Rolling Classical 2017

the met operas I've seen since I moved here are a real hodgepodge basically governed by my policy of always saying yes to any free opera ticket I'm offerred, while remaining too broke to actually purchase tickets to my favorite operas (Pelleas, etc)

yep yep which means G'LUCK

Gluck, father of modern opera? Have yet to see one of his.

I'm listening to this guitarist today: https://soundcloud.com/carlos-bojarski
The Carter and (especially) Henze sound really good imo. Might interest Evan.

I'm spending an evening with my complete Celibidache-does-Bruckner edition, which means "one symphony from the set." Went with 4. people give Sergiu a hard time for the liberties he takes with tempo but honestly the scherzo is downright spritely! when my hearing's truly gone this is some of the music I'll miss most

My colleague is a leading Bruckner scholar. It's one thing I've never gotten into but I should address that.

Bruckner strikes me as one of the hardest symphonists to get right, and not just because of the editing challenges. I'm averse to Karajan for the usual reasons, but his Bruckner, much like his Strauss, is the only one that could make a true convert out of me. A shame that his second set (for DG) has yet to be properly remastered. Sometimes I reach for Barenboim's with the Berlin Philharmonic but the thoroughness and fluidity I hear in Karajan's versions are almost nowhere to be found. As for Celibidache, he preaches to the choir, doesn't he?

I love celibidache in bruckner (I have him doing #4, 5 and 7)

My bruckner collection is very omnivorous. I don't know any one conductor who lights them all up for me -- I like klemperer for #6, jochum for #9, Boulez for #8, etc.

Just got two interesting-looking CDs in the mail:

- the Nash Ensemble performing two string quartets and a string octet (a format I've never encountered before) by Max Bruch, a composer with whom I am also entirely unfamiliar;
- the Goldner String Quartet and pianist Piers Lane performing a piano quintet, a cello sonata, and a string quartet by Alexander Borodin.

Both on the Hyperion label.

The music on both of those is terra incognita to me too. I do have a few discs I like by the Nash Ensemble, but dating back to their days on Virgin Classics. Piers Lane did a great disc on Hyperion of all the Scriabin etudes.

I'm partial to the Borodin quartets as played by… the Borodin Quartet.

I've never heard the Goldner Quartet, but Piers Lane has always struck me as overly genteel in his approach. His Scriabin Etudes lack the daemonic qualities I hear in Alexander Melnikov, Yevgeny Sudbin and Maria Lettberg, to name but these three (the latter recorded the Etudes as a whole, as part of her astonishing box set comprising all of Scriabin's solo piano works!). Perhaps Lane fares better in the Borodin, but I can't say my curiosity's piqued.

And speaking of Alexander-who-tried-to-bring-about-the-end-of-the-world, Roger Woodward's recording of the late piano works is something else entirely. Here's his Vers la flamme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TApC9RDA0hs

Yeah I have that Woodward album, it's great stuff

Yeah, that's sounding good.

I'm really enjoying this recent BIS disc, featuring works for string trio by living Nordic composers:

http://bis.se/shop/17115/art15/h8999/4998999-origpic-77f4d9.jpg

Bent Sørensen's Gondole comes across as a distant tribute to Liszt's late works, i.e. some of the most genuinely ghost-ridden music I've ever heard, meshing quite well with Sørensen's own neo-decadent aesthetic. Nørgård's Strings, for string trio, and Tjampuan: 'Where the Rivers Meet' for violin and cello, are both from 1992, around the time he began to synthesize his infinity series and the kookier, Wölfli-inspired style that followed in the 1980's—intense stuff, especially the trio. The quality of Saariaho's output has been on the wane since L'Amour de loin (I prefer her textures to her melodies), but Cloud Trio is quite evocative, and at times it unexpectedly gestures towards Bartók's quartets. As for Henrik Hellstenius, his name was unfamiliar to me, but he apparently studied with Gérard Grisey in the early 1990's. I hear precious little spectralism in Rift, which brings to mind a more expressionist Nørgård. Regardless, I'd say it's a highlight, and now I'm curious to hear more of Hellstenius's music.

