What Classical Music Are You Listening To?

[Peter Friedman]

Op.51 and Op.64/1

[soulpope]

[soulpope]

[A Lark Ascending]

Another lovely cowpat (or, in this case, sheep dropping). 

PC 1 off first, Lt. Kije off second. Apart from the 3rd I don't know the PCs very well. My bike music for the week.  

From a world not dissimilar to Prokofiev. 

Edited March 14, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[Peter Friedman]

[rostasi]

Remembering Peter Maxwell Davies ...

[Chuck Nessa]

55 minutes ago, rostasi said:

Remembering Peter Maxwell Davies ...

Caught him, The Fires and Mary Thomas in concert at Northwestern around 1980. The program included Pierrot Lunaire.

[rostasi]

2 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Caught him, The Fires and Mary Thomas in concert at Northwestern around 1980. The program included Pierrot Lunaire.

Yes! I think that this was soon after Julius Eastman himself showed up there for a controversial concert that Peter Gena put together.

 

---
Now playing: Bernard Heidsieck - Louis-Ferdinand Céline

[A Lark Ascending]

One of my all time favourites. Bought it on LP c. 1984 after a period of three or four years buying few classical records. Was absolutely floored by this - both the music and the vivid recording. A first choice for a bright sunny day.

Still in the Med:

 

 

Every now and then I hear a piece of music on the radio and think 'That was wonderful, what was it?' and it turns out to be one of these Respighi pieces. Yet when I play these discs (or a Naxos I have) I quickly lose attention. Much the same today.

Back to Spain and another old favourite:

Edited March 14, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[king ubu]

[Peter Friedman]

Symphony No.8

[Larry Kart]

Don't know much of Arnold's music -- a situation I will remedy -- but listening to this disc it immediately became clear that he was an orchestrator whose knowledge and control of symphonic resources was stunning. What an ear for sonorities and how to realize them!  Also, reading about him, I discovered that he was also batshit crazy for much of his life -- a nasty alcoholic, so abusive toward his first wife that he was put under a protection order, Arnold spent a good portion of his later years in mental institutions, though he also remained a prolific composer. 

.

40 minutes ago, Peter Friedman said:

Symphony No.8

That's the best "Pastoral" I know. Perfect tempos, among many other things.

[soulpope]

8 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Don't know much of Arnold's music -- a situation I will remedy -- but listening to this disc it immediately became clear that he was an orchestrator whose knowledge and control of symphonic resources was stunning. What an ear for sonorities and how to realize them!  Also, reading about him, I discovered that he was also batshit crazy for much of his life -- a nasty alcoholic, so abusive toward his first wife that he was put under a protection order, Arnold spent a good portion of his later years in mental institutions, though he also remained a prolific composer. 

.

That's the best "Pastoral" I know. Perfect tempos, among many other things.

I tend to agree, at least one of the top notch performances ....

Edited March 15, 2016 by soulpope

[soulpope]

[A Lark Ascending]

Arnold suffered from extreme bipolarity issues - there were at least two suicide attempts (he also had an autistic son to raise). The story of his latter years (told at great length in Anthony Meredith and Paul Harris' biography) is heartbreaking. 

You hear his troubled mind in so much of the music which often swings at a moment's notice from the joyous to utter despair. The Fifth Symphony, my favourite, has an absolutely gorgeous slow movement; the main theme returns in the last movement and looks like all is going to end in triumph and then he smashes it to bits in the last few bars. He also seemed to delight in the sort of simple tunes that the cognoscenti would dismiss as 'vulgar', sending up the stiff pomposity of the classical music establishment. Yet you get points in his music as bleak as anything you'll find - his many concertos often have quite jaunty outer movements and then middle ones that are like those moments when you awake in the middle of the night with all your fears whirling round you (the slow movement of the Cornish Dances is a good example).

Some great comic pieces - like 'A Grand, Grand Overture' (with floor polishers and four rifles) [worth watching on YouTube...a send up of 19thC grandiosity] and the very popular Padstow Lifeboat written in his Cornish years. His Seventh even has some overt Irish folk music, a result of listening to 'The Chieftains' (a favourite of his son). His Sixth even references Charlie Parker! And then you go to the Ninth and it's almost unmitigated despair.

He was generally seen as an also ran in the 50s and 60s but seems to have enjoyed a revival in recent decades. My favourite story around him was when he helped Jon Lord with Deep Purple's 'Concerto for Group and Orchestra' in the early 70s. Some of the orchestral musicians (RPO) got all snotty about the music and he gave them a tongue lashing, praising Lord's music. The music was 19thC pastiche but Arnold seemed to on the side of the ordinary chap. As far from the Darmstadt grandee as it was possible to get.     

********************************************************

No 2 off latter.

 

Edited March 15, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[soulpope]

Earlier today :

 

[jeffcrom]

Stockhausen - Trans; Southwest German Radio Orchestra / Ernest Bour

[Peter Friedman]

Bach - English Suite No.6

Weingartner - Serenade for String Orchestra & Der Strum Overture and Suite

[A Lark Ascending]

59 No 2. Glorious slow movement.

No 2 of the Rach. 

 

[Balladeer]

Teresa Berganza (mezzo) & Juan Antonio Alvares Parejo (pn) - Sings VIlla-Lobos, Braga, Guastavino (Claves)

[king ubu]

[soulpope]

[A Lark Ascending]

No 3 of latter. Especially enjoyed the middle theme and variations movement. Prokofiev states the theme (a stately neo-classical thing) a couple of times at the start and again at the end but uses a brief harmonic reference between other episodes to give that rondo like sense of a running thread, avoiding the repetition you can get when when a rondo theme gets restated in full. Probably talking bollocks there but that's what went through my head as I was listening.

Now:

Bedford in 'classical' mode but using old bandmate Mike Oldfield plus Chris Cutler from Henry Cow. Vaguely recall seeing this around at the time of release - it came out on Virgin during its initial 'experimental' phase. Didn't hear it at the time. Nice listen if not earth shattering (faint praise, I suspect, for something supposedly depicting the end of a star!). 

Edited March 16, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[Peter Friedman]

String Quintet

[A Lark Ascending]

Particularly like the Violin Concerto on the Ades - reminded me in places of Walton! Enjoyed the Respighi far more than the discs I played yesterday. The Bantock is very much in the style of late-19thC British music - a nice listen but doesn't shout for a replay. Something happens to British music around 1910, long before the Stravinsky/Schoenberg influences kicked in. Suspect it might be Ravel/Debussy. Where Elgar seems to come out of the same world as Bantock (though with far greater individualism of sound), Vaughan Williams is another world.