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

i think i may finally get into rachmaninoff in the new year. same with tchaikovsky and rimsky-korsakov and borodin. in my neotenic modernist crusader phase i instantly shunned anything that appeared merely virtuosic (and basically all romantic/late-romantic composers who weren't german or austrian).

Dude I am so into warhorses now. I can't tell you how happy the motherfucking Polovtsian Dances make me.

WKCR Bachfest innit. One day left.

It's making me very happy that the DJ is referring to each piece only by its BWV number.

i remember those before i remember key sigs

Me too

I don't remember key sigs for ANYTHING tbh. Except the b minor mass and liszt sonata lol

Was totally sincere that it made me happy btw

I heard one of them fess up that they were just very uncomfortable pronouncing German words.

Teri Noel Towe's segments were a joy.

That got me to pull out this album again: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/bach-complete-lute-works/id695290508

I love this recording. Matlik's playing is really crisp and precise. I think the fugue from BWV 998 is one of my favourite pieces to listen to.

Although I've never listened much to the National, I picked this up recently because I saw the CD second-hand for a good price and am really interested in compositions that include electric guitar: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19141-jonny-greenwood-bryce-dessner-st-carolyn-by-the-sea-suite-from-there-will-be-blood/

I've been pleasantly surprised by how strong it is. I didn't know about the depth of Dessner's compositional experience and training tbh but he has serious compositional chops. (The Greenwood piece is good but I knew it already. Good performance/recording, though.)

Sund4r what do you think about g crumb's pcs written for david starobin?

I loved "Quest" when I saw it in Toronto. I should look for a good recording. I don't think I'm familiar with "Mundus Canis" or "Ghosts of Alhambra" but I'll find them. Was Songs, Drones, and Refrains of Death is obv classic.

- "Was"

There's still just the one recording of Quest afaik. Haven't heard Alhambra yet myself.

just bought a cheap ticket to see the following:

Barbara Hannigan soprano, conductor / Britten Sinfonia

Mozart Overture to La clemenza di Tito
Stravinsky Souvenirs de mon enfance
Stravinsky Pastorale
Haydn Symphony No.49, ‘La Passione’
Stravinsky Act One, Scene Three from The Rake’s Progress
Mozart Overture to Idomeneo
Mozart Bella mia fiamma, addio K528
Stravinsky Pulcinella Suite

and if you haven't seen hannigan do her singing & conducting thing before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1YPNEXQu3E

this is more awesome yet tbh, but not anything like what i'll be seeing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFFpzip-SZk

Saw Feldman's For John Cage performed a cpl of wks ago with a sandwiched of Webern either side (massive meat on that sandwich then).

This I am immensely looking fwd to: http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2015/march/against-the-day-a-concert-for-simon-howard-1960-2013

Good op to finally see how Beat Furrer very 'slight' sounding music works out: https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/kammer-klang-beasts-and-beauties-georgia-rogers-be/

digging some

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0001/073/MI0001073246.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

also:
Dietrich Buxtehude - Orgelwerke vol. 1 (Harald Vogel)
Simons Preston's J.S. Bach The Organ Works
Leonhardt's Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (all harpsichord - also watched Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach on nakh's recommendation)
Pickett's Monteverdi - L'Orfeo

Felt a sudden (and largely unprecedented) need to listen to Wagner this afternoon and have been working through Die Walküre (Marek Janowski, Jeannine Altmeyer, Siegfried Jerusalem & Staatskapelle Dresden) since then (4m into Act 3 now).

I get pulled into listening to the lions share of die walkure frequently because I need to hear that fucking storm prelude.

Also the scene with brunnhilde and siegmund where he abjures Valhalla <3

Anyone into Julio d'Escrivàn? I started checking out his music because I was working through one of his music tech textbooks. This is pretty cool imo, a movement from a concerto for USB video game controller, laptop, and orchestra.

This is a superlative Ravel/Rachmaninov recording, it wasn't what I was looking for but it is awesome.
http://www.cdbiblio.com/eingang/cdimages/img_ravel/ravel0008.jpg

That recording of the slow movement of the Ravel is heaven in a bottle.

Attended the Lahti Sibelius Festival last month. All the symphonies and more besides. Great experience. Jon Anderson was in the audience too!

Aarrrrrgghhhh the jealousy
Also I am so stoked that Jon Anderson is a sibelian

Apparently he cried through most of the performances. It was a fantastic series of concerts - really wish you had been there Jon!

Ettore De Carolis - Ciociaria - A Land Of Ancient Silences (one of my finds of the year. and why i will always love the musical heritage society. they put out so much stuff that NOBODY would have put out in the states. Italian folk stuff. children chanting. hurdy-gurdy. guitar. harmonium. mandolin. lutes. trombones. evocations of ancestral rituals. this record has it all.)

^^ This record scott wrote about five years ago is B L O W I N G MY M I N D

I'm taking note.

