'Classical' music from the last 50 years (or so)

[Larry Kart]

BTW, that Clarissa from post #123 is seemingly not a straight excerpt from Robin Holloway's 1976 two-hour opera based on Samuel Richardson's immense 18th Century epistolary novel "Clarissa Harlowe" but a self-contained encapsulation of/reflection upon the opera (for soprano and orchestra) that he created in 1995.

[sonnyhill]

Here's a nice set of podcasts aimed squarely at the theme of this thread: http://www.wwfm.org/webcasts_halfpast.shtml

Playlists available as well.

Thanks. I was looking for something like this.

[JSngry]

Here's a nice set of podcasts aimed squarely at the theme of this thread: http://www.wwfm.org/webcasts_halfpast.shtml

Playlists available as well.

Thanks. I was looking for something like this.

As was I.

Some more links to get you to different spots in the same area:

http://blogs.wfmt.com/relevanttones/

http://www.live365.com/stations/20classics

And AccuRadio has stations for both "20th Century Classical" and "Avant-garde Classical"

[David Ayers]

I don't really know Holloway's criticism except for the Shostakovich essay. I do have a view on that essay as I have been thinking about it for a long time. He is surely right at identifying what Shostakovich's works are not - they are not Haydn or Prokofiev, if we want to put it that way. We can't put that in reverse, exactly, by saying that the lack of colour and wit are, say, 'deliberate'. But nearly so. These works are what they are and what they have become, and the frequent harmonic aridity is only one part of their meaning. What they are and how they mean is not part of Holloway's account at all, and probably rightly as the ditchwater dull and intellectually trivial MacDonald-type view had at the time he wrote taken too much hold and it is what Holloway is railing against. For all the things they 'don't have' or - more to the point - eschew, so many of Shostakovich's works are entirely memorable, with every step coming to seem inevitable. That's usually a sign of something. That they make no concession to joy or transcendence, that the doubts about the consolations of musical discourse are there from quite early and get written in ever deeper, is a key that Holloway maybe could have spotted but which is hard to make claims for against the rudimentary marketing around 'Shostakovich vs. Stalin.' A comparison of his Eighth to Weinberg's 19th ('Bright May', a 1985 celebration and memorial of the end of the war) gives pretty clear grounds for judgement, I think.

Mind you, that your average Shostakovich symphony in concert is a bit like having your head battered by a piece of 2 x 4 still counts against him

Very interesting post -- "...that the doubts about the consolations of musical discourse are there from quite early and get written in ever deeper..." in particular.

To this RH probably would reply (from his Shostakovich essay): "But what else is there to go on, in works of art, but their artistic workmanship -- in music, the actual notes? All human experience can be encompassed and expressed in music's actual notes, when they show themselves to be capable of containing what's entrusted to them." That is a point of view that has a lot of appeal to me, but I think you're saying "Hey, not so fast."

Thanks Larry. It may well be that the lack of colour in Shostakovich's music is in some ways a limitation of his imagination. It may be. If we set Shostakovich's First alongside Prokofiev's the whole difference can be seen. Shostakovich's 1st is good enough, but it would be really hard to see it as the equal of Prokofiev's Classical, which is not only clever and colorful but a perpetually attractive masterpiece. Shostakovich was about 18 when he wrote his, in 1924-5; Prokofiev was about 25 when he wrote his in 1916-17. Both were written in Russia, and the difference in age and in date of composition can't really be used to explain away the difference, though those things are part of it no doubt. If we compare the more or less contemporaneous Shostakovich 8 (1943) and Prokofiev 5 (1944), both war symphonies, then the 'battleship gray' Shostakovich probably should be thought of as expressing things that the Prokofiev keeps under too much control - the spareness of the Shostakovich and the strangled solitariness of many of the parts is a new rhetoric which I would say very effectively evokes disturbed and hopeless feelings.

Of course Shostakovich is hard to read and properly situate. The famous first movement ostinato march of the Leningrad may - in its hollowness and bombast - be a very exact refusal of the rumpy-pumpy evocation of war in something like RVW 6 of 1946, although the dates there matter. What to do with the more traditionally symphonic 5 and 10, which were much favored in the West, the 10th even being conducted by Karajan, the fifth touted world-wide in its time as the apotheosis of the 'Soviet symphony'? Re. the fifth, Shostakovich is reported as saying that he had not found a good way to write a finale. He is also quoted in Testimony as saying that the finale of the fifth was a hollow assertion, 'your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing'. That gives us a plain way of thinking about the hollowness of that finale as a dissenting move - but that does not make it listenable. Re. the tenth, the quoted remark that the scherzo was 'a portrait of Stalin' gives us a clue to the purpose of the kinds off remarks assembled in Testimony (wherever they may originate). For the scherzo of 10 surely does not yield any kind of portrait, except a rather cartoonish one. Shostakovich in any case had earlier renounced the tendency in Soviet musical administration to claim that e.g. the bassoon was the capitalist. So the kinds of remarks attributed to Shostakovich in Testimony still participate in that style of public discourse of music, only now they are intended to redeem the author in terms of the new political correctness of the thaw.

In the fifth and the tenth then we are left with works that are probably flawed in their adherence to the demands of the Soviet symphonist. That said, Fay recounts the reactions of the original audience to the Fifth. That was all about the slow movement. The audience were even surprised that Shostakovich could write slow music - everything they knew of his work prior to that (and they did not, of course, know the fourth symphony) was more than a little brutal and cold. That slow movement was understood by its hearers to be a reflection of their current situation in 1937, a time of true pain when pain could not be publicly acknowledged or expressed. But that of course is not how we are obliged to feel about this work.