And since I mentioned Sørensen, his latest Dacapo disc, featuring works for piano and chamber orchestra, strikes me as one of his finest so far, assuming you're on board with his 'decaying daguerreotype' shtick (I personally adore it). As a bonus, last year ECM put out a disc by Frode Haltli, which also contains some top-tier Sørensen material (It Is Pain Flowing Down Slowly on a White Wall, for accordion and string orchestra), as well as some characteristically pieces by Hans Abrahamsen, including the marvellous Three Little Nocturnes, played by Haltli and the Arditti Quartet.

that looks great, thanks for the note. My eMusic credits have refreshed and I'll at least get the Sorensen and Saariaho tracks. I'm a sucker for a late Liszt homage and still a Saariaho fanboy. BTW, have you ever heard Heinz Holliger's orchestral arrangements of two of the late Liszt pieces (Nuages Gris and Unstern)? They are fucking incredible. They were recorded on an extinct el cheapo Arte Nova CD which can still be found used, and done live by Rattle/Berlin which was broadcast and is on torrents.

I haven't, and I worship Holliger, so I really appreciate the heads up. Thanks!

By the way, assuming you're unfamiliar with it, Marko Nikodijević's orchestral 'remix' of La lugubre gondola, cvetić, kućica…, is also worth hearing. Here's a live recording from YT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3cwskeACV0

Seth Colter Walls has a really good writeup on Glenn Gould's two recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations on Pitchfork today. I just bought A State of Wonder, which combines both recordings, plus a third disc of outtakes from 1955 and an interview with Gould.

My choir is currently singing Ildebrando Pizzettis Requiem from 1923, I think. Lovely music, most of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_GW9O7Qhr0

Also Max Reger. Whom I like less and less, honestly.

Du Yun wins the pulitzer, over Ashley Fure and Kate Soper. And I'm wondering if this is the first time all three nominees were women. For, like, any music prize in the world ever...

A lot of the current composers I enjoy the most are women. I'd include Soper in that number but I don't know the nominated piece. I'll listen to all three of these. Thanks.

ILM's 2017 Rolling Classical Thread Spotify Playlist

So glad you're doing this, ulysses. And extra glad you didn't put a choral composition by Reger on there, because I hate them at this point :)

Do we have a thread to discuss women composers?

Not afaik. I think most of the classical music discussion on ILM happens on this thread (except for the Boomkat-classical thing)?

Oh, "Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say" has become a movement of the Soper work that was nominated? I really love that piece (now a movement)!

https://soundcloud.com/michael-pisaro/lucretius-alap

Lucretius Alap, Michael Pisaro, 2009-12

String Quartet:
Lorenz Gamma, violin 1
Min Lee, violin 2
Mark Menzies, viola
Mona Tian, cello

Been feeling this..

https://soundcloud.com/leheron_idletones/1-01-half-sleep-beings

also, the first track of the Michael Pisaro/Reinier van Houdt 3XCD, the earth and the sky

I look forward to hearing Du Yun, Ashley Fure and Kate Soper's music.

In the meantime, I've been relistening to Helena Tulve's first release, Sula, and the title composition, a tone painting of a glacier's gradual thaw, is as overwhelming as ever:

https://soundcloud.com/helena_tulve/helena-tulve-sula-thaw

Ulysses, I get it could easily be a hassle, but would it be possible to request a movement for the spotify list? The Agnus Dei of the Pizzetti Requiem is lovely, and only takes two minutes :)

I also ask, because a new cd with my choir singing translated Danish songs will be out in a few weeks, and I know what my favorite tidbits are :) Langgaard, Holten, Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (RIP). Good stuff!

np, added.

it's lovely!

I know, right! It's just hard to get that chord around 1:00 perfect. Out of three tries we got it absolutely perfect once! Oh well, still one try left.

Speaking of Helena Tulve, Simon Cummings's retelling of this year's Estonian Music Days really makes me wish I'd been there:

http://5against4.com/2017/04/12/estonian-music-days-2017-part-2/

^^^ 5 against 4 blog is a GREAT resource for downloads of new music broadcasts

I've been exploring black metal and its precipitates and it brought me back to the 'classical' work that helped me overcome my longstanding aversion to 'cookie monster' vocals, Raphaël Cendo's Introduction aux ténèbres. Here's part I—

https://soundcloud.com/rapha-l-cendo/introduction-aux-tenebres2009-chant1-pour-baryton-contrebasse-solo-ensemble-et-electronique

This is cool. When I was in undergrad, my friend and I sometimes talked about how sometimes the vocals on Makrokosmos Vol 2 were a bit metal.

TORA TORA TORA

I strongly recommend hearing the whole thing for full effect (it's on Donaueschinger Musiktage 2009, Vol. 2). Cendo's music in general is worth seeking out, especially if you're interested in his 'overdrive' principle.

