What are you listening 2 now?

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Gunther Schuller, 7 Studies on Themes of Paul Klee.

[Harry]

Joseph Lauber.

Symphony No. 3 & 6.
Die Alpen, Symphonische Suite.

Sinfonie Orchester Biel Solothurn, Kaspar Zehnder.

Already the second instalment in this series and a very welcome one at that. A Swizz composer, to most unknown, but highly appreciated in his own country. His music is approachable and well written. There is always a whiff of the late romantic about the music, but filled with exuberant creativity, softly spoken though. This music needs time to settle in your frame of mind, for there is also the contemplative element that plays a huge role in Lauber's compositions. He is a thoughtful man, enjoying the world of mountains and the nature sightings belonging to it, which is translated in all his music but especially in his Symphonic Suite "Die Alpen", almost literally, with a hint of Bruckner in the background. In the symphonies he orchestrates soberly as to keep the momentum in the detail, so, no massive blocks of sound.
A very successful performance and quite good sound, but using 21 microphones to get that result is overblowing the issue in my opinion, they could do with less, and get a better result.

[SonicMan46]

Excel spreadsheet works for me... though my library is a lot smaller than some around here, I'm sure.

Used Excel and Access in the past when I was on PCs for many years, switched to Apple in retirement, so now using Numbers, Apple's database - below is the Telemann portion from Numbers, and as is evident, there is little room in the 'Title' category to list all of the catalog numbers, hence the need to keep tract of them in another fashion, otherwise my 'simplified' way of listing my owned CDs would be more complicated and MUCH longer (prints out at 42 pages) - now I do have a 6-CD box (right pic below) from JPC coming (on sale there for just $25 USD), so will add these on arrival to the Google Docs listing. Dave

 

[foxandpeng]

Yes, they are great - especially the first four symphonies. Recently I've been listening to No.1 quite a bit although No.3 remains my absolute favourite and I consider it to be one of the Great American Third Symphonies, alongside those by Harris, Schuman, Copland, Ives and Hanson.

I also like #3 very much. Interrupting DSCH to put it on now 😁. I don't know the Harris #3, so will have to prod that too!

[Mirror Image]

Any comments, John? The SQs will probably be the next stop in my exploration of Kodály's music...

Good day to you.

I haven't listened to the first SQ yet, but the second one has that Impressionism meets Hungarian folk music synthesis you mentioned awhile back. So you should enjoy it. I'm a bit puzzled by the first movement at the moment as it doesn't quite give its secrets over so easily, but the second movement went a lot smoother. Definitely worth hearing, though. Good day to you as well, Rafael.

[Mirror Image]

NP:

Shostakovich
String Quartet No. 15 In E Flat Minor, Op. 144
Mandelring

[Iota]

According to Elizabeth Wilson (a former student of his) in her book on Rostropovich:

"The [Britten] third suite....was based on Russian themes, and was an explicit tribute to Rostropovich as a patriot and humanist -- a man who had showed the courage to defend his convictions.  The third cello suite was perhaps the most personal and precious of all the works ever written for Rostropovich.  After the composer's death, he could hardly bring himself to play it, for with its use of the Orthodox funeral chant, 'At Rest with the Saints,' it touched on a vulnerable point, drawing both joyful and painful memories from some deep inner well of his being."

..........."He did record the first two Britten cello suites for Decca, but never overcame his reluctance to commit the third cello suite to any form of recording.  He felt that this music had its own mystical existence, in some dimension beyond time."

p.p.s.  Here's what that CD looks like: 

Interesting.

Coincidentally the Cello Symphony has been spinning here this week, not the Rostropovich one, but a very fine performance indeed by Paul Watkins/Edward Gardner et al on the following disc.

[VonStupp]

My first listen to this piece. One word that could describe it pretty well: ecstatic. I was waiting for too long to hear this wonder of a creation.

Chandos seems to have dropped the original cover with the orange baby pretty quickly after release. Too strange, I wonder?

Hickox is very good, although I might ever-so-slightly prefer Sir Charles Groves, particularly his soloists. The Requiem is a nice pairing here though.

[Harry]

Richard Flury.

Orchestral Music Volume II.

5 Orchesterstücke aus dem Festspiel "Der Scholle treu", Orchestrated by Edouard Favre, 1935 and Paul Mann, 2021.
Four Caprices for Violin and Orchestra.
Andante sostenuto, Orchestrated by Paul Mann, (2021)
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, No. 3.

