What are you listening 2 now?

[ritter]

Sticking to piano music tonight, but moving forward several decades: Roger Woodward plays Jean Barraqué's Sonate.

[Mirror Image]

Continuing my traversal of Schnittke's symphonies:





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Alfred Schnittke's Symphony No 2 is based on the composer's personal experience in the Austrian collegiate church of St. Florian, which he visited during a trip with friends to the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in 1977. Schnittke describes this experience and his symphony's origin and conception as follows:

"We reached St. Florian at dusk, when Bruckner's grave was already closed. The cold, dark baroque church had something mysterious about it. Somewhere in the church a small choir was singing the evening mass: a 'Missa invisibilis'. On entering the church, each of us went in a different direction – to let the cold and powerful size of the building affect each of us alone.

A year later, I received a commission from the BBC Symphony Orchestra for a concert programme which was to be conducted by Gennadij Roshdestvensky. First of all my thoughts turned to a piano concerto; Roshdestvensky however put it to me that I should compose a work dedicated to Bruckner. As I had no ideas on this subject, Roshdestvensky said: 'How about something connected with St. Florian?' That was precisely the right answer. I immediately thought of an 'invisible mass' – a symphony against a choral background.

The movements of the Symphony No 2 follow the traditional order of the mass, and in the choral sections liturgical melodies are quoted. Can a form that ends with the words 'Dona nobis pacem' – give us peace – ever be surpassed?

All the harmony in this symphony is constructed according to the principle of a cross, as too is the form. How, though, can one build up a chord according to the principle of a cross? In this case it results in two chords intermingling; they are not symmetrical, but their intermingling produces a symmetry against which a horizontal motion reacts, so that visually, on the page of the score, a cross appears. I have pursued this thoroughly. It was very important for me to find such a principle of construction, especially for the Credo.

This symphony may at the same time be a mass, but there is less of the mass than of the symphony about it, because the elements which refer to the mass are mostly confined to the beginnings of the movements. A Gregorian hymn is quoted (or two, or one in canon with itself), and then orchestral material is added which is mostly independent and has nothing to do with the chorales – but which is an extension of the chorale. In the process everything vertical is strictly controlled. Everything must accord with the principle of the cross."

[Article taken from Universal Edition]

[North Star]

Hindemith
Sonatas for trumpet / horn / cello / double bass / tuba / trombone & piano
Kalle Randalu et al.

   

[Mirror Image]

Continuing with the Schnittke symphonies:





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Life and work come together in a particularly disturbing way in Alfred Schnittke's Sixth Symphony. Schnittke wrote the work in 1992, after sustained his second major stroke; he suffered his first in 1985, would suffer another in 1994, and, eventually, a fourth in 1998 would take the composer's life. While Schnittke's debilitation was constant and cruel, his fortitude was more astonishing, and his post-1985 "late period" bore a tremendous spring of new music: 3 operas, 4 symphonies, 6 concerti, and many smaller works.

Platitudes abounded of Schnittke's "race against death," and surely Schnittke's last efforts, the Sixth among them, carry a certain heroic. But what renders these late works most poignant is their relationship to Schnittke's lifelong obsession--with evil, in all its deceitful and destructive mask--and his lifelong method--a direct, unremitting unveiling of that evil.

In works such as the Sixth Symphony, one hears the staggered notation of confessions and confrontations, a relentless "season in hell" unrelieved by even briefest repose. The formal has almost entirely disappeared, the structure feels splintered and shambled, every idea chokes itself into silence. Especially in the Sixth, Schnittke lives without the lyric line, that cumulative, tidal development which had been for centuries the life-support of the symphony; instead, every event begins anew at ground zero. The Sixth Symphony is the sound of Schnittke working in the dark, dammed and damned but equally unwavering.

The first movement, for example, begins with a single incisive chord that quickly spread, diffuses, and balloons in a hair-tearing haze. Every movement from the orchestra, often in groups of only one or two instruments, sounds its own arduous achievement and subsequent exhaustion. A confounding climax near movement's end quakes into muteness before looping back to the beginning. The remaining three movements--a wizened, clownish Presto, an Adagio of lachrymose shards, and an angry, blunt Allegro vivace--make many equal attempts, but remain steadfastly in a still, silent darkness.

This darkness has an incarnation in late Schnittke, in the figure of Faust--in many ways the mythic shadow of Schnittke's fascination and struggle with evil. Faust was for Schnittke a man doomed to irresolution, "at least an 'evil' Christian"; simultaneously, he was (perhaps like the composer) obsessed with acquiring knowledge, feeding an insatiable curiosity. His fable became for Schnittke a moral and aesthetic life-symbol, whether in the guise of Johann Spies's 1557 didactic tract "History of Dr. Johann Fausten, the Well-Known Magician" or Thomas Mann's 1946 novel Doktor Faustus, whose "Faustus" was fictional composer with a polystylistic, anarchic style.

