What Classical Music Are You Listening To?

[A Lark Ascending]

One neoclassical piece; and one bit of 70s multimedia avant garde post-modernism. Interesting music. 

 

BBC 4 TV: Pierre Boulez at the BBC: Master and Maverick

Seems like a programme cobbled together in the last month - clips from the BBC woven into a narrative with Tom Service wandering around the BBC and then London in between segments. Interesting if nothing particularly new or incisive (though I'd never heard the story of his being arrested for a few hours in Switzerland in 2001 as a terrorist suspect, related to the old 'blowing up the opera houses' comment). Some nice clips of his Roundhouse Proms in the early 70s - a Ligeti piece with hurled tea tray (the interpretation there was particularly fine). Covered his career as composer, champion of the contemporary and conductor of more established repertoire.

He was, as it happens, the bus driver at the first classical concert I ever went to back in 1974 - Mahler 3. I feel like I should say something like 'such touch, such tone' but I hardly remember anything about it.  

 

[Balladeer]

GIorgio Gaslini - Incanti Piano Solo (Camjazz)

Faure, Tschaikovsky, Monteverdi, Bartok, Handel, Elgar - and one piece Porter (one of the most ravishing interpretations of Everytime we say Goodbye) -
that´s why I file it under this thread.
But it doesn´t matter if its jazz or classical music because this is a fantastic recital. Gaslini was really a master of the piano and an artist of the highest caliber.
Worth checking it our while it´s still available.

 

[alankin]

Anton Bruckner – Symphony No.9 in D minor (Nowak edition)
— New Philharmonia Orchestra – Otto Klemperer (EMI Records / ArkivMusic)

 

[soulpope]

[Peter Friedman]

 

 

[soulpope]

[soulpope]

[A Lark Ascending]

Especially enjoyed 2. Sounded bizarrely like Bartok in the opening movement!

 

 

Edited February 2, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[soulpope]

another replay of this splendid disc ....

[soulpope]

[soulpope]

some excerpts from this recording ....

[Peter Friedman]

3 Piano Trios - HOB. XV:2, Hob. XV:8, Hob. XV:6

[soulpope]

[A Lark Ascending]

Disc 1: Douze Notations; Sonatine; 1st Sonata; Le Visage Nuptial

Very taken by the first two pieces, drifted in the third and lost the plot completely in the last. Think I might have been helped in the first by seeing a performance last year with a very good programme note. Anyway, this set is for the long haul. 

I'm sure this box was on Amazon as a download for a while - seems to have vanished. Hope they've not decided to limit circulation to make it collectible. Should be there for the curious indefinitely.  

I love these two pieces, especially the first. They don't seem to get out much - probably considered 'light' compared with the symphonies (What? No Great Utterances?!). You can hear the roots of some of Mahler's more bucolic moments here; even had me thinking of Elgar in things like the Serenade for Strings. Timed perfectly after a heavy fall of rain and then the sun emerging.  

[soulpope]

[alankin]

Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.10 in F sharp minor/major
(performing version of Mahler's draft prepared by Deryck Cooke in collaboration with Berthold Goldschmidt, Colin Matthews and David Matthews)
— Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra – Simon Rattle, 1999 (EMI Classics)

   
 

Edited February 2, 2016 by alankin

[soulpope]

1 hour ago, A Lark Ascending said:

Disc 1: Douze Notations; Sonatine; 1st Sonata; Le Visage Nuptial

Very taken by the first two pieces, drifted in the third and lost the plot completely in the last. Think I might have been helped in the first by seeing a performance last year with a very good programme note. Anyway, this set is for the long haul. 

I'm sure this box was on Amazon as a download for a while - seems to have vanished. Hope they've not decided to limit circulation to make it collectible. Should be there for the curious indefinitely.  

I love these two pieces, especially the first. They don't seem to get out much - probably considered 'light' compared with the symphonies (What? No Great Utterances?!). You can hear the roots of some of Mahler's more bucolic moments here; even had me thinking of Elgar in things like the Serenade for Strings. Timed perfectly after a heavy fall of rain and then the sun emerging.  

share your view on the Boulez DG Box - long term adventures guaranteed .... Chailly`s Brahms Serenades probably light just at the first glance, and your comparisson with certain reflexions on early Mahler isn`t too far off ....

[papsrus]

Arensky -- Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky

Suk -- Meditation on an Old Czech Carol

Dvorak -- Notturno

Kalinnikov -- Chanson Triste

Glazunov -- Suite for String Quartet

 

 

Purchased this after listening to Arensky's Variations performed last week by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. The piece was written as a tribute to Tchaikovsky following his death, and are based on Tchaikovsky's "Legend: Christ in His Garden," from his Sixteen Children's Songs. It went through several incarnations, apparently -- first as a single movement for a string quartet, then re-scored for violin, viola and two cellos (!), then again for larger orchestra. Some really beautiful stings here.

And happily, the rest of the disc follows largely in the same vein, with lush strings ebbing and flowing through melodies that alternate between longing/foreboding and carefree/fanciful. ... Touching. I was familiar with the Dvorak piece, but have only recently come around to Suk. The others, Kalinnikov and Glazunov, are new territory. And while it was Arensky who drew me in here, the whole sequence of music here is "of a piece." 

 

 

 

Edited February 2, 2016 by papsrus

[papsrus]

Schubert Symphony No. 2

Munch, Boston Symphony Orchestra

 

[Peter Friedman]

Schubert - Piano Trio D. 898

[Larry Kart]

Fine performance of the Schubert D. 894, a great work. Haven't moved on to the Schumann No. 2 yet. It’s amazing to me how out there Schubert could be, especially in the piano sonatas, and this one as much as any I know. It’s like the most basic building blocks/materials of music are virtually stripped of all rhetoric — a note is just a note, a chord a chord, a rhythm a rhythm, a modulation a modulation. Of course, these things do coalesce into larger designs, but at the root there is this sense of nakedness, of near-isolation of parts. Schubert was the Morton Feldman of his time?

[soulpope]

thereof Symphony 5 ....

[soulpope]

[soulpope]

powerful performance + state of art recording ....

[A Lark Ascending]

12 hours ago, soulpope said:

 .... Chailly`s Brahms Serenades probably light just at the first glance...

I meant the Serenades themselves are 'light' by comparison with the grander orchestral pieces (intentionally so...that's what serenades were). I just find the first in particular wonderfully mellifluous. I know Brahms was a great champion of Dvorak - I'm not sure of the chronology but I wonder if there might have been an influence on Brahms there in the sense that I often hear something deeply rural in Dvorak. What is odd is the serenades were traditionally night music - these pieces just seem to evoke Arcadia in all its daylight glory. But I'm undoubtedly reading that onto the music. 

 

These Bax quartets really are something. Over the years I've acquired rather more Bax than is sane without ever being fully convinced by him. Some pieces I love ('November Woods') but more often than not I find myself really liking certain passages, then feeling disengaged by what feels like filler. The smaller scale here seems to really suit him. 

 

Edited February 3, 2016 by A Lark Ascending