What are you listening 2 now?

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Our fellow GMGer  @Dry Brett Kavanaugh alerted me to Spanish pianist Luis Galve, whose recorded legacy is rather slim. I could locate a copy of this release:



The CD includes Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, with the RTVE Orchestra under Enrique García Asensio), recoded live in mono in the Teatro Real in 1974 (after it had reponed as a concert hall, and two decades before it was reconverted back to its use as Madrid's main opera house), and what appear were encores of that concert--Debussy's La Sérénade interrompue, La Puerta del Vino, and Arabesque No. 2--Then we get Falla's Homenaje a Debussy, and solo piano transcriptions of El amor brujo and El sombrero de tres picos (stereo, live in 1976 from the Palau de la Música Catalana in Bareclona).

So far, Galve's playing in the Emperor sounds superb, "apollonian" is the term hat come to mind. Crisp yet poetic. The orchestral accompaniment is a bit bland, OTOH (the recorded sounds may be partly to blame). Let's see how the solo pieces turn out to be, but I am quite optimistic!

EDIT: Despite the occasional wrong note in La Sérénade, the two Debussy preludes are very good IMHO, even if perhaps the playing lacks a bit of individuality. But, even if I consider Debussy one of my very, very favourite composer ever, I really do not like either of the Arabesques at all (no fault found in the performance, it's the music itself I do not care for). OTOH, what a miraculous composition La Puerta del Vino is!!!! I'm always bowled over when I listen to it...

Mandryka informed me about this nice recording. Especially I like his de Falla presentation.

[Que]

A fabulous big 7 verse Es ist das Heil uns kommen her by Weckmann - colourful without being gaudily symphonic, lots of contrasts between the verses - from grand and powerful, at times luxurious, and at times  sweet and almost delicate. The overall impression is of a totally inhabited, involved, deeply felt performance. There's nothing rote about it, it's poetic. 

Peter Westerbrink can control the Groningen Schnitger,  and the engineers have recorded it pretty well - big bass included.

Would be so nice if it were availble streaming. 

Same.

[Cato]

Messiaen

Les Offrandes oubliées (1930)
L'Ascention (1934)
Poèmes pour Mi ((1948)

Will you be visiting the world of Chronochromie ? 

I wonder how younger generations might be reacting to his works, assuming that the kids will have a guide to such a composer!

[Harry]

Would be so nice if it were availble streaming. 

Same.

That will not happen Que

[Traverso]

Will you be visiting the world of Chronochromie ? 

I wonder how younger generations might be reacting to his works, assuming that the kids will have a guide to such a composer!

What important is being born with good genes, upbringing, music education in schools and the like. Even then I don't expect a rush on this music, most people are easygoing and quickly satisfied with meaningless booming 

[Karl Henning]

Maiden-Listen Monday!

[Linz]

Shostakovich Symphony No. 14. op.135 and 6 P0ems of Marina Tsvetaeva, op.143a, Julia Varady soprano, Ortrun Wenkel contralto, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau baritone, Bernard Haitink, Concertgebouw Orchestra

[Traverso]

Maiden-Listen Monday!

Good Day Karl 

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Tchaikovsky The Nutcracker Suite. Karel Ancerl/Vienna.

[Karl Henning]

Good Day Karl 

You, too, Jan!

[AnotherSpin]

Yes one of my favorite recordings!  Another one I love is Michael Tilson Thomas's first effort:
[..]

Did you try Hans Zender?

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

You, too, Jan!

Karl, any oyster bar you like in Boston?

[ritter]

Mandryka informed me about this nice recording. Especially I like his de Falla presentation.

I found Galve's Falla recordings quite interesting on this first listen, in that they sounded rather impressionistic to me (particularly El amor brujo, despite it having a less refined and more "picturesque" flavour than The Three-cornered hat. If it weren't because the music is so well known, one could have thought some passages were by Debussy rather than by Falla.

[Mandryka]

I found Galve's Falla recordings quite interesting on this first listen, in that they sounded particularly impressionistic to me. If it weren't because the music is so well known, one could have thought some passages were by Debussy rather than by Falla.

Actually the Galve was the first time I can remember hearing Falla's solo music - so I kind of assumed that it always sounds like that!

[DavidW]

Did you try Hans Zender?

I haven't, I'll check it out soon.

[Karl Henning]

Karl, any oyster bar you like in Boston?

The historic Union Oyster House near Quincy Market is fun. The Atlantic Fish Company on Boylston Street is very good, too.

[Valentino]

I have been streaming from this the last few days. To me it sounds very Beethovenian.

[ritter]

Chamber music by Fernando Remacha(1898-1984), played by the Brodsky Quartet and pianist Christian Blackshaw (the pieces requiring solo violin are played by the Brodsky's first violinist Michael Thomas).



This CD was recorded in London in 1998, but was apparently meant for the domestic Spanish market (the release was sponsored by several Spanish institutions) and seems to have had very limited distribution. Locating an affordable (but not cheap) copy wasn't easy.

The opening String Quartet (from 1924), in three movements totalling some 15 minutes, is vintage Spanish music from its time, and is a rather accomplished piece for such a young composer. Much the same can be said  of the Suite for Violin and piano from 1929, although this piece is more openly neoclassical (the two central movements are a minuet and a gavotte). The Piano Quartet (from 1933), which earned the composer the National Music Prize —he would be awarded the prize again in 1938 for the much earlier String Quartet, and then once more in 1980–, is one of the major works of Spanish chamber music of the first half of the 20th century (there's a more recent recording featuring the Trío Arbós).

This music exemplifies the particularly Spanish musical sound of the 1920s and 30s, where a group of composers built on the foundations laid by Manuel de Falla, absorbed international influences —Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartók, and even Hindemith and Prokofiev, I'd say— to create a national but simultaneously cosmopolitan style: the music is unmistakably Spanish, but open to the outside world and far from "picture postcard" cute. Unfortunately, the development of this was thwarted by the Civil War (but then again, WW2 also marked a "before and after" moment some years later in most of European music, didn't it?).

The last piece on the disc is from 1954. It's been alleged that Remacha went into "internal exile" —initially in the town of Tudela in Navarre— under the Franco regime. This seems to me a misrepresentation (or at least, a wilful exaggeration), as in 1957 he founded (and then led for almost 20 years) the Pamplona Conservatory, meaning he had a high degree of public and "official" recognition. The little (orchestral) music I know from his post-war years is far less interesting than the earlier stuff, as it reverts to regionalist clichés and eschews any cosmopolitanism (not to speak of avoidance of any post-WW2 radicalism, which one wouldn't reasonably expect in any case).  The brief Romanza in A minor for violin and piano confirms this view: simply sentimentality, alas not redeemed by any memorable (at least for me) tunes. The piece seems to have been a private "gift" to a friend, so it wouldn't have aspired to much anyway.

[Linz]

Schubert Diogenes Quartet, String Quartet in C Minor, D. 103 and String Quartet No. 15 in G Major, D. 887, The last CD

[JBS]

Another opera I haven't heard before