What are you listening to now?

[PerfectWagnerite]

Select a work that Kertesz recorded that actually fits in the space. Everyone seems to be thinking about picking up the process after 2 overtures have already been added to the program. Why? Why not, after deciding that Symphonies 4 and 5 go on one disc, and Symphony 6 goes on the second disc, select a work that actually fits in the remaining space?

It's not as if someone was holding a gun to their heads and saying that the fillers absolutely had to include the Carnival overture. Pick something else. Symphonic Variations? Three symphonies and a Symphonic Variations sounds like a pretty darn sensible program to me.

It's pretty clear that most designers of these things simply don't regard Nature, Life and Love as existing. Dvorak obviously contributed to this by having 3 separate opus numbers**, but I just find it frustrating that so many recordings are not giving people an understanding of the interconnected themes across the 3 overtures. And when the liner notes of a recording actually tell you that you're missing one piece of the whole, it's a bit strange.


**It's not completely clear to me how much of this decision was Dvorak's, and how much was Simrock's.

I supposed DECCA could have included Symphonic Variations (23'12") and Scherzo Capriccioso (11'47") or My Home (9:32) and Scherzo Capriccioso.

I wouldn't mind if on the discs you have they nixed Carnival and included Otello instead. Let's face it who needs another Carnival where the music isn't great anyway. Otello is much more rarely performed and recorded and musically moderately more interesting.

[North Star]

From Gerhardt's Youtube channel, solo concert at Wigmore Hall, June 16 2014.

Kodály
Sonata for Cello, Op. 8
Alban Gerhardt
http://youtube.com/v/fP_RnCUlLHg?t=1472

[Karl Henning]

From Gerhardt's Youtube channel, solo concert at Wigmore Hall, June 16 2014.

Kodály
Sonata for Cello, Op. 8
Alban Gerhardt

http://youtube.com/v/fP_RnCUlLHg?t=1472

Thanks! 

[North Star]

I'm uncertain. Which has me guessing, not;  but knowing how distracted I can be, 'tis only a guess!

Thanks! 

Do tell what you think of it, Karl, when you've had time to listen. As far as I know, it's the most important solo cello piece after Bach, and before Britten.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I think one could make the case that, just as during the 1st fugue the motive was presented in diminution and as its rhythm is significantly altered during the 2nd fugue, the episode is presenting it in augmentation. The two approaches also differ in their way of indicating that the section is an interruption and structurally superfluous—eg in the Hagen version the tempo remains psychologically unaltered but the dynamics are extremely restrained; in the Arditti version the slackened tempo has a similar effect of removing it from the main structure. Both of these approaches are effective at gradually ratcheting up the tension as the music persistently fails to leave the neighbourhood of G-flat major and return to the true structure. I find the slower tempo very effective in the return of the episode at bar 493, where the tempo combined with the Ardittis' over-emphatic accents on 1 and 3 of every single bar serves to undermine the key of A-flat major and make it almost painfully dissonant. (I haven't heard the Alexander recording, or for that matter the Yale.)

One can make a case for a lot of things, and I find the Yale's faster tempo also very effective at 493 in conveying those over-emphatic accents at what sounds like a substantially faster pace. But I certainly want to hear the Hagen, which I see coupled with the Schubert C-major Quintet, and the Arditti can be found on YouTube.

I question more your assertion that the Gb major episode is "an interruption and structurally superfluous," presumably because it is not fugal in itself. But Beethoven himself described 133 as a "grande fugue tantôt libre, tantôt recherchée" (sometimes free, sometimes learned), and the episode for me functions as a slow movement within what Beethoven created as a large-scale self-contained work in multiple tempos. (It's for this reason - as having within itself an opening movement, slow movement, and scherzo/finale - that I believe 133 works best as an independent work and B. was right to create the alternate finale that is more proportional to the rest of the quartet.)

[amw]

Dumb concept, but decent Kreisleriana (extrovert, lots of piano colour, a bit overdramatised, unconvincing tempo fluidity; not a must-buy but a maybe-stream).

