What are you listening 2 now?

[André]

Both composers were born in the last decade of the 19th Century. Both composed ballets for performance in Paris. Ballet was a big draw in parisian theatres, witness Serge Diaghilev's company Les Ballets russes which has brought to the world Daphnis et Chloé, L'Oiseau de feu, Petrouchka, Le Sacre du printemps, Pulcinella, L'Après-midi d'un faune, Jeux, Parade, La Tragédie de Salomé, etc.

Riding on the coattails of Diaghilev's idea, a new company called Les Ballets suédois was created in Paris in 1920. It lasted only 5 years but during that time it fostered new works like Satie's Relâche, Milhaud's La Création du monde and a few new works by swedish composers Kurt Atterberg, Moses Pergament and Viking Dahl.

Both ballets presented on this disc are from 1920. Dahl's La Maison de fous (the Madhouse) is played complete here. Its 17 short scenes (averaging 2 minutes apiece) describe the strange characters and bizarre goings-on that take place in the madhouse. Think Robert Wiene's 1920 film the Cabinet of Dr Caligari for context. There is nothing as radical and nightmarish as Wiene's film, where a mad Doctor hypnotizes a man named Cesare and directs him to go out and kill people. At night Cesare comes back in the madhouse with no remembrance of the events of the night and we see the same kind of bizarreries as in Dahl's ballet. It makes for a lively, absorbing listening experience.

Pergament's Krelantems and Eldeling (boy meets girl) is presented here as a 4-movement suite of some 24 minutes. Its movements are more substantial, more symphonic in character. They don't bear subtitles, just tempo markings like Tempo di marcia, Allegro festoso, Molto adagio etc. The resulting work is quite different in character. Made me think of some of Hindemith's truculent, expressionist compositions from the 1920s.

Excellent production and musical values (detailed synopsys, notes, photographs), very good sound (1997 and 1977). Recommended not just to the curious, but to every listener who enjoys off the beaten path repertoire.

[steve ridgway]

Schnittke - Requiem

[AnotherSpin]

[steve ridgway]

Ussachevsky - Missa Brevis

Very pleasant and follows Schnittke well. Today seems to be the the day for Mass .

[steve ridgway]

Xenakis - N'Shima

The echoing women's voices and horns allowed me to keep the feeling of being in some large cathedral going. Awesome!

[AnotherSpin]

Oh, I have made φασολάδα - with real Greek beans no less  - following Sotiris Evaggelou's video.  In fact that was a revelation because of the way he asked me to add olive oil towards the end of the cooking process. I never expected that. Delicious.

In my city, Odesa, Greek cuisine was never just a restaurant novelty. It lived in the courtyards, among the scents of roasted peppers and aubergines, garlic, lemon and olive oil. Moussaka, fried mullet, keftedes and salads with feta were cooked at home, just as people made borscht, forshmak or strudel. Greek aromas blended into the wider Odesan bouquet, where Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish and German traditions all mingled together.

The courtyards themselves had something of the Mediterranean about them. There were galleries running around the inner yards, laundry stretched from window to window, conversations drifting between floors and the shade of a grapevine above. In such open, warm and many-voiced architecture, Greek food felt perfectly at home. Odesa was a port, a crossroads of cultures, and the Greek taste became part of it, not as a guest but as a neighbour.

[steve ridgway]

Ligeti - 6 Bagatelles

Nice varied selection of short movements.

[steve ridgway]

Maderna - Requiem

I thought I'd escaped the cathedral but apparently it was just a short break for a bit of fresh air before going back in for this morning's final session .

[Madiel]

Vivaldi: Il Giustino



By no means is anything in this series bad, but I wouldn't say Il Giustino is the best example. There are small things holding it back.

The libretto is... it's not great. it had been around for 40 years by the time Vivaldi used it, and apparently a great success in a previous version. And I have to wonder, would it always have looked this clumsy to my modern eyes, or has it got something to do with modifications in Vivaldi's version?*** I don't know. What I do know is that there are some very disjointed bits, and one character in particular will just do and say whatever the plot needs him to do and say at different points. I'm in love with you! You said no so I'm going to feed you to a sea monster! Oh, you were rescued... hey, remember I'm in love with you, we're cool right? You're my enemy! Oh, a voice just told me you're actually my baby brother who was stolen by a tiger and I never mentioned this before, and you have the birthmark that I also never mentioned and apparently didn't notice on your arm earlier...

Yeah.

The performance also isn't quite my favourite. At first I found it just a touch brighter and harder-edged than other Dantone performances, though I suspect now that might just have been I had the volume up higher and my diswasher was running in the background for Act One (*embarrassed shuffle*). But more genuinely, I like the singers in the main parts, but I was a bit less fond of several supporting parts. In particular I don't like the decision to cast one singer in TWO parts, one tenor and one alto. He's frankly a much better tenor.

Sound effects are used a few times, which made me a touch nervous, but they're better used and more justified than in the recording of Arsilda. I can cope with the sound of a bear and a sea monster when both are important to the plot and the growls and snarls are timed to not interrupt the music (which is very clearly "fighting a creature/monster" music at those points).

