Rolling Classical 2017

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

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

― My Body's Made of Crushed Little Evening Stars (Sund4r), Wednesday, May 10, 2017 11:29 AM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seconded. I'd love to hear her sing Claude Vivier's Lonely Child.

The score and recording of Bound to the Bow are here: http://www.ashleyfure.com/new-page-5/

Thanks, much appreciated. Google is less omnipotent than I thought.

ipsa dixit lost me when it started with someone asking, with impeccable diction, "what is art?"

Lonely Child is one of my favourite pieces every btw!

ever

Same here!

I'm thoroughly enjoying Bound to the Bow, btw. It further consolidates my preference for Fure over Du and Soper. Hopefully a CD of her music is in the works.

The Caroline Shaw Partita is something I just got into recently. I know a guy who's the cellist in an up and coming young quartet and they did an all-Shaw concert (which I only found out about talking to him later on)... he told me the partita is currently his favorite piece of music in the world so I bought it on emusic. I'm still coming to grips with it tbrr.

Today's listening highlights were Humphrey Searle's dodecaphonic rager Labyrinth and a wonderful new orchestral arrangement of Liszt's choral obscurity Les Quatre Elements (the original being for choir and piano; Liszt later overhauled it into the warhorse tone poem Les Preludes)

Now I remember where I know Du Yun from -- I heard her piece Kraken. It was okay but kind of a bag of tricks... have not felt the urge to hear again.

I was listening to Shaw's Partita all the time for a while tbh. Getting ready in the morning, exercising, etc.

Partita is pure joy. I think there are some similarity with Soper, which I can't really explain, but her reading about Poetics reminds me of the 'the detail of the pattern is movement' part of Allemande. Spoken word, 'innovative' - mostly rediscovered old - singing techniques. It's almost primordial, reducing choral music to it's essence - sounds of voices - and rebuilding on top of that. It's like the choral version of Merce Cunningham, which probably just means it's inspired by Meredith Monk, I don't know? But Partita knows that if you rebuild choral music from scratch, it would only take a short while until you're joyously shouting 'ah-ah-AH-ah' at the top of your lung.

On a non-Pulitzer note, I finally bought this Stefan Östersjö album of modern(ist) guitar music with an iTunes gift card after streaming it on Spotify for a while and am very impressed and satisfied. (A lot of it seems to have been recorded 20 years ago.) Murail's Tellur is the biggest draw for me; I've been wanting a good recording of it for a long time. Such a remarkable piece. But it's great to have good recordings of Carter's Changes, Dillon's Shrouded Mirrors, and Donatoni's Algo 1 and Algo 2 in one place. I didn't know Kent Olofsson's work before I got into these recordings but his Treccia and Garden of Earthly Delights (for guitar, ensemble, and tape) are really cool too. I'll be digesting this for a while.

The Caroline Shaw Partita is something I just got into recently.

An interesting article from VAN about Deutsche Grammophon.

Sums it up pretty well, though DG hasn't completely lost its touch: this year, they also put out Barenboim's Hommage à Boulez, Rachmaninov's trios with Gidon Kremer, Blechacz's Bach and Chopin's late works by Pollini. Still, the decline is palpable.

There was supposed to be a free premiere performance of John Luther Adams new Ten Thousand Birds in Morningside Park (NYC) today but they've cancelled it doe to the weather forecast >:[

On the other hand, there's still an afternoon performance of Become Ocean scheduled for Thursday...

Huh. I would not have guessed this guy was the drummer for Dawn of Midi.

https://qasimnaqvi.bandcamp.com/album/fjoloy

Wow, some interesting and sometimes arresting stuff there, yeah, thanks. I'll probably buy it. I'd like to know more about what exactly he was doing in terms of the intonation. Dawn of MIDI is a jazz fusion thing?

The "Gloppedalsura"s are standing out for me.

dawn of midi came across to me as post-rock, but i guess there's room for disagreement about what exactly they are. some people say "dance music", they showed up on a mojo "dream pop" compilation.

