What are you listening to now?

[Karl Henning]

"Wolferl"
Viola quintets
and late string quartets

[staxomega]

Alessandrini's recordings of the Brandenburgs has been in my heavy listening for these last few months. Wonderful.

[Kontrapunctus]

This is a wonderfully played and recorded LP. It derives from a digital master (at least it was DSD) and sounds quite realistic.

[SymphonicAddict]

Suk - Symphony in E major: Asrael is known as his most celebrated symphony. This too deserves recognition. Glorious!

Ippolitov-Ivanov - Symphony No. 1 in E minor: Its popularity is rather modest among the Russian symphonies, but it's very good nevertheless. The inner movements struck me as the most succesful ones.

[cilgwyn]

I've listened to this set a few times now,since it arrived,and I honestly think Marie-Catherine Girod's interpretations of this music are fantastic. And I'm a bit of a fan of this music! They really do add another perspective to this wonderful music. Absolutely great! Deserves a reissue,too!

[SimonNZ]

[akebergv]

Film directors Fritz Lang, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and Georg Wilhelm Pabst reigned on the german film scene during the era of silent movies. Lang's Metropolis (1926) is a classic that is regularly presented in specialized theaters, either in b&w or in a colorized version. Pioneer film music composer Gottfried Huppertz composed the music to be played in the theater, meaning that a full symphony orchestra was on hand to play the 2 1/2 hour score during the film screening. Lang and Huppertz' previous collaboration was for the 5 hour epic The Nibelungs, shot in two parts, Siegfried and Kriemhilds Rache (Kriemhild's Vengeance).

When I first saw these films some 40-45 years ago it was assumed that they were silent films, period. Nowhere in the writings of the time (I had a few dictionaries of movies) was there any mention that a full symphony score existed. My 1976 edition of the Oxford Companion to Film fails to mention any music in the entries to Metropolis or Die Nibelungen. The Film Music entry devotes a short paragraph to silent film scores, with a mention of The Birth of a Nation or Abel Gance's Napoléon, but none on composer Gottfried Huppertz. Silent films then were definitely silent. No recordings existed either, obviously. I would have been startled at the time to discover that Lang's epic masterpieces were meant to be seen and heard with their own music music played by an actual orchestra!

Conductor Frank Strobel is an old hand at film music conducting. Here he has the fine Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra playing the score Huppertz composed. Well, not all of it. The team did record a 4 1/2 hour, 4 disc set of the whole shebang. This single disc presents a sensibly assembled 75 minutes selection. Similarly, the Metropolis score exists in full (2 1/2 hour) or abridged (77 minutes) compact disc releases. The full score heard shorn of the visuals is not a winning proposition IMO. A disc of excerpts works perfectly fine and this sumptuously produced disc makes a fine job of presenting some of The Nibelungs' main scenes.

Scenarist Thea von Harbou (quite a character unto herself) went for the nordic saga characters and events, not Wagner's adaptation, so we are not tempted to draw comparisons. What emerges is a fine post-romantic score with a nice sense of the film's narrative. Huppertz was quite good with themes (none having any resemblance to the well-known Wagner leitmotifs), and his orchestration is very effective. Composers like Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Franz Waxman learned their film music trade in part from Huppertz' composing techniques.

I would now expect to see a DVD or theater screening with the full musical accompaniment. Lang clearly expected music to be played during the film screening. It's quite a new paradigm.

The current blu-ray Masters of Cinema editions of both Die Niebelungen and Metropolis come with the Huppertz scores:
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Metropolis-Reconstructed-Restored-Masters-Blu-ray/dp/B0041SMF50/ref=sr_1_1?crid=30GVQBKXBL0SN&keywords=metropolis+blu+ray&qid=1563085721&s=dvd&sprefix=metropolis%2Cdvd%2C169&sr=1-1
https://amazon.co.uk/DIE-NIBELUNGEN-Masters-Cinema-BLU-RAY/dp/B008LTVKJM/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=die+nibelungen&qid=1563085800&s=dvd&sr=1-1

[Introverted]

NP:

[asin]B000026258[/asin]

Reich: Music for 18 Musicians

[Madiel]

Streaming Brahms, Zigeunerlieder op.103

In one of the few recordings that does them as a vocal quartet rather than as a choral work or the solo arrangement (which only has 8 songs out of 11). That alone makes this a serious candidate for purchase.

[Biffo]

Jean Cras: Piano Quintet - Louvigny Quartet with Alain Jacquon (piano)

[André]

The current blu-ray Masters of Cinema editions of both Die Niebelungen and Metropolis come with the Huppertz scores:
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Metropolis-Reconstructed-Restored-Masters-Blu-ray/dp/B0041SMF50/ref=sr_1_1?crid=30GVQBKXBL0SN&keywords=metropolis+blu+ray&qid=1563085721&s=dvd&sprefix=metropolis%2Cdvd%2C169&sr=1-1
https://amazon.co.uk/DIE-NIBELUNGEN-Masters-Cinema-BLU-RAY/dp/B008LTVKJM/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=die+nibelungen&qid=1563085800&s=dvd&sr=1-1

I ordered Metropolis a couple of days ago. It will be a new experience for me. If I like it, I'll go for Nibelungen.

[staxomega]

A first listen to this disc:

[amw]

Bruce Hungerford Op.2/2, 31/3 and later probably 111. He's pretty good so far.

[Karl Henning]

WGBH is playing the Haydn Trumpet Concerto, which of course is a beaut.

[akebergv]

I ordered Metropolis a couple of days ago. It will be a new experience for me. If I like it, I'll go for Nibelungen.

I hope you'll enjoy Metropolis. It's certainly a cinema classic of the first order, not just as a Sci-fi movie that influenced much that came after, such as the design of Blade Runner, but it's also full of apocalyptic references to the book of Revelation.

[André]

I should know. I must have watched it about 10 times  . That will be my first screening with the original music score. The Giorgio Moroder horror should be consigned to oblivion. Terrible...

[jwinter]

Op. 109-111.  Really enjoying this, Arrau has such a lovely way of letting the music breathe... I'm frankly still trying to crack these works, but this is very nice indeed

[North Star]

Prokofiev
Cello Sonata in C major, Op. 119
Sonia Wieder-Atherton (vc) & Laurent Cabasso (pf)
 


First listens

Barber
Cello Sonata, Op. 6
Christian Poltéra & Kathryn Stott
[ASIN]B00A2PAMPG[/ASIN]


Schubert
Complete songs, Disc 21
Graham Johnson et al.
[asin]B000B8657S[/asin]


Bach
Cantatas 108 & 187
Katharine Fuge (S), Richard Wyn Roberts (A), Kobie van Rensburg (T), Stephan Loges (B)
The Monteverdi Choir
The English Baroque Soloists
Gardiner
[asin]B00ETHPJ1U[/asin]

It seems that I'm three weeks ahead of the church year, or rather 49 weeks behind...

[vandermolen]

The first performance (Coventry Cathedral 1962) in all its ' messy grandeur'.
Very moving:

[vandermolen]

Suk - Symphony in E major: Asrael is known as his most celebrated symphony. This too deserves recognition. Glorious!

Ippolitov-Ivanov - Symphony No. 1 in E minor: Its popularity is rather modest among the Russian symphonies, but it's very good nevertheless. The inner movements struck me as the most succesful ones.

+1 for Ippolitov-Ivanov from me.