classical recommendations

[Stefan Wood]

Listened to William Russo's "Street Music" last night, conducted by Seji Ozawa and played by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. This is fun music -- a hybrid of blues, americana, and symphony. I have the lp but I was pleased to see that it is on cd:

Russo Street Music

[jazzbo]

The Complete Liszt Transcriptions of Beethoven Symphonies, performed by Leslie Howard, on Hyperion.

This five cd set has it all: great sound, wonderous interpretations by a virtuoso pianist, incredible source material, fascinating transcriptions to solo piano by Liszt. www.broinc.com often has this for about 30 dollars.

[B. Goren.]

I have a special weakness to the music of JS Bach: The Well Tempered Clavier, The English Suites and The French Suites. To my ears it sounds better when Glenn Gould is the pianist.

[TheMusicalMarine]

Dvorak's Slavonic Dances

[A Lark Ascending]

Whilst wandering round the grounds of Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire this afternoon, home of the Sitwells. A mix of readings of the Housman poems and settings by a variety of early 20thC composers (mainly English but Samuel Barber's in there). The poems are somewhat winsome, the music gorgeous.

[Alexander Hawkins]

Bev, I agree - the Butterworth is great (and I can generally live without much of that era of English music).

[Geoff]

I prefer 20th Century Classical Music over more traditional forms.

My favourite composers are Gyorgy Ligeti, Morton Feldman and John Cage.

Here are some modern classical albums I recommend

[michel devos]

The Complete Liszt Transcriptions of Beethoven Symphonies, performed by Leslie Howard, on Hyperion.

Indeed, these works are pure fire and I was so astonished I produced a complete set too....with pianist Idil Biret as a world premiere.

Although Mr Howard's playing is very adequate, it sounds overall slightly dull to my taste, perhaps because the symphonies are only a fraction of the complete edition of the Liszt works and did not receive as complete a dedication as one would expect for these performances.

You might check the two absolute references, in my opinion, which are still available :

Idil Biret :

http://www.albert-classic.de/

Cyprien Katsaris :http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=classical&field-keywords=cyprien%252520katsaris&search-type=ss&bq=1&store-name=classical/ref=xs_ap_l_xgl15/102-9616877-8347353 ;

Both versions are absolutely stunning, but Idil Biret is the only pianist playing the 9 symphonies in concert today...