Rolling Classical 2018

I’ve never listened to Stenhammar! Probably due to some comment I read in some record guide during the first year I was getting into classical music

If you're curious, I'd say that video I posted today happens to make for a great introduction. His string quartets are also quite wonderful, especially nos. 4-6 as performed by the aptly named Stenhammar Quartet.

Wow, I never listened to Shostakovich's second violin concerto before tbh. That video is pretty striking. I'll be listening more.

don't neglect cello cto 2 as well!

And the violin sonata! And the viola sonata! And the string quartets nos. 12-15! And the 14th and 15th symphonies! And the Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok! And the Michelangelo Suite! And the Six Poems by Maria Tsvetaeva! Late Shostakovich is best Shostakovich, imho.

absolutely otm

the 14th symphony is my favorite thing he ever did

you missed Execution of Stepan Razin on that list btw!

Yep, that's a good one too.

And I completely agree with you regarding the 14th symphony – it's the purest expression of his vision. And there have been so many tremendous recordings of it in recent years: Currentzis, Petrenko, even Kremer.

Just listened to the vimeo of Stenhammar's second piano concerto that anatol_merklich posted upthread. Wonderful stuff, as expected. I really wish Blomstedt would give us studio recordings of Stenhammar's complete works for orchestra (concertos included), as he has a much better grasp of this idiom than most other conductors I've heard, Stig Westerberg excepted.

As a side note, it's odd how sensitive I am to the performance variable when it comes to pre-WWII composers (in the broadest possible sense). For instance, Soviet-era takes on Shostakovich are almost systematically more convincing than what came after: you can feel the nerve-wracked wiriness behind the first Borodin Quartet's partial set (1-13), whereas the Emerson Quartet just sounds phony. Likewise, certain performances of Sibelius's symphonies do absolutely nothing for me, even as Vänskä's cycle with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra is one of my favourites of all.

By contrast, audibly different though they may be, I love most versions of Le marteau sans maître I've listened to, and I can't think of a single recording of Ligeti's violin concerto that I dislike, even though some strike me as more persuasive than others. Of course, there are also composers such as Richard Barrett who include extended improvisations in their scores, which means that no two performances are ever quite the same, but even there, due to the music's endlessly proliferating, often disorienting strata, it can be hard to tell the improvised sections apart from the composed ones, which I assume is part of the point.

Maybe there is a correlation between the scarcity of performances and the availability of 'authoritative' recordings? Newer music doesn't remain long (if at all) in the limelight, so a given composition will often only be associated with a particular musician or ensemble forevermore. It goes without saying that there are far fewer recorded performances of Saariaho's Près than of Bach's cello suites, in part because we assume that Anssi Karttunen, the cellist who premiered Près (as well as the closely related concerto Amers) 'perfected' (the French verb parachever is closer to what I'm getting at here) the work, since Saariaho explicitly dedicated it to him. Perhaps if we could hear the original Schuppanzigh Quartet's interpretations of late Beethoven, there would be (slightly) fewer sets available today (only 'slightly', though, because the more time goes by, the less performers feel compelled to respect the composer's supposed wishes). That said, LPs of Shostakovich's string quartets actually make for a good counter-example here, though I assume a relative dearth of availability in the West up until the 1990s, as well as lo-fi engineering, are partly to blame.

A final hypothesis: a relative increase in compositional complexity may also have diminished performers' agency. Merely 'getting the notes right' is sometimes a feat in and of itself, whereas in a musical paradigm intent on expressivity, that worships virtuoso figures such as Liszt, Paganini, Alkan, etc., but whose repertoire is comparatively 'simpler' (mark the scare quotes), there's more leeway to compress or distend the phrasing whichever way one deems fit, rubato-style.

hmmmm. i was thinking something somewhat similar just this week regarding "authoritative" recordings.

i am not sure the presence of an "authoritative" recording is a factor of the number of recordings, myself. my thoughts were regarding the rite of spring. i'd argue that the "authoritative" recording there was bernstein's 1958 recording, which took place 45 years after its premiere. since then, pretty much all recordings have followed that one, reducing the latitude for interpretation. before bernstein's, one hears the rite performed in all sorts of ways, many of which would be thought of as "wrong" today

so i would argue, really, that the absence of an "authoritative" recording in a difficult work gives one _more_ latitude for interpretation, insofar as one person's "interpretation" is another person's "fuckup". i find that the most difficult works tend to sound far more different between versions, at least in part for precisely this reason. (how many different ways has "scarbo" been played?)

