20/21 season included Verklarte Nacht:https://www.californiasymphony.org/tickets-events/2020-21-season/
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Sunday, 13 June 2021 15:49 (two years ago) link
xps maybe it's just a UK or london thing but they're often £4-6 which is just ridiculous
― Left, Sunday, 13 June 2021 15:55 (two years ago) link
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
― what's fgti up to these days? nothing. she's fake (flamboyant goon tie included), Sunday, 13 June 2021 15:56 (two years ago) link
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
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Sunday, 13 June 2021 15:59 (two years ago) link
Oh wow, that is a different take on "Winter" than Perlman's. A lot of intensity.
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Sunday, 13 June 2021 16:26 (two years ago) link
Yard sale of special effects on baroque instruments, pure gut strings, it’s wild, no?
― what's fgti up to these days? nothing. she's fake (flamboyant goon tie included), Sunday, 13 June 2021 17:45 (two years ago) link
Yeah, sounds great
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Sunday, 13 June 2021 17:51 (two years ago) link
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?
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Tuesday, 15 June 2021 03:41 (two years ago) link
I guess they qualify bc Cowan is originally from Newfoundland, though he is now based in Montreal.
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Tuesday, 15 June 2021 03:45 (two years ago) link
Listened to the Sato performance of the E major Partita - very nice. But fgti, you were joking about replacing the principal violist in the Netherlands Bach Society, I assume? Or serious??
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Monday, 21 June 2021 13:42 (two years ago) link
Nice short dodecaphonic guitar piece by a Sakatoon composer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3UEidNGpSs
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Wednesday, 23 June 2021 21:46 (two years ago) link
But fgti, you were joking about replacing the principal violist in the Netherlands Bach Society, I assume? Or serious??
Haha I'm just determined to be the violist who nails the solo on Brandenburg 3:iii, it's always so disappointing when it happens
― what's fgti up to these days? nothing. she's fake (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 24 June 2021 10:34 (two years ago) link
I'm not a Thomas Adès fan by any stretch of the imagination, but his protégé, Francisco Coll, deserves all the attention he can get. Check out his recent disc of orchestral works for Pentatone, featuring Patricia Kopatchinskaja in the post-Ligetian Violin Concerto and Four Iberian Miniatures. There's a clear, legible sense of narrative and drama in these works, which liberally synthesize late 20th/early 21st century modernist trends, the common thread being his interest in the traditional music of his native country, Spain. Really exciting stuff.
― pomenitul, Saturday, 26 June 2021 12:38 (two years ago) link
Also worth hearing, along the same lines, is PatKop's (I hate this, but it's kinda funny nonetheless) album with the Camerata Bern, featuring works by the aforementioned Coll, Veress and Ginastera.
― pomenitul, Saturday, 26 June 2021 12:43 (two years ago) link
Have heard some Veress these last couple years and am mystified why he isn’t discussed more (in three Classical Music Media Discourse). I love what PatKop does but haven’t heard her Pierrot Lunaire and I’m a bit skeptical about it since she’s not really a vocalist.
― Van Halen dot Senate dot flashlight (Boring, Maryland), Saturday, 26 June 2021 13:33 (two years ago) link
Same tbh. The reviews I've read seem to indicate that it's a 'love it or hate it'-type deal.
― pomenitul, Saturday, 26 June 2021 13:34 (two years ago) link
WTC1 performed live by Mahan Esfahani on a custom-built harpsichord by Jukka Olikka with a carbon fibre soundboard and 16 ft stop and a historically informed well temperament. May be taken down soon-ish. I'm up to Bb minor and it's very good so far:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtEY1kDzmHc
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 18:43 (two years ago) link
Eb minor sounds amazing in this temperament imo.
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:39 (two years ago) link
Listening to this long OOP 1977 record of Christina Petrowska (now Petrowska-Quilico) playing Messiaen and Debussy: https://www.discogs.com/fr/Christina-Petrowska-Messiaen-Debussy-Vingt-Regards-Sur-LEnfant-Jésus-Preludes-Book-Two/release/10419739
I found that there was finally a digital rerelease, along with a 2003 Boulez recording: https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6358/
I haven't listened to the sound of the digital version yet but I doubt David Jaeger screwed it up. The LP is fantastic so I recommend these recordings to anyone who doesn't know them.
