La Generacion del '51: The Spanish Avant-Garde

Started by snyprrr, October 21, 2010, 07:14:59 PM

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snyprrr

oh, great,...

This is the kind of X@&%F that gives me the  :-\ smilee.

The Ardittis have a "Vol.1" of Cristobal Halffter's SQs (1,3,6), and, so what should happen??,... the Leipzigers on MDG are releasing a Halffter SQ disc (1,2,7). I mean, cpme on guys, can we get some communication here? Why waste all this time and energy like this when there are plenty of things that await sooomeone's attention?!? ???

FacePalm Award Nominee to be sure. :-X aye...

some guy

I just found two Halffter pieces in my collection, one in the 25 Years EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO Freiburg set. That's the Variaciones sobre la resonancia de un grito piece that's been mentioned. The other is in the 75 Jahre Donaueschinger Musiktage 1921-1996 set. Planto por las victimas de la violencia. Both of those sets are full of pieces I've liked better. And listening to them both again recently, I notice that they're both of that static, long line, not much happens kind of thing that I only recently started to fancy. So that's why I had no clear recollection of them.

Now....

And I recently got two Auvidis/Montaigne CDs of Halffter. That's right. Auvidis/Montaigne. (I work on call at the corner classical record store here in town. And there are a few treasures like that to be found. Well, they're to be found in my house, now. ;)

One has Concierto para violin y orquesta no. 1 and Mural sonante on it, both of which I like very much. The other has Versus and concierto para piano y orquesta on it. Versus gets interesting once it leaves the pastiche section behind. The piano concerto didn't impress on first hearing. But I never fash meself about first impressions.

And I have a CD of Halffter orchestral music coming in the mail.

Thanks to synprrr for the heads up on this interesting composer!

petrarch

#22
Quote from: some guy on December 30, 2010, 08:57:48 PM
I just found two Halffter pieces in my collection, one in the 25 Years EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO Freiburg set. That's the Variaciones sobre la resonancia de un grito piece that's been mentioned. The other is in the 75 Jahre Donaueschinger Musiktage 1921-1996 set. Planto por las victimas de la violencia.

Got those two sets myself :) and up until yesterday they were the only Halffter I had for more than 10 years... Got this new release from MDG but haven't listened to it yet.



http://www.mdg.de/titel/1671.htm
//p
The music collection.
The hi-fi system: Esoteric X-03SE -> Pathos Logos -> Analysis Audio Amphitryon.
A view of the whole

petrarch

Quote from: petrarch on December 31, 2010, 12:00:22 AM


So I just gave this a listen and it's good. I liked SQs 1 and 2 better than 7, which seemed a tad long-winded. I couldn't help but be reminded of Rihm's SQs when listening to this, even though 1 and 2 predate Rihm's SQs. There were also stretches bringing back memories of Ligeti's Lontano. Overall, makes me want to get Arditti's disc with SQ 1, 3 and 6. I read that 4 and 5 are miniatures that were eventually integrated into 6, so the Leipziger and Arditti discs should cover all of Halffter's output for SQ.
//p
The music collection.
The hi-fi system: Esoteric X-03SE -> Pathos Logos -> Analysis Audio Amphitryon.
A view of the whole

MDL

#24
One of the very first pieces of avant-garde music I ever heard, as I was taking my first tentative steps in my mid-teens, was Cristobal Halffter's oratorio Yes, Speak Out, Yes which made an enormous impression on me. I've got it on a crappy old cassette somewhere in the garage and although I haven't played it for well over a decade, if not two, I played it so often in my teens, I can recall most of it quite vividly. I must dig it out and see if I can still play it. I'll be gutted if it's unplayable.

Does anyone know if there are any plans to record it?

Edit: I should have said that I taped a live broadcast in the very early '80s. I think it was the Philharmonia in the Festival Hall.

snyprrr

Quote from: some guy on December 30, 2010, 08:57:48 PM
(I work on call at the corner classical record store here in town. And there are a few treasures like that to be found. Well, they're to be found in my house, now. ;)



jealous!!!!

snyprrr

Quote from: some guy on December 30, 2010, 08:57:48 PM
I just found two Halffter pieces in my collection, one in the 25 Years EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO Freiburg set. That's the Variaciones sobre la resonancia de un grito piece that's been mentioned. The other is in the 75 Jahre Donaueschinger Musiktage 1921-1996 set. Planto por las victimas de la violencia. Both of those sets are full of pieces I've liked better. And listening to them both again recently, I notice that they're both of that static, long line, not much happens kind of thing that I only recently started to fancy. So that's why I had no clear recollection of them.

Now....

