Topic: What are you listening to now?

[sanantonio]

Music for Holy Week
Schola Antiqua | Blackley Jones

[NikF]

Schumann: Piano Quintet, Piano Quartet - Juilliard Quartet/Bernstein/Gould.

[Toccata&Fugue]

He plays No.3, 6, and 7, and plays them very well! Good sound--not nearly as reverberant as his Bach Partitas disc. And the best part? It cost me just $.01 plus shipping--brand new!

[André]

Disc VI of Marie-Claire' 22 disc traversal of french organ music. Grigny's Mass setting. With Les Chantres de la Chapelle de Versailles.

[Todd]

[Mirror Image]

Ending my listening session of the night with this gorgeous recording:



Listening to Daphnis et Chloé. This is still a work that gives me goosebumps no matter how often I hear it.

[Mirror Image]

Now:



Listening to Piano Concerto in G major. Decided to listen to one more work before hitting the sack.

[Webernian]

[Que]

Tchaikovsky' Symphonie pathétique, by 2 iconic soviet (at the time) conductors: Mrawinsky with the Leningrad Philharmonic (stereo, 1956), and Markevitch (no, he wasn't French) with the Berlin Philharmonic (mono, 1953).

Mrawinsky is generally credited to have recorded the über alles Pathétique for DGG (along with symphonies 4 and 5). Many years later he and his orchestra re-recorded it for Erato. Neither interpretation convinces me. The Erato disc actually strikes me as one of the worst recordings of anything aver made. Meaning: he seems to hate the music and wants the composer dead all over again. This is of course a very personal reaction.

Markevitch OTOH embodies what I consider the right approach to the music: strictly musical, neither hysteric nor condescendingly perfunctory. Between these extremes, the conductor navigates smartly, alternating between the fast and furious, and the obligatory tchaikovskian elegance and true pathos.

This beautifully engineered Markevitch Berlin performance easily (also from DGG) trumps nudges the Mrawinsky's as the real thing.

I'm also fan of Markevitch' Tchaikovsky - for the reasons you stated - but only know his London cycle.
Didn't know of this BPO recording - thanks for posting! 

Q

[Que]

Early morning listening:



François Couperin: L' Œuvre pour clavecin
Noëlle Spieth

Q

[Que]

Schumann: Piano Quintet, Piano Quartet - Juilliard Quartet/Bernstein/Gould.

A Golden Oldie - love it....

Q

[NikF]

Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor (version for two pianos) - Silke-Thora Matthies/Köhn.

I already have the version for piano duet and between that and this one it's an interesting experience - especially as it's kind of helping me hear things in the concerto a little more clearly.

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

Schumann: Cello Concerto - Haitink/Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Schiff.

Very nice!  They may accuse me of having it both ways, but I do not think there is anything wrong with Schumann's scoring.  And I also enjoy the added color in the Shostakovich re-orchestration.

[Harry's corner]

To my ears this is how Machaut should be performed. It feels totally authentic to me.

http://walboi.blogspot.nl/2017/01/machaut-de-guillaume-c1300-1370-messe.html?spref=tw

[Daverz]

I haven't seen you around here in awhile, Daverz. I hope you're doing well. I've been contemplating on whether I needed another Debussy disc of orchestral music, but no thanks to you and your comment about this MTT recording, I still have one more left to purchase now.

Kind of you to ask.   I've been hanging out more on a facebook classical group started by some friends.  But that group, which was cozy for a while, seems to have regressed toward the mean level of conversation on facebook, so here I am again. 

[sanantonio]

Llibre Vermell de Montserrat : Pilgrim songs & dances
New London Consort and Philip Pickett

[ørfeo]

Now:



Listening to L'enfant et les sortilèges. One of the most magnificent works of the 20th Century.

Should finally be listening to that within a couple of days.

[jessop]

Schumann composed some of the most magnificent oratorios of the 19th century

[ørfeo]

The second set of Impromptus, D.935

[Draško]

I'm also fan of Markevitch' Tchaikovsky - for the reasons you stated - but only know his London cycle.
Didn't know of this BPO recording - thanks for posting! 

Q

It's a very nice recording, can't say I prefer it to Mravinsky as Andre but still definitely worth hearing. I find it quite interesting also as a tribute to flexibility of early 50s Berlin Philharmonic. It's nearly contemporary recording with Furtwangler's Pathetique with the same orchestra from two years earlier and it's great to hear how well they cope with two interpretations which are polar opposites in terms of both vision and style.



Prompted by the Dvorak thread I'm listening to my favorite recording of Dvorak's 3rd. The lushness and sweep of Chung and the VPO in endlessly melodic piece as the 3rd is almost intoxicating. Shame that chances of hearing it live (outside Czech Republic) are pretty slim I guess.