What are you listening to now?

[Brian]

The second-to-last disc in my BIS 40th Anniversary listening project:



And the 5th disc in my Murray Perahia listening project:

[Mirror Image]

Now:



Listening to Songs of Sunset. Absolutely gorgeous and a first-rate performance.

[amw]

If you only have time to listen to one amazing thing today, consider this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCJ_Y98Jk84

(Alternately, if you don't mind bad sound, better pianist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbnTkkq11RY)

[marvinbrown]

MAHLER: Symphony no. 3
Cologne Radio S.O.    Gary Bertini, cond.
Gwendolyn Killebrew, contralto    Bavarian Radio Chorus etc.

   Wonderful!  I have that as part of Bertini's complete Mahler symphony cycle and which is consistently good across all of the symophonies! Very insightful interpretations. 

  [asin]B000BQ7BX2[/asin]

  marvin

[Karl Henning]

I have to make peace with the Americans after being somewhat insulted by one of them.  Some of this great stuff is doing the trick.

If we spirits have offended . . . .

[Madiel]

Just my 19th Holmboe work in the last week... String Quartet No.17, 'Mattinata'.

[North Star]

Ligeti
Requiem
Lontano
Atmosphères
Ramifications, for 12 solo strings
Aventures
Sonata for Solo Cello
Ballad and Dance, after Romanian Folksongs
Old Hungarian Ballroom Dances
Artikulation (for tape)
[asin]B0016A8E1K[/asin]

Dutilleux
Symphony No. 2 'Le Double'
Métaboles
The Shadows of Time
Graf & Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine
[asin]B001S3QTBC[/asin]

[Sergeant Rock]

Haydn String Quartet G minor op.74/3 "Rider" played by the Schuppanzigh Quartett




Sarge

[Sergeant Rock]

Just my 19th Holmboe work in the last week... String Quartet No.17, 'Mattinata'.

I'm Holmboing myself this afternoon 

Sinfonias I-IV played by the Danish Radio Sinfonietta




Sarge

[Fafner]

Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.18; Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43
Yuja Wang
Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Claudio Abbado

[asin]B004G8AM2I[/asin]

[North Star]

Mozart
PC no. 17 in G major, K. 453
Bezuidenhout, Müllejans & Freiburgers
[asin]B007X98RGU[/asin]

[Sergeant Rock]

Horn Concertos by Michael and Joseph Haydn




Sarge

[Brian]

I'm Holmboing myself this afternoon 

Holmboejob I was never here...

[Karl Henning]

Hovhaness
Prayer of St Gregory, Op.62b
Jn Wallace, tp solo
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Wind Orchestra
Keith Brion

I am so accustomed to taking this at a, well, more meditative pace, that this performance almost sounds rushed to me.  Not at all a bad performance, mind you.

[asin]B000BK53H4[/asin]

[Brian]

Started my morning with Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians (Hungaroton). Now...

[Gurn Blanston]

Horn Concertos by Michael and Joseph Haydn




Sarge

Curious what you think of that disk, Sarge. I am quite keen on it, but that's just me.

[North Star]

Mozart
Rondo for pf & orch. in A minor, K. 386
PC no. 22 in Eb major, K. 482
Bezuidenhout, Müllejans & Freiburgers
[asin]B007X98RGU[/asin]

[Fafner]

ASTRID VARNAY
Opera Scenes & Orchestral Songs

Ludwig van Beethoven
Richard Wagner
Giuseppe Verdi

Töpper · Windgassen
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen
Rundfunks · Bamberger Symphoniker
Ludwig · Weigert · Leitner

[kishnevi]

Hovhaness
Prayer of St Gregory, Op.62b
Jn Wallace, tp solo
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Wind Orchestra
Keith Brion

I am so accustomed to taking this at a, well, more meditative pace, that this performance almost sounds rushed to me.  Not at all a bad performance, mind you.

[asin]B000BK53H4[/asin]

Well, the ensemble does have the word "Drama" in its name.....

Thread duty:
MTT/SFSO doing LvB.
Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II, WoO 87
Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 36
[asin]B00FKC1BVU[/asin]

Strangely enough, it is the cantata which sounds more like the later Beethoven, even though it was written in Bonn at the age of nineteen--which further suggests that some of the things we associate with Beethoven's musical style were constants over his life.  Of course, the text is rather heroically overwrought, and the subject no doubt called for something other than austere classicism.   But the music deserves a better fate than the obscurity that overtook it (never actually performed until the 1880s).  Beethoven apparently liked the music enough to re-use some stray bits of it in Leonore/Fidelio.

MTT's reading of the symphony itself (perhaps it merely sounds this way because the cantata precedes it on the CD) is very much on the Haydn/Mozart line of things, and would fit much more companionably with a recording of Mozart's Jupiter than with LvB's Eroica.

[Wanderer]

.[asin]B0011WMWUW[/asin]