While doing a little research on the technique of singing while playing woodwinds, I came across this piece, where the clarinettist does this on every note. Interesting and enjoyable piece. Roche's blog can be pretty interesting as well: https://heatherroche.net/

ooh thanks!

Crumb uses this in his chamber works for flute also

not gonna mention tull though

Ha, I think you just did. I like both of those examples, for sure, and Kirk; I just found this piece notable in terms of how in-depth it goes with that technique. And also find it expressive and appealing. (I just finished writing something that uses the technique but kept it much simpler than this.)

that's neat

Just picked up tickets for Angela Hewitt at the National Arts Centre. I've never seen her before! She's not playing anything from Well-Tempered Clavier but we're thinking of yelling out a request: "Fugue in C minor!"

I'm in the choir for a version of La Boheme this august. Second act is kinda some amazing proto-Ives stuff. I remember seeing the opera years ago, and liking it a lot, but delving deeper into it, it's really quite incredible.

thanks for mentioning it. been meaning to listen more closely to puccini for quite awhile. Playing the famous Decca boheme recording now.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5193lUu%2BU%2BL._SR600%2C315_PIWhiteStrip%2CBottomLeft%2C0%2C35_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CKD585

The samples on here from the latest Kuniko Kato album Bach: Solo Works For Marimba sound beautiful. I loved her previous Reich + Arvo Part recordings.

These classical labels do take the piss though. £18 for a flac download, £12 for mp3 - gtf !

Hyperion are about 10 usd through the iTunes Store

I'd almost be tempted at that price, Jon. But my massive aversion to Apple + iTunes and having their horrible software on my pc is too strong.

There's another UK website based one with similar pricing from which I've bought Chandos before... name escaping me atm...

Check presto classical, I've bought reasonably priced downloads from them before

Lots of Birtwistle this week, mostly downloaded recordings from this year's and prior years' Proms. His stuff is finally starting to break for me.

I remember liking Panic a lot.

calzino got me on a marimba kick. this is the last track of a really good recent cello record by michael samis (not in this version, obviously).

https://vimeo.com/82713733

Angela Hewitt was magic! Such a good concert experience. It was the first time I brought scores to a concert and followed along while listening and watching, which I found very helpful. I think she is my favourite Bach interpreter: she brings out and connects the lines so clearly and sensitively imo.

John Luther Adams has made a grand choral work. Right up my ally. Canticles of the Holy Wind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JeFaMpucVg

I brought scores to a concert and followed along while listening

I was talking to a friend last night, who thought it was lolsome that I did this the week after seeing Migos at Bluesfest. Maybe this is why I need ilx.

xp I've listened to most of Canticles and liked it very much so far. On the to-buy list.

Yeah I'm buying Canticles this week when my emusic credits refresh.

There's a concert in NYC next month with a new work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir plus a Pauline oliveros piece; I'm totally going

Also a staging of hans zender's explosion of Winterreise with Ian Bostridge. Going.

I want to sing this, or something like this. Just to figure out how it works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9mY5tvd-lM

Going to see Penderecki String Quartet tonight. I went to all three of these new music concerts on Monday, which were mostly very good. The Chan Ka Nin string quartet was probably my favourite piece of them all, integrating Chinese folk-derived melodies with the gamut of contemporary string techniques. I will definitely be listening to more Brian Current. The Palej songs were lovely, too!

The string quartet concert was wonderful. I'd never seen P's 3rd live before and it was startlingly intense and powerful. The Murphy is a new piece that was commissioned for the quartet's 30th anniversary. I always enjoy her work and suspect that if she lived in NYC or Boston and knew the right people, she'd be a lot more famous. (Her aesthetic makes me think of something like a contemporary take on Bartok, with much more use of extended techniques/timbral exploration, with a lot of rhythmic energy.) It was also really nice to see the Mozart! A breath of fresh air in a week of new music.

I picked up this CD, which seems v good so far.