What are you listening to now?

[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.

[North Star]

Oscar Peterson
Things Ain't What They Used to Be
Back Home in Indiana
George Gershwin
I Loves You Porgy

Steven Osborne
http://areena.yle.fi/1-3388784

[André]

This is the first time I prefer a JEG version to one of its competitors (make that two: Mackerras and Preston)  . The work is Handel's gigantic Concerto for chorus and the occasional soloist, aka Israel in Egypt.

..........................................................................



Maybe some day the recitant part will be replaced by an instrumental transcription (viola ?). It would be nice to be rid of the hopelessly passé Giraud poems. OTOH it's nice to hear its campy declamation from time to (distant) time. So, there it is, and a good interpretation at that.

I don't like Webern's music. Any of it. Therefore I never lose an occasion to listen to it when it crosses my path (as on this disc).

[André]

EMI's recordings for Karajan in the seventies seem to be the acme of the art of capturing a huge orchestra in transparent, spacious sound. That the Meister was at his most self-indulgent at the time is of course a coincidence, therefore for many these recordings are a curate's egg. To be noted: James Galway's solo flute playing in the first movement. Priceless.

This is one of the best of the lot. Amplitude of sound and conception seem to go hand in hand with immense concentration in execution. Karajan's later DG recording with the WP is slightly more fragile, less certain of its tranquil possession of the musical truth. Many prefer it for its more human conception and less insolent execution.

[Sergeant Rock]

Arnold Symphony No.8, Gamba conducting the BBC Phil




Sarge

[Karl Henning]

I don't like Webern's music. Any of it. Therefore I never lose an occasion to listen to it when it crosses my path (as on this disc).

And on the positive side:  It never lasts terribly long! 

[Karl Henning]

Maybe some day the recitant part will be replaced by an instrumental transcription (viola ?). It would be nice to be rid of the hopelessly passé Giraud poems. OTOH it's nice to hear its campy declamation from time to (distant) time. So, there it is, and a good interpretation at that.

Not surprisingly, much can depend upon the recitrix.  I don't know this Jane Manning/Rattle performance, but Anja Silja is marvelously musical in the Op.21.

[aligreto]

Arvo Part:

De Profundis
Es sang vor langen Jahren
Summa

all from this very fine CD....