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Tuesday, 3 August 2021 13:39 (two years ago) link
Rerelease less than a month old.
He's been releasing a lot since COVID but this recent William Beauvais set is especially good, all solo improvisatory pieces on classical guitar: https://williambeauvais1.bandcamp.com/album/improsessions
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Tuesday, 3 August 2021 13:41 (two years ago) link
Listening to the Boulez pieces from Sound Visionaries on NML, they sound great.
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Tuesday, 3 August 2021 14:05 (two years ago) link
Pretty nice album of contemporary violin duos by Twin Cities composers: https://newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/113-composers-collective-resistance-resonance
Definitely on the modernist side. The notes describe the pieces better than I could atm:
The album opens with Jeremy Wagner’s Oberleitung. This is the German word for “overhead lines,” the kind that carry electricity. It is perfectly descriptive of the skittering, arachnid energy of much of the music. Wagner takes advantage of the violins as much for their percussive attacks as for pitch. After a brief opening incantation, crackling battuto and drop-bow gestures are batted back and forth between the instruments in shaped, fast-moving volleys, as if they are playing a game, creating virtuosic swarms. Wagner gives each of them room to breathe, allowing the series of gestures to speak for themselves inside the larger form. In contrast, A Lifeless Object, Alive (Dysarthria) by Michael Duffy opens with full-throated double stops, shadowed by soft, porous wisps of sound. This gesture happens many times in the piece: it is as if the long, noise-laiden tones charge the air with sound, and the high, quiet resonances are the afterimage, or the dust settling. The emphasis here is on the grain of the sound, on the continuous morphing and layering of timbre. Layering these tones in separate registers (one violin playing very high, the other much lower) brings an additional degree of depth to the mostly slow-moving lines. Keening, slow glissandi give the piece an air of sorrowful remembrance. Autochrome Lumière by Joshua Musikantow is a work infused with nostalgia. Fittingly, a more traditional, melodic style of playing is often in the fore here. The music meanders slowly, talking outside of time. The end of the first movement seems to slide up and away, pianissimo, like a memory vanishing. In the second movement, one violin takes the melodic foreground while the other slides in and out of the background with multiple commentaries, whether a waltz beat, or pecking battuto bows, or tapping on the body of the violin. The final movement speaks vividly, in tangled, vexed phrases. It brings to mind the poem that accompanies Musikantow’s piece: ...I contemplate how the dramatic, percussive hang up is not possible with mobile phones. You need a landline. You need a phone with weight; a phone with spiral cords you can twirlanxiously; a phone you can hold in the nook between your head and your collarbone, almost as if playing the violin. Sam Krahn’s piece Resistance/Resonance starts with satisfyingly meaty scratch tones from one violin and microtonal ornamentation and double stops from the other. The music is pulled back and forth between these two poles; resistance and resonance, noise and pitch. Krahn cultivates engaging music that bridges the two, with gorgeous bent double stops and emotional friction between the two voices . The violins are both attracted and repelled by each other, sometimes standing apart playing without any regard for one another, and sometimes coming together, hovering just outside of consonance. Difficult Ferns by Adam Zahller is highly microtonal, and heavily ornamented. The piece moves forward on tiny, highly specific changes in rhythm, pitch, and color. The two violins sometimes seem as two projections of the same image, shimmering and wavering through small differences in pitch or rhythm. Zahller creates shadowy, ghostlike images by asking the player to use harmonic touch in the left hand, transforming mid-range pitches into very high, unstable auroras of sound. Much of the music is very quiet, encouraging the listener to lean in and focus more closely on the changes, and saving the louder end of the auditory spectrum for intense moments. The closing work on the recording, cistern . anechoic . sonolucent by TIffany M. Skidmore is inward-looking, understated. The music floats languidly, slowly moving like a jellyfish in calm water. Like the Zahller, it too explores the quiet range of the instruments, with only a few gestures stepping forward out of the shadows, only to recede again. The mood is one of soulful contemplation. The most arresting part occurs at the very end, when, having placed heavy mutes on the strings to further dampen the sound, the breathing of the two musicians become audible.
