Rolling Classical 2018

Listening to Hahn's disc of Mendelssohn's and Shostakovich's violin concerti over and over in the van these days.

I wasn't overly keen on Linda Catlin Smith's previous releases, but Wanderer is definitely doing it for me. Bits of it remind me of Mark Hollis's S/T shorn of the man's voice. I should give Dirt Road and Drifter another go, I probably wasn't paying enough attention.

My crush Víkingur Ólafsson has a Bach piano solo album out. Turns out Bach is great!

I saw a wonderful performance of Beethoven's Ninth this weekend. The festival was great, though I'm sad to have missed all of the string quartets.

Missed it all.:( I'll probably start going to more concerts again when I get more work hours.

Kukuruz Quartet: Julius Eastman - Piano Interpretations

^^^

this is blowing me away rn, awesome.

I've often wondered why some performers approach fin de siècle French chamber music in a deliberately cloying, saccharine way, minimising its modernity as much as possible (actually, I think I know why). Debussy and Ravel generally survive such opulence, but I can't say the same about Fauré, especially his later, more harmonically prickly pieces. Few things are as refreshing, then, as hearing Pierre Fouchenneret, Raphaël Merlin and Simon Zaoui's takes on Fauré's works for strings and piano (quartets and quintets notwithstanding). They remind us that, despite appearances to the contrary, this isn't Parisian salon music, except, perhaps, as painted by the Nabis (Pierre Vuillard, Edouard Bonnard, Maurice Denis). I haven't listened to many new classical releases this year, but I'm absolutely loving this one (titled Horizons), which also features a pitch-perfect performance, by David Lefort, of the brief song cycle L'Horizon chimérique.

I've also been listening to Mihai Ritivoiu's first recorded recital, showcasing works for piano by Enescu (who was Fauré's pupil), Franck and Liszt. The album's title is Transcendence, and I daresay he gets there without resorting to tired tricks such as slowing the tempo down to a crawl. Enescu's first sonata is the highlight as far as I'm concerned, and I hope Ritivoiu will record the rest of his output for solo piano, as well.

Speaking of Romanian composers, NEOS just put out an Hommage à Horațiu Rădulescu, gathering all of his works for piano (including the concerto) in performances by Ortwin Stürmer, to whom Rădulescu dedicated several scores, including the 'Lao Tzu' sonatas, which contain metaphysically bumbling titles such as 'settle your dust, this is the primal identity' or 'like a well… older than God'. Most of this material was already available elsewhere, but it's nice to have the sixth sonata on disc, as well as a few odds and ends, all of which are quite fascinating due to the collision between the piano's limited microtonal range (at least when played conventionally) and Rădulescu's spectralist aspirations, which tend to imply the use of string instruments. Somewhat surprisingly, the concerto reins in the strings somewhat so as to remain in 'tune' with the piano. It's definitely one of his most conventional efforts – a tribute to Brahms, as it were. As a side note, I really hope Mode will be able to continue its piano sonatas and string quartets cycle with Stephen Clarke and the JACK Quartet. That first disc was incredible.

I haven't listened to much living contemporary music, however, aside from the aforementioned Wanderer by Linda Catlin Smith and Bent Sørensen's meltingly beautiful Pantomime; Rosenbad, the second and third parts of his Schumann-esque Papillons trilogy (the first instalment, Mignon, came out in 2016). There is still time to catch up, I suppose, and I'll no doubt switch back to an almost exclusively classical diet once I get bored with the rest anyway (I go through cycles).

Wanderer is amazing, need to get some more L C Smith in my life.

She actually did a concert in the cultural dead-zone that is my neck of the woods last year, but tbf our contemporary music has got q

keyboard fail!
...got quite a big rep in recent years.

the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival that is.

The HCMF sounds amazing indeed. I should like to check it out now that I live, well, less than 300km away, but I doubt I could afford to spend ten days there, which is the amount of time I'd need to see both musikFabrik and the Arditti Quartet. I'm also an idiot for not having a driver's licence.

(On an unrelated note, it occurs to me that 'driver's licence' is a Canadian shibboleth: neither 'driving licence' nor a 'driver's license'.)

I've been a Canadian composer or composition student for 20 years and I never knew until now that Linda Smith's middle name is not "Caitlin".

György Kurtág's opera adaptation of Samuel Beckett's Endgame is currently playing at La Scala, in Milan. I didn't think he'd ever finish it, to be honest, especially since he was apparently too ill (he's 92) to attend the premiere. Anyhow, it has effectively become his largest work – perhaps an unexpected way to cap a career almost entirely dedicated to wisps and fragments.

Someone posted a radio recording to YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFOUf9WAY8Y

holy crap a kurtag opera?

My fiancée has given it a thumbs-up half an hour in.

I think it's the lyricism.

That Beckett should have exerted such a pervasive influence on contemporary notated music is testimony to his understanding of literature's inherent musicality. Kurtág's works often spring from linguistic elements even as he gives voice to the difficulty of turning speech into song, so it's a natural pairing that rests on a similar conception of lyricism as a necessary and salutary object of desire that punishes the speaker/singer by placing him/her under duress. Kurtág has had considerable time to practice before Fin de partie, incidentally: pas à pas… nulle part and Samuel Beckett: What Is the Word, from the 1990s, are both incredible settings in their own right.

Reposting from EOY lists thread:

Listening to the Frederic Hand album from the Textura list and this is definitely up my alley. I have to say, though, that I'm a little intrigued by Textura's love of Hand. They listed him in 2016 too. I never see other classical guitar albums on their EOY lists. I think e.g. John Gordon Armstrong's album from last year and Steve Cowan's from 2016 were really good and more envelope-pushing. William Beauvais had a decent album in 2016 in an accessible style not that far removed from Hand's.

which is to say, I think, are there any good eoy classical lists? I'd be happy to wait until the year is actually over but everyone seems to be publishing them now. I'm especially interested in recs of more 'difficult' compositional music (atonal, complex, spectral, ...), just because it's harder to find as much on it. I saw a lot of good concerts this year and ofc that's the primary medium for the tradition but it's always a good thing to have recordings to listen to on a day-to-day basis.

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)