For those who know French, he explains it quite well here: http://brahms.ircam.fr/documents/document/21512/

So I've been trying to catch up with the Pulitzer nominees and I must say I wish Ashley Fure had received the prize over Du Yun, perhaps because Fure studied under Chaya Czernowin, whose music I've long admired. I'm a sucker for polystylism when it's done right, but the Du works I listened to via Soundcloud often failed to its avoid its classic pitfalls: a superficial incongruity and a sense of 'so whatness' that Schnittke almost never fell prey to. Still, I am curious to hear what comes next.

Have you heard the entire Soper work?

Not yet, actually, in part due to this description:

'Ipsa Dixit is an evening-length work of theatrical chamber music by American composer Kate Soper. Exploring the intersection of music, language, and meaning, the piece blends elements of monodrama, Greek theater, and screwball comedy to skewer the treachery of language and the questionable authenticity of artistic expression. Each of the piece’s six movements draw on texts by thinkers such as Aristotle, Plato, Freud, Wittgenstein, Jenny Holtzer, and Lydia Davis, delivering ideas from the linguistic disciplines of poetics, rhetoric, and metaphysics through extended vocal techniques and blistering ensemble virtuosity.'

I enjoy all of these things separately to varying degrees, but not so much when they're set to music. And I'm frankly tired of the whole 'critique of authenticity' shtick, it's preaching to the choir.

It sounds quite a bit like Caroline Shaw's Partita. Which I love! Anywhere to listen to it / excerpts from it?

Here's the first movement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zTqwkD28NA

Yeah, that's a bit... overcooked.

It's not like Partita, from what I know it. This movement was around as a standalone work for a couple of years, and I rate it pretty highly:
https://vimeo.com/55881666

"know of it"

I don't care that much about most of the things described in that blurb but I like what she does with the voice.

bbc proms: i will be going to simon rattle's gurrelieder, the monterverdi vespers, shostakovich's 11th symphony. Otherwise i do find the pickings slim this year. Last year was loads of boulez and other interesting stuff.

Musorgsky's Khovanshchina as well.

I haven't found either Ashley Fure's Bound to the Bow or Du Yun's Angel's Bone, but here are two other instances of their respective styles, if you're curious:

https://soundcloud.com/duyun/quatrain-slow-portraits-iii

https://soundcloud.com/ashley_fure/ashley-fure-something-to-hunt

Honestly, the general failure (dotted with myriad specific counterexamples) of "classical culture" to come to terms with the existence of recorded music is a pretty strong argument against the perpetuation of "classical culture" as distinct from "popular culture". At the same time I genuinely love many forms of classical music and would not like to see the classical idiom become a "dead language", particularly now that it finally has the opportunity to be something other than a male dominated nationalist/colonialist enterprise.

That's why I care about being able to know what's going on now. Because "classical music" is going the way of Latin. Only the most elite even know how to read it anymore. Nobody writes it. I love a lot of the different kinds of music that's out there today, but I think that music would be even better if more people knew how to write fugues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZM4yxbE0ZE

Most people don't care about such art forms, especially not in North America. Some things just aren't meant to be popular, and that's okay. It just decreases the likelihood of making a living out of it but that's just a function of late capitalism.

Honestly, the general failure (dotted with myriad specific counterexamples) of "classical culture" to come to terms with the existence of recorded music is a pretty strong argument against the perpetuation of "classical culture" as distinct from "popular culture".

Maybe it's not a failure?

Also, the new music world has definite problems but there's not really a shortage of composers or performers (or even scholars for that matter), unless I'm misunderstanding "only the most elite can read it; no one writes it".

Anyway, I do actually agree that I'd like to have more contemporary classical recordings in my mix, and/or I sometimes wish there was more going on compositionally in a lot of other music, so yeah idk maybe.

Well, this years winner of the Grawemeyer award, Bent Sørensens L’Isola della Città, can be heard on NYT. Second Danish winner in three years btw 8)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/arts/music/grawemeyer-award-bent-sorensen.html

Also, the new music world has definite problems but there's not really a shortage of composers or performers (or even scholars for that matter), unless I'm misunderstanding "only the most elite can read it; no one writes it".

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r)

well it seems like there's this very nearly open hostility from some corners towards the notion that people who aren't musicians trained in the classical tradition might want to listen to composed music. i understand that the (continuing) popular rejection of serialism probably hurt many people deeply, but i'm not sure forming essene communities is the best reaction to this.

Congrats to Sørensen! I haven't heard that particular piece yet, but his music never disappoints.

The Sørensen piece sounded good on first (slightly distracted) listen. The integration of contemporary techniques with more Romantic material was satisfying.

