Rolling Classical 2019

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.

Jelly.

xp

Which Debussy pieces did he orchestrate and have they been recorded?

I won’t have money to go to this year’s Hannigan-led Ojai festival. I really wanted to.

Children's Corner. You might be able to stream the whole thing here? https://www.dr.dk/radio/p2/p2-koncerten/p2-koncerten-hans-abrahamsen-leonie-sonnings-musikpris-2019 If not, then I think the concert is broadcast in every EBU member, so it might show up someday :)

early warning for NYCers to add this to their calendar (looking at you jon)
July 25 – ICE plays Ashley Fure and Anna Thorvaldsdottir
http://www.lincolncenter.org/mostly-mozart-festival/show/fure-and-thorvaldsdottir

That's my birthday :D

Definitely want to go

Nice! And free! Gonna have to try and get to that.

I have little sympathy for what Michel Houellebecq has become (or revealed himself to be) in recent years, but I often think back on his simple description of Liszt's late music in The Map and the Territory (Houellebecq's best novel imho):

There is perhaps no music that expresses better than Franz Liszt’s last pieces of chamber music that funereal and gentle feeling of the old man whose friends are all dead, who in some way already belongs to the past and who in turn feels death approaching, who sees it as a sister, a friend, the promise of a return to the childhood home.

With this in mind, I've been listening to Cédric Tiberghien's recent recital for Hyperion, showcasing the third and last year of Liszt's Années de pèlerinage, as well as a smattering of pieces from the 1870s-1880s including the notorious Bagatelle sans tonalité, said to foreshadow Schoenberg. It's all wonderfully bleak for the most part, and played just right – a shame Tiberghien didn't record Nuages gris, however, although I suppose the disc's running time wouldn't have permitted it.

Oh, that sounds worth checkimg out.

*checking

i am obsessed with late liszt, not just the pieces houllebecq is referring to there but also the strange and whimsical dances (valses oubliees, mephisto waltzes, the bagatelle) which are just as resignedly forward-pushing as the laments

The late pieces sound especially great on a fortepiano - search out Andrea Bonatta's disc on Arcana. For the late dances, I am head over heels for Olivia Sham's Liszt recital 'The Art Of Remembering'. Brendel is incredible in the selection of late pieces he recorded. For 'Nuages Gris', Krystian Zimerman is almost hallucinatory.

There's a great disc of late liszt arranged for wind ensemble by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and a disc on BMC of late liszt orchestral adaptations by a hungarian composer. Finally, Heinz Holliger made two incredible orchestrations which were recorded on an old Arte Nova disc.

Liszt himself did very little for orchestra at this point in his life BUT his final symphonic poem From the Cradle to the Grave is a stunning exception.

I'm with you, Jon: those bizarre dance-like pieces are just as fascinating as the dirges (incidentally, Tiberghien's recital includes the fourth Mephisto Waltz).

I must admit I'm not too keen on Bonatta's disc, however, due to a blind spot more than anything – I've never really warmed up to the sound of premodern pianos. But Zimerman's Liszt recital is an absolute favourite of mine and I love all things Holliger.

I'll check out the arrangements for wind instruments – I had no idea, so thanks for the tip. And yes, From the Cradle to the Grave, despite its short length, dwarfs the Dante and Faust symphonies both.

There's also an old Hungaroton disc featuring Liszt's works for harmonium (including an arrangement of the lovely Angelus, which also kicks off year three of the Années de pèlerinage), as well as cello & piano versions of Romance oubliée, La lugubre gondola and the two late Elegies. With Miklós Perényi, no less.

Speaking of which, I always come back to Alexis Descharmes and Sébastian Vichard's recordings of the works for cello & piano (all of them, including Tristia for piano trio, an 1880 transcription of an early work, which makes for a fascinating juxtaposition). It's a clichéd thing to say, but Liszt was such an incredible arranger, an undersung craft if ever there was one.

Saw this with Jon at The Stone and STRONGLY recommend it... Jon, you wanna go again on the 21?
https://roulette.org/event/travis-laplante-yarn-wire-inner-garden/

I was gonna ask you about that today! Yes I want to see it again man.

Great, hit me by email and let's get you a ticket.

http://5against4.com/2019/03/05/quatuor-bozzini-phill-niblock-baobab/

Quatuor Bozzini – Phill Niblock: Baobab

2 pieces of "uppercase ambient" from the impressive experimental string quartet that the reviewer says is a recording that recreates the brilliance of the live experience they encountered of them at the Hudds music festival.

https://quatuorbozzini-actuellecd.bandcamp.com/

and another:
Simon Martin : Musique d’art

Yes, but is it true ambient?

Kidding aside, I'll be sure to check them both of them out, thanks.

“There are no waves, there is only the ocean.” or something like that!

Confession: while listening to András Schiff's second volume of Schubert pieces and sonatas played on a 1820 fortepiano, I once again came to the conclusion that pre-20th century pianos are an exercise in frustration. I can't recall a single recording where I preferred the prototype to its modern equivalent.

I like Bach on historical keyboards, modern pianos, and Wendy Carlos's Moog. I like how harpsichords and clavichords can rip in a way that pianos don't. Not sure about early fortepianos, though: haven't listened to a lot of that tbh.

Period performance Bach is right up my alley and I love the harpsichord's tone. It's really just the fortepiano I struggle with, perhaps because I like my Romanticism to be forward-looking.