One can make a case for a lot of things, and I find the Yale's faster tempo also very effective at 493 in conveying those over-emphatic accents at would sounds like a substantially faster pace. But I certainly want to hear the Hagen, which I see coupled with the Schubert C-major Quintet, and the Arditti can be found on YouTube.

That's the 1996 recording, actually, which I haven't got in my collection at the moment (it's on whatever drive I stored my 50 Schubert Quintets for the comparison). The 2002 recording uses the Grosse Fuge as the finale of Op. 130, so I'm not sure how much you'd like it, lol. (I think it is absolutely the best recording of the rest of the quartet as well, and makes the best possible case for the Grosse Fuge as finale, though I otherwise tend to prefer the substitute finale.) http://www.amazon.com/String-Quartet-Op-130-133/dp/B00006ZTCR/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1461245133&sr=8-3&keywords=hagen+quartet+beethoven

I question more your assertion that the Gb major episode is "an interruption and structurally superfluous," presumably because it is not fugal in itself.

It is pretty strictly fugal, actually, but anyway The superfluity is built into the tonal relation (flat submediant) which throughout the quartet has been the key of unreality—everything in the quartet that happens on the flat submediant is never established as a true modulation, generally being reached by stepwise motion, and in character is alien to the rest of the music. (eg the role played by Gb in the first movement or Cb in the fifth) This particular section is completely static—no real development—and always tentative. Essentially, on a structural level, it's a three minute fermata on a Gb major chord, which only shifts in the last four bars to resolve in very straightforward 6/4 - V - I as though it had never existed.

(The role played by Ab major, the key in which it recurs, is more complicated—Ab major could be a true threat to the integrity of Bb major by pushing it towards Eb; so Beethoven is careful to overemphasise Ab every time it appears until this prolonged hammering turns it into a dissonance which needs to be resolved, and again he goes for the simplest way, IV - ii - V - I, again, as though it had never existed. The flat leading tone is not important in any other movements of the quartet, which makes it a real threat to tonal unity at this point but also somewhat unpremeditated; another reason Beethoven wrote the substitute finale.)

the episode for me functions as a slow movement within what Beethoven created as a large-scale self-contained work in multiple tempos. (It's for this reason - as having within itself an opening movement, slow movement, and scherzo/finale - that I believe 133 works best as an independent work and B. was right to create the alternate finale that is more proportional to the rest of the quartet.)

We will have to agree to disagree there! I've never been able to see the Fugue as anything but a unity (in multiple tempos, natch) and don't really buy the "movements" thing.

[(poco) Sforzando]

(why write a long new tempo indication then...?)

Because tempo is not just an indicator of absolute note values, but also of the character of the music. You will sometimes see composers writing Doppio movimento (twice as fast) where they could have simply kept the original tempo and changed the note values. In Mozart's overture to Cosi, you could make a case that the Presto is a doppio movimento to the Andante introduction. (When we first hear the Cosi motif in the intro, it is written in Andante half notes; when it comes back just before the coda, Mozart writes Presto whole notes.) Copland's Appalachian Spring starts in 2/2 at half=66, but when the Shaker hymn first comes in on the clarinet, he writes Doppio movimento and switches to 2/4 at quarter=72.

As for the Beethoven Ninth, you've identified one of the major problem spots caused by the metronome markings (another being the trio to the scherzo). Is the tenor solo to be played at dotted quarter=84 (as in Norrington/LCP), or dotted half=84 (as in Gardiner), or something in between? And however you deal with the tenor solo, what about the fugue just following, which is often wildly speeded up despite no tempo change in the score? But that's a whole other can of worms in itself.

