What are you listening to now?

[Mirror Image]

Wow. This goes in the shortlist of Top Five Saint-Saens Recordings for me.

Why don't I work up the list!

- Organ Symphony + stuff. Daniel Barenboim (DG)
- Piano Concertos. Anna Malikova (Audite)
- the final sonatas for woodwinds. Canada's National Arts Centre (Naxos)
- hmmmm...probably need the cello concertos and Carnival of the Animals here...?

I haven't heard Barenboim performance of Saint-Saens' 3rd, but, and this is a massive BUT, I have doubts that it would top Levine's performance. Would be interesting to do some comparisons, though.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Some really stunning and dissonant music

[kishnevi]

Earlier

First listen to these works. Viola concerto might be one of the great concertos of the 20th century.  Cello concerto impressed me less.
MI, do you have these performances?
They were originally on Melodiya, and recorded soon after the world premieres of each concerto--Bashmet and Gutman being the dedicatees--so these were probably the very first recordings.

[Mirror Image]

Earlier

First listen to these works. Viola concerto might be one of the great concertos of the 20th century.  Cello concerto impressed me less.
MI, do you have these performances?
They were originally on Melodiya, and recorded soon after the world premieres of each concerto--Bashmet and Gutman being the dedicatees--so these were probably the very first recordings.

I do own them indeed, Jeffrey. For me, the greatest performance of the Viola Concerto is with Bashmet but with Rostropovich on RCA (w/ the LSO). Bashmet brings more nuance and, of course, experience to his later performance. That performance of Cello Concerto No. 1, to be brutally honest, is atrocious. The Ivashkin/Polyansky on Chandos is the performance you should hear. Ivashkin bleeds this music and you can hear how he tears into every note with passion and raw intensity.

[kishnevi]

I do own them indeed, Jeffrey. For me, the greatest performance of the Viola Concerto is with Bashmet but with Rostropovich on RCA (w/ the LSO). Bashmet brings more nuance and, of course, experience to his later performance. That performance of Cello Concerto No. 1, to be brutally honest, is atrocious. The Ivashkin/Polyansky on Chandos is the performance you should hear. Ivashkin bleeds this music and you can hear how he tears into every note with passion and raw intensity.

Wishlisted both.

[Mirror Image]

Wishlisted both.

[Mirror Image]

Well, in the moment of listening to it I was feeling that there was nothing better than this that I could have been listening to at that time. I also love Adès's and Ligeti's and Pateras's violin concertos, but The Lost Art of Letter Writing ticked all the boxes for me for what I wanted to listen to right then.

Have you heard Berg's Violin Concerto? This one of my favorite VCs of all-time. It's bizarre, downright eerie, but altogether gorgeous. I love this concerto so much that I even bought a small book on it:

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Have you heard Berg's Violin Concerto? This one of my favorite VCs of all-time. It's bizarre, downright eerie, but altogether gorgeous. I love this concerto so much that I even bought a small book on it:

I'm very familiar with this one. Incredibly beautiful at times, and the opening actually reminds me of Dean's viola concerto which is another concerto I'm very fond of.

[Mirror Image]

I'm very familiar with this one. Incredibly beautiful at times, and the opening actually reminds me of Dean's viola concerto which is another concerto I'm very fond of.

Yeah, Berg's VC is a beauty. Speaking of Berg, now playing:



Listening to Three Pieces for Orchestra. Simply outstanding performance.

[SimonNZ]

Dufay motets - Huelgas Ensemble, Paul van Nevel

desert island disc

[Mirror Image]

Now:



Listening to Te Deum and then off to bed. Just gorgeous.

[SimonNZ]

Klaus Ib Jørgensen's Moon-Pain - Iris Oja, mezzo, Paul Hillier, cond.

[Spineur]

Because of all the GMG Janacek afficianados, I got his Glagolitic Mass, in the 1927 original version.   Its a recent release.  It is coupled with the Eternal Gospel.
It is not as charming as the Sinfonietta, but still pretty nice. It does not sound as sacred music to me, but that's OK.  I prefer it to his operas (De la maison des morts, La petite renarde rusée).  Janacek orchestration is wonderful.

[prémont]

The booklet says nothing about this. They sound stereo to me. I've read a siilar complaint about the Suites in some amazon customer review...

You do not recall correctly, because it is the Brandenburg's this reviewer from Amazon.com complains about.

Quote from Amazon.com:

Unfortunately, the Brandenburg appears to be not stereo, but not exactly mono either. I went back to the LP and confirmed that it has nice stereo imaging. But if I look at the CD version in a waveform editor, the left and right channels appear almost, but not quite, identical. If I invert one of the channels and add them together to get the difference between the two channels, the difference is not exactly zero; instead, I hear a reverberant and very scratchy sound. One would expect the difference signal to be high in reverberation, but I can't explain the scratchiness. It sounds like an artifact of some sort. I don't notice the scratchiness when I listen to the overall recording, but, as mentioned, I don't get the stereo imaging either. It's too bad, because the original recording is a real treasure.

[NikF]

Brahms: Violin Sonatas - Suk/Katchen.

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[Que]

Starting my day with a return to this:

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The saced music by Diabolus in Musica.

Q

[Que]

Dufay motets - Huelgas Ensemble, Paul van Nevel

desert island disc

That recording is - inexplicably - still absent on my shelves! 

Q

[Camphy]

Symphony 48 "Maria Theresia"

[NikF]

Brahms: Sextet in B-Flat Major, Op. 18

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I find this a beautifully warm and sensitive performance, but not at the expense of passion - especially in the measured playing by Casals when the spotlight falls on him during the andante.

[Wanderer]

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