What are you listening 2 now?

[steve ridgway]

Stravinsky - Ebony Concerto

I'm finding much of Stravinsky's work to my taste now .

[Que]

On disc 1: masses by Lupus Hellinck and Pierre de Manchicourt and a few motets by Johannes Flamingus and Franciscus Mergot de Novo Portu.

[Harry]

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704)
Fidicinium Sacro-Profanum.
XII Sonatas for 2 violins, 2 violas & basso continuo Nuremberg 1683.
tam Choro, quam Foro, Pluribus Fidibus concinnatum et concini aptum, also ,,Geistlich-weltliches Saitenspiel, für Kirche wie Marktplatz, für mehrere Streichinstrumente kunstgerecht komponiertund für das gemeinsame Spiel geeignet".
Harmonie Universelle, Florian Deuter & Mónica Waisman.
Recorded: 2018, Kirche St. Leodegar, Niederehe (Germany)

I greatly appreciate this ensemble to start with. In Biber's collection "Fidicinium Sacro-Profanum" (1683) for four-to five-part string ensemble, despite numerous beautifully cantabile sections, the listening experience is repeatedly marred by the far too rapid, sometimes downright 'brutal outbursts in the continuo, thus destroying the sonata structure and blowing it to smithereens. Maybe Deuter"s former teacher "Reinhart Goebel" was too much of an influence, for he tops him in speed among other things that are not that positive,  Added to this is the sometimes washed-out spatial sound and a garishly used historical church organ from the Bach era and not the Truhe chest organ that is common today, which would have adequately supported the string character. The tempo is also quite over-the-top and unbalanced, with only sharp and rushed string sounds. In general the harsh and sharp sound of the Violins, plus a ridiculous large organ as continuo makes this  interpretation a bad choice. But this happens if ones checks out other recordings of this renown ensemble, it is likely that one can be disappointed. And I am!

[Traverso]

Haydn

 sonata in C minor No.20
 sonata in E flat  No.49

[Harry]

Pieter Hellendaal (1721–1799)
Cambridge" Sonatas.
World premiere recording.
See for more details back cover.
Recorded: Südwestrundfunk, 2018-2019, SWR Studio Kaiserslautern, Germany.
Cover: Engraving (c. 1767) attributed to Sir Abraham Hume.

Unknown repertoire, which is always a pleasant discovery. Hellendaal, is not a minor composer, and the Cambridge sonatas are ample proof of his art and skill as a composer. He is little recorded as it is so the interpretation is doubly welcome. Johannes Pramsohler is a well respected violinist in my book, so I expected no less as a thoroughly researched and executed recording, which is what I got. Very invigorating and pleasant music, well chosen tempi, and a balanced sound. This ensemble connects in a musical sense, and that is what this is all about. Projecting the music can only be done where there is synergy between musicians.

[Iota]

In Memoriam

Haydn Piano Sonata No.59, Hob XVI 49 in E flat
Alfred Brendel (piano)

Exquisite.

[Que]

But this happens if ones checks out other recordings of this renown ensemble, it is likely that one can be disappointed. And I am!

What would be you pick? 

Ars Antiqua Austria/Letzbor (Challenge)
Der Musikalische Garten (Coviello)
Purcell Quartet (Chandos)
Les Plaisirs du Parnasse/Plantier (Zig-Zag)
Clemencic Consort (Accord)

[Que]

Thread duty:

[Irons]

From Liszt to Bach - no problem.

[Florestan]

In memoriam.



Going through the whole thing in the next days and nights.

[pjme]

[Traverso]

The Art of Julian Bream

[Harry]

What would be you pick? 

Ars Antiqua Austria/Letzbor (Challenge)
Der Musikalische Garten (Coviello)
Purcell Quartet (Chandos)
Les Plaisirs du Parnasse/Plantier (Zig-Zag)
Clemencic Consort (Accord)

The ZIG-ZAG recording is quite good, but if I had to choose I would go first to Clemencic and on an equal footing Les Plaisirs.

