Rolling Classical 2021

Speaking of the 21st (and 20th) century guitar, DaCapo just released a monograph devoted to Danish guitarist-composer Lars Hegaard and it's quite lovely, on the gentler, more impressionistic end of high modernism.

Oh thanks, I'll look for that.

Another recently released record that I feel the need to stan for is Caeli by Bára Gísladóttir & Skúli Sverrisson, which is an epic (2h+) sky-touched duo for double-bass and electronics that draws on Scelsi, spectralism, Stefano Scodanibbio, ambient and noise. I'll need to look into Sverrisson's other duos (there's one with Bill Frisell from 2018, for instance).

Alejandro Tentor killing Murail's Tellur rn.

Free/PWYC Angela Hewitt livestream concert at 4:00 EDT today: https://www.thegilmore.org/event/angela-hewitt/

Thinking about it myself.

New Adam Cicchillitti/Steve Cowan album Intimate Impressions/Impressions intimes is all arrangements of music by Ravel, Debussy, Tailleferre, Jolivet, and Mompou: https://open.spotify.com/album/5hWYCrIHZuRpMXmugoQ3vL?si=cZIHrq_KRBKvL8GvGPNpeA . Much softer than Focus but pretty, intricate, and really precisely played and recorded. Adam also played Benjamin Dwyer's first etude at 21CG, which was great.

Here's a video of that Dwyer study, actually:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RYYWqcNCao

I'm a fan of the repertoire so I'll check out the album for sure.

*micropolyphonically* Nice. pic.twitter.com/rf8Ms4U5uU

— Robert Komaniecki (@Komaniecki_R) April 8, 2021

I wonder if Beethoven also had it in mind when he wrote his third cello sonata?

I am so, so into the Netherlands Bach Society videos. They're recording and uploading every single thing that Bach ever wrote. I.. have yet to hear anything that they've uploaded that hasn't immediately become "my favourite performance of this work".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr0f6t2UbOo

^ this is transcendent; I am going to replace their principal violist tho

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

Jesus fucking Christ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYT1JUq0k04

Jesus fucking Christ
This dude, Shunske Sato, also the artistic director of this group, is serving my favourite-ever performances of solo Bach and I've listened to literally thousands

btw? that famous part of the E-major prelude (0:37)? I just learned that there is a word for that technique: bariolage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bariolage

Ha, yeah, I started learning the lute version and then put it down when things came up Should pick it up again.

Anyone else here using the Primephonic streaming service for classical? I just signed up yesterday to a two month free trial. It's main selling points are superior audio quality (an option for lossless 24-bit FLAC files), an extensive catalog, and searching and browsing that's organized for classical.

That last part, although not ideal in every way, is what I've most appreciated so far. Selections are grouped mainly by composer and composition, rather than artist, album and song. After the frustration of hunting through Spotify with its messy search results for classical, it's a relief to be able to easily navigate to, say, a specific Bartok quartet and see a list of dozens of versions by different ensembles. I've only been playing around through its Sonos interface, so it may be even better on other platforms.

The catalog does appear to be up to date with new releases, although not so extensive on older recordings that may be out of print. It also may not be a place to seek out all the edgiest new shit, unless that's safely tucked away somewhere from the predominant usual longhair fare.

I can access Naxos Music Library for free through the library so it wouldn't have occurred to me to pay for a classical streaming service but are you saying you can actually stream at 24-bit FLAC quality??

Does Primephonic have booklets/liner notes? That’s the main advantage of Naxos.

sund4r, yes if your system and bandwidth can handle it, and if the recording is in 24-bit, of course. The subscription rate is 50% more than for 320k files. I'm sure my older Sonos system wouldn't support 24-bit. I didn't realize the Naxos service had become so big. Thought it just had stuff on the Naxos label.

Yes, the Primephonic Web player has booklets for many releases, not all. It's in a hi-res, very readable format.

Yeah the Naxos has a very wide selection of labels.