[Karl Henning]

"It's what the music obviously requires" 

[Madiel]

My evening program has consisted of:

Holmboe: To a Dolphin
Stravinsky: Agon
Debussy: Jeux (piano version)
Britten: The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard
Kodaly: Sonata for Solo Cello
Szymanowski: Mythes

[(poco) Sforzando]

It is pretty strictly fugal, actually, but anyway The superfluity is built into the tonal relation (flat submediant) which throughout the quartet has been the key of unreality—everything in the quartet that happens on the flat submediant is never established as a true modulation, generally being reached by stepwise motion, and in character is alien to the rest of the music. (eg the role played by Gb in the first movement or Cb in the fifth) This particular section is completely static—no real development—and always tentative. Essentially, on a structural level, it's a three minute fermata on a Gb major chord, which only shifts in the last four bars to resolve in very straightforward 6/4 - V - I as though it had never existed.

(The role played by Ab major, the key in which it recurs, is more complicated—Ab major could be a true threat to the integrity of Bb major by pushing it towards Eb; so Beethoven is careful to overemphasise Ab every time it appears until this prolonged hammering turns it into a dissonance which needs to be resolved, and again he goes for the simplest way, IV - ii - V - I, again, as though it had never existed. The flat leading tone is not important in any other movements of the quartet, which makes it a real threat to tonal unity at this point but also somewhat unpremeditated; another reason Beethoven wrote the substitute finale.)
We will have to agree to disagree there! I've never been able to see the Fugue as anything but a unity (in multiple tempos, natch) and don't really buy the "movements" thing.

Some of this I don't quite understand ("the key of unreality?"), and some of it I understand well enough to agree or disagree. (But as for your last point, I think it's mainly a semantic distinction.) In the first movement, B. first modulates to the dominant but then approaches the flat submediant via chromatic stepwise motion to its dominant; nonetheless as far as I'm concerned if a new key center is reached, a modulation has taken place, however unusually. As for the Gb section of the fugue, it does have some homophonic areas as well as some fugal ones to be true, but it touches on enough other keys that I can't quite see it as your "3-minute fermata on a Gb chord."

[jlaurson]

Current listens...


Erland von Koch, Symphonies 3 & 4, Impulsi, Nordiskt Capriccio
Per Hammarstöm / Swedish RSO
BIS
German link - UK link

(not an SACD, as the disgruntled Amazon reviewer had to find out the "hard" way.)

[Karl Henning]

(not an SACD, as the disgruntled Amazon reviewer had to find out the "hard" way.)

Crikey, and that drove the one-star rating?

[Brian]

Crikey, and that drove the one-star rating?

I just left a comment on that review, too. What a moron!

[André]

Théodore Gouvy's symphonies 1 and 2


As the numbering implies, these are youthful works written before Bizet's C Major or Gounod's symphonies. Whoever likes these composers' symphonic oeuvres will find a lot to like here. Beautiful production from the CPO label. The other symphoies are included in this 4cd set. Gorgeous, uncomplicted life-affirming works.

[Brian]

Igor Levit plays Beethoven's First Concerto.

[Todd]

[aligreto]

Indeed. A lovely work. Check out Larsson's Lyric Fantasy and Winter's Tale as well (if you haven't already).

Thank you for that. This is the only work that I have by Larsson so I will indeed check out your recommendations 

[Brian]

Trying out this Bruce recommendation & recent John purchase:



Starting with Enchantements oubliés. I am really, really liking this! It reminds me of Vasks or Rautavaara, in terms of the openness of the scoring (strings, celesta, harp, percussion), with a lyricism of Chen's own. The composer, BTW, was Messiaen's last student, from 1984-88, although this particular composition seems more old-fashioned than much of Messiaen's orchestral work.

Worth noting how real Chinese or Taiwanese composers sound less "exotic" than western composers' attempts to write "Chinese" music. Because they're not faking it.

[Mandryka]

https://www.youtube.com/v/duUYAIXqmf8

Pierre Attaignant, extraits du Kyrie de la messe Cunctipotens on  Scherrer/ Embrun. I think it's very good. It sounds like something a generation after by Titelouze.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

What a moron!

I think you mean - in keeping with your avatar - "what a moroon".