What are you listening to now?

[Karl Henning]

Thread Duty:

Henning
Night of the Weeping Crocodiles, Op.16
Mirage, Op.79
kh, cl
Alexei Shebalin, vn
Carolyn Eric Mazonson, pf
Performed in Woburn, MA (21 June 2010)

[Karl Henning]

Henning
Annabel Lee, Op.111
The Libella Quartet
Performed in Somerville, MA (25 Apr 2013)

[Karl Henning]

Henning

For God so loved the world (after the Nunc dimittis, Op.87 № 9)
The Choir of King's Chapel
Heinrich Christensen, director
Performed in Boston, MA (6 Apr 2014)

Nicodemus brings myrrh & aloes for the burial of the Christ, Op.85 № 4
Kirstin Seitz Peltz, vc
Vytas Baksys, pf
Performed in Weston, MA (4 Apr 2014)

[Que]

Ignoring the 1-star review at Amazon US, this was love at first sight/ hearing for me.

[asin]B00795C6RO[/asin]

Now I NEED to have the other volume of the concertos too, and the sonatas set...help!     It is CDCDCD!

Q

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

What are some things you really admire about #5? It's currently my least favorite, but that doesn't mean I dislike it, it just means I love it less than the others. (#2 and #4 are my two biggies.)

And yes, definitely, without GMG I would not have gone crazy with love of Martinu in the past two years!

You too, smitten with Martinů!  Loved him from the very first few notes, so fresh, spontaneous, organic-seeming.  Someone once described him as "a lonely soul."  Perhaps it is his reaching out through his music that compels our response.  Tastes, impressions and judgments change and evolve, of course; I used to dislike Sibelius's 6th and now regard it as his foremost symphony.  But pending further listens  (happy time to be spent!), I do prefer Martinů's 5th to the others, for its maturity of expression and contemplativeness :  in its passage from moody, self-introspection to dancing joy, it seems to me the most confident of his symphonic work.  All his powers are on display.  Typically I like my thematic ideas more fully developed in the Brahmsian tradition, so Martinů seems an oddball to be in my Top Ten Composer's list.  His melodies spring-up all over the place, but perhaps it is that that beguiles - his architecture (I know there is one) is clever and sneaky and elusive.  But I will crack it, not that I need to, it works on an unconscious level.  How do you like the Philip Glass-like momentum in the first movement?   Steinberg quotes Martinů's biographer, Harry Halbreich's characterizations of the symphonies:

#1: epic and broad;
#2: idyllic and intimate [I would have said 'pastoral' but that's not contradictory]
#3: weighty and confessional
#4: radiant, happy and sunny
#5: sophisticated and full of contrast
the sixth he describes more fully and impressively in his Symphonies book - I've only heard that one a coupla times, so you can see I'm but a freshman (provisional acceptance at that!) at MU (Martinůniversity). 

Glad he has such a devoted following - so well-deserved.  Sure hope he's less lonely now.  Best not to regret our own days and decades spent w/o him...

[Karl Henning]

Ignoring the 1-star review at Amazon US, this was love at first sight/ hearing for me.

[asin]B00795C6RO[/asin]

Now I NEED to have the other volume of the concertos too, and the sonatas set...help!     It is CDCDCD!

Q

"He knew the risks . . . ."

[Wakefield]

Henning
Annabel Lee, Op.111

This name immediately caught my imagination, Karl. 

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

"He knew the risks . . . ."

+1   Yes, but brave in the face of adversity...

[Karl Henning]

This name immediately caught my imagination, Karl. 

Have you had a chance to listen, Gordo?

http://www.youtube.com/v/tN3aMOrzEb8

[Karl Henning]

+1   Yes, but brave in the face of adversity...

Indeed!

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

Noir.  Everything is going noir...  "Please open the second shutter so that more light may come in," Goethe's true last words.  Maybe.

[asin]B00JL1BIJG[/asin]

[Ken B]

[asin]B00JL1BIJG[/asin]

Me too, Adams, City Noir.