To be fair, I doubt Bernstein's Rite of Spring was ever viewed as authoritative in Russia. Authoritativeness varies quite a bit from place to place.

As for 'Scarbo', it's a fiendishly difficult piece within that paradigm, sure, but is it harder to play than, say, Carter's Night Fantasies or Michael Finnissy's solo piano pieces? It doesn't sound that way to me, a layman, so I'd be curious to hear a pianist's thoughts on this.

By contrast, audibly different though they may be, I love most versions of Le marteau sans maître I've listened to,

Boulez was loosening up compared to his earlier work but surely this piece is still more strictly notated than virtually any pre-war music?

Yeah, that's definitely a major factor.

oh lord, i'm not a pianist but i wasn't ever intending to make a direct comparison between "gaspard de la nuit" and "english country-tunes"! i mean there's a lot of other stuff going on there that makes a direct comparison of those scores in terms of "technical difficulty", i would argue, counterproductive. these are works which were created, and exist, in entirely different sociocultural contexts!

is stravinsky in general thought of highly in russia? i have a wonderful russian recording of "les noces" but stravinsky doesn't really seem to have been celebrated in russia as a "russian".

My bad, Bernstein apparently played a major role in the Rite's Russian reception:

The Rite of Spring had a very different trajectory in Russia than it did in Western Europe. Though conceived in St. Petersburg by a trio of Russians - choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, with a libretto and set design by Nicholas Roerich, and music by Stravinsky - the famous original ballet was never performed in Russia itself. Serge Koussevitsky gave performances of the concert work in 1914 in St. Petersburg, and afterwards the ballet had a spotty Russian history. Stravinsky never found the favor in Soviet Russia that Prokofiev or Shostakovich did. When Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic in The Rite on a tour to Moscow in 1959, it was the first time the work had been performed in the city in thirty years.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-robin/a-russian-rite-revisiting_b_3315248.html

My view was informed by Gergiev's – a reassessment more than anything:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/9260665/Valery-Gergiev-why-Igor-Stravinsky-was-Russian-to-the-core-interview.html

clearly stravinsky was russian - outside of russia one can hardly help but think of him in this way - but he was never soviet, and whatever russia is under putin, he wasn't that either. at some point the russians may "rediscover" him as one of their own... but he currently has no apparent value as a cultural symbol to the russian oligarchs.

For curiosity's sake, I checked out the Bolshoi Theatre's upcoming shows. Par for the course:

https://www.bolshoi.ru/en/timetable/

I love how La Traviata, Manon Lescaut, Billy Budd and The Taming of the Shrew, among others, are billed as for 'adults only'.

The Mariinsky Theatre is considerably more adventurous and incidentally features The Rite of Spring (along with a lecture) and Petrushka:

https://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill/playbill

Just bought tickets to see Adès conduct the Ligeti violin concerto (as well as Beethoven 8, an Adès piece, and a Stravinsky piece) this weekend.

Good program, though I have little experience with Adès as a conductor beyond his own music, which strikes me as relatively hit-or-miss.

It was spectacular to see the violin concerto live, with those microtones ringing in Boston's Symphony Hall. Hadelich's playing was beautiful, really precise and clean compared to the Astrand recording I'm familiar with. The third and fourth movements were especially intense and the aria movement was poignant. I admit to drifting a little in the fifth, not sure if it was just because I'd already been through the rest or because Astrand's approach may have worked better for me with that one; still, one of the best live music experiences.

Also, that was my first time at the BSO and the first time I've actually experienced a classical audience that seems as posh as the stereotype. Different from what I'm used to and a bit weird. A surprising number of people were talking and sometimes even laughing at moments during the Ligeti.

Also, I've had something playing in my head that I kept trying to place for the last couple of days. I finally realized maybe five minutes ago that it's the opening of Bartok's 4th string quartet.

the fourth has some great earworms, maybe my favorite of his quartets

Wtg Grammy winner Hannigan! I should remember to purchase Crazy Girl Crazy. I haven't listened to the Higdon viola concerto yet, although I did enjoy "All Things Must Pass".

New Reich album coming out btw. The movement they're releasing early is not really a departure for him but still effective, with some complex rhythms going on and nice melodic motives: http://smarturl.it/PulseQuartet?iqid=gm.us.fb

Excellent news! Hannigan deserves as much exposure as she can get.

xp

Listening again, I really appreciate how the form of the Reich movement is crafted.

Ugh, I meant "All Things Majestic".

So Barbara Hannigan didn't win the Sonning Award after all. But Hans Abrahamsen did. So she'll be in Denmark performing Let Me Tell You and other works next year! Now I have to figure out how to get tickets...