And I recently got two Auvidis/Montaigne CDs of Halffter. That's right. Auvidis/Montaigne. (I work on call at the corner classical record store here in town. And there are a few treasures like that to be found. Well, they're to be found in my house, now. ;)

One has Concierto para violin y orquesta no. 1 and Mural sonante on it, both of which I like very much. The other has Versus and concierto para piano y orquesta on it. Versus gets interesting once it leaves the pastiche section behind. The piano concerto didn't impress on first hearing. But I never fash meself about first impressions.

And I have a CD of Halffter orchestral music coming in the mail.

Thanks to synprrr for the heads up on this interesting composer!

You're still going to want to get the Cello Concerto No.2. I've been trying to find those two you mentioned for cheap.

There is an LP of CH on YouTube which has Synposium, Lineas & Puntos?, and one other piece, and Officium Defunctorum is on YouTube also, a very powerful piece.



I agree that CH's early period (up to @1972) is of the 'static' variety, much like Donatoni before he became interesting, but, many previously academic Composers matured in the early to mid '70s.

Still, I won't stop propping up the CC2.

snyprrr

Quote from: petrarch on December 31, 2010, 01:23:06 AM
So I just gave this a listen and it's good. I liked SQs 1 and 2 better than 7, which seemed a tad long-winded. I couldn't help but be reminded of Rihm's SQs when listening to this, even though 1 and 2 predate Rihm's SQs. There were also stretches bringing back memories of Ligeti's Lontano. Overall, makes me want to get Arditti's disc with SQ 1, 3 and 6. I read that 4 and 5 are miniatures that were eventually integrated into 6, so the Leipziger and Arditti discs should cover all of Halffter's output for SQ.

Wow, that was quick. I thought it wasn't avail until Jan.11?

Anyhow, you don't find it curious that we all of sudden have competing CH SQs?

I did like No.1. To my ear, it begins much like Bartok No.4. I like the Don Quixote-type fourth/fifth in the Finale. Very much in the vein of those Composers who started out being influenced by Bartok, and then visited Darmstadt, and, poof!



I know that SQ No.4 is just that short piece Con Bravura y Sentimiento, which can be found on the Arditti 'Vienna' cd, but I,... ok, I just checked, and No.5 is only @7mins. Where did you read that they were incorporated into No.6? I'll check the liner notes on the Arditti.

I imagine No.2 is pretty cool, but No.3 is probably the BigOne here, which of course, can be had on that old Arditti Spanish disc. That one is total experimental.


Still,...Arditti, let's get that hen out!

snyprrr

Yes, and I've just ordered Halffter's Piano Music on the Verso label (verso-producciones.com; only available in u.k., or download on amazon; (search: garvayo)), the same label that had that chamber disc.

And,... I just ordered Luis De Pablo's Piano Trio. There are now three! cds of this piece! There is a ColLegno PT disc and now also a Verso PT disc. What IS with all this duplication lately??

ok, my CDCDCD was kicking up, and I wanted to make a clean break for 2011, haha, so I had to choose, so I decided to shore up the Spanish Main!

snyprrr


some guy

I like the static stuff a lot, now. So those pieces are fine for me!

The string quartets and the cello concerto are going to be ordered by me within seconds of me clicking "Post" on this post.

Those two sets I mentioned (25 and 75) are pretty interesting. I have several like that--collections of festivals or organizations over some time span or other. I just realized I have two of the Michigan folk, the ONCE festival set and the SOURCE set. And I think I finally have all of the Musik in Deutschland series. Hard to tell with them. I've stopped trying to find any more, anyway.

But, back to Spain, I still don't have anything in my collection that I enjoy any more than Francisco Lopez. But that doesn't stop me from liking all the de Pablo, del Puerto, Villa-Rojo, Maldonado, Torres, and Gerhard that I also have. (Music is good fun.)

Has anyone heard anything by that guy with the French name? Agustin Charles.

just Jeff

Digging deep into the 20th Century collection of LPs I am currently enjoying, I find the earliest LP pressing of any works by Cristobal Halffter to be the Spanish RCA Victor "Panarama of Contemporary Music" LSC-16329.  Looks like 1967 vintage recordings. 

The Halffter piece is titled "Espejos" and the set also contains Luis De Pablo's "Cesuras" among a couple other composers works.

Recorded in Madrid, conducted by Enrique Garcia Asensio.

I might just have to post a picture of this album cover, you know how I am,
20th Century Music - Ecrater Storefront:
http://20thcenturymusic.ecrater.com/

some guy


snyprrr

Quote from: petrarch on December 31, 2010, 01:23:06 AM
So I just gave this a listen and it's good. I liked SQs 1 and 2 better than 7, which seemed a tad long-winded. I couldn't help but be reminded of Rihm's SQs when listening to this, even though 1 and 2 predate Rihm's SQs. There were also stretches bringing back memories of Ligeti's Lontano. Overall, makes me want to get Arditti's disc with SQ 1, 3 and 6. I read that 4 and 5 are miniatures that were eventually integrated into 6, so the Leipziger and Arditti discs should cover all of Halffter's output for SQ.