Rushomancy, I have a lot more exposure to people who i) desperately want a broader audience and strain to try to find one or ii) have resignedly given up. I really don't come across the "who cares if you listen?" attitude all that much from North American composers and musicians under 45 in the present day. Maybe with some more examples, I'd see what you're talking about. Are you thinking mainly of New Complexity types?

Come to think of it, Sørensen is an excellent example of a living neo-Romantic who doesn't elicit any skepticism on my part.

Rushomancy, I have a lot more exposure to people who i) desperately want a broader audience and strain to try to find one or ii) have resignedly given up.

I mean, also a bunch of iii) people who are happy with the audience they have, regardless of their educational background.

i'm not talking about the composers themselves! i'm talking about the _scene_. so many really great people but at the same time so much scenester bullshit :(

I honestly can't think of a single musical genre for which that statement doesn't hold true.

2018 Classical and Opera Grammy Nominees Spotify Playlist

Meh.

That said, props for listing Barbara Hannigan, György Kurtág and Maria Lettberg.

I wish I could come up with a counter-playlist but I always forget whether the 'classical' stuff I listened to this year came out, well, this year or in times of yore.

Thanks, ulysses! I was planning to listen to a bunch of those. Esp curious about the Higdon piece. Listening to Hannigan's take on the Berio vocal sequenza now.

Her Lulu Suite is equally exquisite. What an incredible musician.

I'll listen to that. There's this famous one, too, of course.

Ugh: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/arts/music/james-levine-sexual-misconduct-met-opera.html

Ugh x2

Rumors have been around forever, knew it was him as soon as I saw the link that was posted in the Weinstein thread.

For awhile a year or two ago, there were a lot of predators being unveiled around the classical and early music world in the UK, most of it was written about on ian pace’s blog. Philip Pickett comes to mind

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/dec/06/sound-of-mega-orgasms-female-composers-london-contemporary-music-festival-new-intimacy

a work by Kajsa Magnarsson “for strap-on and electric guitar”

After watching, I think I preferred Anvil's take on this concept.

“Modernism was about removing the body from art,” says festival director Igor Toronyi-Lalic. “About removing personal identity and prioritising science, abstraction and objectivity.

Also, this is emphatically not what the Second Viennese School did imo.

Yeah that statement does not ring true for me at all

Favorite records of 2017 I should consider checking out before doing my ILM EOY list? Potentials for me are Canticles of the Wind by John Luther Adams, Last Leaf by the Danish String Quartet and Crazy Girl Crazy by Barbara Hannigan.

Ten personal favourites, in no particular order:

Arturo Fuentes - Broken Mirrors; Liquid Crystals; Ice Reflection; Glass Distortion
György Kurtág - Complete Works for Ensemble and Choir
Tõnu Kõrvits - Moorland Elegies
Bent Sørensen - Mignon
Pascal Dusapin - Quatuor VI « Hinterland »; Quatuor VI « OpenTime »
Alberto Posadas - Sombras
Michael Jarrell - …mais les images restent…
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir & Kaspars Putniņš - Schnittke: 'Psalms of Repentance'; Pärt: 'Magnificat' & 'Nunc dimittis'
Quatuor Psophos - Constellations
Chaya Czernowin - Hidden

Shit I need that Kurtag. I keep forgetting.

Noticed the Jarrell on eMusic yesterday. Thinking about it. His orchestration of a few of the Debussy Etudes was brilliant.

Not saying it's aoty but I got this recently and am getting a lot out of it, as more Canadian solo guitar stuff goes (gnarlier than most of the Victoria disc):
http://www.johngordonarmstrong.com/my-new-cd/

really enjoying that Last Leaf album, thanks for that!

For those compiling your year-end lists, this playlist includes all the available tracks on this thread, organized roughly chronologically in order of mention:

ILM's 2017 Rolling Classical Thread Spotify Playlist

it's worth noting that this thread (along with electronic and jazz) is where the spotify catalog gets a bit punchy.

The Danish Quartet (Mk 4) is great, yeah. Also notable is their Carl Nielsen sq cycle (for Dacapo).

Will check that out, thanks!

After James Levine, Charles Dutoit:

http://www.ledevoir.com/culture/musique/515974/allegations-d-inconduite-sexuelle-contre-le-chef-d-orchestre-charles-dutoit

(Link is in French.)

Wow, damn.

I've had "Tjønneblomen" off that Last Leaf album on repeat for like a half hour; what a lovely song