What are you listening 2 now?

[Symphonic Addict]

Raff - Piano Quintet in A minor

There is another recording of this work, but it's not as effective as this one. One of the great Romantic piano quintets.




Symphony No. 3 Die Tageszeiten and Piano Concerto

An interesting cycle of lovely symphonies. This last symphony is a joyful work with a remarkable orchestration. The Piano Concerto is more modern-sounding but firmly tonal. Positively impressed by these pieces.

[SonicMan46]

Enescu
Vox maris, Op. 31
Marius Brenciu, tenor
Catherine Sydney, soprano
Chœur De Chambre "Les Éléments"
Orchestre National de Lyon
Lawrence Foster

1+ - just listened to that set the other day w/ my 'Enescu day' - enjoyed! Dave

[André]

Raff - Piano Quintet in A minor

There is another recording of this work, but it's not as effective as this one. One of the great Romantic piano quintets.




Symphony No. 3 Die Tageszeiten and Piano Concerto

An interesting cycle of lovely symphonies. This last symphony is a joyful work with a remarkable orchestration. The Piano Concerto is more modern-sounding but firmly tonal. Positively impressed by these pieces.

+ 1 for the Pepping discs !

[SonicMan46]

Well after most of the day listening to Louise Farrenc, onto a couple of recent BRO acquisitions - just tacked onto an order to justify shipping - Joachim Held I've liked on other recordings, and not sure that I have any Scarlatti Sonatas other than on harpsichord (Scott Ross box) or piano.  Dave

 

[Daverz]

Alwyn

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The whole "album" for a change.  The Piano Concerto is brief, though.

Excellent performances and sonics, though the older digital recording does turn a bit hard in the louder bits.

[vandermolen]

Alwyn

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The whole "album" for a change.  The Piano Concerto is brief, though.

Excellent performances and sonics, though the older digital recording does turn a bit hard in the louder bits.

I really like that CD. Alwyn's First Symphony is often decried as 'film music' but I think that is a very fine and moving score, as, for that matter, is his magnificent film score to 'Odd Man Out'. Do you know that one? It's on Chandos as well and I rate it amongst his finest scores. It has appeared in a couple of manifestations. During the past couple of years I've discovered his magnificent and inexplicably neglected Violin Concerto.
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[Daverz]

I really like that CD. Alwyn's First Symphony is often decried as 'film music' but I think that is a very fine and moving score, as, for that matter, is his magnificent film score to 'Odd Man Out'. Do you know that one? It's on Chandos as well and I rate it amongst his finest scores. It has appeared in a couple of manifestations. During the past couple of years I've discovered his magnificent and inexplicably neglected Violin Concerto.
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Great film; I'll look for the music.  Yes, the Violin Concerto is a really lovely work.

Now playing;

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[Mirror Image]

Schoenberg
Gurrelieder
Klaus Maria Brandauer (narrator), Thomas Moser (tenor), Kenneth Riegel (tenor), Jennifer Larmore (mezzo-soprano), Deborah Voigt (soprano), Bernd Weikl (baritone)
Prague Men's Choir, Chor der Sächsischen Staatsoper Dresden, Chor des Mitteldeutschen Rundfunks Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden
Giuseppe Sinopoli



About Gurrelieder:

The Gurre-Lieder took an unusually long time for Schönberg to compose; he worked on them from 1900 to 1911, albeit with long interruptions. He dealt with the piece most intensively between March 1900 and March 1901 when, according to his own statement, he had already "finished" it. He was occupied with the orchestration between 1901 and 1903, after which he left the Gurre-Lieder untouched for fully seven years.

During those years he ranged far away from the late-Romantic style which had influenced his earlier work on the Gurre-Lieder; when he finished the orchestration in 1910/1911, he considered the piece a document of a style of composition and an intellectual attitude which already seemed alien to him – although that did not detract from the work's importance: "It is the key to my entire development. It shows sides of me which I do not reveal later on, or, from a different approach. It explains how everything had to happen as it did later on, and that is enormously important for my work – that one can follow the man and his development from that point on."