I love Abrahamsen, though as a home listener I am a wee bit confused by these endlessly proliferating recordings of his first string quartet. What's wrong with its follow-ups?

They're playing his forth string quartet as well. Should I go see it?

I'd say yes, but I'm rather fond of his music, as well as a sucker for string quartets in general.

You can check out the Ardittis' recording on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/5RpogjWbEWPt8C8QUuyYxl

For a not-as-enthusiastic (and, to me, amusing) take on it: http://5against4.com/2013/02/03/hcmf-2012-arditti-quartet/

Breaking up the English contingent was Hans Abrahamsen, and there was a clear sense of expectation for the first UK performance of his String Quartet No. 4, completed in 2012 having been commissioned over twenty years ago. One can only imagine how that time was spent, as the result is 21 of the most wretched minutes i’ve ever spent in a concert hall. In many ways, it presents a more extreme version of Archbold’s Nine memos, only in Abrahamsen’s quartet just four behaviours are explored: high harmonic counterpoint, alternating between solo and tutti passages; the same interspersed with col legno passagework and episodes redolent of viol music; plodding pizzicato counterpoint, again with solo and tutti contrasts; and delicate twirling material that Abrahamsen likens to “the ‘babbling’ of a child”. All four movements cling to their mannerisms as though nailed to the floor, exhausting all interest in moments but continuing relentlessly for minutes on end. It’s bad enough that such dull, lazy music as this should be written in the first place, but then to claim—somewhat triumphantly—to have spent two decades working on it is, frankly, to piss all over your chips.

Just listening to Alexander Melnikov's Four Pianos, Four Pieces, namely Schubert's Wanderer-Fantasie, Chopin's Etudes, Liszt's Réminiscences de 'Don Juan', and Stravinsky's Three Pieces from 'Petrushka'. A nifty concept, played as well as you'd expect by a Sviatoslav Richter pupil. I can't wait for him to start recording Beethoven's sonatas and concertos.

I don’t have him in any solo recordings but in several chamber music recordings with Isabelle Faust et al where he is excellent

On an unrelated note, fans of Saariaho's pre-2000 output should check out this performance of Helena Tulve's Extinction des choses vues:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keNVBPOyFx4

melnikov's shostakovich preludes/fugues recording is great!

Will look into all of this. Tulve sounds really good so far. The best thing I've been listening to recently is probably Kate Soper's Nadja for soprano and string quartet from a year ago. It gets pretty intense and satisfying. Some great noisy string bits: https://soundcloud.com/ateoper/sets/nadja

John Gordon Armstrong's Space Within for Julian Bertino on 10-string guitar (both guys I know tbf): http://www.johngordonarmstrong.com/the-space-within/

Nicholas Omiccioli's Field Well for chamber winds is a fairly open composition, I gather, with a lot of extended techniques. Works in a loose sound mass sort of way: https://soundcloud.com/nicholas-omiccioli/the-field-well-2017-for-chamber-winds

Thanks, Sund4r, I'll check them out in a bit.

Of the three, my preference goes to Omiccioli. I like that he filed the piece under 'ambient' on Soundcloud - it's a type of crossover I'm invariably happy to hear. I enjoyed Armstrong's piece as well, and would love to hear a higher quality recording of it (was this sub-128 kbps?). Soper elicited mixed feelings: I'm mostly on board with her string writing (she should write a purely instrumental string quartet) but the vocal lines sounded kind of awkward to my ears, a little too hesitant for comfort (nor did that appear to be the desired effect). The Breton setting struck me as marginally more successful on that front, though for admittedly personal reasons the irruption of speaking voices reciting parts of the English translation of Nadja in a casual North American accent didn't move me or even strike me as particularly thought-provoking, for that matter. Interesting stuff nonetheless.

would love to hear a higher quality recording of it

Yeah, it's definitely not a top-notch recording, just a document of that performance. I think it's very possible that there may be better-quality recordings to come.

Yep, the Tulve piece is pretty much what I've been looking for. It must be magnificent in the concert hall! What's that one dude blowing into? Some sort of rubber tubing??

Btw, Armstrong's Music for Solo Guitar, from last year, is very good. I've been listening to it all the time.

RIP Klaus K. Hübler: https://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/rip-klaus-k-hubler/

Listening to Donnacha Dennehy for St. Patrick's Day: https://bedroomcommunity.bandcamp.com/album/tessellatum

Thanks for the link. I’m familiar with the name but have yet to hear his music.