At the Sixth Symphony's composition, Schnittke was indeed orchestrating the first two acts of his Faust opera, a work still uncompleted when the composer died. In many ways, however, the opera's myriad motives, colors, harmonies and gestures contaminate the Sixth Symphony can be heard as a kind of instrumental fantasy upon the opera.

And yet, beneath the more deliberate "themes" of the Symphony lies a disquietingly direct experience of Schnittke's own difficulties. Schnittke once remarked that he wanted the Sixth to convey the sound of a struggle with concentration, a sonic transcript of mental confusion and fatigue-hence the countless grand pauses for full orchestra and the stuttering attempts to repeat even the homeliest musical ideas. In a strange way, this is the sound of "bad" music, the very stuff that bespeaks musical failure. But expression as direct as Schnittke's Sixth often has little to do with the well-made. It inhabits a second-level eloquence, that eloquence that comes from an almost complete lack of words.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

[North Star]

Martinů
What Men Live By, H. 336
Symphony No. 1, H. 289

Ivan Kusnjer, Petr Svoboda, Jan Martiník, Lucie Silkenová, Ester Pavlů, Jaroslav Březina, Josef Špaček (narrator), Lukáš Mareček
Martinů Voices, choirmaster Lukáš Vasilek

Czech Philharmonic
Bělohlávek

[vers la flamme]

Béla Bartók: The Wooden Prince, op.13. Ádám Fischer, Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra

[Mirror Image]

Hindemith
Sonatas for trumpet / horn / cello / double bass / tuba / trombone & piano
Kalle Randalu et al.

   

Martinů
What Men Live By, H. 336
Symphony No. 1, H. 289

Ivan Kusnjer, Petr Svoboda, Jan Martiník, Lucie Silkenová, Ester Pavlů, Jaroslav Březina, Josef Špaček (narrator), Lukáš Mareček
Martinů Voices, choirmaster Lukáš Vasilek

Czech Philharmonic
Bělohlávek

Béla Bartók: The Wooden Prince, op.13. Ádám Fischer, Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra

Pounds the table!

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I think the duplication may have been the only criticism.  If you like the selections, why not get the complete ballets?

YES! You must hear the complete ballet of Estancia. The Ben-Dor performance is the one to get, but it might actually be the only recording of the complete ballet. As for your question about that Popol Vuh recording, the performances of Panambí and Estancia are extractions from the full ballet recording I posted about earlier. Anyway, that Popol Vuh disc is great --- all of the Ben-Dor recordings of Ginastera are worth their weight in gold. If you don't own it, I would also buy this one:



As for Hurwitz's critique, who cares. His opinion isn't any more valid than anyone else's.

Gents, thank you for the explanations and recommendations. I will purchase both the discs of complete ballet and Casals Themes.

[Mirror Image]

Gents, thank you for the explanations and recommendations. I will purchase both the discs of complete ballet and Casals Themes.

Very nice.

[foxandpeng]

Malcolm Arnold
Complete Symphonies
Symphony #5 #2
Hickox/Gamba
Chandos

Seems a good close to Wednesday evening

[Crudblud]

Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 30 (Annie Fischer)

[Karl Henning]

Music without the fim:

[Mirror Image]

NP:

Mahler
Symphony No. 6 in A minor (Live recording, 1983)
LPO
Tennstedt

[HomerChapman]

Music without the fim:

I did not realise that Rozsa had done the music for The Thief Of Bagdad. Good to know. The disc looks enjoyable.

[Mirror Image]

NP:

Henze
Symphony No. 3
Berliners
Henze

[Que]

Morning listening  (rerun, Spotify):



Delightful! 

[Harry]

Morning listening  (rerun, Spotify):



Delightful! 

I am waiting for them Que, please remember when you roam the streets of Sevilla Don't you come back without them

[foxandpeng]

Ruth Gipps
Symphonies 2 & 4
BBC NOoW
Rumon Gamba
Chandos

Early start with Ruth Gipps before work meetings eat my chips

[vandermolen]

Ruth Gipps
Symphonies 2 & 4
BBC NOoW
Rumon Gamba
Chandos

Early start with Ruth Gipps before work meetings eat my chips

That's one of my best CD purchases of recent years Danny - especially for Symphony No.4, which I rate very highly. No.2 is great as well but I already knew that through a different recording. Let us know what you think of it.

[Harry]

That's one of my best CD purchases of recent years Danny - especially for Symphony No.4, which I rate very highly. No.2 is great as well but I already knew that through a different recording. Let us know what you think of it.

+1