Just listened to this and enjoyed it on first listen. It will be played here on Sunday, although I will have to miss it, unfortunately:
https://vimeo.com/332029867/35f6f43258

For English ilxors, my choir, Lille Muko, is going on a small tour this summer. We're singing July 11th in Ely, 13th in Norwich, and 14th in Cambridge. We're singing only 20th century Danish choral music on this tour.
http://cambridgesummermusic.co.uk/the-university-choir-lille-muko/?fbclid=IwAR2x5xxwiV1GewmvutAIw6Ua5xhrWzKAKZrjzZ-e5TG2ueuytyfWahpDNtg
I'm the third guy from the right, btw. I was very, very hungover the day the photo was taken.

your hairstyle is quite indecorous

Classical controversy shockah:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/04/the-guardian-view-on-classical-music-art-or-status-symbol

i think we tutted about that in the Graun thread. i assume they let a work experience kid write it.

Ah, I only just got wind of it through a series of rebuttals.

In any case, lol @ the undying and undead notion that live classical music is somehow egregiously more expensive to consume than other genres.

it's impressive in the number of wrong sentences it packs in.

A few responses:

Here is a screen grab of @RichmoMusic’s Times rebutal of the Guardian’s ‘state of classical music’ editorial. pic.twitter.com/YZBajW3yM1

— Petroc Trelawny (@PetrocTrelawny) July 9, 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/07/classical-music-and-the-dreaded-elite-tag

yep, attacking the proms as conspicuous commercialism or whatever stupid term they used in that garbage piece was spectacularly missing the point - seeing as it is probably the only major event in London doing six quid tickets!

https://johnlutheradams.bandcamp.com/album/become-desert

this is beautiful.

Indeed it is. More oceanic (again) than desert-like but I'm not keeping a tally.

yep, attacking the proms as conspicuous commercialism or whatever stupid term they used in that garbage piece was spectacularly missing the point - seeing as it is probably the only major event in London doing six quid tickets!

Also many of the seats cost less than a tenner. Ive booked 5 concerts and 2 of those are under ten, in the circle

This is rather… unexpected given HWH's politics:

The opening of Hans Werner Henze's 'Allegra e Boris', the violin & viola duet he wrote for Boris Johnson's marriage to Allegra Mostyn-Owen in 1987 pic.twitter.com/4ETeBgCGuY

— Tom Coult (@tomcoult) July 21, 2019

Odd. There has to be some context for that?

Ana Sokolović was a name familiar to me for geographical reasons but I'd never been tempted to check out her music because program notes tend to emphasize its purported 'humour', which is not a quality I seek outside of, well, film and day-to-day life. So I've only just gotten around to her latest disc for ATMA, Sirènes, which features a smattering of vocal works (one for a cappella choir and two short song cycles), as well as a violin concerto, none of which I found very funny (to my great relief).

As it turns out, her penchant for humour is sporadical and of the mildly surrealist, late Ligeti-esque variety, i.e. tempered by darker hues and a feel for the mysterious macabre. Her writing for voices clearly leans on Claude Vivier's, and parts of Evta (for violin and orchestra) hearken back to Gubaidulina's string concertos, so she stylistically brings together no less than three of my absolute favourite composers, on top of her own personal touches, which highlight her Serbian heritage. Although I catch myself wishing she'd make more of this (lesser known) cultural baggage, her polystylism is of a highly competent and seamless sort, far removed from, say, Osvaldo Golijov's. There's a sense of poetry (a meaningless, meaningless word, I know) throughout, and it stems from the music itself, beyond her settings of Francisco Tanzer and others.

Anyhow, I'm glad to have finally gotten acquainted with her work.

Someone else I never looked into. You do make it sound good.

I don't want to oversell it as I'm not wholly bowled over (structurally, she does meander a little too much at times), but if you're a fan of her touchstones, I'd say it's worth your while.

I'll have to check out her other discs – there are way more of them than I expected.

RIP Anner Bylsma (1934-2019).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD4CnTbjkSA

Microtonalist Ben Johnston as well

RIP

I'm not as familiar with his work. I'll have to remedy that.

I just saw Quatuor Danel play Shostakovich 8; first time I've seen it live. Goosebumps p much the whole time. Weinberg after intermission.

I have their Shostakovich cycle - they’re great.

Recently enjoyed Boris Giltburg’s solo piano transcription of that piece

Yeah, I'll look for that set (their intégral of Shostakovich, as the host of tonight's concert described it in good Ottawan franglais). I thought it was supposed to be available for sale here but I couldn't find it so bought a glass of rosé instead.

Could be the rosé talking but I really liked Weinberg 6, which I'd tbh never heard before.

Jelly, Sund4r!

The Danels studied under the Borodins (and Fyodor Druzhinin) and it really shows. Theirs is by a significant margin my favourite post-Soviet Shostakovich SQ cycle. All of their recordings are good tbh – I think the only one I was disappointed with was their Debussy, which was a little too wiry.

And yeah, Weinberg's music is a treasure trove. I need to dig into it further. Speaking of which, there have been two important releases devoted to him this year, which I've yet to hear: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21 (he was quite prolific) with the KREMERata Baltica, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, and his 24 Preludes for solo cello arranged for violin (and played) by the indefatigable Gidon Kremer.