What are you listening 2 now?

[vers la flamme]

Johannes Brahms: 4 Ballades, op.10. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

Astonishing. The B major ballade seems to go on for an eternity, in a good way. Brahms wrote this at age 21? Amazing. Foretaste of what he would do with his very last piano pieces.

[vandermolen]

Bruckner: Symphony No.5

[Todd]

[Klavier]

No. 5-8 this morning. Great pieces. If you like Britten and Tippett with a dash of Bartok, then you should like this recording.

[SonicMan46]

More Korngold for the afternoon - Dave

   

[Klavier]

[VonStupp]

Morton Gould
A Cappella - Tolling / Solfegging
Of Time and the River

Gregg Smith Singers - Gregg Smith

A Cappella is more of the double-chorus wordplay Gould invested into the cheery Quotations, also on this recording.

Of Time and the River is tougher music, and Tom Wolfe's prose is a bit imposing and oddly set to music. The bird song in movement 4 is interesting, as is the separation of voices in the 2nd movement 'Play Us a Tune on an Unbroken Spinet', but overall this work is a bit austere compared to the wit and personality of the other music on this recording.

The Gregg Smith Singers are simply a pleasure, and their dedication to unsung American choral music is always fun to explore. Suffice to say their a cappella technical abilities are outstanding!

https://open.spotify.com/album/0VzwOOG8cKAhSw2Xztg7SJ

[aligreto]

Fauré: Piano Trio in D minor Op. 120 [Nash Ensemble]





There is a great sensitivity to the music making here and the presentation is wonderfully atmospheric, lyrical and engaging. The music is enchanting and it is given a very fine performance here. The final movement is particularly exciting, intense and engaging in this performance.

[kyjo]

Just checking out the Franck - never heard it.  This particular performance is available as part of the standard Amazon Prime membership - as you say remarkable for such a young composer.  You only ever think of Franck looking old with big mutton-chop whiskers so hard to thing of him as a young composer!

Glad you enjoyed it! Tbh, I prefer Franck's remarkable early piano trios to several of his more famous later works like the Symphony in D minor.

[kyjo]

First-Listen Sunday -

Glass
Cello Concerto No. 1
Ruth Sutter, cello
Orchestra of the Americas
Dante Anzolini

MI listening to Philip Glass?! I think I'm gonna have a heart attack!

[kyjo]

If memory serves, I was quite disappointed by Searle's symphonies last time I heard them (years ago). I'll pull them off the shelf for a dust up. Chances are I've changed my mind about his kind of modernism.

I'm not familiar with his other symphonies, but I think there's a good chance that the 2nd is by far the best. As I said before, I sampled the 1st and I found it quite unpleasant...

[classicalgeek]

Listened to another disc in the Barber/Alsop collection:

Samuel Barber
Capricorn Concerto
A Hand of Bridge
Mutations from Bach
Intermezzo from 'Vanessa'
Canzonetta for oboe and strings
Fadograph of a Yestern Scene
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Marin Alsop



Loved it all, maybe not so much the 'Mutations from Bach', but certainly everything else. The Capricorn Concerto absolutely sparkles, and I detect more than a bit of the influence of Stravinsky, particularly 'Pulcinella' in the finale. 'A Hand of Bridge' is loads of fun, and the 'Intermezzo' and 'Fadograph' are Barber at his most passionate. The 'Mutations' didn't really sound like Barber to me - but they were still enjoyable. And the 'Canzonetta' is just gorgeous - yearning, almost heartbreaking music, highlighted by the fact that this was the last work Barber wrote. I'm looking forward to the remaining discs in this set!

[Traverso]

Johannes Brahms: 4 Ballades, op.10. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

Astonishing. The B major ballade seems to go on for an eternity, in a good way. Brahms wrote this at age 21? Amazing. Foretaste of what he would do with his very last piano pieces.

A great recording..

[aligreto]

Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras [Shermerhorn]





No. 6 for Flute and Bassoon
No. 7 for Orchestra

[Karl Henning]

Thanks. That was cool; I should hear more of Karl's music.

Thank you, indeed!

[André]

I'm not familiar with his other symphonies, but I think there's a good chance that the 2nd is by far the best. As I said before,.  I sampled the 1st and I found it quite unpleasant...

TD: this disc.



Well, my opinion of the first symphony (1953) is rather positive  . At least I can follow what's going on. It doesn't sound too modern for my ears. The very beginning even seems to borrow a theme from Die Walküre.

Night Music (1943) is an earlier work, a short orchestral nocturne dedicated to Webern, who never heard it because of his unexpected death. On Musicweb it's described as 'monster film music'. At least it earns a description. The 4th symphony from 1962 is undescribable. It is not actively unpleasant, but it tries hard in that direction. The notes state that « with the skeletal fabric of the Fourth symphony Searle had reached a stylistic crisis ». I'll bet he had.

By way of contrast I was reminded of Schoenberg's Variations op. 31: luminous shards of tones mingle with sinuous atonal lines without any clearly discernible design. It's only when it reaches its apex in the last variation that the impression one has heard a masterpiece dawns on the listener. Searle's effort is not on that level. When it comes to atonality and serialism the symphonies of Roberto Gerhard are more my kind of thing. 

[Todd]

Disc two.

[Carlo Gesualdo]

Georges Gurdjieff, a fabulous mystic & holistic to cleanse the minds of negative energy, he was a mystic he live in his dream got Harmonic Development, strongly beautiful and harmonic music, that is transcendent, great great composer of 20 century like the guy seem so lucid for a dreamers.

[JBS]

MI listening to Philip Glass?! I think I'm gonna have a heart attack!

You obviously missed his burst of Glass on the Purchases thread. 😁

TD
The opening movement of the First Symphony reminds me of Brahms (although given the chronology any influence would have run the other way) the later movements of Schubert and Schumann.

[Mirror Image]

MI listening to Philip Glass?! I think I'm gonna have a heart attack!

Hah! Don't get too comfortable with that idea, Kyle. I'm not exactly finding much to latch onto so far.