What are you listening to now?

[Mandryka]

Rerun:

[asin]B00BUT59WE[/asin]

Tremendously. 

Q

I was surprised by the hesitations, rubato, changes in touch and changes in tempo.

[Mandryka]

They go right past Peres, judging by the samples:

http://www.glossamusic.com/glossa/reference.aspx?id=403

Schmelzer commented somewhere that he was pleased to have found very low and very high voices, and this inspired him to work on the mass. They'd dropped that Byzantine sound for their Binchois and Honnecourt. I get the feeling that Graindelavoix is a very changeable ensemble, just like Ensemble Organum in fact.

I've not heard the recording, by the way, or the sample. I hope he's produced a nice juicy essay for the booklet explaining some of his decisions.

[Que]

I was surprised by the hesitations, rubato, changes in touch and changes in tempo.

True, but no objections on this side.

Now:

[asin]B001P4KG1S[/asin]
On rehearing, perfpmances are sophisticated and elegantly done. I do wonder however, if this music wouldn't have benefited from stronger, more involved interpretations. Another angle I note on reviews is that most of these trios are not amongst Haydn's strongest output (but some are), due to the fact that they were written for amateur use by Haydn's employer, prince Esterhazy...
I think both is true.

For those reasons this is a set that almost anyone will enjoy but nobody really needs, except for devoted Haydn lovers.

Q

[prémont]

New acquisition. Muffat's music is not well served on this CD. I rather expected a bit more as what came out of my speakers.


http://walboi.blogspot.nl/2016/04/muffat-georg-1653-1704-selections-from.html?spref=tw

Completely agreed. I have always found Radulescu's playing dull (I also own his other Muffat CD and Bach's CÛ III), so even if I am an ultra completist in these matters, I have passed his Bach integral (which by the way is difficult to get hold of) by.
Radulescu's force is as an organ teacher.

[prémont]

I was surprised by the hesitations, rubato, changes in touch and changes in tempo.

Do you think I is too much?

[Karl Henning]

Probably fair.  But a larger population of devoted Haydn lovers is also called for 

[prémont]

Schmelzer commented somewhere that he was pleased to have found very low and very high voices, and this inspired him to work on the mass. They'd dropped that Byzantine sound for their Binchois and Honnecourt. I get the feeling that Graindelavoix is a very changeable ensemble, just like Ensemble Organum in fact.

Having heard the Machaut clip (Agnus Dei) I would be inclined to think of this as a blatant travesty of the recording by Ensemble Organum. Never-the-less I have ordered the CD.

[Mandryka]

Do you think I is too much?

I couldn't figure out the point of it. It seemed a bit random  and not really very expressive.  I've only listened once.

[Madiel]

Chopin
Mazurkas, op.56
Ashkenazy

[Florestan]

CD 3

Even if the infamous Chorale of St. Anthony is spurious, it is still great stuff (the whole divertimento, actually). 



No. 33



No. 59



Genial, relaxed and wonderful music.

[prémont]

I couldn't figure out the point of it. It seemed a bit random  and not really very expressive.  I've only listened once.

Thanks. I think I shall pass it by.

[aligreto]

[asin]B001P4KG1S[/asin]
On rehearing, perfpmances are sophisticated and elegantly done. I do wonder however, if this music wouldn't have benefited from stronger, more involved interpretations. Another angle I note on reviews is that most of these trios are not amongst Haydn's strongest output (but some are), due to the fact that they were written for amateur use by Haydn's employer, prince Esterhazy...
I think both is true.

For those reasons this is a set that almost anyone will enjoy but nobody really needs, except for devoted Haydn lovers.

Q

Interestingly, my wife, who rarely comments on the music being played on the system, likes it when she hears extracts being played from that set.

[aligreto]

Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 1 Op. 5 No. 1....





Really enjoyed that performance. If the rest of the set is of equal quality I will be very pleased with this recent purchase.

[Que]

Interestingly, my wife, who rarely comments on the music being played on the system, likes it when she hears extracts being played from that set.

Not surprising, the baryton is a lovely instrument with a beautiful sound!  And who wouldn't like anything written by Haydn? 

Q

[NikF]

Mendelssohn: 6 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 35 - Benjamin Frith

[asin]B00000140U[/asin]

[Mandryka]

Having heard the Machaut clip (Agnus Dei) I would be inclined to think of this as a blatant travesty of the recording by Ensemble Organum. Never-the-less I have ordered the CD.

I can't make out whether Schmelzer is a genius or a fraud, maybe both. I've been listening to music by Alexander Agricola on their CD called Cecus, and I think it's really beautiful! So I then find this on their website, an interview where there's a discussion of blindness, and I really don't understand! But I suspect the failing is mine, and I find his teases, suggestions of ideas rather than ideas, both annoying and stimulating at the same time.

http://www.glossamusic.com/glossa/context.aspx?Id=54

What would loss or absence of sight have implied in late medieval times? How would this have applied to music?

If I am right in my thinking Alexander Agricola was one of the first who invented new values for the writing and performing of polyphony, affirming the possibilities of a 'musical blindness', rather than following the common critical social rejection of blindness (which were fundamentally considered as a deprivation of sight). Notation and reading/performing the notation is one issue. Another is to create a tactile relationship with it: to give it a palpability which goes beyond the mere interpretation of visible signs. In this sense I try to represent Agricola's position in our own practice.

What he's getting at is especially "deep" because it's not interpreting music written by a blind man which he's talking about, it's more like a claim that Agricola was exploring the spiritual implications of blindness, and its relation to memory

Although Agricola was probably not physically blind, he had a strong fascination for the consequences of blindness and moreover, its conditions and potentialities, marking a very strong aesthetical and social limit of the performers of that time. But memory, so important for blind performers is also a key-word of the polyphonic repertoire in general, focusing essentially on the commemorative and the memorial

There's a bit of a synergy here for me because I've been thinking recently about some novels by Tahar Ben Jalloun where he explores blindness and handicap.


By the way he talks about a public exchange of letters with Sigiswald Kuijken, and there's a link to them which, unfortunately is now dead. Does anyone know how I can get hold of the letters, apart from writing to the correspondents?

W G Sebald is also a new name for me - something to explore there too.

I remember Thomas Baeté, one of our viol/fiddle-players, comparing a Graindelavoix project to a novel by the German writer WG Sebald, trying to reinvent history and events on the basis of remnants and ambiguous traces, creating a world of images and sounds which is very hard to point at in time...

[Que]

. [asin]B000XQ9IZO[/asin]
Amazing.....

Q

[jlaurson]

Current #morninglistening...


W.G. Mozart, Arias
Gerhahrer / Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
Sony
German link - UK link


Current #morninglistening...


Ludwig v. Beethoven, op.18
Cypress String Quartet
Avie
German link - UK link

[Drasko]

https://www.youtube.com/v/HYISGZhHtWo https://www.youtube.com/v/rOjdHz5m-hE
https://www.youtube.com/v/W-E7ts-W4UM

Brahms - Violin Concerto
Hermann Krebbers, violin
Concertgebouw Orchestra
Willem Mengelberg, conductor
Amsterdam 15.IV.1943

[jlaurson]

Current #morninglistening...


L.v. Beethoven, Symphony No.2
Vienna Symphony Orchestra / H.d.Roos
Gramola
German link - UK link
1. 16:20 | Adagio molto - Allegro con brio:
2. 15:18 | Larghetto
3. 05:33 | Scherzo (Allegro)
4. 09:12 | Allegro molto

The tempos and timing of this release are what makes it special. In a way it's the sound to go along with his book on Beethoven... which is wacky and wildly entertaining and incredible at times... and all kinds of other things.