Topic: What are you listening to?

[Barak]

Samson François in Chopin's' Ballades and Scherzos. This is Maria Callas pianism. Fraught with edge-of-seat  instrumental faults (rushed runs, smudged coloratura), but it reveals the essence of the music. Everything is played with death-defying urgency. That's a great artist's unique gift: communicating the feeling there won't be a second chance. Chopin demands no less.

[Coopmv]

Now playing CD1 from this set from my Chopin collection ...

[Bogey]

This week's highlight:



Still second to Végh, but very nice nonetheless.

[Coopmv]

Some Langgaard to play out this horrible birthday. Who wants to be reminded how old they have gotten? Everybody in my house certainly wishes to press my creeping mortality upon me - and I am still "young", so god knows how much worse this will become in coming years Still, it was an excuse to play music loud without anybody complaining, so I chose the largest sounding pieces I could find



From the Kempe I had time for Don Quixote, Don Juan and Macbeth. I have yet to find another recording which handles Don Quixote as well as Kempe. I like to use Variation VII as a microcosmic test of each performances, and so far Kempe and his recording team is the only one that manages to make sense of all the individual lines, which generally turn into horrible smudges of sound. It may not be a particularly accurate representation of how it would sound live, but nothing beats it for impact.

Actually, ditching friends to listen to Strauss at high volume, maybe I am getting old

Anything less than half a century old is considered young IMO ...

[Lethe]

Good to know


No.2 & 6

Edit: Man, I still don't get Tubin. There's something going on here, but it makes no sense to me.

Edit2: Next up, first listens:

[listener]

KRENEK  Reisebuch aus den österreichen Alpen  op. 62  (1929)
Markus Köhler, baritone;  Reinhard  Schmiedel, piano
a 24-song cycle about travel in the Austrian Alps, dipping down to Italy.  These songs are miniature tone-poems, close to late Richard Strauss in harmonic freedom.   Meditations on the meaning of travel itself, travelers, transportation, people met (and those who flee from travelers), landscapes...   Time passed quickly listening to this disc.

[Que]

See comments HERE.

Q

[Que]

CD 7: La Chapelle Royale au Temps de Louis XIV

Henry Dumont (1610-1684): Exultat animus; Magnificat.
Céline Scheen, Hanna Bayodi-Hirt, dessus; Mathias Vidal, haute-contre; Lluís Vilamajó, taille; Stephan MacLeod, basse-taille
Collegium Vocale de Gand; Ricercar Consort; Philippe Pierlot, direction
Enregistré à la Chapelle royale du Château de Versailles

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687): Miserere (LWV 125)
Amel Brahim-Djelloul, dessus; Damien Guillon, bas-dessus; Howard Crook, haute-contre; Hervé Lamy, taille; Arnaud Marzorati, basse-taille
Les Pages et les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles; Musica Florea (Marek Stryncl); Olivier Schneebeli, direction
Avec l’aimable autorisation de K617

Henry Desmarest (1661-1741): De profundis
Hanna Bayodi-Hirt, Stéphanie Révidat, dessus; François Nicolas Geslot, haute-contre; Sébastien Droy, taille
Le Concert Spirituel; Hervé Niquet, direction
Avec l’aimable autorisation de Glossa

Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles.

Q

[val]

DVORAK:        Piano Quintet opus 81           / Janacek Quartet, Eva Bernathova

The sound of the recording is mediocre, the pianist also, and the Janacek Quartet has a too pathetic perspective of the work, in special the first movement.
As usual, the Janacek Quartet was never very interesting in their recordings of piano Quintets (Franck, Brahms, Dvorak).

[Sergeant Rock]

BeethovenOp. 10 No. 3Schnabel
Probably the most desolate Largo e mesto I've ever heard.

Prompted by this, I put it on and I must agree. Gilels takes this movement almost as slow, but I don't recall if his is as dark.

Schnabel I don't own (I keep hoping Naxos will box their remasters) but I just listened to Gilels and Barenboim, both deeply felt and, yes, desolate interpretations too (timings 10:49 for the former, 12:01 the latter). In the concluding bars of the Largo Barenboim emphasizes a wider dynamic range while Gilels really slows down, making the final two notes sound like the tolling of funereal bells. Magnificent, and devastating.

Sarge

[Harry]

This music for Vihuela is devastatingly beautiful, in this fine performance. The recorded sound leaves nothing to wish for.

[John]

This set is on my shopping list.  While I am no major fan of Mahler music but I have always enjoyed recordings by the late Klaus Tennstedt and heard good things about this set ...

I posted the wrong album cover.  I was listening to Inbals Mahler, not Tennstedts.

[Wanderer]

[Harry]

Marin Marais.
Pieces en Trio, pour les Flutes, Violin & dessus de Viole. 1692.
Musica Pacifica.
Period instruments.
CD I.

Hardly to imagine this can be better performed. Delightful music in every aspect, and a excellent recording too.

[Coopmv]

See comments HERE.

Q

Ockeghem composed some excellent early music but has not enjoyed the same level of reputation as William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, etc.

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

Ockeghem composed some excellent early music . . .

D'you think he tapered off as his career went on? . . .

[Coopmv]

D'you think he tapered off as his career went on? . . .

As a practicing musician and perhaps musicologist, you are probably more qualified to answer this question than most on the forum.  I found this wiki page on Ockeghem quite interesting.  It appears many of his works cannot even be dated with precision.  As such, whether his composing aspect of his career tapered off as his life went on is somewhat unclear.  He did appear to live to some ripe old age and was a less prolific composer than his reputation would suggest ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Ockeghem

[Coopmv]

Now playing this CD from my early music collection ...

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

I was riffing on excellent early music . . . where you obviously meant epoch, I redirected it towards his career, which as you've found is shrouded in some obscurity.  I need to revisit his music . . . I only remember that the samples we heard during the various music history sequences struck me as dry (which might not be the composer's fault, of course).  I should be interest to sing some of his music, actually.  So I appreciate the mention of this recording, I should listen to some snippets.

[Coopmv]

I was riffing on excellent early music . . . where you obviously meant epoch, I redirected it towards his career, which as you've found is shrouded in some obscurity.  I need to revisit his music . . . I only remember that the samples we heard during the various music history sequences struck me as dry (which might not be the composer's fault, of course).  I should be interest to sing some of his music, actually.  So I appreciate the mention of this recording, I should listen to some snippets.

I hear you.  Years ago when I first started listening to classical music, I used to hate Bach's choral music because it did not sound good.  Well, it turned out the recordings were the problems - both the SQ and the performers.  Bach's works today make up the largest portion of my collection for a single composer.  BTW, I found most of the recordings of Ockeghem's works on the Gaudeamus label quite good ...