In contrast, A Lifeless Object, Alive (Dysarthria) by Michael Duffy opens with full-throated double stops, shadowed by soft, porous wisps of sound. This gesture happens many times in the piece: it is as if the long, noise-laiden tones charge the air with sound, and the high, quiet resonances are the afterimage, or the dust settling. The emphasis here is on the grain of the sound, on the continuous morphing and layering of timbre. Layering these tones in separate registers (one violin playing very high, the other much lower) brings an additional degree of depth to the mostly slow-moving lines. Keening, slow glissandi give the piece an air of sorrowful remembrance.
Autochrome Lumière by Joshua Musikantow is a work infused with nostalgia. Fittingly, a more traditional, melodic style of playing is often in the fore here. The music meanders slowly, talking outside of time. The end of the first movement seems to slide up and away, pianissimo, like a memory vanishing. In the second movement, one violin takes the melodic foreground while the other slides in and out of the background with multiple commentaries, whether a waltz beat, or pecking battuto bows, or tapping on the body of the violin. The final movement speaks vividly, in tangled, vexed phrases. It brings to mind the poem that accompanies Musikantow’s piece:
...I contemplate how the dramatic, percussive hang up is not possible with mobile phones. You need a landline. You need a phone with weight; a phone with spiral cords you can twirlanxiously; a phone you can hold in the nook between your head and your collarbone, almost as if playing the violin.
Sam Krahn’s piece Resistance/Resonance starts with satisfyingly meaty scratch tones from one violin and microtonal ornamentation and double stops from the other. The music is pulled back and forth between these two poles; resistance and resonance, noise and pitch. Krahn cultivates engaging music that bridges the two, with gorgeous bent double stops and emotional friction between the two voices . The violins are both attracted and repelled by each other, sometimes standing apart playing without any regard for one another, and sometimes coming together, hovering just outside of consonance.
Difficult Ferns by Adam Zahller is highly microtonal, and heavily ornamented. The piece moves forward on tiny, highly specific changes in rhythm, pitch, and color. The two violins sometimes seem as two projections of the same image, shimmering and wavering through small differences in pitch or rhythm. Zahller creates shadowy, ghostlike images by asking the player to use harmonic touch in the left hand, transforming mid-range pitches into very high, unstable auroras of sound. Much of the music is very quiet, encouraging the listener to lean in and focus more closely on the changes, and saving the louder end of the auditory spectrum for intense moments.
The closing work on the recording, cistern . anechoic . sonolucent by TIffany M. Skidmore is inward-looking, understated. The music floats languidly, slowly moving like a jellyfish in calm water. Like the Zahller, it too explores the quiet range of the instruments, with only a few gestures stepping forward out of the shadows, only to recede again. The mood is one of soulful contemplation. The most arresting part occurs at the very end, when, having placed heavy mutes on the strings to further dampen the sound, the breathing of the two musicians become audible.
Musikantow is a former grad school colleague but I like his piece a lot.
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Saturday, 7 August 2021 14:21 (two years ago) link
RIP
https://www.cbc.ca/music/r-murray-schafer-composer-writer-and-acoustic-ecologist-has-died-at-88-1.5404868
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Sunday, 15 August 2021 19:08 (two years ago) link
― pomenitul, Sunday, 15 August 2021 19:30 (two years ago) link
Now that I've finally caught up with my 2021 playlist, my classical faves so far look something like this:
Alberto Posadas – VeredasAlpaca Ensemble – Rehnqvist & LindquistAnna-Liisa Eller – Strings AttachedBára Gísladóttir & Skúli Sverrisson – CaeliBehzod Abduraimov – Debussy, Chopin, MussorgskyBéla Bartók – Bluebeard’s Castle (S. Vörös, M. Kares, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, S. Mälkki)Clara Iannotta – MOULTClaudia Chan – Thoughts About the PianoDaniele Pollini – Schumann, Brahms, SchoenbergDanish String Quartet – Prism IIIEnsemble Organum & Marcel Pérès – In memoria eternaEstonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir & Kaspars Putniņš – Schnittke, PärtFelix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – String Quartets op. 44 Nos. 1 & 2 (Minguet Quartett)Ferenc Snétberger & Keller Quartett – HallgatóFrancisco Coll – Violin Concerto; Hidd’n