What are you listening 2 now?

[Todd]

Having grown bored with listening to so many good and great recordings of core rep, I decided to listen to some Arthur Schoonderwoerd in the form of this HIP take on the Eroica.  Knowing that the maestro opted for stripped down, scratchy sounding forces, I decided to listen via Amazon Music, my now ancient Motorola phone, and some JBL wireless earbuds in an attempt to make the playing sound comparatively beefy.  Hoping the performance would have zest, I listened while taking my constitutional, looking for some musical inspiration.  I was not inspired.

The opening movement made me think of a cat chasing a mouse.  Well, not so much chasing as lazily ambling after it.  Schoonderwoerd's understanding of Allegro con brio differs from mine.  OK, OK, a non-scratchy, puny, feeble, boring opening movement may be too much to ask from this ensemble, but surely the funeral march would fare better.  Nope.  It's actually worse.  Much worse.  Like, so bad.  Not only does it fail to generate any punch or scale or drama, it enervates.  Walking my well-trodden path became a chore, though about halfway through the movement I decided to alter how I would listen to the rest of the piece.  I actively listened for moments of questionable playing, ugly timbre, sloppy ensemble.  Wouldn't you know it, things got better!  Images of Jerry's burial flashed through my mind's eye.  Performance salvaged.  And then came the Scherzo.  Schoonderwoerd works magic.  He takes music with zest and pep and drains it of life and energy and brings the ugly aplenty.  Oh yeah.  The theme and variations closer offers something unique, too.  The slowish playing and clear textures allow one to follow the theme easily and to identify strained playing and timbral ugliness with disarming ease.  Remember, I used midfi wireless earbuds. 

Schoonderwoerd does something that is very hard to do here.  He takes the greatest of all symphonies, a magnificent piece packed with scale and drama befitting its original dedicatee Joaquin Phoenix, and downscales it, uglifies it, and just botches it to the point where it remains listenable only if the listener crafts dynamic listening tactics on the fly.  I initially expected a musical trainwreck going in, but that is not what I got.  In the spring, I visited the Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum, and there I gazed upon a pristine, fully functional 1902 Wright Brothers glider.  (The museum keeps all contraptions on site in proper working order.)  What I did not see was one of the demolished gliders or other flying contraptions constructed by the brothers' competitors that crashed immediately upon takeoff.  That's what this recording is like.  To be sure, I have heard a worse version of this symphony.  I once listened to a MIDI "performance" of part of the work.   This is the worst actual instrument version of the symphony I have heard, and that includes uninspired, underplayed solo piano transcriptions.  I skipped the overture because I did not want to hear it.  I think I shall avoid Schoonderwoerd's conducting for a while.  Maybe – and that's a big maybe – I try some of his solo recordings later this year or decade.

[Brian]

Having grown bored with listening to so many good and great recordings of core rep, I decided to listen to some Arthur Schoonderwoerd...I decided to listen via Amazon Music, my now ancient Motorola phone, and some JBL wireless earbuds in an attempt to make the playing sound comparatively beefy...The slowish playing and clear textures allow one to follow the theme easily and to identify strained playing and timbral ugliness with disarming ease. ...its original dedicatee Joaquin Phoenix...one of the demolished gliders or other flying contraptions constructed by the brothers' competitors that crashed immediately upon takeoff.

    
One of the funniest posts on here in a while. By the way, I watched the trailer to the Joaquin Phoenix movie and he really is bringing indie mumblecore sad boy energy to the role. Quite a choice.

[Lisztianwagner]

Alban Berg
Lyric Suite

Leipziger Streichquartett

[Todd]

By the way, I watched the trailer to the Joaquin Phoenix movie and he really is bringing indie mumblecore sad boy energy to the role. Quite a choice.

Indeed, I wanted to see Commodus Unbound.  I will watch the movie - I may even go to the movie theater, something I have not done since December 2019.  And no, it was not the pandemic that dissuaded me from dropping hard-earned dough on going to the multiplex, it was the utter crappiness of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that crushed my movie-going spirit.

[Mandryka]

Since reading this post I have listened to this, twice so far.  I agree that it is an absolutely outstanding example of this type of music, pure and poised, a real gem unearthed from around the middle of the polyphonic period.  And these performers seem reliably good in this little corner of the repertoire.
( Missa Ave Maris Stella is contained in Vol.5 of their Des Prez: The Complete Masses )

Glad you like it. For me it's a major discovery - if only I could find more music like that!

[vers la flamme]

Morton Feldman: Durations I-V. Ensemble Avantgarde

I don't have the score in front of me, so please forgive me if this is wrong. I believe Feldman's concept here was to notate pitches exactly, while leaving the duration that each pitch is played up to the whims of the individual performers, making this work a product of Feldman's time as one of the leading exponents of musical indeterminacy. So not quite as free-form as the "graph scores" of certain others of his pieces, but still somewhat indeterminate. For some reason, it's really making sense right now!

[brewski]

Coming up in 20 minutes, live from Aspen, the great Augustin Hadelich in a new violin concerto written for him by Donnacha Dennehy, with conductor Markus Stenz and the Aspen Festival Orchestra.