***According to the liner notes, there are a large number of arias here that Vivaldi reused from earlier works (probably because this opera was for Rome and he was confident that the audience wouldn't have heard this material before), often with little or no change to the lyrics. The largest number are from the opera Tieteberga, but beyond that the liner notes don't give full details. I do wonder whether this meant that the libretto was revised a bit to enable the arias to slot in.

[Wanderer]

[Iota]

Mozart: Serenade No. 12 in C Minor, K. 388
Netherlands Wind Ensemble

Mozart at his wondrous best, in a dream of a performance.

[Traverso]

Mozart

CD 2

[SonicMan46]

Mozart, WA - Violin Sonatas - on the recordings below selectively; Ibragimova/Tiberghien (modern approach), Podger/Cooper (period instruments) - both complete (Ibragimova on 5 double jewel boxes for 10 discs total); Breitman/Rivest doing the late works only on 4 discs (Breitman on fortepiano).

Wolfie wrote about three dozen violin sonatas split into two groups - 1) Early childhood pieces (1762-66; KV 6-15; KV 26-31) and 2) Mature works (1778-88; first KV 296 to last KV 547). (Source)


 

 

[Mandryka]

In my city, Odesa, Greek cuisine was never just a restaurant novelty. It lived in the courtyards, among the scents of roasted peppers and aubergines, garlic, lemon and olive oil. Moussaka, fried mullet, keftedes and salads with feta were cooked at home, just as people made borscht, forshmak or strudel. Greek aromas blended into the wider Odesan bouquet, where Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish and German traditions all mingled together.

The courtyards themselves had something of the Mediterranean about them. There were galleries running around the inner yards, laundry stretched from window to window, conversations drifting between floors and the shade of a grapevine above. In such open, warm and many-voiced architecture, Greek food felt perfectly at home. Odesa was a port, a crossroads of cultures, and the Greek taste became part of it, not as a guest but as a neighbour.

You're making me want to visit it. Just kick Putin's arse out of Ukraine first!

[Mandryka]

Very disconcerting Liederkreis  - both the voice and the piano are totally different from anything else I've heard.

[Spotted Horses]

Second listen to Beethoven Piano Sonata No 15, Op 28, No 2, "Pastoral" this time Badura-Skoda performing on Fortepiano.



Quite a vivid performance, and the sound of the fortepiano brings out the music in a different way. Very satisfying.

I was going to go on to the Sonata No 15 (Op 31, No 1) but I have the notion to queue HJ Lim's recording of Op 28, No 2 first.

[ritter]

Chez ritter, more music by Luciano Berio, on the centenary weekend...



The composer conducts vocal soloists and the Ensemble Musique Vivante. Librettist Edoardo Sanguinetti appears as reciter.

Commissioned by the ORTF in 1965 to celebrate the 700 anniversary of Dante's birth, the libretto combines texts by the Florentine poet with biblical quotes, and texts by T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Sanguinetti himself. Berio described the work as a theatre piece (but, TBH, I don't have the remotest clue what it's about), and said that " it can be treated as a story, an allegory, a documentary, a dance. It can be performed in a school, in a theatre, on television, in the open air, or in any other place permitting the gathering of an audience".

Interesting music, with a 60s "happening" flavour to it...

[pjme]

Both composers were born in the last decade of the 19th Century. Both composed ballets for performance in Paris. Ballet was a big draw in parisian theatres, witness Serge Diaghilev's company Les Ballets russes which has brought to the world Daphnis et Chloé, L'Oiseau de feu, Petrouchka, Le Sacre du printemps, Pulcinella, L'Après-midi d'un faune, Jeux, Parade, La Tragédie de Salomé, etc.

Riding on the coattails of Diaghilev's idea, a new company called Les Ballets suédois was created in Paris in 1920. It lasted only 5 years but during that time it fostered new works like Satie's Relâche, Milhaud's La Création du monde and a few new works by swedish composers Kurt Atterberg, Moses Pergament and Viking Dahl.

Both ballets presented on this disc are from 1920. Dahl's La Maison de fous (the Madhouse) is played complete here. Its 17 short scenes (averaging 2 minutes apiece) describe the strange characters and bizarre goings-on that take place in the madhouse. Think Robert Wiene's 1920 film the Cabinet of Dr Caligari for context. There is nothing as radical and nightmarish as Wiene's film, where a mad Doctor hypnotizes a man named Cesare and directs him to go out and kill people. At night Cesare comes back in the madhouse with no remembrance of the events of the night and we see the same kind of bizarreries as in Dahl's ballet. It makes for a lively, absorbing listening experience.

Pergament's Krelantems and Eldeling (boy meets girl) is presented here as a 4-movement suite of some 24 minutes. Its movements are more substantial, more symphonic in character. They don't bear subtitles, just tempo markings like Tempo di marcia, Allegro festoso, Molto adagio etc. The resulting work is quite different in character. Made me think of some of Hindemith's truculent, expressionist compositions from the 1920s.

Excellent production and musical values (detailed synopsys, notes, photographs), very good sound (1997 and 1977). Recommended not just to the curious, but to every listener who enjoys off the beaten path repertoire.

Indeed a most enjoyable CD - roaring twenties fun:

[Todd]

[Wanderer]