Blue; Mural; Four Iberian Miniatures; Aqua cinereaGeorg Friedrich Haas – Ein Schattenspiel; String Quartets Nos. 4 & 7Guillaume Dufay – Le prince d'amours (Ensemble Gilles Binchois, Dominique Vellard)György Kurtág – The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza (Tony Arnold & Gábor Csalog)James Weeks – SummerJean Rondeau – Melancholy GraceJohann Sebastian Bach – Well-Tempered Clavier (Piotr Anderszewski)Johannes Brahms – Sonatas op. 120 (Antoine Tamestit & Cédric Tiberghien)José Luis Hurtado – Parametrical CounterpointKassiani – Hymns (Cappella Romana, Alexander Lingas)Lars Hegaard – Octagonal RoomLudwig van Beethoven – Complete Piano Concertos (Krystian Zimerman, London Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle)Ludwig van Beethoven – Missa solemnis (René Jacobs, et al.)Ludwig van Beethoven – Violin Sonatas, Vol. 2 (Frank Peter Zimmermann & Martin Helmchen)Maacha Deubner & KAPmodern Ensemble – BessonnitsaMarc Monnet – En piècesMichaël Jarrell – Orchestral WorksOlga Neuwirth – SoloPaul Lewis & Steven Osborne – French DuetsRamón Humet – LightRichard Barrett – binary systemsRobert Schumann – Complete Piano Trios, etc. (Trio Wanderer)Sam Hayden – BecomingsScott Wollschleger – Dark DaysThibaut Roussel, et al. – Le Coucher du roi. Musiques pour la chambre de Louis XIVToshio Hosokawa – Works for FluteTrio Hélios – D’un matin de printempsTrondheim Soloists – Shadows’ DreamVadim Gluzman – Beethoven, SchnittkeWolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Mozart Momentum 1785 (Leif Ove Andsnes, Mahler Chamber Orchestra)
― pomenitul, Saturday, 21 August 2021 19:30 (two years ago) link
Just saw that Hewitt is streaming live from Wigmore Hall rn:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECxLZNYjJW4
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Monday, 23 August 2021 12:59 (two years ago) link
(Art of the Fugue)
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Monday, 23 August 2021 13:22 (two years ago) link
I really need to listen to that Anderszewski WTC on your list, pom, since this year i got acquainted with his Mozart+Schumann fantasies album and it floored me; now my favorite rendition of the Schumann Fantasie. The Tiberghien Brahms and Andsnes WAM are also on my listen pile.
To my great surprise the New Yorker has published a piece on Herbert Blomstedt. Surprising because he is a truly great conductor in more the Pierre Monteux mold - excellence that's hard to hang a tag on. NYer publishes very good classical writing from time to time but I would expect them to cover people like Rattle or FX Roth or like Celibidache-type weirdos rather than somebody like Blomstedt. Yay NYer!
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/30/the-most-vital-conductor-of-beethoven-is-ninety-four
― covidsbundlertanze op. 6 (Jon not Jon), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 14:47 (two years ago) link
Anderszewski’s disc of WTC sélections is indeed worth your while, as are all of his other recordings (many of which are devoted to Bach).
And yes, that piece is most welcome. Blomstedt 4evah!
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 14:53 (two years ago) link
Finally found some uninterrupted time to listen to Moult today. It's quite something. Haven't broken much down but the timbres and textures are interesting and pleasing and it all feels like it flows intuitively or at the least constructs an ambient space, despite the relative lack of pitched material. Beguiling atmospheres in the titular composition.
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Friday, 27 August 2021 02:54 (two years ago) link
The Anderszewski Bach disc is the excerpts from WTC2? I've been listening to that on NML. It was sounding great today, all the lines and thematic material very clear and the recording itself very pleasant.
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Sunday, 29 August 2021 14:26 (two years ago) link
Yes, that’s the one. Glad you liked the Iannotta btw.
― pomenitul, Sunday, 29 August 2021 14:52 (two years ago) link
I somehow just noticed that the finale of Haydn's Piano Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI/G1, and the first movement of the G major Sonata or Divertimento Hob. XVI/11 are exactly the same.
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Wednesday, 1 September 2021 11:29 (two years ago) link
https://yarnwire.bandcamp.com/album/tonband
Have you ever experienced sound melting through your headphones? Maybe you’ve heard real-time spectral disintegration of an air raid siren? What about purposeful deformation of the natural order of sound itself?
that's almost exactly what I wuz thinking! I do like this new Yarn/Wire recording though. They've also played on the new Annea Lockwood release that came out yesterday as well.