I'm a little disconcerted at how few classical albums I've been able to get into. Maybe something like 4 out of 15? I've heard people say it takes a bit more patience than most music, but even 20 listens hasn't been able to crack a lot of them. And most of it seems totally up my street. All the scarier is how long it takes to cover all the big boys and girls before you branch out.

How did people get into this stuff before recorded music was available? Is it just a case of being familiar enough with the genres?

Actually playing the music and seeing it live; probably still the best ways.

My only suggestion would be to listen to lots of different stuff from all periods, rather than intensely trying to crack individual pieces. I find that learning about art is often about learning how to situate things in contrast with each other. You may learn more about how to hear a Mozart piece by hearing how it's different from a Beethoven piece.

If you can read music, following scores can help. Otherwise, it might help to try to identify melodic themes and motives and follow how they are developed and transformed; also looking for points of harmonic resolution might serve to guide your listening. Hard to say more without knowing what you're listening to and looking for.

xp Yeah, reading a book on music appreciation will probably be helpful. This one is good: https://www.amazon.ca/Music-Appreciation-Roger-Kamien/dp/0078025206

Sorry, "yeah" = jmm's idea is a good one and it made me think that reading up on the music in general may supplement it well. I've used the Kamien in an intro music appreciation course and it worked well ime.

http://www.cdbiblio.com/eingang/cdimages/img_ravel/ravel0008.jpg

check this beauty out RAG, you don't need to try and like it but you might!

I always tell people to start by thinking about what kind of instrumentation they feel the most instinctively attracted to. Solo piano? String quartets/chamber combos? Orchestral? Vocal + orchestra? Vocal + piano? Go with your gut and fuck around in that area for awhile, checking out stuff from different centuries - composers of every era from the 18th c to today have worked in these more or less stable formats (well an “orchestra” for Mozart and an “orchestra” for Lutoslawski are quite different in scale and variety but you know what I mean)

Also for beginners I am a big fan of Michael Steinberg’s two books The Symphony and The Concerto - he does a wonderful job of writing you through a piece without getting too technical but without resorting to lame ass poetics either.

Calzino- Thanks

For the record, the stuff I did get into was Bach organ stuff, first disc in the big Mahler box (might have benefitted from having long breaks between listens), Havergal Brian's Gothic. Enjoying bits of Delius right now.

Surely Glen Branca's Ascension doesn't count? Just felt like enjoying a rock album to me.

4 out of 15 is a pretty good hitting percentage! do you like a quarter of the rock albums you listen to?

anyway, if you listen to something 20 times and don't like it you should probably take a break from that recording. it's taken me 25 years to get into classical, that's the beauty of it, you can take your time with it.

What got me into classical in my late teens was program music or pieces that had a strong association with movies or books, or evoked pictures in my mind of historical periods and cultural scenes. So like, the Clockwork Orange soundtrack got me into Beethoven's Ninth, then other Beethoven symphonies, then Schubert, Brahms and so on. Meanwhile, Wendy Carlos led me to Bach keyboard works and the Brandenburgs, then Scarlatti, Vivaldi and them boys.

At no time was I seeking this stuff out in a conscious effort to appreciate classical music. It all just sounded good to me in spite my instinctive rock music bias.

A few of the more obvious starting points that I was drawn to along these lines: Symphonie Fantastique, Scheherazade, Peer Gynt and Holberg Suites, Also Sprach Zarathustra, The Planets, La Mer, Le Tombeau de Couperin, Rite of Spring. I soon moved beyond a need for any programmatic tie-in. That's the last type of thing I go for anymore, or when I do, it's not for the pictures or storylines it is meant to conjure up.

Based on what you're already liking, most of this could seem a bit unsophisticated. Yeah, well...

I actually do like most of my rock purchases. Funnily enough I cant think of many albums I've actively disliked. But I comprehend most of them well.

I forgot to mention the role that weed played in my listening. People are right that it can take patience. Sometimes a little smoking helps to crack into these things. Not to be a bad influence, mind you.

Surely Glen Branca's Ascension doesn't count? Just felt like enjoying a rock album to me.

At the last job, my late 20th century music students thought that even Branca's 13th symphony just sounded like a rock band without the singing.

I've also got Branca's Symphony 1 which sounds a lot more like classical to me and I didn't dig it quite as much.

it helps to branch out from music you already like, e.g. I loved Aphex Twin and loads of other synth music and naturally explored the history of it, going back to the first academic experiments from modern classical composers, which led to classical music that might not be electronic but showcases some elements like Messiaen, Kagel, Berio etc. which led to exploring music of the previous generations, and so on

I'm a big fan of symphonic prog and metal, so symphonies seems natural. Also pipe organs, so Bach.

the bartok string quartets are pretty metal.

for symphonies try prokofiev. start with the 3rd.

I would recommend 'Weather' by Michael Gordon, it's pretty symphonic and brooding.

mahler's 6th is a really good un. not really metal but so full of tragedy and bombastic apocalyptic doom, apparently he was quite astutely feeling that very bad times were coming back for European Jewry and I think one of his children was dying when he composed it.