Nice animated video for Hahn's new recording of the Scherzo from Prokofiev's Violin Concerto no. 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDZlF7a_OJY

When getting an autograph from Hilary Hahn a few years ago during intermission at the National Symphony in DC I unwisely told her “I like your Ives”—meaning her Ives Sonata CD that came out about that time. She looked a little alarmed and I detected that and quickly hustled off. Only later did I find out that she has a stalker, and may have heard me say “I like your EYES” and may have scared her.

Haha aw

lol! Just pronounce it 'eaves' for the extra eccentric nerd cred while simultaneously skirting any risk of unintentional skeeviness.

If The old man heard you call him “Sha-rel Eaves” he’d probably hurl some homophobic imprecations your way.

Good review of Bára Gísladóttir & Skúli Sverrisson's Caeli, certainly one of the classical highlights of 2021 so far:

http://5against4.com/2021/04/22/bara-gisladottir-skuli-sverrisson-caeli/

This is really nice, just premiered on Youtube two days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZi5L0HVnBI

Sounds like a lot of quarter-tone trills (?), also some flutter-tongue, pitch bending, overblowing and breath effects? Really sensitive dynamics.

Ok I’m going to try to listen to every album mentioned here so far, I’ve previewed some and they sound great.

Any review sites or blogs for classical music that you follow and you’d recommend?

A few English-language ones that I like, although they're hardly exhaustive:

http://5against4.com (mostly contemporary classical, with a dash of ambient on the side, and a recurrent emphasis on the British and Estonian scenes)

https://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com (mostly contemporary classical as well, also with a slight bias towards the British scene)

https://www.therestisnoise.com (Alex Ross's website aka the New Yorker's resident classical music critic, a bit too US-centric for my tastes but still worthwhile)

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/andrewclements (Andrew Clements' reviews for The Guardian generally showcase quality releases, and I often myself agreeing with his assessments)

ResMusica is quite good if you can read French, and I'm sure there are plenty of excellent Spanish-language resources. Anglo (and especially American) perspectives on classical music need to be supplemented due to their often subconscious parochialism (this is true of all linguistic and/or lenses, of course). MusicWeb International, for instance, is at times hilariously British, with a marked preference for conservative UK composers, as is The Gramophone. ClassicsToday is the David Hurwitz show, and he's got a strong, extremely subjective sense of what he likes and dislikes, which may or may not be one's jam.

In all honesty, though, I mostly go straight to the labels I enjoy the most and take it from there. They are:

BIS
Chandos
Col Legno
ECM
DaCapo
Deutsche Grammophon
Harmonia Mundi
Kairos
Neos
Ondine
Outhere
Wergo

…and there's plenty more, but it's a start.

Mode Records too
Sono Luminus for contemporary Icelandic composers
Winter & Winter
Editions RZ

Everyone swears by Another Timbre these days. I find them very hit-or-miss because their aesthetic is too neutral and uneventful for my ears but I'm probably alone on this one. Wandelweiser takes it to an even greater minimalistic, quasi inaudible extreme and it's not my thing at all but you might be into it.

Pom you are a dear as always. Thanks!

My pleasure. :)

this is true of all linguistic and/or lenses

This should read 'this is true of all linguistic and/or national lenses' btw.

Thank u pom!

RIP Cristóbal Halffter, one of Spain's 20th century greats:

https://www.explica.co/composer-and-conductor-cristobal-halffter-dies.html

I'm pretty sure this is a Spanish-language obituary run through Google translate, but eh, it's better than nothing.

Huh, I didn't know about him. Best place to start?

Xpost: Yeah original source comes from 20minutos which is a popular newspaper from Spain.

Here’s the original source:

https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/4706197/0/muere-el-compositor-y-director-de-orquesta-cristobal-halffter/

Just as I thought, thanks.

Sund4r: I’m not familiar enough with his oeuvre to say, but I remember enjoying his 2nd Cello Concerto (dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich), the few string quartets of his I’ve heard and the Guitar Concerto (with Narciso Yepes playing the solo part).

I'm usually a little sceptical of these ideas but according to this article, they might work?

