I must be missing something. I guess I'll keep hunting and gathering bits.

As I write this, the 3rd mvt of Schumann's string quartet in A comes up on shuffle. Slow, fluid, a bit drippy, but compared to what would come later in the century, practically stately. Also, the chord sequence starting around 1:40-2:00 reminds me why I love him so much. I read he suffered from depression, and like Sibelius, I hear moments like this as spots where he's distracted, looking inside (or out a window into the rain), and hanging on a chord or progression a bit longer than is necessary. He makes a very meditative, melancholy music, and seems timeless to my ears.

latest thing i've been really enjoying are various recordings of guitar compositions by manuel maria ponce, henze, brouwer, cornelius cardew and some others - julian bream's '20th century guitar' got me started down that path. one really nice one i just picked up for cheap that i'd never heard before is nikita koshkin's 'the prince's toys' played by some guy called vladimir mikulka, which has got a fair amount of banging and harmonics and stuff on it and kind of reminds me of a cross between bream and steffen basho junghans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2qDpUqkjJo

^ this is good fun

So much Sibelius the last couple of months. Not news, he's still my favorite of them all. His Sixth is the apex for me these days; Dominique I'm taken aback by your divergent reactions to the 7th and Tapiola. They are v much twins IMO. Wish I could go to Finland for the 150th bday festivities next year.

this is very old, but i enjoyed watching this stravinsky documentary today, no modern bullshit just all excellent archival footage:

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

igor cracking up when someone reads aloud shostakovich's criticism of him for being too avant garde is so wonderful

well Jon don't be! I need to listen more.

That Strauss box is a good buy. Also, the beloved old EMI box of Strauss' non-operatic work (rudolf kempe/Dresden staatskapelle) has been newly remastered for the first time since the early 90s and reissued cheaply under Warner's aegis. Supposed to sound great. I guess the new remastering was done a few years ago for Japan CM boffins market and now gets general release. So weird to have warner logos on classic EMI stuff tho.

My stravinsky of the month is Persephone, as already noted in the waiting for spring thread. About the only recording I don't have is the Stravinsky-craft one. (Is that in the 22 cd budget box?)

have been going mad over cage yet again, delving into the pieces i haven't heard, esp. the number pieces.

listened to that same schumann quartet for the first time the other day. the imitation of bagpipes in the last (?) movement was surprising!

yes jon - the last disc in the box is craft conducting various pieces under stravinsky's supervision

Heh Dominique before I came to this thread, I just read your thoughts on Liszt in the piano thread, and vaguely recalled someone writing something vaguely similar about Sibelius: the notes/harmonies not really doing what they are *supposed* to do in the expected context; a sort of "modernism" in form, not necessarily idiom, if that's at all possible.

I've had some problems with Sibelius. It may be related to the above; JS has generally given me an indeterminate feeling of seasickness, or something. (Similar to a thing I get (about 20 times stronger) with J Adams.) However, I stumbled upon symph 3 some months ago, which I find great catchy fun (POWER CHORD!), and recently have also found myself playing the string quartet more and more often.

(Also I realized I've actually totally disregarded Liszt as a composer in a way that is probably very unfair. A partial excuse is that I *really* do not care for the sound of the piano that much.)

Aha! An analogy for my Sibelius thing just occurred to me (you must excuse me, I've had a few beers tonight): for me, his stuff is probably in the Uncanny Valley, unlike Bach and Haydn and Brahms and Webern and Prokofiev and Babbitt and etc etc.

Went up to Bard and saw Peter Serkin play the Bartok Piano Concerto 3 with the Bard Conservatory Orchestra. Really great, and I was impressed with their student orchestra. I'm listening to the Dinu Lipatti recording of it now, anyone know a good more contemporary version? Lipatti is the man but I'd like to hear a better recording.

Geza Anda is great and the recording is very good early stereo. I also really like the Jando recording on Naxos. It's easy to take him for granted because he recorded so much for them but some of his discs are wonderful. Kocsis with Ivan Fischer is also really great but idk if it's available anymore.

good rec on geza anda thx, listening to it on youtube now. The Lipatti is just a little too poor sound quality for me, even has some strange blips on it.

listening to a lot of "second-tier" 19th c russian music, v enjoyable stuff

The Bard orchestra also did a Martinu piece, and I need to check out more Martinu I think. Where to start?

I spent a lot of time with Martinu last year and these are my faves:

Concerto for Double Timpanis
Symphony no 4 - especially in the utterly bewitching performance conducted by Turnovksy
Symphony no 6
Frescoes

There's a Mackerras disc with the concerto and the frescoes both

martinu seems very performance sensitive, if the playing is heavy or sluggish he just dies.

cto for double string orchestra
can also vouch for the symphonies, they're all worthy but 6 is v unique

martinu had the same problem as stravinsky and milhaud in that they wrote music with such facility that a lot of it is quite ephemeral. in that respect they are similar to the classical-era composers in that there isn't so much focus on the "masterwork" as there is in simply making work.

or the baroque even more so

i like to think of film score composers as the baroque super-prolific hired guns of the 20c and 21c but that's another convo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfA61_noOQQ&feature=youtu.be

I was just introduced to the music of this young local composer/cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne. I especially like this project, which might fall slightly out of the purview of this thread: http://thevisit1.bandcamp.com/ They describe this duo as a synthesis of Middle Eastern and Persian music, contemporary chamber music, and metal.

From what I've heard, Weinroth-Browne's own 'solo' compositions, which definitely fall under the purview of this thread, are very good too in my opinion. They're on the 'accessible' side of contemporary art music, occasionally verging into film music territory, but there's something emotive and gripping about them. The writing and orchestration are strong and the rhythmic ideas can be quite complex and sophisticated, probably owing to his love of progressive extreme metal. I enjoy these pieces:

https://raphaelweinroth-browne.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmQJ-fBc6Vo

I don't know whether newly composed music belongs here, but have you guys heard the new release of Become Ocean by John Luther Adams? It's seriously lovely. Alex Ross was overwhelmed last year: http://www.therestisnoise.com/2013/07/jlas-become-ocean.html

Important quote: Anyone who has secretly wished, during the swirling stasis that opens the Ring, that the music would go on like that forever will find much to love in Become Ocean. Yeah, that's pretty much me. It's on spotify, at least danish spotify.

Newly composed music definitely belongs here. I'm a relative novice re JL Adams but I just got Inuksuit which on first listen was amazing.