What are you listening 2 now?

[Maestro267]

Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delá...
Berlin PO/Rattle

[HIPster]

Looks very good! 

Q

Hi Que. 

It is very good (and yes, mixed composers  ).

[Karl Henning]

Scott Ross playing Scarlatti

[Carlo Gesualdo]

Brice Pauset, a French man, look I know I'm more of an early music dude, but this is quite refreshing for modern classical, French modernists are  impressive look back at the work of Tristan Murail too.But let's talk about the album I'm listening, Brice Pauset:: ensemble & orchestral works on aeon, this is actually pretty good work and quite entertaining. Anyone into modernism should listen to mister Pauset, if my memory accurate I have another album called Preludes, very very starling interesting , moving, intriguing classical.

[André]

A new composer of 'Tallis Variations (1976), 'Ego flos campi' (2001), and even Psalm 104 (2002), all on this great disc, using titles, themes and ideas one Vaughan Williams composed music on in 1910, 1925 and 1950 respectively, can commit no wrong. 

Bo Holten is one of those 'tonal, but complex' composers from the late 20th Century who had a hard time under the musical establishment because of his "conservative" style, in his case in Denmark but almost exactly the same situation existed in the Netherlands and the UK, for example (my guess would be that the Canadian situation differed a bit, but I might be totally wrong).

It's all sincere, well-written, uplifting, inspirited and fine, yet won't hold its place with the present new wave of even more accessible choral composers (e.g. extremely so with Andresen and Gjeilo, for me especially with Ēriks Ešenvalds, very much like Holten, but also more inspired and 'special' (and of course big guns Lauridsen, Whittaker Whitacre and the like, less to my taste, more to that of a larger audience). Another factor being, that Holten makes use of Danish only, whereas his best comparison among the names mentioned here, the Latvian Ešenvalds, but also Norwegian Gjeilo, make use of Latin and also English (very helpful for choral music). Holten will remain a more local phenomenon I'm afraid, and worth hearing for that reason too.

As about this disc, what impressed me most is Holten's creative use of the orchestra, strings, instrumental settings etc. E.g. the Tallis Variations not like Vaughan Williams at all, of course  - but more in the mood of Britten's Bridge Variations alternated with wordless choral interruptions of often timeless beauty ('Gregorian'). Not bad. 

Totally agree, I find the whole disc one of the finest Delius discs I know (unexpected from Hickox perhaps, yet true). 

Great post, thanks!  i will certainly put it on my wish list, your description of it fits my tastes to a T.

I know Holten's work as conductor only and as commentator/conductor in the superb BBC film on Delius, where he conducts choral items as well as extracts from Koanga.

What you say reminds me of something I read in the booklet notes of a disc of Chamber Symphonies by Holmboe. As a teacher he had a row with some of his pupils, including Ib Norholm and Per Norgärd over his aesthetic stand (he favoured the Hindemith-derived neo-classicism  vs the avant-garde of Boulez and Stockhausen). As a result he resigned his post of teacher at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

Edit: I inadvertently used 'wrote' instead of 'read' in the bolded section above.

[André]

Now:

[asin]B01N6NUZK7[/asin]
Q

Very nice and generously filled set. Minor masters maybe, but not a dull moment.

[Florestan]

Schubert

CD7  Circle of friends

Pounds the table! This whole box is excellent!

[André]

I own that one too! 

It's great... I prefer the later one because the RCG playing is better than the LSO (not that the LSO is poor by any means) but that earlier one is a great record in its own right

This Nutcracker is one of the best discs ever to come out of the Concertgebouw - on a par with Kondrashin's Schéhérazade. Superlative orchestral playing, interpretation and sound.

[Florestan]

Looks nice! Any good? 

Q

You didn't ask me, but y answer is YES!

[André]

Sumptuous. This is not a quality I'm looking for in this work. It becomes too comfortable, not angsty enough. The conductor's broad tempi remove yet another layer of edge. As a whole it is very good in a karajanesque way. I was more taken with the recent Currentzis version.

[ChopinBroccoli]

This Nutcracker is one of the best discs ever to come out of the Concertgebouw - on a par with Kondrashin's Schéhérazade. Superlative orchestral playing, interpretation and sound.

