What are you listening 2 now?

[Bachtoven]

Great playing and sound.

[Harry]

Great playing and sound.

Apart from being a beautiful woman, she is one of my favourite violinists in much of the repertoire I love.

[Irons]

Delius: Violin Concerto.

A strange piece that along with his string quartet the Delius works I listen most although neither typical.

[ritter]

First listen to this new arrival. 

Othmar Schoeck: Das holde Bescheiden, op. 62 (18 songs to poems by Mörike). Lynne Dawson (sop.), Ian Bolstridge (ten.), Julius Drake (pf.).

CD 11 of this set:

[Que]

Nice. Their style is well suited for this repertoire. Although I found the other recording with continental repertoire also pretty good.
At the heart of this recording are the surviving parts of Thomas Tallis' Christmas mass Puer natus est nobis.

[AnotherSpin]

[Traverso]

Sweelinck

CD 1 keyboard works 1

Winsemius-van Doeselaar & Harald Vogel


Schwalbennest-Orgel in St. Marien (Lemgo)



Orgel der Uttumer Kirche

[vandermolen]

Haitink's 4th is excellently shaped. I'm surprised he doesn't rein in the brass and timpani from what the players clearly see as a field day, with overloud climaxes from the brass and exciting but unsubtle hammering from the timpanist. The sound is early digital and the WP seem to have been recorded rather closely. A degree of saturation and tubbiness have crept in.



Surptisingly, the much younger Nézet-Séguin is guilty of the exact opposite, a diffidence that is accentuated by a slightly backward placing of the brass and timpani. Again, the work is very well conceived, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. Slightly brash and unsubtle in Vienna, confident but insufficiently assertive in Montreal.



First hearing ever. I've been smiten by the other Marco Polo disc of Devreese works (the ballet Tombelène and the violin concerto no 1 especially). This time around I'll clearly need a couple more hearings to grasp the work's vocabulary correctly. Devreeses' language here seems much more direct than in the ballet and concerto but curiously the discourse seems harder to understand.

In Memoriam is a very fine work IMO.

[Traverso]

Purcell

CD 8

[AnotherSpin]

[Brian]

Haydn Symphonies 55 and 56
from the L'Estro Armonico / Solomons box

[Spotted Horses]

Hindemith, Clarinet Quintet, Prazak Quartet, Severe,



Wonderful work. The slow movement stands out, a quiet fugal opening which builds to an impressive climax before returning to a mood of repose. Also a Landler that would make Mahler blush.

Beware of a corrupt version for streaming or download. When I first tried to listen to it the slow movement cut off in mid phrase. I later noticed that there are two versions of this release floating around, one in which he slow movement is about 3 minutes, the other in which it is about 6 minutes. This applies to Apple Music and Qobuz.

[Vox Maris]

Not much time for music this morning, but now playing:

Schreker
Vorspiel zu einem Drama
Bochumer Symphoniker
Steven Sloane



I own several other performances of this work on CD and none of them are less than very good. Such a gorgeous work that is difficult to ruin.

[Bachtoven]

Apart from being a beautiful woman, she is one of my favourite violinists in much of the repertoire I love.

Indeed. She often performs with the Baroque Orchestra at the high school where I used to teach. When she first heard about it, they were the only period instrument high school orchestra in the US. There are still only a handful. She also coaches them on Baroque performance practices. The students seem to love working with her.

[Traverso]

Stravinsky

Jeu de Cartes
Orpheus
Agon

Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin

Vladimir Ashkenazy

[Bachtoven]

[AnotherSpin]

Max Reger

String Quartet No. 5, Op. 121
Clarinet Quintet, Op.146

Schoenberg Quartet

[Linz]

Ralph von Williams The Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, Thomas Stoddart, Edward Hughes, Angus McPhee, Eloise Irving, Katy Hill, Timothy Murphy

[Brian]

Man, I really, really like Stenhammar's Quartet No. 5 "Serenade." 20 minutes of nonstop action!

[Bachtoven]

Being a virtuoso guitarist himself, Porqueddu certainly knows how to write for and exploit the possibilities of the guitar.