How one symphony found success by acting more like a jazz club. https://t.co/oFEr9AsV0w pic.twitter.com/K4W7CKtC7x

— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) June 13, 2021

last couple could go either way but the rest are good and long overdue imo

could there be some kind of pay what you want thing for the programme notes if they're not included in the ticket price bc what they charge for them is nothing to some concert-goers and prohibitively expensive for others

these are good practical accomodations my only fear is if "accessibility" also means (as it so often does) doubling down on just playing the hits and marginalising (even more) anything deemed too challenging for audiences. that *and* the culture that frowns on the things in the twitter post above are what have made concert attendance so unappealing to me

I've never had to pay for programme notes?!

From a quick scan of California Symphony programmes, they don't seem that conservative, by the standards of American symphonies, e.g.

https://www.californiasymphony.org/shows/cellobration/

20/21 season included Verklarte Nacht:
https://www.californiasymphony.org/tickets-events/2020-21-season/

xps maybe it's just a UK or london thing but they're often £4-6 which is just ridiculous

Maybe this has been posted before but I've never heard anything risk so much and pay off so well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31tkGPvdMjs

I'm actually not sure the 'hits' that fill up most symphony seasons in the US/Canada are especially popular with broader and younger audiences (as the fact that we are having this discussion itself indicates). xps

Oh wow, that is a different take on "Winter" than Perlman's. A lot of intensity.

Yard sale of special effects on baroque instruments, pure gut strings, it’s wild, no?

Yeah, sounds great

Cicchillitti/Cowan album Focus won Classical Recording of the Year (for last year) at East Coast Music Awards: https://www.ecma.com/news/announcing-the-2021-ecma-winners/

Anyone know the "classical composition" winner?

I guess they qualify bc Cowan is originally from Newfoundland, though he is now based in Montreal.

The cello suites are, in comparison, consistently "cello music"; they are idiomatic to the instrument. With the violin sonatas and partitas, Bach was intentionally writing in styles that were unidiomatic, and making it work (usually). The three Adagios off the top of each Sonata are clearly "I am writing lute music, except for the violin"-- they would theoretically work better on lute, but that's not really the point. The C-major Adagio in particular is one of Bach's greatest feats of stylistic synthesis, in my opinion, it's both "lute music" and "violin music" and there is no other piece like it in the repertoire.

The Fugues that follow those Adagios are "keyboard music". I hold the less-popular opinion that these Fugues are bad music and don't really work. The g-minor one is amazing but the a-minor and C-major do not sound like music, they sound like a failed experiment. I would argue that all three fugues would sound better on a keyboard instrument, but Bach wrote oceans of fugues and these aren't top-drawer; why bother adapting them? (The g-minor one is excepted, it's an amazing thing.)

The chaconne is an outlier. It's doubtless one of the most brutally beautiful things that Bach wrote, but the 'experiment' of "polyphonic violin writing" is less interesting than the musical material itself. I think it is the movement of the entire opus that lends itself most readily to adaptation.

The rest of the work is often adapted-- I hear the E-major prelude on guitar as often as I do on violin-- but it's violin music, you can borrow it but it's not yours

Isn't the struggle and harshness of playing chordal music on the violin part of the point, though? Confession: I've never played it all. I sight-read the whole thing at half tempo (sometimes less) last night.

Prelude from Cello Suite 1 (BWV1007) one of my favourite guitar pieces.

Ultimately I think Bach was testing the limits of violinistic technique and certain movements cross a line into "this is too difficult to deliver anything really but accuracy" territory. The a-minor fugue, like, I enjoy Hadelich's and Shunsuke Sato's renditions but it's just too astronomically difficult in its writing for even the most brilliant of A-listers

Nice short new solo piano composition by Amy Brandon (perf Jennifer King): https://open.spotify.com/track/6v0TPSAvjaIurPJwsAaPLA?si=04c23c42d2444b78

Her programme note: Frost grows in two types of movements - a flash freeze, followed by the growth of slow fractal patterns of frost flowers. With Frost Moon I tried to capture this freezing effect in sound - a violent sudden crystallization, followed by intricate lattice-work, growing and overlapping in self-same patternings.