The story – involving King Waldemar and his beloved Tove, who is eventually murdered by the jealous Queen – can be traced back in various versions to the Middle Ages and Denmark's trove of national sagas. The material underwent many changes in the course of time, as specific place names were added and the restlessly roaming King was introduced and the legend was eventually projected onto King Waldemar IV, who died in 1375 in Castle Gurre. This is the version which Jens Peter Jacobsen adopted as the basis for his 1868 poem, which strongly attracted Schönberg; Jacobsen had been intensively involved with religious issues, ultimately turning away from Christianity and embracing Darwinism (this is especially powerful in the Gurre-Lieder's constellation revolving around Nature – God/Love – Death). 

A competition inviting the submission of a Lieder cycle for voice and piano announced by the Vienna Tonkünstlerverein provided Schönberg with the direct impetus to compose the piece. His teacher and friend Alexander Zemlinsky recalls: "Wanting to compete for the prize, Schönberg composed a few Lieder to texts by Jacobsen. I played them for him (as we know, Schönberg did not play the piano); the Lieder were very beautiful and truly novel – but we both had the impression that they would have little chance of winning a prize for that very reason." Accordingly, Schönberg did not submit the composition, deciding instead to rework it for voice and orchestra, an ensemble which ultimately grew to a colossal size: five soloists, three four-voice male choruses, an eight-voice mixed chorus and an enormous orchestra.

The first part of the Gurre-Lieder is comprised of a prelude, nine songs for Waldemar and Tove, a long orchestral interlude and the Song of the Wood-Dove. Unlike Gustav Mahler (who, in Das Lied von der Erde, merged a series of six orchestra Lieder with symphonic form), Schönberg yet sought no corresponding equivalences, although each individual Lied contains thematic references which combine into a broadly extended form. The recurrence of certain thematic ideas, tightly woven in context, provides internal cohesion, for instance, and motifs reappearing from song to song develop from ideas characteristic of each; in his guide to the Gurre-Lieder, Alban Berg speaks of the "rebirth [...] of a theme from new motifs" and "typically Schönbergian artistry."

Transitional passages provide further links between the self-contained songs. Berg's analysis of Tove's O, wenn des Mondes Strahlen ruhig gleiten describes it "like a song which segues to another one, how a transitional model forms from offshoots and motivic components already containing important new seeds of the new song."

These techniques manifest the principle of "thematic development," which occurs on two levels: that of each song and that of the piece as a whole. The sequence of Songs 1 – 9 makes up a thematic process revealing a quasi-symphonic conception determined by premonition and fulfillment. The melodic gestalt bringing this process to its conclusion (So laß uns die goldene Schale leeren) is the intensification of an unprepossessing idea from the first song, Nun dämpft die Dämmrung jeden Ton.

The main voice and the accompaniment are always differentiated in the Tove and Waldemar songs, whereby the main voice is not always in the sung line. And yet the cycle's first part is dominated by the singing; here, themes and motifs returning in Part Three are not so much "orchestra motifs" as they are "singing motifs." They do not form a "tissue over the entire work" (Richard Wagner); they remain clinging to the verse from which they derive, while the orchestra turns the harmonic structure into an accompaniment richly differentiated in sound. Thematic-motivic work appears above all in the interludes, where the orchestra comments on the songs. Thus, in the large-scale exposition in Part One, the orchestra makes up for what the singing cannot do, viz. it comprehensively interlinks the themes.

The "idea of singing a song" manifested in the sections of alternation between Tove and Waldemar is destroyed by the instrumental transition to The Song of the Wood-Dove (bar 944); the abrupt tutti clap in bar 950 and the subsequent cor anglais solo again express what the singing cannot: the attack on Tove and her death. Schönberg portrays the turning point poetically and musically as Remembrance – Anticipation. The Wood-Dove, the Speaker and Waldemar himself recall the past (Waldemar and Tove's togetherness), while The Song of Klaus Narr dwells on Waldemar's arrest at the time of happy love long ago.