I listened to SQ No.6, and could hear where the intro ends (SQ No.5), and where the ending begins (SQ No.4). And yes, my notes declare this incorporation also.

But that seems to beg the question for me concerning the programming of these two potential cycles.



3 Pieces (SQ 1): @13mins

SQ 2: @22mins???

SQ3: @20mins

SQ4: 4mins

SQ5: 7mins

SQ6: @20mins

SQ7: @25mins???



That's such an unwinnable time constraint for cd programming. :(



btw- was No.7 a static piece, or noisy, or both? No.6 sounds like he's really blazing, and the central part, the actually newly written part, has a very beautiful mysterious central section, before it whips up the ending which is No.4.


petrarch

Quote from: snyprrr on January 02, 2011, 06:58:09 PM
btw- was No.7 a static piece, or noisy, or both? No.6 sounds like he's really blazing, and the central part, the actually newly written part, has a very beautiful mysterious central section, before it whips up the ending which is No.4.

Both. It has 7 parts, the odd-numbered ones consisting of silences of 10-20 seconds where poetry is read silently in the manner of Nono's Fragmente-Stille (but, unlike it, the poetry is projected on a screen for the audience to read) and the even-numbered ones with music, each roughly 7-8 minutes long.
//p
The music collection.
The hi-fi system: Esoteric X-03SE -> Pathos Logos -> Analysis Audio Amphitryon.
A view of the whole

snyprrr

Luis De Pablo Piano Trio (October 1993)

There are now three recordings of this piece, which I am now listen to the Premiere Recording on Ermitage (w/Ives & Solbiati!). This cd has always been on The List for its inventive, yet explicable, program.

I suppose the main feature of De Pablo's PT (his first, check out the other discs) is that it is the most conspicuous PT in the generation of masters which runs from Maderna to Xenakis to Boulez and later (yes James, curious about KS). No one wrote one! Much like none very many from Prokofiev and Hindemith before them.

So, this PT has always had a kind of allure as a sole example of what a PT of High Modernism might sound like. If you are afraid there will be 'Spanishness', let me put your fears aside. This premiere PT by Luis De Pablo is quite a beautifully crafted piece, in three poetic mvmts, that I struggle to find compare. I wouldn't call it 'serial'. It is in free fantasy form as I call it, not hysterical, yet full of tickling effects, such as the introduction (how will it start? I wondered) where the violin and high register piano and cello and low register piano mingle in a De Pablo variation of the Xenakis 'arbor' scales. Truly, this is an intimate and vigorous music for piano, violin, and cello. I will post in the PT Thread.

snyprrr

Quote from: petrarch on December 31, 2010, 01:23:06 AM
So I just gave this a listen and it's good. I liked SQs 1 and 2 better than 7, which seemed a tad long-winded. I couldn't help but be reminded of Rihm's SQs when listening to this, even though 1 and 2 predate Rihm's SQs. There were also stretches bringing back memories of Ligeti's Lontano. Overall, makes me want to get Arditti's disc with SQ 1, 3 and 6. I read that 4 and 5 are miniatures that were eventually integrated into 6, so the Leipziger and Arditti discs should cover all of Halffter's output for SQ.

ok, Vol.2 of the Halffter SQ cycle by the Arditti is on their website, and on diverdi.com.

SQs 2,4,5,7

alrighty then!

snyprrr

Quote from: some guy on December 31, 2010, 10:06:22 AM
Francisco Lopez.

Forgive me, but I'm excavating my eyes from the back of my head. ;D I shoulda known! Lopez looks like he's in a race with the Merzbow guy, no? Only one review on Amazon, about a 'barest drone' that works its way into a lather.

soooooo,.... what do you,...uh,.... recommend? I thought you guys said there weren't that many cd length A/E guys, a la Persepolis? I see he's on the 'Remix' album. anyhoo....

At first I thought you meant the Lopez-Lopez guy. I think he's in with the Halffter/De Pablo crows. Jose Manuel Lopez-Lopez? And the Turina guy.

just Jeff

#38
Quote from: some guy on January 02, 2011, 07:10:27 AMDo it!

ok




The piece is a pretty wild ride, very avant-garde if I say so!
20th Century Music - Ecrater Storefront:
http://20thcenturymusic.ecrater.com/

just Jeff

and of course this pricey CD I have up at amazon.  No other sellers of this title have come forward in the last 9 months...

20th Century Music - Ecrater Storefront:
http://20thcenturymusic.ecrater.com/