Also on the program, The Ring, an Orchestral Adventure—Wagner arranged by Henk de Vlieger.

https://www.aspenmusicfestival.com/events/calendar/livestream-aspen-festival-orchestra-3/

-Bruce

[vers la flamme]

Morton Feldman: Durations I-V. Ensemble Avantgarde

I don't have the score in front of me, so please forgive me if this is wrong. I believe Feldman's concept here was to notate pitches exactly, while leaving the duration that each pitch is played up to the whims of the individual performers, making this work a product of Feldman's time as one of the leading exponents of musical indeterminacy. So not quite as free-form as the "graph scores" of certain others of his pieces, but still somewhat indeterminate. For some reason, it's really making sense right now!

Now the excellent Coptic Light, with Michael Morgan and the DSO Berlin. Quicker, possibly also better, than the Michael Tilson Thomas/New World Symphony recording.

[Bachtoven]

[Mapman]

I was at Tanglewood today, for the performance by the BSO conducted by Nelsons. They played Beethoven's Leonore #3 and Orff's Carmina Burana.

The performances were excellent; they did a great job conveying the emotions of the text in Carmina Burana. I was also pleasantly surprised by the acoustics: the sound was good even though I was near the edge of the semi-open Shed. (There were some birds audible throughout the concert.)

[Linz]

Schubert Octet and Nonet Consortium Classicum, Dieter Klöcker

[brewski]

Two nights ago at Carnegie Hall, the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (with conductor Andrew Davis) did a fantastic encore, the March that ends Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis. So today I went down a bit of a rabbit hole, looking for other versions, and found a surprisingly powerful one from the US Navy Band, but this one with Abbado and Berlin took the prize. Never heard this recording before.

-Bruce

[vers la flamme]

Lute Suites by Ennemond Gaultier, François Dufaut, Johannes Fresnau & Charles Mouton. Toyohiko Satoh

My favorite disc of lute music in my extremely small collection of that genre. Satoh just put out a new album this year, I ought to hear it.

[JBS]

I was at Tanglewood today, for the performance by the BSO conducted by Nelsons. They played Beethoven's Leonore #3 and Orff's Carmina Burana.

The performances were excellent; they did a great job conveying the emotions of the text in Carmina Burana. I was also pleasantly surprised by the acoustics: the sound was good even though I was near the edge of the semi-open Shed. (There were some birds audible throughout the concert.)

Birdsong is not inappropriate for the Orff, I think.

TD


Symphony 8 in G Major Opus 88 B 163 (1889)
Three Concert Overtures (1891):
In Nature's Realm[V prírode] Opus 91 B 168
Carnival[Karneval] Opus 92 B 169
Othello Opus 93 B 174

[Karl Henning]

I was at Tanglewood today, for the performance by the BSO conducted by Nelsons. They played Beethoven's Leonore #3 and Orff's Carmina Burana.

The performances were excellent; they did a great job conveying the emotions of the text in Carmina Burana. I was also pleasantly surprised by the acoustics: the sound was good even though I was near the edge of the semi-open Shed. (There were some birds audible throughout the concert.)

Welcome to Mass!

[kyjo]

Cowen: Symphony No. 5 in F major

Sometimes one has the privilege of coming across composers or works that reward with ideas that catch the ear or leave you thinking for good, but on other occasions the situation is completely opposite (and somehow ineludible) as in this case. Frankly, this is one of the most predictable, boring, formulaic, down-watered, forgettable, bland symphonies I have ever heard, and I don't blame the performance which sounded serviceable and committed enough. A genuine snooze fest. Even conservative symphonies like the ones by Parry or Stanford have much more to say. The remark that some composers deserve oblivion is true here.

Yep, my impressions very much echo your own. I couldn't make it through more than five or so minutes of this insufferably bland work. Parry's and Stanford's symphonies (even the weaker ones!) are blazing masterpieces compared to this...

[kyjo]

Bohuslav Martinů
Piano Concerto No.5

Emil Leichner (piano)
Jiří Bělohlávek & Czech Philharmonic Orchestra

Great set! I was recently listening to the deliciously neoclassical/neobaroque PC no. 1 from it the other day.

[kyjo]

Persichetti: String Quartets 1 & 2

Attractive works by a composer I'm not familiar with.

Persichetti wrote some really attractive, satisfying (if not terribly "personal") music in a neoclassical yet muscular vein, rather close in style to, say, Piston. I've enjoyed his 3rd and 4th symphonies quite a bit, as well as his more modernistic and quite fascinating 9th (Janiculum). Of his SQs, I only know the 2nd which is a fine work.

[kyjo]

He seems one of those cases where more is less, there are so many works that many tend to be similar each other. One does have to investigate among that huge output to discover gems and I'm sure they exist.

Oh, well, I have many favorite pieces:

L'Homme et son désir (a bizarre yet quite original piece)
String quartets 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 15, 17
Le Carnaval de Londres
Le Carnaval d'Aix
Violin Concerto No. 1
Concertino de printemps
Concerto for percussion and orchestra
All the five piano concertos (especially the first three) + Concerto for two pianos and orchestra
Clarinet Concerto
Scaramouche

Most of his chamber music is still unknown to me, but I do want to get familiar with it in the future.

Thanks, Cesar! Maybe I'll start by investigating his PCs, which I don't think I know at all.

[Symphonic Addict]

Granados: Piano Trio
Mozart: Piano Quartet No. 1

Two highly pleasant and accomplished compositions. I wasn't expecting to enjoy the Mozart so much.