Rolling Classical 2019

I'm beating a dead fun-hating horse at this point but fwiw, with regards to:

I somehow doubt he is trying to be historically accurate.

I understand that most of his videos ARE meant to be accurate and educational in their comedy (they're usually about economics rather than music): "Merle loves for his music to be used in the classroom. "

In my uni teaching experience, I couldn't really expect students to come in familiar with any modern composers of notated music, btw.

Congrats on the new performances, fgti.

This is my dad's composition. I'm so fucking proud.

https://youtu.be/mzohsaDtTQg?t=213

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzohsaDtTQg&feature=youtu.be&t=211

(starts around 3:30)

Ok let's try that one more time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzohsaDtTQg

mazel

Wonderful this is beautiful

:)

I was there. 200 people on stage, 800-1000 in the audience I think, with relatively minimal promotion. Mix of American U. and pros in the orchestra and chorus (plus a children's chorus). Text is an english translation of poems of medieval poet Judah HaLevi about his sea pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Going to perform Morten Lauridsens six Madrigali in a month. Lauridsen is normally pure candyfloss, but I really like this. The first five a pretty challenging in different ways, and then the final one is pure sugar again. Like a band performing all their new stuff at first, then playing the hit as an encore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPxQnnVKqu8

Michael Gielen has died. A tremendous working life.

I don't know anything about classical music however I found this interesting.
The #1 album of 2019 according to Rate Your Music is a classical five-CD box set.

Nature Denatured and Found Again
by Michael Pisaro

http://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4246156871_16.jpg

https://michaelpisaro.bandcamp.com/album/nature-denatured-and-found-again

The piece is derived from field recordings made along the Grosse Mühl River, Neufelden, Austria, from 2011 to 2015 (during the flussaufwärts project created by Joachim Eckl, Marcus Kaiser and Michael Pisaro). Alongside the recordings of the river as it flows down from Neufelden to the Danube, are performances by Antoine Beuger, Jürg Frey, Marcus Kaiser, Radu Malfatti, André Möller, and Kathryn Pisaro. Pisaro has been working on the piece since 2011 and we are very happy to have it finally see the light of day.

Disc 1: Fissures in Green (2011)
Disc 2: Pathsplitter (Yellow-Red) (2012)
Disc 3: Landscape in Black and Grey (2013)
Disc 4: White Light Under the Door (2014)
Disc 5: Hellgrün (Small New World) (2015)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vUJDLqMrHM4/W9duBKrm5rI/AAAAAAAACfc/1YQ_vDHo5t0P86cFfGXZcn0TqhnSKFcYQCLcBGAs/s1600/Flussphoto.jpg

http://michaelpisaro.blogspot.com/2018/10/nature-denatured-and-found-again-gw-016.html

I was going to stream it but it's not on Spotify and there are only two songs that are streamable on the Bandcamp link above. It's probably not my thing but it's quite an anomaly to see a classical box set atop that particular website's rankings for the year, even though it's only March!

The featured tracks on Bandcamp were pretty nice and intriguing.

Np the art of fugue - Zoltán Kocsis

I miss him. :(

As for Michael Pisaro, I must admit I've never been too keen on the Wandelweiser aesthetic, no more than once or twice a year tbh.

love it

Kocsis was turning out to be such an awesome conductor and I really wanted him to record more orchestral Liszt or at least broadcast more of it - especially the arrangements he was making of the late piano music.

Gielen festival in here this past week - Zimmerman requiem for a young poet, Liszt Dante symphony, stuff I’ve never heard before by Jorge Lopez, Strauss Metamorphosen from his Cincinnati days, and his amazing haensler studio recording of Mahler’s 7th.

I forgot to reply to your Gielen post upthread (I mentioned it on ILX's rolling obituary thread amidst the usual indifference) but yeah, what a giant of a man. I've never heard a recording of his that I didn't like. The pre-box set Mahler discs for Hänssler, padded with a cornucopia of modernist works, is a thing of beauty – and it's instructive, to boot.

In general, the guys who held longtime posts with german radio orchestras were just fucking great, not only gielen but hans zender, ernest bour, i guess hans rosbaud was kind of the prototype. They and their bands could do EVERYTHING effectively, and did, and were almost always recorded doing it.

Otm. A shame that said orchestras are apparently underfunded these days – even Germany is giving up on classical music.

The libretto is hilarious and has the kids singing threateningly conservative jargonism at the audience interspersed with quotes from Cyclops's angry speech to Odysseus prior to eating a couple of his men (taken from three different sources)

dammit i should have marked my calendar

tbh was less excited about seeing them play with wye oak; that choir is a nuanced artist unto itself and i don't care much for people using them as an effect to sing over.