I can't say I am liking it much. Jazz club sounds; traffic sounds. Might just take more than one listening, I dunno.

[Mandryka]

Lena Jacobson plays Buxtehude's Buxwv 139.  It is a radical solution to the problem of of unity: she solves it by being almost as free with rhythms and with the inter-voice relationships in the fugal sections as she is in the non-fugal sections. And she chooses the same organum plenum registration throughout. I appreciate the fact that she's letting the music explain itself, rather than choosing to underline each section by changing registration or rubato, agogics.

The music sounds like sprechgesang, and I like that very much. I like it more than aria because it really does sound like people discussing, arguing about something that they care about. It has all the irregularities of a real debate - that's why it's a good thing she's so free in the fugues.

She makes the others, who either articulate with larger phrases, or who don't mark their articulation so clearly, sound romantic. I listened to Foccroulle play it too, and I think that he was outstanding - more successful at the unity and the transitions than Vogel or Davidsson in my opinion.

[Harry]

Lena Jacobson plays Buxtehude's Buxwv 139.  It is a radical solution to the problem of of unity: she solves it by being almost as free with rhythms and with the inter-voice relationships in the fugal sections as she is in the non-fugal sections. And she chooses the same organum plenum registration throughout. I appreciate the fact that she's letting the music explain itself, rather than choosing to underline each section by changing registration or rubato, agogics.

The music sounds like sprechgesang, and I like that very much. I like it more than aria because it really does sound like people discussing, arguing about something that they care about. It has all the irregularities of a real debate - that's why it's a good thing she's so free in the fugues.

She makes the others, who either articulate with larger phrases, or who don't mark their articulation so clearly, sound romantic. I listened to Foccroulle play it too, and I think that he was outstanding - more successful at the unity and the transitions than Vogel or Davidsson in my opinion.

Could we have this in a normal explanation, in other words, understandable language. I for one cannot make soup of what I read

[Karl Henning]

Me too, Adams, City Noir.

I can't say I am liking it much. Jazz club sounds; traffic sounds. Might just take more than one listening, I dunno.

Though we do not see eye-to-eye viz. the Mennin Eighth, I appreciate your response here.

[Mandryka]

Could we have this in a normal explanation, in other words, understandable language. I for one cannot make soup of what I read

Right. Buxwv 139 is made sections, some of them are free fantasy type  music and some of them are fugues. So when you play it you have a problem of making it sound unified, and of making the transitions from one section to another sound natural. You know, sometimes in performances the free sections sound really free and fantasy like, and the the fugues sound well, academic and "formal". And so the whole thing sounds piecemeal, bitty.

She solves that by being really rhythmically free in the fugues, and staggering the voices, and using tons of rhythm tricks, rubato, hesitations. So the fugues sound very free, almost like fantasy music. And she just stays pretty well with the same registration throughout - she doesn't mark out each section with a fresh registration. Which appeals to me 'cause she doesn't need to - the music speaks for itself. And it also helps integrate the whole thing.

The other thing she does is articulate the music in very small and clearly defined phrases - like how people speak, not at all like a song. And I'm saying I like that because . . .  I do - it sounds like people arguing, discussing things, discussing important things seriously,  I say.

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

Me too, Adams, City Noir.

I can't say I am liking it much. Jazz club sounds; traffic sounds. Might just take more than one listening, I dunno.

On first listen, it strikes me as music making of the highest calibre and intriguing.  Betcha' it grows on the both of us!  Like you, I might be inclined to resent its more obviously representational aspects (is it this, perhaps that makes you dislike La Mer, at least in part?), but Noir is intended to be a "film score" and thus must by definition be representational and what the lit-crits call "intertextual."  I think the recording is beyond first rate - it's stellar - this might be the best reproduction I've ever heard outta my speakers and to be marveled at in and of itself. 

[Karl Henning]

For what film was it scored?

[mn dave]

Every home should have one.
[asin]B00000144U[/asin]

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

For what film was it scored?

It is its own film  .  In the words of the composer:  "City Noir is a symphony that may also be experienced as the soundtrack to an imagined noir film."