What are you listening to now?

[San Antone]

A really wonderful work by Debussy

[asin]B0000027WZ[/asin]
Michael Tilson Thomas provides us with a very good recording.  Complete; not the truncated version so often found; and the singers good.  Not much competition in this field; I would love to find a really top notch all-French recording.

[SonicMan46]

Well, Que seems to be listening to the box set below often, so I thought that a couple days w/ these superb recordings would be relaxing - Dave

[North Star]

It had been a while . . . just now I listened again to Out in the Sun.  I think it may be a keeper.

Time for me to revisit as well.

It certainly is, Karl. One of my favorite works from your pen.

Hear, hear.

[listener]

Harry SOMERS: Sonata for Violin and Piano no.1    Murray ADASKIN: Canzona and Rondo...
Marta Hidy. violin     Chester Duncan, piano
folk song arrangements by Benjamin BRITTEN
Peter Pears, with Britten on piano
and SCHUBERT: Schwanengesang
Hermann Prey, Walter Klein

[RebLem]

Since my last report, I have been listening to the following:

Naxos CD--Three works by Michael Daugherty (b. 1954)--Pacific Symphony, Pacific Chorale*, Paul Jacobs, organ+, Carl St. Clair, cond.  All these performances are World Premiere Recordings.  Recorded @ the Renee & Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Costa Mesa, CA, 4-6 February 2010 (tr. 1-4), & 23-25 February 2012 (tr. 5-10)

Mount Rushmore, a Dramatic Oratorio for Orchestra & Chorus* (2010) (31'48"):   Tr. 1.....George Washington (4'04")   |   Tr. 2.....Thomas Jefferson (6'17")   |   Tr. 3.....Theodore Roosevelt (7'51")   |   Tr. 4.....Abraham Lincoln (13'36")

Radio City: Symphonic Fantasy on Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra for Orchestra (2010) (25'36")--Tr. 5.....O Brave New World (7'28")   |   Tr. 6.....Ode to the Old World (12'18")   |   Tr. 7.....On the Air (5'50")

The Gospel According to Sister Aimee for Organ, Brass, & Percussion (2012)+ (20'29")--Tr. 8.....Knock Out the Devil! (7'30")   |   Tr. 9.....An Evangelist  Drowns/Desert Dance (4'57")   |   Tr. 10....To the Promised Land (8'02")

The Mount Rushmore oratorio seems like an OK, but not too inspirational work, until you come to the longest movement, the one on Lincoln, which is set to the sung text of the Gettysburg Address.  This is a very emotional movement, and the relevance of it to us today is obvious.  When you think of Ferguson, Eric Garner, and Amadou Diallo and all the others, and you listen to the text being sung, "It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion...."  The task Lincoln set for us is still not completed, more that 151 years after he spoke those words.  If we are to have the "new birth of freedom" which Lincoln called for, we must overthrow the dictatorship of the police, who now get to do absolutely anything they want, including the most wanton of murders, with impunity nearly everywhere in our beknighted land.

Radio City is pleasant enough, but it is purely instrumental.  It has nothing like the impact of Mount Rushmore, and none of the movements contains references to their subjects which I recognized as quotations or references from or to other works.

The Gospel According to Sister Aimee is definitely a sonic spectacular, good for taking to your audio dealer for auditioning new equipment.  And it does have some emotional impact, too, if you are familiar with the story of Aimee Semple McPherson.  She was a controversial figure, but this seems to be a largely sympathetic portrait of her.

From a 6 CD set from Warner Classics, licensed from EMI, of Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra (4 & 7), New Philharmonia Orch. (all save 4 & 7) performing the Bruckner Symphonies 4-9, all recorded in Kingsway Hall, London.

CD 1--Tr. 1-4 of 4....Sym. 4 in E Flat Major "Romantic" (1886 vers., ed. Nowak) (61'01")--rec. 18-20 & 24-26 September 1963.