The anticipations nurtured in Part I stand in opposition to those moments of remembrance; together with Tove, Waldemar presages the reality to come in Part III, while song melodies from Part I reminisce, transformed into orchestra motifs. Unlike a song in its character, this movement yet reflects on lost happiness in love, negating it in the way it expressed – in song.

Agnes Grond
© Arnold Schönberg Center

[André]

A trio of concertos written over a 6 decade period (1942-1997). Think Hindemith with a soft, moist core in the slow movements. Genzmer studied composition with Hindemith during 6 years. With over 400 opus numbers in practically every genre imaginable - a treasure trove for instrumentalists and chamber ensembles - Genzmer emulates his teacher's ability to write intelligent, sensitive hausmusik. In the concertos the main discourse emanates from the soloist, the orchestra providing a foil and a counterargument to kick-start the music in another direction. All three works are of the highest quality. Chamber music for soloist and orchestra.

[André]

Music to stand on the same footing as the sonatas and partitas of Bach and the caprices by Paganini. The second sonata in particular is a hair-raising composition. The Dies irae theme recurs through all four movements in different disguises, as if in a spooky hide-and-seek game. Zehetmair, Baráti and Yang offer equally valid conceptions of the work (Ysaÿe probably intended it as a cycle).

[JBS]

Music to stand on the same footing as the sonatas and partitas of Bach and the caprices by Paganini. The second sonata in particular is a hair-raising composition. The Dies irae theme recurs through all four movements in different disguises, as if in a spooky hide-and-seek game. Zehetmair, Baráti and Yang offer equally valid conceptions of the work (Ysaÿe probably it as a cycle).

That was my first recording of the Ysaye cycle.  I'm not sure which performance I would give the palm to.
TD
Tonight's listening centers around Johann Strauss II [Naxos Complete Orchestral box] and string quintets by Michael Haydn from the Brilliant Michael Haydn Collection.

[Mirror Image]

1+ - just listened to that set the other day w/ my 'Enescu day' - enjoyed! Dave

Awesome, Dave. I'm kind of surprised to see that you're a Enescu fan given the modernity of his later music, but I'm glad to see you're a fan of the composer. We could always use more Enescuians around here.

[Karl Henning]

Zowie! Schoenberg's Erwartung is incredibly powerful. I think these monodramas from Schoenberg are simply infectious. I can't get enough of them.

Terrific disc!

[Karl Henning]

Stravinsky
Jeu de cartes
LSO
Abbado

I wouldn't call it top-tier Igor Fyodorovich, and it's not on the list of 25 Stravinsky pieces to which my ears periodically hanker to return . . . but I always enjoy it when I do listen to it, which certainly success enow.

[Mirror Image]

Terrific disc!

It sure is, Karl, and I'm just as impressed with this performance of Pierrot Lunaire --- a work I've come to really, really enjoy. Schoenberg was a genius, IMHO.

[Karl Henning]

RVW
A London Symphony
Boult

[Karl Henning]

That was my first recording of the Ysaye cycle.  I'm not sure which performance I would give the palm to.
TD
Tonight's listening centers around Johann Strauss II [Naxos Complete Orchestral box] and string quintets by Michael Haydn from the Brilliant Michael Haydn Collection.

Just heard the Fifth Solo Sonata live on Saturday, great piece, and great program: The violinist also played the Bach d minor Chaconne.

[Mirror Image]

Disc 1 from this set:

[SimonNZ]

[Irons]

Haydn Op 50, Aeolian Qt.  An exceedingly civilized way to listen through one's lunch hour...

Sold like hot cakes during the era of the LP. Each label sported an image of Haydn.....a nice touch.