Top 10 Favorite Tone Poems

[Mirror Image]

Martinů: Les fresques de Piero della Francesca

Pounds the table! A fine work indeed and apart of a trilogy along with Parables and Estampes (his last orchestral work).

[kyjo]

One per composer and in no particular order:

Scriabin: Promethée, le poème du feu
R. Strauss: Don Quixote
Rimsky-Korsakov: Shéhérazade
Respighi: Feste romane
Sibelius: The Wood-Nymph
Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau
Debussy: La mer
Janáček: Taras Bulba
Martinů: Les fresques de Piero della Francesca
Mussorgsky: Night on Bald Mountain (original version)

Table-pounding list! All works which I adore except for the Strauss.

[Mirror Image]

Table-pounding list! All works which I adore except for the Strauss.

Yeah, like most Strauss, it's superficial junk.

[kyjo]

Yeah, like most Strauss, it's superficial junk.

I will protect you should you receive a shelling from the Strauss fans!

[Mirror Image]

I will protect you should you receive a shelling from the Strauss fans!

Bring it on!

[Cato]

Using stream of consciousness...

First thing which came to mind: Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande.

Then: Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead.

And then: Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini.

Followed by: Scriabin's Prefatory Action/Universe (One movement, not the 2-CD version).

After that: Smetana's Moldau and Rachmaninov's Prince Rostislav

Finally: Gershwin's An American in Paris, Julian Carrillo's Christopher Columbus, Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, Liszt's Les Preludes.

[TheGSMoeller]

Any and all tone poems by GMG's favorite, Richard Strauss 

and then add Rachmaninov: Isle of the Dead

[Sergeant Rock]

Yeah, like most Strauss, it's superficial junk.

Any and all tone poems by GMG's favorite, Richard Strauss 

Touché! Thank you, Monkey Greg 

Sarge

[kyjo]

Julian Carrillo's Christopher Columbus

Where is this work available? I've heard of Carrillo, but I've never heard any of his music.

[Cato]

Where is this work available? I've heard of Carrillo, but I've never heard any of his music.

Ask and ye shall receive!  YouTube is amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/v/lOihGnn6HoE

[kyjo]

Ask and ye shall receive!  YouTube is amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/v/lOihGnn6HoE

Thanks very much, Cato! Yes, YouTube is amazing!

[vandermolen]

I should have included Sir John Blackwood McEwen's valedictory 'Where the Wild Thyme Blows' an intensely moving Siberian work from 1936 (on a very good Chandos disc of McEwen's music, containing the fine 'Solway Symphony'.

[Christo]

an intensely moving Siberian work

Wilde thyme in Siberia? Or should we think of Sibelius? 

[vandermolen]

Wilde thyme in Siberia? Or should we think of Sibelius? 

Excellent point! My school have kindly furnished me with an 'iPad' which has a mind of its own and decides independently what word to use, regardless of what I actually type.  It is rather like 'HAL' in the film 2001 A Space Odyssey. Yes, I meant 'sibelian'. 

PS I am listening to Miaskovsky Symphony 8, the slow movement of which I once saw described as a kind of 'Delius of the Steppes' so these unlikely juxtapositions are possible!

[The new erato]

Ask and ye shall receive!  YouTube is amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/v/lOihGnn6HoE

I associate Colon more with a kind of postludio....

[vandermolen]

I should not have left out the magnificent 'Nadir' by Philip Sainton. It quotes from Lao Tze on the title page and was written after Sainton witnessed the death of a child in a bombing raid on Bristol during World War Two. I cannot recommend this moving and defiant work strongly enough. The booklet note rightly associates the sound world with the Vaughan Williams of Symphony 4, but also there are associations with Novak and Suk. Just before it was premiered in 1949, Barbirolli's wrote to Sainton: We ran through Nadir...it sounded really splendid and very moving in its tragic intensity... If you like it try Sainton's Baxian 'The Island' on the same excellent Chandos double album (with another great work 'The Trees so High' by Patrick Hadley) - one of my very favourite albums. After the despairing central section of 'Nadir' Sainton quotes from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with much the same effect as Martinu does at the end of his 'Memorial to Lidice' or Shostakovich does at the end of the 'Leningrad Symphony'.

Another major omission is Erik Chisholm's 'Pictures from Dante'.

[Christo]

Excellent point! My school have kindly furnished me with an 'iPad' which has a mind of its own and decides independently what word to use, regardless of what I actually type.  It is rather like 'HAL' in the film 2001 A Space Odyssey. Yes, I meant 'sibelian'. 

PS I am listening to Miaskovsky Symphony 8, the slow movement of which I once saw described as a kind of 'Delius of the Steppes' so these unlikely juxtapositions are possible!

The autocorrection of my iPad does the same trick, but insists of turning them into Dutch. With some rather embarrassing results, given the many false relations between the two Germanic languages. 

Both Delius and Sibelius leave me Siberian though. 

[The new erato]

I should not have left out the magnificent 'Nadir' by Philip Sainton. It quotes from Lao Tze on the title page and was written after Sainton witnessed the death of a child in a bombing raid on Bristol during World War Two. I cannot recommend this moving and defiant work strongly enough. The booklet note rightly associates the sound world with the Vaughan Williams of Symphony 4, but also there are associations with Novak and Suk. Just before it was premiered in 1949, Barbirolli's wrote to Sainton: We ran through Nadir...it sounded really splendid and very moving in its tragic intensity... If you like it try Sainton's Baxian 'The Island' on the same excellent Chandos double album (with another great work 'The Trees so High' by Patrick Hadley) - one of my very favourite albums. After the despairing central section of 'Nadir' Sainton quotes from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with much the same effect as Martinu does at the end of his 'Memorial to Lidice' or Shostakovich does at the end of the 'Leningrad Symphony'.

Another major omission is Erik Chisholm's 'Pictures from Dante'.

The Sainton/Hadley double is extremely cheap on presto now, so I ordered it. And the Chisholm is a very fine work; I have the Dutton.

[kyjo]

Definitely agree with Jeffrey about the beauty and power of the Sainton, Hadley and Chisholm works. BTW I'm really tempted to start another top 10 thread, but I'm trying to constrain myself.......

[North Star]

There will soon be a 'Top 10 kyjo Top 10s' thread...