Otto Klemperer was a towering figure in the history of music in the 20th century.  Among people who know music well, he is, I suspect, on more "Top 10 conductors" lists than all but a few others.  He began as a student of Gustav Mahler, and was known in his early career, say from 1907, when Mahler's recommendation help him secure an appointment as a conductor at the German National Theater on Prague.  After having served in a number of positions in various cities, he finally landed the top conducting job in 1927 at the Kroll Opera in Berlin, an avant-garde theater which mostly promoted living, active composers.  In 1933, after Hitler came to power, he was fired, mostly because he was a Jew, but also because he was an advocate of what the Nazis considered "decadent" art.  He didn't take it lying down; he sued in a German labor court, but, of course, lost the case.  People who wonder why so few Jews seemed to have fought back at the Nazis need to remember this.  This case was well known in Germany, and it served as an object lesson for anyone who might be thinking of publicly opposing the regime.  In any event, he was able to emigrate to the United States that same year, and became the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

One of my acquaintances in the late 1960s and through the 1970's was a member of the second violin section of the Chicago Symphony.  He was a bitter and aging Marxist, but he had played under Klemperer in LA., and greatly admired him.  He told me that one weekend, Klemperer had gone to a jazz club in Watts to hear some music, and upon leaving, was accosted by a gang of youth, robbed, and beaten so severely he had to spend about a week in the hospital.  During his stay, a string quartet from the orchestra came, with their instruments, to play a Beethoven string quartet for Klemperer.  At the conclusion, they asked Klemperer what he thought of their performance, expecting a perfunctory response.  "Hand me the score," Klemperer said.  The score securely in hand, Klemperer went over it bar by bar, critiquing the performance for a full hour.

From Wikipedia:

Then, after completing the 1939 Los Angeles Philharmonic summer season at the Hollywood Bowl, Klemperer was visiting Boston and was diagnosed with a brain tumor; the subsequent brain surgery to remove "a tumor the size of a small orange" left him partially paralyzed. He went into a depressive state and was placed in an institution; when he escaped, the New York Times ran a cover story declaring him missing, and after being found in New Jersey, a picture of him behind bars was printed in the Herald Tribune....  Furthermore, his erratic behavior during manic episodes made him an undesirable guest to US orchestras, and the late flowering of his career centered in other countries.

After WWII, Klemperer returned to Europe; he secured a job in Budapest in `947, but increasing interference with his work based on Communist ideology irritated him, and he left in 1950, and he lived on guest conducting engagements. 

From Wikipedia:

In the early 1950s Klemperer experienced difficulties arising from his U.S. citizenship. American union policies made it difficult for him to record in Europe, while his left-wing views made him increasingly unpopular with the State Department and FBI:  in 1952 the United States refused to renew his passport. In 1954 Klemperer again returned to Europe, and acquired a German passport.

His career was turned around in 1954 by the London-based producer Walter Legge, who recorded Klemperer in Beethoven, Brahms and much else with his hand-picked orchestra, the Philharmonia, for the EMI label. He became the first principal conductor of the Philharmonia in 1959. He settled in Switzerland. Klemperer also worked at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, sometimes stage-directing as well as conducting, as in a 1963 production of Richard Wagner's Lohengrin.

A severe fall during a visit to Montreal in 1951 forced Klemperer subsequently to conduct seated in a chair. A severe burning accident further paralyzed him, which resulted from his smoking in bed and trying to douse the flames with the contents of a bottle of spirits of camphor nearby. Through Klemperer's problems with his health, the tireless and unwavering support and assistance of Klemperer's daughter Lotte was crucial to his success.

One of his last concert tours was to Jerusalem, a couple of years after the Six-Day War, at which time he was awarded an Israeli honorary passport.  Klemperer had performed in Palestine before the state of Israel declared its independence, and returned to Jerusalem only in 1970 to conduct the Israeli Broadcasting Authority Symphonic Orchestra in two concerts, performing the six Brandenburg Concerti of Bach, and Mozart's symphonies 39, 40 and 41. During this tour he took Israeli citizenship. He retired from conducting in 1971.

Klemperer died in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1973, aged 88, and was buried in Zürich's Israelitischer Friedhof-Oberer Friesenberg. In his later years, he had become increasingly worried about the influence of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel, and about Israel's foreign policies.