Eric Le Sage, one of my favourite living pianists, recently released his take on Gabriel Fauré's Nocturnes. I'd been waiting for this disc, as Le Sage's recordings of Fauré's chamber music were superlative and he has just the right tone for this music: a kind of Romantic detachment (if that makes sense?). Most pianists either overemphasize the pathos, which is alien to the more forbidding late-period works, or seek to neuter melody as much as possible (a far preferable approach in my opinion, but it has its limits). Le Sage gets the Nocturnes' ambiguity just right, and it suits them throughout, from 1875 to 1921. Rediscovering these pieces through his playing is a pleasure.

The Pulitzer winners are out. Ellen Reid wins for her opera 'Prism' about sexual assault. Heard a few excerpts, sounds really good! Other nominees were Andrew Norman for 'Sustain' which Alex Ross absolutely loved, and James Romig for 'Still' which can be heard here, and which is pretty cool and Feldman-like: http://www.jamesromig.com/still.html A lot of the chord-changes are pretty jarring.

I'm going to admit that I haven't heard of any of them but will dig in.

Did the jury have something against Invasion of Privacy?

The new Maja S. K. Ratkje album, featuring a modified pump organ, may be my favourite thing I've heard by her so far. Incidentally, I don't know if this is the most appropriate thread for it, but eh, who cares.

Oh wow, I saw her in 2013 and really liked it. I like the old Tzadik album (River Mouth Echoes??) so I should listen to this.

I quite liked River Mouth Echoes as well. I'd say this one is more approachable and consistent: it's a continuous single piece (a ballet score, in fact, inspired by Knut Hamsun's Hunger) born of a series of live improvisations for voice and prepared pump organ, rather than a showcase of works penned for different forces. Really beautiful stuff, I think you'll enjoy it.

Is it streaming anywhere?

It's on Apple Music. And Spotify as well, based on a cursory search.

On YT, as well, although the sound quality is bound to be iffy (I haven't tested it):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_illXigaX4

Oh, I see it now. It's under "Maja S. K. Ratkje" and didn't turn up when I looked on the Spotify artist page for "Maja Ratkje" but it came up when I searched for "Sult".

That first clip from Reid's Prism is amazing! It actually made me think a bit of the Knife's Tomorrow in a Year for some reason. Listening to the Soundcloud excerpts now and this is nice so far. xp

This is what the augmented pump organ looks like btw:

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0022742f170547419c40f92ead99adeb82234e09/0_503_6000_3600/master/6000.jpg?width=1920&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=c347381a765208f808986fe96692b067

<3

The Ratkje album is really nice. I still don't pay for Spotify so the commercials spoiled the mood a little but the pieces were often more beautiful than I expect from her, and, you're right, it works as a consistent album.

Yeah, this one's got actual songs. She's a remarkably versatile artist, as a composer and performer both.

On the more traditional end of things, I'm finding Bomsori Kim and Rafał Blechacz's DG recital for violin and piano to be most enjoyable. It includes Fauré's first sonata, Debussy's lone effort in the genre and an early attempt (from 1904) by Szymanowski. The Fauré and Debussy are stunningly well played, as is the Szymanowski, but the work itself doesn't do it for me at all. I suspect my tolerance for late Romantic histrionics is higher than most people's, but the piece falls apart almost as soon as it begins, devolving into a catalogue of emotive fin de siècle clichés. Szymanowski appears to have only really hit his stride around 1914.

Put on the video of Still while making and eating breakfast. It started out sounding beautiful and sparse, then started driving me bonkers in the lack of development, and now (28m in), I'm just getting engrossed in the spaces and slight variations.

I quite like Still so far. It's eternally unfolding somewhere between Feldman's Triadic Memories and Pärt's Für Alina.

I haven't managed to find a recording of Andrew Norman's Sustain, alas. I might give Ellen Reid's opera a shot, but it's a genre I tend to dislike almost systematically, so I'll probably just skip it.

I don't think Sustain has been recorded at all, but if you want to hear Norman I'd say give Play a play or two. It's pretty great.

this maja s.k. ratkje record is lovely, thanks

Ratkje gave an incredible performance at the Rune Grammofon anniversary concerts in Oslo in December, and I love organ music, so I'm definitely gonna check this album out.

another thanks for the Ratkje; sizzles on first contact.

Glad you guys like it!

Went to the Hans Abrahamsen Leonie Sonning Award concert yesterday. Sat at fourth row and heard Barbara Hannigan sing Let Me Tell You. One of the biggest concert experiences I've had in a while. The program also consisted of Abrahamsens orchestrations of six Debussy pieces and his concert for left-handed piano called Left, Alone. Second half was good as well, but it was the first half that was awe-inspiring.

Abrahamsen has finished his first opera, based on the fairy tale The Snow Queen (or as it's known nowadays, Frozen) and in his version the snow queen character will be portrayed by a bass singer.