Past Purchases (CLOSED)

[Zizekian]

Now you're cookin' with gas!

Good to know! 

How did you get the album covers to show up in a smaller size? I always feel bad about taking up too much space on here with images.

[Brian]

Today I did NOT buy the following.  Rather, I was informed that it has been bought and sent to me.  It is Vol. 4 of the composer's works; I've never heard of her in my life but am told that she is a 'capable harpsichordist but that this disc has no harpsichord music.' 

Should arrive in 3 - 4 days.  Anyone want to give me a heads-up as to what I'm getting? 

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Think of the "open-air" landscapes of popular Copland, the genial gestures of someone like Schickele or George Lloyd, the background in song you might expect from Rorem or Bolcom, and an unwillingness to be neither too grating nor too light-hearted. I haven't heard that CD, but I have heard I think Volume 7 from the series; Harbach's music is well-crafted, sincere, and instantly appealing, but maybe not high in nutrients. Also she has a penchant for awful titles but don't let them distract you. I've considered investigating more of her music.

MusicWeb's Bob Briggs, who loved Harbach's music very much before his recent death, has an in-depth review of the CD you are receiving. Read it here.

[DavidRoss]

How did you get the album covers to show up in a smaller size? I always feel bad about taking up too much space on here with images.

(img width=100)url(/img) Put whatever size you want, replace parentheses with brackets

[Zizekian]

(img width=100)url(/img) Put whatever size you want, replace parentheses with brackets

Thank you! I just tried it with my previous post and it worked perfectly.

[Coopmv]

Placed 2 separate orders at Presto Classical on the following CD's & CD sets ...

 
   
   

 
 
 

[Sadko]

Thank you! I just tried it with my previous post and it worked perfectly.

Although - if the images are downloaded to my computer in full size already I find it quite a waste to be able to see them only small.

[PaulR]

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2nd time trying to get Weinberg's Cello Concerto.

[Uncle Connie]

Think of the "open-air" landscapes of popular Copland, the genial gestures of someone like Schickele or George Lloyd, the background in song you might expect from Rorem or Bolcom, and an unwillingness to be neither too grating nor too light-hearted. I haven't heard that CD, but I have heard I think Volume 7 from the series; Harbach's music is well-crafted, sincere, and instantly appealing, but maybe not high in nutrients. Also she has a penchant for awful titles but don't let them distract you. I've considered investigating more of her music.

MusicWeb's Bob Briggs, who loved Harbach's music very much before his recent death, has an in-depth review of the CD you are receiving. Read it here.

My thanks, Brian, for the trouble to help out.  I did read the review and note that he recommended listening first to one of her symphonies (on a different volume of the series) which itself is a paean to the novelist Willa Cather - and right there the Americana aspect lights up in very bright neon, I'd say. 

I did look Ms. Harbach up on Wikipedia and they mention her friendships with Joan Tower, Libby Larsen and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.  Well - I've never heard a note of Ms. Larsen, but of the other two I have had some experience, and in both cases my impression so far has been of excellent crafts(wo)manship, readily accessible tonal and harmonic elements, and generally admirable material that I listen to two or three times and then put the disc on the shelf and forget I own it.  That is to say, not one bloody thing wrong with any of their work, it merely lacks the magic pellet of memorability.  Consider this a brief generic warm and positive review that simply is not a rave.     

And on the other hand, at least they don't blow my ears off the way, say, Gloria Coates can.  Anyway - I think I shall wait and order the Cather-inspired symphony later, after I see if it appears my relationship with Harbach's music is likely to go anywhere.  But I did order a CD of her as a harpsichord performer; sounds like just my sort of thing:   


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Born 1731, apparently wrote a fair amount of music but only a small fraction survives.  Nice cover on the CD as well, of a historic map of Venice and surroundings. 

[Brian]

Joan Tower, Libby Larsen and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.  Well - I've never heard a note of Ms. Larsen, but of the other two I have had some experience, and in both cases my impression so far has been of excellent crafts(wo)manship, readily accessible tonal and harmonic elements, and generally admirable material that I listen to two or three times and then put the disc on the shelf and forget I own it.  That is to say, not one bloody thing wrong with any of their work, it merely lacks the magic pellet of memorability.  Consider this a brief generic warm and positive review that simply is not a rave

Sounds exactly correct. Lacks the magic pellet of memorability. Exactly right, every word. Although I must say there are a few Zwilich pieces I want to return to at some point or another.

This is, though, obviously a cue for me to listen to something by Gloria Coates!

[jlaurson]

Sounds exactly correct. Lacks the magic pellet of memorability. Exactly right, every word. Although I must say there are a few Zwilich pieces I want to return to at some point or another.

