New Releases

[Que]

One CD lasts 53 mins and the other lasts 29 minutes. Caveat emptor.

How is the performance? I'm still loving Glen Gould in these pieces.

Q

[Mandryka]

How is the performance?
Q

Contrapuntal. As always with Koroliov. Spacious, I mean he plays the silences very well. I've only listened to ops 118 and 119

Presumably another volume of "Ballades, Rhapsodies, Capriccios and Romance" follows.

My feeling, I could be wrong, is that Koroliov is made for the sort of music in the intermezzi, with its strange contemplative melancholy.

[Brian]

"Samuel Is Piano"

Early Horn features concertos and chamber works by Leopold Mozart, Wolfie Mozart, Joseph Haydn, C.H. Graun (NOT J.G. Graun), Telemann, and my favorite composer, anonymous. track listing

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Some more of the Sony reissues Todd mentioned:

[Daverz]

Where are Symphonies 13, 14 & 15, Sony?  The Tchaikovsky and Sibelius sets were able to include RCA recordings.

[Brian]

FEBRUARY STUFF





Two noteworthy piano selections on this Bach/Busoni album: some of the pieces are recorded on an 1860 Bechstein, and others on the new "Barenboim" straight-strung grand piano. I'm not sure if anyone other than Barenboim himself has recorded on this instrument.



Trios 1 and 2 + Fantasiestüche Op. 88



2 CD set

Early candidate for ugliest album cover of 2020:







"This two-and-a-half hour recital surveys a pan-European variety of styles, genres and techniques, and comprises 36 works, each by a different composer, many not recorded before on a modern piano." Names including Gabrieli, L. Couperin, Frescobaldi, Philips, Muffat, Jacquet de la Guerre, Farnaby, Byrd, Bull, and people I've never heard of like Tarquinio Merula.



"Song composition has been a constant in British music since the lute and consort works of the early seventeenth century. By 1900, it had developed into a sophisticated genre embraced by almost all serious composers. The music on this amply-filled disc illustrates the diversity of British song-writing and its transformation over a century: from Vaughan Williams's Orpheus and his Lute (ca 1901) to Huw Watkins's Five Larkin Songs, composed in 2010 for Carolyn Sampson, who performs them here. Together with Joseph Middleton, her partner on several acclaimed recital discs, she has devised a highly contrasting programme bookended by two groups of songs by William Walton – A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table from 1962, celebrating the diversity of London, and three songs from Façade, the 'entertainment' with which the young composer gained both fame and notoriety in 1923.These frame settings by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Roger Quilter and Frank Bridge of poetry by writers from Shakespeare and Shelley to Keats and Yeats. In comparison, the anti-romantic poems by Philip Larkin have been described as marked by 'a very English, glum accuracy'. Huw Watkins (b. 1976) has selected texts from across Larkin's output, catching the various moods – ranging from a certain unsentimental nostalgia to the poet's seemingly habitual pessimism – in settings that often carry a bittersweet sting in the tail."

[Harry]

I found these series a huge disappointment. Bad acoustics, bad recordings, middle of the road performances.

[Brian]

FEBRUARY PART DEUX





"Myroslav Skoryk, a postgraduate student of Dmitry Kabalevsky, is one of Ukraine's leading composers and teachers. His works range from opera and ballet, a symphonic transcription of Paganini's 24 Caprices, and his cycle of nine Violin Concertos written over a 45-year span. They draw on elements of Carpathian folklore and are saturated in expressive dialogues, lyricism and elegy while also exuding powerful intensity. Skoryk's sensual writing is frequently contrasted with syncopated motifs, cadenzas, fugal episodes and march rhythms. This is the first of two volumes."



"Works by Fux, Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, Bruckner, Webern and Zemlinsky complement the core work: a newly imagined Strauss trumpet sonata. The material is variously drawn from the first movement of Strauss's Violin Sonata, Op. 18, a combination of both light and very significant arrangements of miscellaneous music, newly composed music, and development or transitions based on existing material within the Sonata."



Italian Concerto BWV 971
Overture in the French Style BWV 831
Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue BWV 903
Prelude Andante and Fugue BWV 894 (andante interpolated from BWV 1003)

[JBS]

BIS and Naxos are suddenly releasing dueling versions of the Skalkottas Sinfonietta? (Or did he write more than one?)

And why is Scherbakov's Godowsky being releases under the Marco Polo label and not the Naxos label? (I thought they no longer issued recording under the Marco Polo name.)

[Brian]

BIS and Naxos are suddenly releasing dueling versions of the Skalkottas Sinfonietta? (Or did he write more than one?)

