A Lark Ascending

One I'll d/l at the weekend. It's always been quite a low key group. I wish someone would record Nikki Iles band 'The Printmakers' in which Norma sings. Although a group that would fit comfortably on ECM, people like Mark Lockheart and Mike Walker add a muscularity that suits:

And now the full page Babel advert in Jazzwise! Superstar status! Great to see your music picking up such good press.

Thanks for that reminder. Don't know him at all well but I've picked up a few discs in the last couple of years. Always enjoy them without having yet got a sense of his particular 'voice' (I can hear that in Handel, Bach, Purcell and, I think, Rameau now). That says more about my perception or experience than about his music. Have my copy of 'Tafelmusik' ready to roll. Did enjoy the alternative 'Water Music' today. Ideal exam marking music.

None of them is stranger than the drum machine.

Presumably this will soon be followed by an app that listens to the music so you don't have to bother.

I was brought up a Catholic (mega-lapsed since the early 70s) but have always much preferred Anglican hymns (the Catholic ones remind me of those pictures of Christ showing his bleeding heart) and church music. I suspect they are based on much older music. Don't go to church of any sort (except Sainsbury's) but sometimes I hear choral evensong on Radio 3 on a Sunday - has an incredibly reassuring feel to it. You can hit anything from RVW to Tallis, Stainer, Lennox Berkeley or John Rutter in one of those. One of my future projects is to work through Hyperion's English Anthem series. Just have the one at present. Doesn't work through the services as you describe but cherry picks the grander pieces.

Only know a short guitar piece on this gem of a disc:

Sounds good. Excellent players both. Fabulous gig, very enjoyable - and Paricelli gets better every time I see him. It was their quartet with Dudley Philips on bass and Dave Smith on drums (I think - subbing for Martin France). Dave Smith is very good - I saw him with a Brit band supporting Eddie Henderson some years back. Very exciting.

I can't comment on the quality of performance but this 2CD set has kept me happy over the last year: It got the 'first choice' recommendation when BBC Radio 3 CD Review surveyed the various recordings last year. Which means someone in the know values it. It's on harpsichord. You might be able to hear the 40 min programme here (make sure you enable 'show all episodes'). You might hear something else you prefer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/bal/all Look for 23 Mar 13

Oh, I'm sure there are some good ones around. But what I see along Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road does not look promising. Actually, the worst fish and chips I ever had (outside the place half a mile from me...I have to drive 2 miles for a good one here!) was in a large fish and chip restaurant on the corner of those two streets. Think it might have gone now as the whole area is under the wrecking ball as they rebuilt the underground station there.

The piece I can't get enough of at present is Rameau's opera 'Les Indes Galantes'. A series of tableaux depicting fairly stereotypical (and to a later age, racist) tales of Turkey, Peru and Native American North America. Wonderfully exuberant music. There's not much in the way of non-European exoticism in the score but an awful lot of influences from French folk music - even some nice bagpipes at one point. What really lifts it is the tremendous dance music throughout - William Christie in the programme added to the DVD recording refers to Rameau as the most important dance composer before Stravinsky (I can see a few 19thC Russians taking umbrage). What's nice is you can listen to it in a CD set; but there are plenty of recordings of extracts and even a transcription for harpsichord alone. Extracts also turn up on a fair number of singer based French Baroque recordings. Though the thing that really put this piece into the centre of my heart was the above mentioned Christie DVD - just seeing the extraordinary spectacle had a tremendous effect. You read about the extravagant court pageant at Versailles - even though the performance on the DVD is not any attempt to reconstruct a mid-18thC presentation you get a real sense of how exciting these must have been for the privileged few who could see them.

Have you seen this French film? About Marais - some marvellous music throughout (and not as much bonking as the sleeve image might suggest). Helped set me off on the French Baroque a couple of years back.

Sounds good. Excellent players both.

Given the way he was egging on Khrushchev in Oct 1962 I'd suggest 'Close to the Edge' or 'Fragile'. Or maybe 'Going for the One'.

Far be it for me to say what people can or can't post. All I'm requesting is that the overall focus is on the piece. I appreciate that in this area in particular there are often enormous differences in versions and it might be hard to express excitement at a particular piece without also referring to a particular edition. Thanks for the recommendations so far.