This is, though, obviously a cue for me to listen to something by Gloria Coates!

Here are a few words on Coates (a very dear lady, incidentally) by my ionarts-colleague that I find apt:

Its middle movement (Puzzle Canon) is the strangest, and in many ways most satisfying, tribute to Mozart to come out of that year. The strings open with a chorale-like quotation -- it must be Mozart, but what? -- gradually obliterated by Coates's trademark glissandi that smear into groaning clusters. As the quotation is then played in retrograde from the middle of the movement, it turns out to be Mozart's most familiar choral work, Ave verum corpus, just that in the first half of the movement it was quoted backwards.

The danger Coates runs is that her trademark sounds -- the drooping glissandi, quotations of tonal music, limping marches -- can easily slide from stylistic distinction into cliché. In three live performances captured here by different ensembles, both interpretations apply. The Cantata da Requiem (1971-72) struck me as a dead end, while the chamber symphony Transitions (1984) seemed more durable, with its quotation of Purcell and exploration of odd tintinnabulations (an attempt, Coates has said, to render metaphysical experiences she had following her father's death). One has to wonder what orchestral musicians would have to say about performing her works, as they often strike the ear as a little spare and unchallenging.

She has a niche-appreciation following among Goths, btw..
Her style, if few of her pieces, are certainly memorable.

[Fafner]

(89 cents from Zoverstock)
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[Uncle Connie]

Here are a few words on Coates (a very dear lady, incidentally) by my ionarts-colleague that I find apt:

She has a niche-appreciation following among Goths, btw..
Her style, if few of her pieces, are certainly memorable.

Thanks for the quote-comments, unfortunately I can't figure out how to quote them....

My first thought on Gloria Coates, composer and painter, is that if you look at the covers of her Naxos releases (which she painted), you'll almost always get the sense of an swirling explosion of blazing and brash colors.  Think perhaps of Mexican murals, with the searing-desert reds and oranges that they use; then put that mural on a turntable and send it spinning.  Gloria Coates has arrived.  (Need I say I have oversimplified a bit?) 

As to her music, I think I need to mention that I first became acquainted with her music at just about exactly the time I also discovered Iceland's Jon Leifs, he of the hurling boulders and other extreme percussion.  I found Leifs' music mostly - not entirely - an exercise in noise.  Ms. Coates on the other hand, while frequently very loud and overbearing (though no rocks are thrown), is loud more as an exercise in intensity, ebbing and flowing and inter-reacting over and over again in as many intricate patterns as she can think up.  In both Coates' and Leifs' case, I hear such things as melody and classical harmony as incidentals; they are not ignored and they are not random, but neither do they seem to be fundamental to the music, merely useful as a means to address the hearer intelligibly.  If that sounds idiotically pedantic and pretentious, it's probably because (a) I am sometimes, and (b) in the case of these two composers but overwhelmingly in Ms. Coates' case, I find the formal analysis to be absurd.  You sit down, you put on the CD, you let the thing just wash over you, and you say "......[whatever you say]...." about it, and then you put on a different CD and do it all over again, and it is different but identical.  Sic!  (Well, it made sense to me after I heard a few things!)  But you don't then go sketch an analytical flow chart of it.... 

I notice that one of your quotes mentions the word "glissando" for Coates.  Memorize that word!  It is for her a mantra, the equivalent of a cornerstone.

And oddly enough I found the Cantata da Requiem, not a dead end at all, but to date the best thing I've heard from her. (Admittedly my exposure is limited; three discs.)  It's certainly the least mannered.   

Here's the cover of the ...da Requiem and her painting, unfortunately very small - imagine it full-sized on a wall!


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[Ataraxia]

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[Uncle Connie]

Leave it to me to pick one of the less brash Gloria Coates covers.  Here, try this:


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(But in this case I haven't heard the music.)

[Fafner]

Another mystery composer

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[Todd]

To be listened to while reading the government's zombie apocalypse info kit, I assume.

[Ataraxia]

To be listened to while reading the government's zombie apocalypse info kit, I assume.

Nice!

[Karl Henning]

You may laugh now, but when it happens you'll be happy you read this . . . .

[Ataraxia]

Already posted this on my Facebook wall. 

[Brian]

Taking advantage of a sale from Presto - EMI items on clearance, the rest of the stuff in this post was 25-30% off.



My first recordings of the Elgar cello concerto (JDP), Sea Pictures (Baker), and the Saint-Saens non-organ symphonies.

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The Cuarteto Casals plays quartets by Debussy, Ravel, Zemlinsky, and Toldra.

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And look at this cover!:



Grand total: just a hundred bucks!