FINALLY tracked down the Rostropovich/Ozawa/Boston recording of the 2nd Shostakovich cello concerto. Was not disappointed in the slightest. Fuckin' A. Is there anything better in all of music than the last minute of the finale?

Other pieces obsessing over last coupla weeks:

Schumann Dichterliebe (i've been a fiend for his solo piano corpus for over twenty years and only now do i finally realize how great the song sets that come right after the solo piano phase really are!)

Berlioz Faust (now I know why I never clicked with this piece: the Colin Davis/Philips version is fucking boring, that's why. Hello Paul Paray live bootleg and JE Gardiner proms 2017 broadcast)

Ohana - just keeps getting better the more I hear of him. Definitely one of my top 10 20th c composers by now.

Shostakovich Symphony 10 - Svetlanov mid 1960s on Melodiya. Monstrously overwhelming version. Fantastic sound for russia at that time.

Ohana hasn't quite clicked for me yet, but I'm sure it'll happen someday. I need to give those Erato recordings another shot.

I didn’t know about those until quite recently. I had been working my way through the series on the Timpani label (which I think originally came out on a different label). I’d say my favorite piece atm is Office des Oracles.

I've mostly put classical music on the back burner this year, so I can't help you as much as I would like. I haven't looked for classical EOY lists either, partly because I'm already burnt-out on non-classical ones… That said, here's some of the stuff I enjoyed among this year's releases (late 20th/early 21st century only):

Alexander Knaifel - Lukomoriye
Anna S. Þorvaldsdóttir - Aequa
Bent Sørensen - Rosenbad; Pantomime
Brian Ferneyhough - La terre est un homme
Gérard Pesson - Blanc mérité
Heinz Holliger - Choral Utopia
Horațiu Rădulescu - Complete Piano Works
Jörg Widmann - Viola Concerto
Julian Anderson - The Comedy of Change; Heaven Is Shy of Earth
Linda Catlin Smith - Wanderer
Octavian Nemescu - Apokatastasis
Ondřej Adámek - Sinuous Voices
Stefano Gervasoni - Pas perdu
Toivo Tulev - Magnificat

It's not much, but it's a start. I definitely plan on checking out 5against4's list when it comes out.

OK, wow, I haven't listened to any of those, except the online excerpts from LCS. Thanks! New album from Ferneyhough!

i'm not a real serious classical head but here are the 2018 releases in my library tagged classical:

alexander melnikov - four pianos, four pieces
charlie looker - simple answers
ensemble orchestral intercontemporain - adamek: sinuous voices
gyorgy kurtag - fin de partie
ipek gorgun - ecce homo
john bence - kill
linda catlin smith - wanderer
tanya ekanayaka - 12 piano prisms

also, sorry for not appropriately crediting, but i copied and pasted this list of works from another thread earlier this week and they're on my "to listen" list:

Anna S. Þorvaldsdóttir - Aequa
Cassandra Miller - Just So: String Quartets
Eva-Maria Houben - Breath for Organ
Laura Schwendinger - Quartets
Linda Catlin Smith - Wanderer
Sarah Nemtsov - Amplified Imagination
Séverine Ballon - Inconnaissance
Suzanne Farrin - La dolce morte

I didn't know Fin de Partie had been recorded!

I've been working through the Ferneyhough album one piece at a time via Naxos Music Library since Friday. On "Liber Scintillarum" now (first piece on the album but the last one I'm listening to). I'm really loving this stuff. Tbh, I never dug too deeply into the guy's work before, although he was a hero to some in my grad programme and I've seen some performances over the years. I did like "Cassandra's Dream Song" a lot. I've never actually listened to any of these pieces before. Even though I don't fully understand them, even with the liner notes, there's just so much going on and such visceral richness and detail of sound that they grab me and make me want to investigate further. I expect I'll be able to keep getting more out of these pieces with more and more listens.

William Beauvais had a decent album in 2016 in an accessible style not that far removed from Hand's.

After listening to both of them the other day, I feel p comfortable ranking the Beauvais higher tbh.

sorry for not appropriately crediting

That was me, in response to the relative dearth of women above 35 in the EOY lists. All of those albums are very much worth hearing, so I'm glad you're looking into them!

As for Fin de partie, I think rush was referring to the radio recording that's been making the rounds (the YT link I put up a month ago is no longer available, though).