The relationship between Walter Legge and EMI was a stormy one, but he had several things going for him: he had founded the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1945, he had a solid relationship up until the 1960'w, with Otto Klemperer, and in 1953, he married the great German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, another major asset fo EMI.  [Klemperer recorded the Mahler 4th with her, among other works.] In 1964, it all came to a head.  EMI was dissatisfied with Legge's independence and his insistence that he have complete freedom of choice as to what to record, and Legge was unhappy about what he felt were declining standards in the orchestra.  So, he fired all of the musicians in the orchestra, disbanding it.  The musicians, however, refused to be disbanded, and reorganized themselves as a self-governing orchestra, assuming the name New Philharmonia Orchestra, and hired Klemperer, who had supported them throughout, as thier music director.  EMI continued to record the orchestra under Klemperer's direction, and in 1975, they acquired the rights to the name "Philharmonia Orchestra," and dropped the word "New" from the name.

The present recording of the Bruckner Fourth is one of the legendary glories of the catalogue.  It does, perhaps, have a few equals, but definitely no superiors.  This performance is a granitic, monumental performance.

2 CD Decca set of the J.S. Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin performed by Arthur Grumiaux, recorded in Berlin in 1960-1.

CD 1--Tr. 1-4......Sonata 1 in C Minor, S. 1001 (13'45")   |   Tr. 5-12.....Partita 1 in B Minor, S. 1002 (19'37")   |   Tr. 13-16.....Sonata 2 in A Minor, S. 1003 (18'44")

CD 2--Tr. 1-5.....Partita 2 in D Minor, S. 1004 (24'32")   |   Tr. 6-9.....Sonata 3 in C Major, S. 1005 (20'21")   |   Tr. 10-15.....Partita 3 in E Major, S. 1006 (14"37")

Grumiaux's performances of these works are masterful, among the greatest.  Unfortunately, the violin is recorded much too closely, and sounds harsh in places, and the CDs are plagued with zilching.[/b]

[Mirror Image]

Now:



Listening to Diversions. Really outstanding work and performance.

[Karl Henning]

Time for me to revisit as well.

Hear, hear.

Thank you, too.

[San Antone]

Op. 9 from this set of the complete Durufle choral works

[asin]B000AV622Y[/asin]

[North Star]

Now:

Listening to Diversions. Really outstanding work and performance.

Ditto, Peter Donohoe's recording with Rattle & CBSO

[Karl Henning]

Op. 9 from this set of the complete Durufle choral works

[asin]B000AV622Y[/asin]

A frank (and partly rhetorical) parenthesis . . . but given the various scorings of the Op.9, is an album with just one version the "complete choral works"?

[Karl Henning]

Ditto, Peter Donohoe's recording with Rattle & CBSO

Fun piece, and a wonderful performance!

[North Star]

Fun piece, and a wonderful performance!

Yes indeed!

[San Antone]

A frank (and partly rhetorical) parenthesis . . . but given the various scorings of the Op.9, is an album with just one version the "complete choral works"?

Just one iteration of each. 

[Mirror Image]

Before:



Listened to Jeu de cartes.

Now:



Listening to The Fairy's Kiss.

[North Star]

First-listen fTuesdays
https://www.youtube.com/v/9VjVvBbVTP4

[Harry]

Some beauty in the form of this fine Dutch composer.

http://walboi.blogspot.nl/2015/03/from-my-collection-mann-gottfried.html?spref=tw

[Drasko]

.[asin]B0007DBXJM[/asin]

[Mirror Image]

Now:



Listening to Four Last Songs. A magnificent work and performance.

[Harry]

Composers that do not come by very often, but are worth your attention

http://walboi.blogspot.nl/2015/03/from-my-collection-bate-stanley-and.html?spref=tw

[San Antone]

First-listen fTuesdays
https://www.youtube.com/v/9VjVvBbVTP4

I'd be interested in your thoughts.  Basinski likes to take a few elements, could be a few notes or chords, and permute and rotate them.  Nocturnes is somewhat "busy" for him.