New Releases

[JBS]

To my utter dismay, after listening to recordings by Beauty Farm, I begin to understand that it could be necessary to but them all. I will of course print new cover art and block those horrific covers.

Not all of them are bad. With that Tinctoris CD one merely needs to assume he's reading a devotional text on his phone and it becomes a rather appropriate image.

[Harry]

Harry - I'm aghast!    Guess that I'm the next one up for a listen - plenty on Spotify - any recommendations as to a 'starter' recording of this group w/ the 'queasy' cover art that will convince me?  Thanks - Dave 

The one I posted in the purchase thread

[Mandryka]

The Bauldeweyn is good, and the music is the same broad style as Josquin I think.

[Brian]

Hyperion's November lineup:



Hewitt's Mozart is sonatas K279-284 & 309 and advertised as the beginning of a series

Isserlis cello contents:
Bruch - Kol Nidrei (for cello and piano, but with the harp solo from the orchestral version still played on harp)
R. Strauss - Cello Sonata
Dvorak - Four Romantic Pieces (arr. Isserlis)
Luise Adolpha Le Beau - Cello Sonata
Ernst David Wagner - Kol Nidrei
Isaac Nathan - Oh! weep for those (arr. Isserlis)

[Madiel]

Another op.87 to check out...

[Mandryka]

Giulia Nuti recorded a CD of French music which I thought was very successful indeed.

[Mandryka]

https://www.stift-zwettl.at/kloster-und-pfarren/stiftsmusik/egedacher-orgel/
https://www.highresaudio.com/en/album/view/ou5awn/marco-paolacci-un-italiano-a-zwettl


Good sound. I especially appreciated 7 minutes of Steigleder!

[The new erato]

The Bauldeweyn is good, and the music is the same broad style as Josquin I think.

Probably my favorite of all Beauty Farm releases.

[Que]

Probably my favorite of all Beauty Farm releases.

Agreed, and the De La Rue Masses.

The first impressions on the Obrecht are also good, but I'll have to wait till I have that on disc.

[Harry]

Agreed, and the De La Rue Masses.

The first impressions on the Obrecht are also good, but I'll have to wait till I have that on disc.

Eventually I will buy them all, I think there are about 11 recordings of them, right. Many are doubles like the Bauldeweyn. Did I miss any?

[Florestan]

Extraordinary

If by that you mean artificial, contrived, gimmicky and ultimately pointless, I agree. 

[Madiel]

Oh look, it's not as if pop music hasn't been using recording technology to do this for decades.

[Symphonic Addict]

Some interesting CPO releases. The Rauchenecker looks quite intriguing:

[Mandryka]

[DaveF]

Hey, good news!  I can't see a release date yet, although Amazon offers delivery by September 28th.  I hope it really is the "Complete Opera", without the cuts in the Colin Davis version.

[Brian]

OCTOBER RELEASES FROM NAXOS DISTRIBUTION





this group is following up on their previous album - a wildly untraditional Monteverdi Vespers - with an equally untraditional Rachmaninov album, with the composer's work chopped up/interwoven with traditional Byzantine hymns



cellist and singer



violin and harpsichord





I didn't realize it, but Johannes Klumpp, who is finishing the Thomas Fey Haydn cycle, is also doing a Mozart cycle. This disc has 1, 28, and 41.



"Alberto Hemsi was born in 1898 in Turgutlu (also known as Cassaba), in Anatolia (present-day Turkey). Although there had been a Jewish presence in Anatolia for more than 2000 years, the population expanded considerably following the Alhambra Decree of 1492, with the arrival of Sephardim from Spain and Portugal. It then dwindled precipitously with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Nazism, the creation of the state of Israel, and the escalation of anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Having completed his training at the conservatory in Milan, Hemsi returned to Anatolia determined to collect and notate as much traditional Sephardic music as he possibly could. A fascination with national folk music had taken root throughout Europe – Bartók and Kodály in Hungary, Dvorák and Smetana in Bohemia, and Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst in England being the most familiar examples. Because his research was not defined by political or geographical boundaries, Hemsi was compelled to survey the myriad communities spread throughout the vast Sephardic diaspora. He was as fascinated by this musical heritage as he was concerned about its survival but, like so many composers, he also understood how traditional melodies, together with the various performance styles and conventions that supported them, could provide inspiration and nourishment for his own music."

[Brian]

MORE OCTOBER STUFF



For all ye who made fun of the Norrington Martinu album:





"This is the first of three recordings by Iman to be released by Metier and is a remastered re-issue of a disc from short-lived Belgian label ZeD (the other two albums are new, recorded in the summer of 2022)"



"He held prestigious posts (music director of the Philharmonic Society in Ljubljana, professor of the Music Academy in Vienna, first concertmaster of the Hoftheater). Few of his works have survived, with the majority of them being music Beneš wrote for his own solo performances. His final pieces, two string quartets (published in 1865 and 1871, respectively) date from the period when he no longer pursued a career as a soloist, yet all the parts require very dexterous players."





In case you thought The Planets needed to be paired with The Moons. The composer has supplied her own poems for several tracks, and one poem is recited by a NASA astronaut.



This guy has noodled with the Shostakovich First Piano Concerto to make the trumpet more important than the piano. On the other hand, his proceeds for this album were donated to a Ukrainian refugee charity.

Finally, I must protest the ongoing Hrusa Brahms/Dvorak cycle. Not only is each release a 2CD set with 35-40 minutes per CD, but the symphonies paired together on each double album are obviously the wrong pairings. Brahms 2 and Dvorak 6 belong together. Brahms 3 and Dvorak 5 belong together. What is this nonsense?

[JBS]

Re the Alberto Hemsi CD and its listing of the Pilpúl Sonata: does the word have a meaning in Turkish? Because in a Jewish context it has a definite meaning (but not usually any diacritic marking such as on the CD)

Leo Rosten defines pilpul with uncanny pertinence: "An inflated form of analysis and debate used in Talmudic study: i.e., unproductive hair-splitting that is employed not so much to advance clarity or reveal meaning as to display one's own cleverness."

Its underlying meaning is more neutral--precise technical analysis.

[Brian]

I'm aware of no Turkish word by that meaning so I looked at the booklet:

"'Pilpúl', derived from the Hebrew word for pepper, is now applied to the analytical arguments used to interpret Talmudic rules, and to the finicky, even casuistic claims and distinctions employed to defend them. In the score's short preface, Hemsi tells us that the Sonata is based on three such 'arguments', which were heard on separate evenings in Cairo."

It looks like either the composer or the record label invented the diacritic.

[JBS]

I'm aware of no Turkish word by that meaning so I looked at the booklet:

"'Pilpúl', derived from the Hebrew word for pepper, is now applied to the analytical arguments used to interpret Talmudic rules, and to the finicky, even casuistic claims and distinctions employed to defend them. In the score's short preface, Hemsi tells us that the Sonata is based on three such 'arguments', which were heard on separate evenings in Cairo."

It looks like either the composer or the record label invented the diacritic.

Thanks.

The De Swarte/Taylor CD looks interesting.
I likef De Swarte's CD of concertos (which was on Harmonia Mundi, IIRC).