― calzino, Saturday, 11 September 2021 11:07 (two years ago) link
^^^
the opening two piano/percussion pieces on this are fucking immense imo
― calzino, Monday, 13 September 2021 10:04 (two years ago) link
Long concert by Emmanuel Jacob Lacopo (DMA student at McGill) from yesterday with a lot of interesting material. A mix of classical guitar and electric guitar + fixed media, with pieces by Florence Price, Meredith Monk (five pieces I think), Thomas Flippin, Ulysses Kay, Shelley Washington, Tania Léon.https://fb.watch/8guIxqFwc7/
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Sunday, 26 September 2021 18:54 (two years ago) link
This album of solo piano pieces by Nordic composers, played by Ieva Jokubaviciute (d/k how to pronounce that), could be an aoty contender. Really hits the right intersection point of compositional integrity, approachability, and complexity and progressivism: https://sonoluminuslabel.bandcamp.com/album/northscapes
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Saturday, 2 October 2021 16:41 (two years ago) link
The sample track - the first movement of Poppe's Feld - is fantastic! Great colours and energy.
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Sunday, 3 October 2021 02:01 (two years ago) link
This is pretty cool, a string quartet by Vijay Iyer meant to be played attacca after an unfinished fragment by Mozart, that takes the final motif as its starting point:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LPOPQEJacY
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Monday, 11 October 2021 02:43 (two years ago) link
https://anothertimbre.bandcamp.com/album/ballad
some new (old) Linda Catlin-Smith that I rather like.
― calzino, Monday, 11 October 2021 13:22 (two years ago) link
“We’ve never dated before, but I wrote you this symphony about my vivid fantasies of our love and lust, how I drugged myself and dreamed I killed you, and how you then joined me in a diabolical witch orgy. Want to go out?” 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩— Dr. Annika Socolofsky 🏳️🌈 (@aksocolofsky) October 16, 2021
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Sunday, 17 October 2021 02:26 (two years ago) link
Lol. Never liked the Symphonie Fantastique but not necessarily because of the story.
― Typo? Negative! (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, 17 October 2021 02:46 (two years ago) link
I probably am most likely to listen to Liszt’s solo piano arrangement of the fantastique these days tbh Berlioz was genuinely nuts
― covidsbundlertanze op. 6 (Jon not Jon), Monday, 18 October 2021 20:47 (two years ago) link
RIP Bernard Haitink
https://www.bso.org/brands/bso/features/remembering-bernard-haitink.aspx
― No Xmas For Jonchaies (Tom Violence), Saturday, 23 October 2021 00:15 (two years ago) link
Listened to a ton of his live recordings today (live is where he really excelled IMO)
― covidsbundlertanze op. 6 (Jon not Jon), Saturday, 23 October 2021 00:25 (two years ago) link
Very much contemporary, and not for everyone, but I just purchased and am listening to this for the first time and it is immense, expansive, and sort of frightening in a Deep Listening way. Like if Oliveros listened to black metal. two double bassists, one electric and one acoustic. Really intense and beautiful! I really love it.
https://sonoluminuslabel.bandcamp.com/album/caeli
― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 20:23 (two years ago) link
I finally listened to the whole thing. I really like the sound, and it is really satisfying in doses, but I'm not sure I need over 2h of it, as there's not much variety. (Maybe it needs to be heard in higher quality?) What's going on compositionally? It mostly feels improvised to me.
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Sunday, 14 November 2021 16:10 (two years ago) link
Fantastic album of contemporary piano music, often with preparations or extended techniques: https://newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/kerm-s
― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Monday, 15 November 2021 19:41 (two years ago) link
Sund4r, I'm not totally certain, but it does seem like Caeli is mostly improvisatory. Both musicians involved also have their feet in the jazz world, so I think there's some overlap.
I do think that it has its repetitive side, but I treat it more as a drone or deep listening record to be left on, with my focus moving in and out as I please/am able.
― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table), Monday, 15 November 2021 20:10 (two years ago) link
Listening to Gregson's "Patina" right now. It's lovely, a bit mannered, but wow these strings are richer than butter. Enjoying it.
― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table), Monday, 15 November 2021 20:11 (two years ago) link