Agreed

[Todd]

Old Ashkenazy is very fine.  Young Ashkenazy is great.

[Symphonic Addict]

Symphony No. 3

Is it me or do I hear hints of VW in this work? Some Sibelius's reminiscences seem clearer. Anyway, such a lovely and fine work.

[Symphonic Addict]

Concerto for string quartet and orchestra

Martinu hardly ever disappoints me. This work contains one of his spooky and ghostly slow movements I find so fascinating.

[Symphonic Addict]

Sumptuous. This is not a quality I'm looking for in this work. It becomes too comfortable, not angsty enough. The conductor's broad tempi remove yet another layer of edge. As a whole it is very good in a karajanesque way. I was more taken with the recent Currentzis version.

For me it's a tremendous rendition.

[André]

For me it's a tremendous rendition.

It is powerful and hugely committed, especially in the second half of the finale, where I would certainly apply the word tremendous, but before that I thought it was not driven or edgy enough. But that's just me, and that's how I hear it now. As Scarlett O'Hara said, « Tomorrow is another day »   

...........................

TD:



Halfway through Messis (latin for Time of Harvest, meaning the end of times in the Christian tradition). This big work (101 minutes in three parts and a postlude and 19 movements) is a reflexion on its subject matter based on quotations from the Psalms and the Gospels. Langgaard finished the work in 1939. Appropriately enough the last part is titled Buried in Hell.

Never one to do something like everybody else, Langgaard wrote the biblical quotations in the score but they are not spoken or sung. One is left guessing what part exactly they are supposed to have in the musical setting. However, a choir is heard very briefly (under a minute) at the end of the first part, intoning a single verse from a 17th century chorale. The remaining 100 minutes is for organ only.

Messis was written in the 1930s. Musically the style is closer to Tournemire than Messiaen, but I don't think that helps figure what one can expect from this musical experience. It is prefaced on the first disc by a later but more conventional work titled In ténebras exteriores. The notes inform us that it is thematically linked with the third part of Messis, but since it is played first the connection was lost to me.

[Christo]

Great post, thanks!  i will certainly put it on my wish list, your description of it fits my tastes to a T.

I know Holten's work as conductor only and as commentator/conductor in the superb BBC film on Delius, where he conducts choral items as well as extracts from Koanga.

What you say reminds me of something I wrote in the booklet notes of a disc of Chamber Symphonies by Holmboe. As a teacher he had a row with some of his pupils, including Ib Norholm and Per Norgärd over his aesthetic stand (he favoured the Hindemith-derived neo-classicism  vs the avant-garde of Boulez and Stockhausen). As a result he resigned his post of teacher at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

I think I wrote - to the utter dismay & bloody anger of 'Madiel' - about ten times about my visit to the Holmboes in August 1995, in their home in Sjaelland, making an afternoon stroll with those fragrant and lovely couple in the woods they had planted with their own hands in the late 1930s and 1940s, one of the few highlights of my all too unadventurous life.

The point being, that I not only admire Holmboe as one of the finest composers I know, but also met the loving and fragile yet sensitive person he was, leaving a lasting impression on me (he died a year later in 1996, yet he showed my the manuscript of the 13th Symphony he had just finished, one that I love with a passion.

AFAIK Bo Holten, he's in a different league, yet his sincerety and independence is in complete accordance with that of Vagn Holmboe. More than enough ground for taking him very serious and loving his music too.     

[Madiel]

The piano quintet version of Faure's La Bonne Chanson



Now that I'm more familiar with the work (thank you, Veronique Dietschy), this arrangement is working a lot better than I expected.

[Todd]

Since I'll be getting Lifschitz's LvB sonata cycle in a couple months, I figured I should brush up on the Beethoven I've heard from him.  Not my favorite set of violin sonatas, but I do want to hear what the pianist can do solo.

[Symphonic Addict]

Symphony No. 3

A more lyrical, more relaxed, broader and less incissive rendition than that by Järvi on BIS. Very convincing to my ears.

I can't still get the idea why some people don't enjoy this composer's music.