And I'm happy to hear you're enjoying the Ferneyhough, Sund4r. I found his music forbidding the first few times I tried listening to it 15 years ago (I think it was that Montaigne disc with his string quartets nos. 1-3 performed by the Ardittis). For whatever reason, I opened up to it once I realized that several of my favourite living composers (including Kaija Saariaho, Chaya Czernowin and Richard Barrett) studied under him. It also requires a bit of a leap of faith at times, more so than with other 'difficult' composers, since the overwhelming complexity on display is a deliberate challenge to our narrative/structural expectations. I'm also fascinated with the notion of hypernotation as conducive to performative freedom (you can't possibly follow every single instruction to the letter, so you have to 'transcend' them, in an almost Lisztian sense, by actively looking for a workaround).

Oh and since I don't want to leave out the dead, I also very much enjoyed these 2018 releases:

Andreas Haefliger - Perspectives 7
Barbara Hannigan - Vienna: Fin de siècle
Claude Debussy - Les trois sonates (Faust, Melnikov, Queyras, et al.)
Dénes Várjon - De la nuit
Ditta Rohmann - Solo Cello Portrait
Edvard Grieg - Violin Sonatas (Vineta Sareika & Amandine Savary)
Gabriel Fauré - Horizons
Heino Eller - Violin Concerto; Fantasy; Symphonic Legend; Symphony No. 2
Mihai Ritivoiu - Transcendence
Olivier Messiaen - Catalogue d'oiseaux (Pierre-Laurent Aimard)
Robert Schumann - String Quartet (Engegård Quartet)
Till Fellner - Beethoven, Liszt
Wilhelm Stenhammar - Symphony No. 2; Serenade (Herbert Blomstedt)

I am very much hoping from the title of that Hannigan album that it includes schoenberg op.10. I have a glitchy broadcast capture of her doing that and have been really hoping for an official recording.

Googling, I see it’s not. Darn. Soon, I hope.

As for Fin de partie, I think rush was referring to the radio recording that's been making the rounds (the YT link I put up a month ago is no longer available, though).

― pomenitul

yeah that was the one

for my NYC types: http://prototypefestival.org/
perhaps of particular interest is carolyn shaw's Partita for 8 Voices, performed live and free in Times Square at 4pm and 7pm. only a half hour long!
http://prototypefestival.org/shows/out-of-bounds/

Have the roomful of teeth recording of Partita, absolutely not missing Partita.

let's plan on doing it together jon! times square in january, what's not to love?

#classicalfrenz :)

for sure and def, consider it written in stone

(LL u should listen to partita if you haven't it will floor u!)

i will, it's holiday break mental reset time :) :) :)

same here starting in two hours

but only til wednesday

to the side. to the side. to the side and around. through the middle and. to the side. to the side. to the side and around. through the middle and. to the side. to the side. to thesidetothesidetothesideandaroundtothesideandaroundandaround. to the side, two three four. and fiveacrosssix seven eight, through the midpoint, uppertwolinethreedrawnfourfromtheleftfourleftfivesidesixleftalabandesideleftahahahahahahahahahahahahaahaahahahaa AAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAA

it's only 25 minutes Lechera, totally worth it.

Shaw's chamber pc Valencia was performed a couple of weeks ago at Scholes St Studio which is quite close to my house and has a chamber music series, I lamed out and I feel dumb about that. Also on the bill was the 2nd Brahms Quintet which I adore. I don't get myself sometimes.

amendment, i almost NEVER get myself

Valencia = the string quartet that Jasper SQ recorded on Unbound? In the end, I just never felt like that piece hung together, formally, nor that the parts were remarkable enough in themselves to overcome that isssue, unless I just didn't understand it. Maybe it would work better live?

Following up on this post in 2016 Rolling Classical Listening Thread about taonga pūoro, traditional Māori instruments

Two new albums feature taonga pūoro:

A compilation of pieces by Richard Nunns, Mahi (Works)

- https://rattle-records.bandcamp.com/album/mahi

The book gathers together an enormous amount of the current knowledge about taonga puoro, and will undoubtedly be the most important written resource in existence on the subject. It also charts the many other paths that Richard has taken with the music, including the huge variety of recordings he has done, his sound-track work, and his playing in other genres, such as free jazz and classical. - (Rattle.co.nz)

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4282364086_7.jpg https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0727883899_7.jpg

And a new work by Al Fraser, Toitū Te Pūoro (~The music remains), featuring Ariana Tikao on "Hikoi"

- https://rattle-records.bandcamp.com/album/toitu-te-pu-oro

Subtle and strident, of this world and yet not of this world, this album is as close as we are likely to get to a recorded impression of the sounds of our land and water, of our ancient Aotearoa. Only someone who has committed to the kind of apprenticeship Al Fraser has gone on with taonga puoro could have created this album. Our cultural landscape is richer for his work and dedication. - (Jacquie Walters, Music.net.nz)