I think the coldness and mechanicalness of the satirical early Shostakovich is a key. The clockwork wind-down at the end of the fourth, which appears again in the fifteenth, is a statement about human life and its empty exhaustion. It is a refusal of hope which in the fourth, at least, appears spirited, but which in the fifteenth has become one empty gesture among others. In this sense the later bleakness is drawing out the implications of an attitude to musical discourse, a refusal of its affirmation, which has been present for a long time.

None of this obliges us to hear the works in this way. Surely Holloway is right to doubt the comparison of the Preludes and Fugues with Bach (though they are relatively memorable). And a critic who was present at a performance of the fourth which I also attended last year was surely right to state that it was a bit like having Shostakovich sitting next to you and haranguing you. It was at that concert too that an outsider opened a rear door at the auditorium and, as the music sounded, shouted loudly at the shaggy conducter, Jukka-Pekka Saraste - 'Scooby-Doo man! Whooooarrrr!' As the critic I mention noted, the interruption hardly seemed incongruous, just a part of the mayhem. It was a wonderful performance, but the question of what that work really is - and what Shostakovich's music really is - seemed focalised by that weird cry.

Edited December 23, 2014 by David Ayers

[sonnyhill]

Could someone point me to some recommended recordings of the Schnittke piano sonatas?

[StarThrower]

I acquired this set recently.

[A Lark Ascending]

I acquired this set recently.

Looks good.

I've been working off this one for the last few years. Still at an exploratory phase.

As mentioned elsewhere I've been reading this recently as a way of trying to get a narrative of post-1945 music (which, given the anti-narrative nature of so much modernism is probably completely the wrong thing to do!):

Really enjoyable and helping to get a better picture than I had (though the 'science parts' lose me!). Has pointed me in some new directions as well as getting me exploring things buried in my collection unabsorbed.

The thing I love about this exploration post-1945 is that it puts me back to where I was at 17 - when I knew very little music but discovered that pushing beyond your comfort zone could bring enormous rewards. I've been banging my head against most post-1945 music for a good 40 years (with notable exceptions like Messiaen, Britten, Tippett etc) but in the last 10 I've finally made a breakthrough and found music I really want to listen to again.

Edited January 31, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[StarThrower]

The Sony Ligeti box is a great addition to the Teldec set because it includes a large amount of music not represented on the 5 disc set. I bought it for the piano music, the opera, and the chamber works. It also comes with a superb booklet including Ligeti's personal notes on all of the pieces.

As far as the Teldec set goes, I think it's superb. If you have time to get more deeply into it, you'll find much great music there. I'm a huge fan of all of the concertos, the cello sonata, and the unique requiem.

[A Lark Ascending]

Sounds good. If I didn't have the Teldec I'd consider the Sony. As it is, I'll pick things up as they catch my eye (or ear!) in single discs. I have a disc of the 'Etudes' (which I seem to recall are not approved of by Those Who Know), and an annoying vocal disc (nothing wrong with the music, but the download sequencing was botched with clicks between tracks...I think that's Sony).

I prefer to watch opera on DVD - there is a DVD of 'Le Grand Macabre' which I will probably try at some point.

[StarThrower]

I bought the Sony box from the Movie Mars vendor at the Barnes & Noble sight, and I paid less than the cost of the opera alone on Wergo. And from what I've read, the English version by Salonen on Sony is the superior performance. I've watched some of the DVD on YouTube. If I ever put together an audio/video system for my retirement days, I'll get some DVDs including a few operas, and maybe the Glenn Gould on Television set.

[A Lark Ascending]

Yes, there are tremendous bargains to be had. I'm in the market myself if it's music I don't already have (like the Eisler box I got before Xmas).

But I've a bit of a thing about not duplicating pieces I've bought where possible (I've no interest in following celebrity conductors/performers). I'll only duplicate if I have an old recording of something and become aware of a newer version that might sound clearer (or in a few cases, where I can sense there's more to the music than I'm getting from the recording I have).

I'm relatively new to DVD opera - I've rarely bought DVDs of any sort as I rarely watch a film more than once. But a couple of years back I bought 'The Ring' and was utterly transfixed by seeing it instead of just hearing it. Since then I've built up a bit of a collection (mainly 20thC but I succumbed to a Rameau bug too) and find the visuals really enhance the experience for me. There's not a huge amount of later 20thC opera on DVD/Blu-ray but I imagine it will become increasingly common for productions of new operas to be filmed as well. George Benjamin's 'Written on Skin' seemed to appear not long after its staging. Seems an obvious way to get a piece of music out beyond the limited audience able to get to an opera house (cost and location can make it a rare treat for those not living close to a centre).

[A Lark Ascending]

Resonate: the great British symphonic revival

"A new fund will encourage orchestras to programme the best works by British composers of the past 25 years. Gillian Moore MBE selects the pieces that deserve to be heard again

There was a time, about half a century ago, when the symphony orchestra was deeply out of fashion with composers. The enfants terribles of mid-century modernism and American minimalism had little time for it either politically, institutionally or musically. They preferred inventing bespoke ensembles for every piece or, in some cases, using electronic instruments. But the orchestra survived, composers started writing for it again and, I’d argue, we’ve seen a particularly exciting revival of orchestral composition here in the UK in recent years........"

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jul/13/resonate-the-great-british-symphonic-revival