Alexandre Dubach, violin.
Liepaja SO, Paul Mann.

Fulfilled every expectation I had of it, and even exceeded it with a wide margin. Sound is very good.

[Brian]

Naxos Music Library just uploaded a bunch of obscure back-catalogue Supraphon stuff, so I'm going to dive in.

[Harry]

Igor Stravinsky.
Divertimento.

Dmitri Shostakovich.
Sonata for Violin and Piano, opus 134.

Judith Ingolfsson, Violin.
Vladimir Stoupel, Piano.

Audite SACD recording

An absolute beauty of a performance, perfectly recorded. It gets a passionate treatment, but well dosed.

[VonStupp]

Sergei Prokofiev
Alexander Nevsky

St. Petersburg PO - Yuri Temirkanov

Not the cantata, but a reconstruction of the film score of some sort. Temirkanov uses three combined Russian choirs.

[Madiel]

Used Excel and Access in the past when I was on PCs for many years, switched to Apple in retirement, so now using Numbers, Apple's database - below is the Telemann portion from Numbers, and as is evident, there is little room in the 'Title' category to list all of the catalog numbers, hence the need to keep tract of them in another fashion, otherwise my 'simplified' way of listing my owned CDs would be more complicated and MUCH longer (prints out at 42 pages) - now I do have a 6-CD box (right pic below) from JPC coming (on sale there for just $25 USD), so will add these on arrival to the Google Docs listing. Dave

 

You list things by album. I don't, I list things by work recording, so I don't face the same problem of how to squeeze that information in.

And I don't think I've ever tried to print the information!

You also include a lot of fields I wouldn't, I only use performer to identify which particular recording rather than record label, year etc. It's not that I don't find that information interesting, but not for the purposes of keeping track of what I actually have.

[VonStupp]

David Diamond
Symphonies 2 & 4
Seattle SO
Gerard Schwarz
Naxos

I had forgotten how much I like Diamond's symphonies.

It's been great that Naxos has reissued Gerard Schwarz's back catalog from Delos for those of us who never picked them up the first time around. Probably cheaper now too.

[Que]

[...] now I do have a 6-CD box (right pic below) from JPC coming (on sale there for just $25 USD), so will add these on arrival to the Google Docs listing. Dave

Since I've been listening through those recordings the past few weeks, I can testify that it is going to be a treat! 

[Mirror Image]

NP:

Bernstein
Clarinet Sonata
Richard Stoltzman, Irma Vallecillo

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Interesting.

Coincidentally the Cello Symphony has been spinning here this week, not the Rostropovich one, but a very fine performance indeed by Paul Watkins/Edward Gardner et al on the following disc.

Not familiar with Paul Watkins recordings but will keep an eye out for it. 

Naxos Music Library just uploaded a bunch of obscure back-catalogue Supraphon stuff, so I'm going to dive in.

Brian,

I have that Janacek, Martinu and Kalabis CD though mine is an earlier release on Panton.  Hope that you enjoy it!

PD

[Harry]

Since I've been listening through those recordings the past few weeks, I can testify that it is going to be a treat! 

Okay okay stop harassing me, I will order it

[André]

The composer's name is Siegfried Matthus but you won't find it on either cover of this cd, only on the spine, in very small characters. Strange kind of marketing.

The works included here are a Concerto for trumpet, timpani and orchestra from 1982, the Manhattan Concerto for orchestra (1994) and Der Wald, a concerto for timpani and orchestra composed in 1984.

Matthus was born in 1934 in Germany, grew up in the GDR (East Germany), where he studied with Hanns Eisler. After the reunification of Germany he made quite a name for himself and was commissioned to write the trumpet and timpani concerto by the Berlin Philharmonic for its centenary celebrations. The Manhattan Concerto was commissioned by the New York School of Music and premiered by Kurt Masur. There are references to Bernstein and Gershwin (no surprise I suppose) as well as birds chirping (Central Park?).

Matthus composed many operas and concertos, as well as 3 symphonies. He is quite extensively recorded. His music is dynamic, spiky, very colourful. Structurally it is anchored in the classical forms. While he sometimes goes in surprising directions, his writing is economical and direct.

Performances are all from the RSO Saarbrücken, conducted by the excellent Günther Herbig. I thoroughly enjoyed this fine disc.

[vandermolen]

Bax: Symphony No.6 (LPO Thomson)
So much better than Del Mar's boxed-in recording, which put me off the work for decades. This and the Lloyd-Jones recording on Naxos are the best: