What are you listening 2 now?

[SonicMan46]

The Shelley series is actually 5 discs and is consistently excellent, Dave. If you find them at a reasonable price, grab them while you can. 

Hi Andrei - yes, I saw a half dozen or so Chandos discs w/ Shelley on Amazon, many mixing other piano works w/ the concertos - rather expensive for new ones but there are some 'used' options - maybe I can find a couple to supplement my Stephen Hough (Op. 85/89)?  Thanks - Dave

[Florestan]

Still available on the JPC site as a complete set.They give me more satisfaction than the old Melos recordings. I am very satisfied with them and am also considering purchasing the Beethoven quartets with this ensemble.
The ensemble playing is first-class, the way of performing  seems a bit cool at times comparing with the Melos but it gets under your skin anyhow, I'm very satisfied with it. 


https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/Franz-Schubert-1797-1828-S%E4mtliche-Streichquartette/hnum/4258696

Thanks. I have the Leipziger plus the Diogenes and Auryn series but never listened to any of them. Now I have great difficulty deciding which set I should listen to first. 

[Mirror Image]

Thanks. I have the Leipziger plus the Diogenes and Auryn series but never listened to any of them. Now I have great difficulty deciding which set I should listen to first. 

Mind blown. You're supposed to be a Schubertian! You might as well tender your resignation.

[Florestan]

Mind blown. You're supposed to be a Schubertian! You might as well tender your resignation.

What I actually meant, John, was that I never listened to them as complete sets, in their entirety, from the first to the last quartet, apart from the few well-known quartets which every Schubertian worth their name would have listened to. 

[Brian]

! POTENTIALLY DEFECTIVE NEW RELEASE WARNING !

Just had an amazingly trippy experience:



I've never heard Hindemith's Clarinet Quartet before. But unfortunately, in this performance, the second movement contains two tracks overlaid on top of each other. The second movement is played normally, but with the entire first movement repeated in mono sound in the background of the right channel. The result takes Hindemith's love of counterpoint to, uh, a dangerous new extreme. 

This is true on several streaming sources I've tried: Naxos Music Library, Presto free samples, even Orfeo label's own website. So it is possible Orfeo has coded the insane merger track into everything.

Now I have to seek out another album to hear this piece as it is meant to be played. Because that was...uh...terrifyingly intense. Kind of cool in an Ivesian way. But also hair-raisingly bizarre.

[ritter]

I've stayed clear of those giant conductor-centered box sets and I have say I'm all the better for it. I prefer the composer to the the conductor. This isn't to undermine what a conductor does, but for me, the music is of utmost importance.

Says the man who has bought a whole lot of CDs conducted by Dimitri Kitajenko over the past days....

Good evening to you, John!

[Florestan]

Says the man who has bought a whole lot of CDs conducted by Dimitri Kitajenko over the past days....

[Karl Henning]

! POTENTIALLY DEFECTIVE NEW RELEASE WARNING !

Just had an amazingly trippy experience:



I've never heard Hindemith's Clarinet Quartet before. But unfortunately, in this performance, the second movement contains two tracks overlaid on top of each other. The second movement is played normally, but with the entire first movement repeated in mono sound in the background of the right channel. The result takes Hindemith's love of counterpoint to, uh, a dangerous new extreme. 

This is true on several streaming sources I've tried: Naxos Music Library, Presto free samples, even Orfeo label's own website. So it is possible Orfeo has coded the insane merger track into everything.

Now I have to seek out another album to hear this piece as it is meant to be played. Because that was...uh...terrifyingly intense. Kind of cool in an Ivesian way. But also hair-raisingly bizarre.

"weird with a beard," as the Firesigns said.

[Spotted Horses]

! POTENTIALLY DEFECTIVE NEW RELEASE WARNING !

Just had an amazingly trippy experience:



I've never heard Hindemith's Clarinet Quartet before. But unfortunately, in this performance, the second movement contains two tracks overlaid on top of each other. The second movement is played normally, but with the entire first movement repeated in mono sound in the background of the right channel. The result takes Hindemith's love of counterpoint to, uh, a dangerous new extreme. 

This is true on several streaming sources I've tried: Naxos Music Library, Presto free samples, even Orfeo label's own website. So it is possible Orfeo has coded the insane merger track into everything.

Now I have to seek out another album to hear this piece as it is meant to be played. Because that was...uh...terrifyingly intense. Kind of cool in an Ivesian way. But also hair-raisingly bizarre.

I have and enjoy the Ensemble Villa Musica recording on MDG. To confuse matters, they record the "first version" so there must be a revision.

[Mirror Image]

Says the man who has bought a whole lot of CDs conducted by Dimitri Kitajenko over the past days....

Good evening to you, John!

But it's the repertoire that I found so enticing, Rafael. And a good evening to you!

[Mandryka]

Ghost of Machaut would agree

Ah. You mean Machaut's ghost is dancing to this.

[Mirror Image]

What I actually meant, John, was that I never listened to them as complete sets, in their entirety, from the first to the last quartet, apart from the few well-known quartets which every Schubertian worth their name would have listened to. 

Thanks for the clarification. I'm no Schubertian myself, but if I were, I'd imagine I would most definitely go for the SQs first.

[Cato]

! POTENTIALLY DEFECTIVE NEW RELEASE WARNING !

Just had an amazingly trippy experience:



I've never heard Hindemith's Clarinet Quartet before. But unfortunately, in this performance, the second movement contains two tracks overlaid on top of each other. The second movement is played normally, but with the entire first movement repeated in mono sound in the background of the right channel. The result takes Hindemith's love of counterpoint to, uh, a dangerous new extreme. 


Now I have to seek out another album to hear this piece as it is meant to be played. Because that was...uh...terrifyingly intense. Kind of cool in an Ivesian way. But also hair-raisingly bizarre.

Dude!  That disc is a KEEPER!   

! POTENTIALLY DEFECTIVE NEW RELEASE WARNING !


This is true on several streaming sources I've tried: Naxos Music Library, Presto free samples, even Orfeo label's own website. So it is possible Orfeo has coded the insane merger track into everything.

So, will they pay attention and fix things when people complain?

I am betting...no!  e.g. Amazon is notorious for allowing all kinds of confusion to reign in their offerings and reviews and rarely fixing anything, even things which could easily be untangled.


Many years ago, I bought a Sibelius LP, possibly the Second Symphony with Colin Davis.  Side I was fine!

When I turned it over to Side II, I heard a lecture about the sounds of various rifles on the battlefield of Gettysburg!!!

"Here is the sound of the Spencer rifle!"  CRAACK-CHIIING!  (Echo effect)


Your overdubbing of the Hindemith is even stranger!

On a tangent, our youngest son decided he wanted to watch the original F.W. Murnau silent movie version of Nosferatu on a free-movie channel.

The soundtrack was weird: they played the entire Sixth Symphony of Tchaikovsky (which sort of worked now and then, but was usually incongruous).  When that ended, on came the same composer's Marche Slav (again, sort of okay, usually not), and then that was cut short and on came the opening movement of Dvorak's Ninth Symphony, which really did not work at all!

[SonicMan46]

Hummel, Johann (1778-1837) - Piano Sonatas w/ Stephen Hough doing just 3, Ian Hobson who recorded 3 volumes (just the first one shown below), and Costantino Mastroprimiano (3 discs in a dual-sized jewel box) on a fortepiano by Urbano Perroselli, after Anton Walter, ca. 1790 and an Erard ('en forme de clavecin'), 1838) - unlike Hummel's Piano Concertos, these KB Sonatas are well covered in my collection.     Dave

   

[Brian]

Many years ago, I bought a Sibelius LP, possibly the Second Symphony with Colin Davis.  Side I was fine!

When I turned it over to Side II, I heard a lecture about the sounds of various rifles on the battlefield of Gettysburg!!!

"Here is the sound of the Spencer rifle!"  CRAACK-CHIIING!  (Echo effect)

I bought the Claudio Abbado Berlin DG Beethoven symphonies cycle (red box) and CD3 was not symphonies - it was a rock album by a group called "Extreme". Luckily DG did send a replacement disc for that one! I even got to keep the "Extreme."

[Traverso]

Thanks. I have the Leipziger plus the Diogenes and Auryn series but never listened to any of them. Now I have great difficulty deciding which set I should listen to first. 

  I am curious what you think of the Leiziger and Diogenes recordings .  Don't decide,just pick one and get started.

[Florestan]

Guillaume Du Fay

Triste Plaisir

Again this beautiful recording that might be better listened to in parts but is undeniably of an exceptional beauty.
They are worth more to me than all of Shostakovich's symphonies put together, but this is of course my limited opinion.
Optimal expressiveness with minimal means and of great poetic beauty. Anyone who claims that contemporary music is more meaningful, richer in content and artistic value has never listened properly.. I am a musical omnivore but I do have my musical preferences and those are mainly determined by Bach and earlier music. With all due respect Boulez is more music of the head, Dufay on the other hand speaks to me on a more personal field.
Music is an abstract art form where for me, especially in early music, a richness is offered that is incomparable, in the sense that my personal being is involved and yet has a universal character.
These are just thoughts and subject to change, the fact is that early music in particular appeals to me in a fullness that I do not experience in contemporary music despite my appreciation.
Let me be clear I love Boulez but purely as an experience the early music offers me a richer experience in which I feel more fully involved.
An exception to this for me is the music of Messiaen.
Of course there are more examples, I'm just speaking in general. 

To be clear I use the term "early" in the sense of Bach and earlier.

I don't remember when, where and by whom I read something to the effect that "writing dissonant and ugly music is modern/contemporary's composers way of responding to the horrors of the modern/contemporary world; my own response to the horrors of the modern/contemporary world is listening to Bach and Schubert". 

[Florestan]

  I am curious what you think of the Leiziger and Diogenes recordings .  Don't decide,just pick one and get started.

I will toss the coin. 

[Traverso]

Returning to Koechlin after a few weeks:

Les Bandar-Log
Stuttgart Radio Symphony
Heinz Holliger



Unmistakably Koechlin - that weirdly exotic and evocative sound world could belong to no one else.

And then my first foray into the Jochum/EMI box:

Bruckner
Symphony no. 1
Staatskapelle Dresden
Eugen Jochum



I confess I'm not as familiar with the Bruckner symphonies prior to no. 3, though I want to be. And Jochum, for me at least, does Bruckner better than anyone else.

I like Jochum but I prefer the DG recordings.I like Böhm and Haitink too, to name just a few.

[Cato]

I bought the Claudio Abbado Berlin DG Beethoven symphonies cycle (red box) and CD3 was not symphonies - it was a rock album by a group called "Extreme". Luckily DG did send a replacement disc for that one! I even got to keep the "Extreme."

Despite the name, the group sounds rather mellow.

Here is supposed to be one of their biggest hits, which to my ears channels The Everly Brothers.

https://www.youtube.com/v/UrIiLvg58SY


https://www.youtube.com/v/tbU3zdAgiX8