[Traverso]

Lute Music from the royal Courts

A relisten....

[VonStupp]

This is a fun piece. What is the text from?
VS

[Karl Henning]

This is a fun piece. What is the text from?
VS

An old friend of mine has a daughter, back when said daughter was eight years old, one evening she did not wish to be sent to bed. Mara shared this text as her daughter's expression of protest. 

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

NP: Reich Jacob's Ladder



About Reich's Jacob's Ladder

The entire text for Jacob's Ladder is Genesis 28:12:

Va yachalohm
Va heenay, sulahm
mutzav artzah
Va rosho mahgeeah
ha shamymah
Va heenay, malachay
Elokim ohlim v'yordim bo

And he dreamed,
And behold, a
ladder set up
on the Earth
and its top reached
heaven
and behold, messengers
of God ascending and
descending on it.

Jacob's Ladder cries out for commentary. The imagery is compelling yet wide open. William Blake drew it as a winding staircase; you can see ladders all over Bruegel's "Tower of Babel." There are mysterious ladders in late Phillip Guston paintings. There are all kinds of interpretations of ladders. Powerful images originate from everyday objects and radiate out to infinity.

When I first approached writing the piece, it seemed that the most obvious musical analogue to a ladder was a scale. (Incidentally, the word 'Sulahm' in Hebrew is used for both 'ladder' and 'scale.') What followed was a lot of wasted time trying to rewrite Hanon and other exercise books. I finally realized, any melodic movement—up, down, or held—can find its analogy on a ladder. Sometimes one only goes up a few rungs to reach something and then descends, or perhaps climbs higher, pauses, and then descends pausing at each rung on the way down. That got me out of the trap of thinking only in terms of scales, and into a frame of mind where everything I composed was totally intuitive, yet still a connection between heaven and earth.

There are four short sections—exposition, if you like—on each of the four lines of text I mentioned and then four longer sections elaborating on and developing those first four. What's particularly interesting to me in these much longer sections is that they are mostly instrumental music. The instrumental music interprets the movement of messenger/angels going up, down, or pausing on a ladder (or ladders) between heaven and earth; a musical interpretation without words. Probably as a result of thinking of the 'notes as messengers,' I ended up with a little more than half the music purely instrumental. The voices return at length, however, in the final section. The constant 16th-note pulse slows to eighths and finally to quarters as the voices and instruments broaden out to a still, held point at the end.

—Steve Reich, 2023

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

NP: Ravel Ma mère l'oye

[ritter]

First listen to this recent purchase. Sylvano Bussotti: Pièces de chair II. E-MEX Ensemble, Monica Benvenuti (sop.), Renatus Mészár (bass-baritone), Martin von der Heydt (pf.), Christoph Maria Wagner (pf. and cond.).



This is supposed to be Bussotti's first major work. Its world premiere in Darmstadt in 1959 (with David Tudor at the piano) was only fragmentary, because the director of the Summer Courses, Wolfgang Steinecke, intervened, saying the notation style was too "hermetic" (probably a euphemism for "too wacky"  ).

[JBS]

First listen to this recent purchase. Sylvano Bussotti: Pièces de chair II. E-MEX Ensemble, Monica Benvenuti (sop.), Renatus Mészár (bass-baritone), Martin von der Heydt (pf.), Christoph Maria Wagner (pf. and cond.).



This is supposed to be Bussotti's first major work. Its world premiere in Darmstadt in 1959 (with David Tudor at the piano) was only fragmentary, because the director of the Summer Courses, Wolfgang Steinecke, intervened, saying the notation style was too "hermetic" (probably a euphemism for "too wacky"  ).

If that cover image is a photo of the score, I would not want to the musician assigned to the middle stave.

TD


The fourth of the 5 CDs devoted to DuFay in the MEoL set.