What are you listening to now?

[HIPster]

Venice Preserv'd
Hogwood/AAM

http://www.amazon.com/Venice-Preserved-Hogwood/dp/B00000E46F/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1416619876&sr=1-1&keywords=venice+preserved+hogwood

OOP, but cheap in price. . .

Beautiful recording!

[Ken B]

Ives, various including ? and Holidays,
Disc 51

[asin]B00LL4U1TE[/asin]

[mc ukrneal]

Time to pay attention to The Pile, Opera Division

Wonderful stuff!

[EigenUser]

Ives, various including ? and Holidays,
Disc 51

[asin]B00LL4U1TE[/asin]

CPintheD? That's my favorite Ives. Reminds me of the slow movement of Bartok 2PC.

[Todd]

[HIPster]

Interstellar soundtrack ~
[asin]B00OTLFGDW[/asin]

Enjoyed the movie quite a lot and the music was a big part of that for me.

Nice soundtrack disc. 

[Mirror Image]

Now:





Listening to Ameriques. Great stuff.

[Mirror Image]

If you can find this at a fair price, run do not walk!

[asin]B000FBIYBG[/asin]

Oh man, I need this. To the Christmas wishlist it goes...

[Mirror Image]

Now:



Listening to Symphony No. 2 'Elegiaca'. I could imagine a more driven performance, but I don't think Malipiero's symphonies will get another cycle probably in my lifetime. A beautiful work, though.

[Mirror Image]

Now:





Listening to Ein Wallfahrtslied. Beautiful work.

[Mandryka]

Michel Block plays some of Chopin's mazurkas.

Block makes the music sound ambiguous. On the one hand it's political, music which is teaming with patriotic anthems and calls to the fight. On the other it if full of all sorts of ineffable, autumnal feelings, wistfulness. 

Block is from the beautiful tone school of piano playing - burnished, legato, impeccable execution, flowing, rounded, colourful. Despite this, the ambiguity makes these great poetry, as William Empson would have said, and I think this is a magnificent recording. On spotify.

[FlyMe]

Currently on the Naim
[asin]B000A2ES88[/asin]
A long time since I wallowed in this!

[RebLem]

I have looked over some of my previous reports on my listening activities.  I don't think many people read them all the way through, because they are sort of daunting.  I found that even I had a hard time getting through them when I saw the total length.  So now, I am going to try reporting every two discs or issues, whichever is greater, instead of every four.  This will keep my reports shorter.  I am going to try to make each post short enough that most people will be able to view the whole post without scrolling.  With that, here's the two discs I have listened to in the last few days--

Disc 3 of the 4 CD Supraphon set of the larger chamber works of Antonin Dvorak.  Two works on the disc:  Piano Quintet 1 in A Major, Op. 5 (1872, revised 1887) (28:40), rec. 30-31 OCT 1993   |   Piano Quintet 2 in A Major, Op. 81 (1887) (41:22), rec. 6-13 JUNE 1982--Jan Panenka, piano with Panocha Quartet.

Both of these works are favorites of mine.  The 1st is a new favorite, because this is the first time I have ever heard it.  It is characterized by a lush and fairly simple, folk based tunefulness and relatively simple, one might almost say naive developments in each of its three movements. 

The 2nd is a familar favorite, various recordings of which I have listened to for years, always with pleasure.  Curiously enough, one of the principal themes sounds very similar to the American hymn, "Shall We  Gather at the River," which was written in 1864 by a Brooklyn Baptist preacher named Robert Lowry (1826–1899).  I know of no evidence that Dvorak was aware of the hymn; the similarity is almost certainly either a coincidence or, perhaps, Lowry and Dvorak having had some familiarity with a Bohemian tune which inspired both of them.  In any event, here is the hymn:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El7QNtXqavo   And here is the quartet, in a different performance than the one reported on here, so you can compare for yourselves if you are so inclined.                                                                                                 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q35ayW9J5t4


Shastakovich: Sym. 1 in F Minor, Op. 10 (1925) (27:48), rec. live 3/2004   |   Sym. 15 in A Major, Op. 141 (1972) (46:17), rec. live 6/2005--Oleg Caetani, cond. Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi.  Arts Music label.

This is Disc 1 in Caetani's 10 disc cycle of the Shostakovich Symphonies.  Caetani was born in 1956 , per Wikipedia, "in Lausanne, Switzerland, the son of the Ukrainian conductor and composer Igor Markevitch and his second wife Donna Topazia Caetani (1921—90), who is descended from a Roman family that included the early 14th-century Pope Boniface VIII.  Caetani has chosen to use his mother's family name to continue its lineage."

Caetani's is, to the best of my knowledge, the first Shostakovich Symphonies cycle to be recorded in SACD surround sound with no compression.  This is by far the best recorded cycle, better even than the Barshai, which, before this, held top honors in the sound department, at least.  Judging by these performances, this is also an aesthetic success.  These are arguably the best performances of these works, esp. in the first.  The ending of the last movement of the 15th does not have quite the misterioso quality, the sense of life slowly but peacefully ebbing  away, that I prefer and that only a very few other performances have.  I shall be listening to the whole set in the coming weeks.  As for now, I can say this has the potential for becoming the new consensus standard, once it becomes better known, by which all others should be judged.

[EigenUser]

Currently, Constant's orchestration of Ravel's Scarbo from Gaspard de la Nuit (Eschenbach). Impressive orchestration, but I like the piano version far better. It naturally lacks the intimacy that makes the piece so effective to begin with.

Listening to the solo piano version is like sitting in a small group in a creepy old house and listening to an old man tell a scary story about a haunted gargoyle. Listening to the orchestration is like sitting in a comfortable movie theater in among a crowd and seeing the same story acted out on screen. Still entertaining, but far less effective.

[Ken B]

Currently, Constant's orchestration of Ravel's Scarbo from Gaspard de la Nuit (Eschenbach). Impressive orchestration, but I like the piano version far better. It naturally lacks the intimacy that makes the piece so effective to begin with.

Listening to the solo piano version is like sitting in a small group in a creepy old house and listening to an old man tell a scary story about a haunted gargoyle. Listening to the orchestration is like sitting in a comfortable movie theater in among a crowd and seeing the same story acted out on screen. Still entertaining, but far less effective.

*boggles*
*shakes head*

Isn't this exactly what I said about Ravel's own orchestrations?

[North Star]

*boggles*
*shakes head*

Isn't this exactly what I said about Ravel's own orchestrations?

But Ravel orchestrated the ones that actually work orchestrated. Orchestrating Gaspard is as silly as orchestrating Chopin or a Beethoven sonata.

[Ken B]

But Ravel orchestrated the ones that actually work orchestrated. Orchestrating Gaspard is as silly as orchestrating Chopin or a Beethoven sonata.

Or a Mussorksy piano suite ...

[North Star]

Or a Mussorksy piano suite ...

Pfft, whatever.

[Karl Henning]

(* chortle *)

[HIPster]

Morning music ~

Cozzolani- Vespers
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