Yep - exact same Sinfonietta, and both releases claim to be the world premiere recording. Interestingly, the world premiere performance was by the BIS conductor with the Naxos orchestra. The BIS recording was made in September 2017 and Naxos in June 2018. BIS clocks in at 25', Naxos at 24'. Maybe Wanderer can tell us which of the orchestras he prefers.

And why is Scherbakov's Godowsky being releases under the Marco Polo label and not the Naxos label? (I thought they no longer issued recording under the Marco Polo name.)

I wondered the same thing and did a bit of investigating. Marco Polo is defunct except for previous series which are still continuing - this is Vol. 14 of the Scherbakov Godowsky series. The other 2019 Marco Polo releases have been Strauss family waltzes and such.

[André]

I'm looking forward to this one:



I am very happy with volume one. Hopefully a new recording of the symphonies will see the light of day from these forces.

[JBS]

Yep - exact same Sinfonietta, and both releases claim to be the world premiere recording. Interestingly, the world premiere performance was by the BIS conductor with the Naxos orchestra. The BIS recording was made in September 2017 and Naxos in June 2018. BIS clocks in at 25', Naxos at 24'. Maybe Wanderer can tell us which of the orchestras he prefers.

I'll be getting both, since the CDs differ on the rest of the music they offer,  and one can not have too much Skalkottas.

I wondered the same thing and did a bit of investigating. Marco Polo is defunct except for previous series which are still continuing - this is Vol. 14 of the Scherbakov Godowsky series. The other 2019 Marco Polo releases have been Strauss family waltzes and such.

Scherbakov has a Godowsky series?  Must investigate the preceding 13.

[ritter]

I'll be getting both, since the CDs differ on the rest of the music they offer,  and one can not have too much Skalkottas.

+1 

[j winter]

Where are Symphonies 13, 14 & 15, Sony?  The Tchaikovsky and Sibelius sets were able to include RCA recordings.

+1. 

Personally I'd like to see an Ormandy conducts Rachmaninov set... any sign of that?

[mc ukrneal]

Scherbakov has a Godowsky series?  Must investigate the preceding 13.

Scherbakov generally does a great job and the series is easily recommendable. I am very excited to see how he tackles arguably the pinnacle of his output with the studies on Chopin's Etudes.

FYI: A few of them can be found at Berkshire (periodically they have been available anyway).

[Roy Bland]

[Symphonic Addict]

The final instalment of Stanfords's SQs on Somm:

[Mandryka]

Released in May, but I missed it.

[Mandryka]

Vieux Gaultier, Mouton, Dufaut, Fresneau. Fabulous silences!

Anyone care to explain to me what iki is?

[Que]

Anyone care to explain to me what iki is?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iki_(aesthetics)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-aesthetics/#IkiRefiStyl

The wonders of modern information technology...
But thanks for putting out the question - I know now a lot more about Japanese aesthetics than ever before. 

Q

[Mandryka]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iki_(aesthetics)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-aesthetics/#IkiRefiStyl

The wonders of modern information technology...
But thanks for putting out the question - I know now a lot more about Japanese aesthetics than ever before. 

Q

This is from the CD booklet

Here is an example of Iki fashion: A person wearing
a simple and unspectacular Kimono with luxurious,
patterned lining material. The colorful lining playfully
peeks out once in a while but is never completely visible.
Similarly, there is a tale about Murata Jukō, a man known
as the founder of the Japanese tea ceremony. He was
making tea in his dingy little hut when a curious samurai
passed by and tried to get a glimpse inside. The samurai
then noticed that an extremely expensive horse was tied
outside the hut. Inside was a frugal looking man sitting by
himself, just making tea.

It reminds me of something I experienced when I was about 13 or 14. I was in Seville, it was summer, hot and sunny, and I passed a house where you could glimpse from the sidewalk a beautiful bright moorish courtyard, just a glimpse through big heavy wooden doors and at the end of a long dark passageway. The beautiful courtyard at the end of all that weightiness and darkness. That had a profound effect on me, it's one of my Proustian memories which matter!

The booklet continues

The 17th-century French music holds a similar aesthetic.
Style Brisé may at first appear like ordinary music with
some irregularly broken chords, but when listened to closely, you may hear that all pieces are in fact polyphonic.
The distances between the notes are often so far that the
melodies are not immediately noticeable. However, once
you recognize the melody line, its sharp and clear beauty
will emerge. To me, this resembles a delicate and alluring
beauty on a woodblock print.