I take your point about performance here. Scores can be fragmentary and the original performances could change with different music being substituted for later ones. I suppose what makes it hard is the sheer volume of music, written with an intent very different to our Classical/Romantic expectations. Biber (mentioned above) caught my attention last year with a chance radio hearing of the Sonata Representativa. Full of deliberate discords and odd moments. Sounded quite contemporary in places. I have a recording of the Mystery Sonatas but have only listened in a perfunctory way so far. One to give more time to.

Cod or haddock in batter are the standard. Though there are many variations. Beware of fish and chips in London (the tourist areas, anyway). Very careless. Once you get into the places where normal people live I suspect the quality improves.

Aren't chips a Belgian invention? My memory of living/travelling in that area of Europe is chips with mayonnaise. Not something I could do. What I do like is German chips with currywurst. Now that is the equal of English fish and chips.

Most of the people who interviewed pop musicians in the 60s had little interest or knowledge about music. It rarely went much beyond 'What is your favourite colour?'. Pop/rock journalism in the UK didn't really start to take itself seriously until the 70s. Most of these interviews were carried out by journalists who might be covering the Ideal Home Exhibition the next day.

Sorry if this sounds picky but I'm thinking more specific pieces (I'm currently obsessed by Rameau's 'Les Indes Galantes' and have a long time infatuation with the Monteverdi Vespers). I tend to find these giant boxes indigestible unless I'm zeroing in on a particular composer. I like to get excited by a particular piece and then explore further piece by piece. [Not knocking Vivaldi, by the way. I really like the Mandolin Concerto (and the other 'plucked' concertos that generally accompany it). I first heard it about 20 years back in the background of a Morse episode with Lewis (I think) whizzing through the Italian countryside. I think it was the first Vivaldi record I bought]

An area I've only dabbled in over the last 40 years but I've finally got a feel for. I know the definition of what is/is not Baroque is as contentious as any musical boundary marking but lets think 1600-1750. I have (varying, often superficial) experience of Monteverdi, Lully, Purcell, Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, Scarlatti, Rameau. Interested in recommendations of pieces that you have really taken to. If you can focus on the pieces of music rather than versions please (I'm sure you are used to my prejudices there! And there are lots of threads about versions.). Genuinely interested in going down some trails I'm not familiar with.

Yes. Musical history...and history in general...tends to get written in linear form. Those lines can quickly become orthodoxies that miss the lateral connections.

I never cared for the Crusaders at the time, but have come to love them (and the JC) - I'm sure it's because the ground was laid listing to those Joni and SD records.

Sorry, Both Sides Now, of course. I suppose one of the things I like about the arrangement is the way it links from the acoustic section with a quiet opening to the more electric final songs. Just provides a nice transition for me. I can hear that LA reference too - it's all over the Steely Dan records of the period too (often the same musicians, iirc). My background with JM was a bit odd - I completely ignored her until '74, writing her off as wishy-washy singer-songwriter for 'girls'. Somehow I bought Court and Spark that year and was converted. Miles of Aisles was my first experience (apart from random radio hearings) of the pre-C&S music. I can see the record would sound very different coming at it after hearing the original albums. I wonder if being immersed in John Martyn might have made weird Joni more palatable on first hearing. Although different in many ways, he also went for the strange chord choices, jazzy feel (he was actually much more prone to the improvisatory) and that way of sliding his voice over the music with unpredictable accenting. Maybe 'Solid Air ' was the real Joni Mitchell album before Hissing!

Not until the 80s, at least! 'Hissing' was heralded as virtually the Second Coming when it came out in 1975 in the British rock press. I can remember reading the reviews in the late summer and being really anxious to hear the record that was being trumpeted as some sort of radical departure for rock music. For once the claims were born out by the listening. My favourite moment is the guiar playing and Joni's vocal phrasing on 'Don't Interrupt the Sorrow'. The miracle of Hejira is that it goes somewhere else again - where Hissing seems to be Joni looking at the world around her, Hejira seems to return to her looking within herself, but with greater maturity. Hissing adopts different instrumental approaches from track to track; Hejira seems much more unified in sound. I really like ' Miles of Aisles' - it has the feel of a real concert. The LA Express may not be groundbreaking musicians but I like the alternative arrangements of songs that were mainly quite spare on the original records. 'Clouds' has a lovely arrangement. I really enjoy the run of Joni's records from the first to Mingus. I've never connected to any of the 80s/90s things but I did like the two heavily orchestrated things she did in the noughties (or was it earlier?). Haven't heard the last one.