What are you listening 2 now?

[ritter]

Some Mahler today: Maurice Abravanel conducts the Utah Symphony in the Seventh.

CD 7 of the complete set:


Not the most polished of performances TBH, but quite compelling and engaging...

[Mirror Image]

Kodaly

Lovely work and performance, Jan.

[aligreto]

Khachaturian: Extracts from the Incidental Music to "Masquerade" [Tjeknavorian]






The music is very well and assertively played throughout. It is sometimes contemplative and sometimes energetic and boisterous and it is always atmospheric. It is also very well orchestrated.

[aligreto]

If you like Gallus it is perhaps a good idea to give this box the attention it deserves.

Cheers, Jan, and thank you for the recommendation 

[Mirror Image]

Khachaturian: Extracts from the Incidental Music to "Masquerade" [Tjeknavorian]






The music is very well and assertively played throughout. It is sometimes contemplative and sometimes energetic and boisterous and it is always atmospheric. It is also very well orchestrated.

Have you heard any more Martinů, Fergus? I know I'm pestering you about this composer, but there's so much I believe you should hear!

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Have you heard any more Martinů, Fergus? I know I'm pestering you about this composer, but there's so much I believe you should hear!

lol You're unrelenting John! 
PD

[Mirror Image]

lol You're unrelenting John! 
PD

I'm anything if not tenacious.

[aligreto]

Have you heard any more Martinů, Fergus? I know I'm pestering you about this composer, but there's so much I believe you should hear!

The Answer, unfortunately, is no, John, but pester away. I have such a backlog of music to listen to from right across the ages. However, I assure you that he is among them. 

[aligreto]

lol You're unrelenting John! 
PD

I'm anything if not tenacious.

 

[Mirror Image]

The Answer, unfortunately, is no, John, but pester away. I have such a backlog of music to listen to from right across the ages. However, I assure you that he is among them. 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

The Answer, unfortunately, is no, John, but pester away. I have such a backlog of music to listen to from right across the ages. However, I assure you that he is among them. 

I'm anything if not tenacious.

But Fergus, surely they are at the top of the pile(s?)! 

PD

[Papy Oli]

Good afternoon all.

[Brian]

Saw a favorable mention of Alexander Lazarev the other day, and decided to get acquainted with his style in big, loud Russian masterworks. Ain't streaming great?



He favors very fast interpretations. His DSCH 6th takes less than 30 minutes, his 5th takes 44 (Lenny/Sony is 45:35), and his 11th takes just 58 minutes (compare to Maxim 60', Berglund 66', Haitink 61', although Ashkenazy has the record at 52').

[Mirror Image]

Saw a favorable mention of Alexander Lazarev the other day, and decided to get acquainted with his style in big, loud Russian masterworks. Ain't streaming great?



He favors very fast interpretations. His DSCH 6th takes less than 30 minutes, his 5th takes 44 (Lenny/Sony is 45:35), and his 11th takes just 58 minutes (compare to Maxim 60', Berglund 66', Haitink 61', although Ashkenazy has the record at 52').

And your opinion? Favorable or unfavorable?

[Brian]

And your opinion? Favorable or unfavorable?

I'm 14 minutes into track one (Hamlet overture). I'll report back at lunchtime. 

But it is a very good Hamlet, direct, exciting, and the Japanese orchestra, which I didn't know well at all, has a really nice brass section. The sound does favor brass over winds to a degree.

[aligreto]

Lloyd: Symphony No. 8 [Downes]





The wistful woodwinds and strings create a wonderful atmosphere at the opening of the work. This tone becomes prolonged and also somewhat disconcerting and also a little menacing when the dynamics are augmented. The further into it I go the more sinister sounding it becomes. This is all the more unnerving as this is played against a somewhat comical passage which I find unnerving and yet quite engaging and inventive. I do not know what Lloyd is trying to say with this music to be honest but I do like its heightened musical language, its wonderful scoring and its sense of drama and tension. The brass has great bite throughout the movement. 
The slow movement appears like a dream-like sequence of passages layered with different sonorities each yielding up its own individual atmospheric sound picture. Each individual thread weaves itself into a grand plan to create an atmospheric, mysterious and enchanting tapestry.  This I find very inventive, interesting and effective.
The tempo, dynamics and the tone all pick up in the final movement. We have a return to that element of levity that occasionally appears in the first movement and which, likewise, is countered here by a sense of menace. All of this, however, never distracts from the sense of power and drama in a movement that is very well driven throughout with a great conclusion.

[aligreto]

But Fergus, surely they are at the top of the pile(s?)! 

PD

Unfortunately the answer is no again, PD, but do not let John know that 

[ritter]

Petrushka anyone? I mean, could you get more kitschy than quoting Joseph Lanner in full? 

I haste to add that Petrushka is my very favorite Stravinsky work hands down, not least precisely because of that Lanner quote --- followed by Pulcinella, not least because of those kitschy Pergolesi quotes in full.

The jury is still out on the third place.

EDIT: I'd really and honestly rather listen to Joseph Lanner and Pergolesi than Stravinsky...

We probably have a different perception of what "kitsch" means, Andrei (at least in this instance). In my view, Stravinsky's quotes from Lanner (and also from the popular song Elle avait une jambe en bois, which he thought was in the public domain, but the author was alive and kicking, leading to a hefty financial cost for Igor Feodorovich  ) are eminently ironic, not kitschy by any means. And in Pulcinella, the quotations from Gallo and Pergolesi can only be described as "lovingly humorous", and the result is simply extraordinary (miraculous, actually). As Boulez wrote, in Pulcinella Stravinsky "definitively imposed his look on the contemporary world: this unheard of mixture of vigour, aggressiveness, poetry, good humour, familiarity, candour, pessimism and melancholy" (my translation from Boulez's book Regards sur autrui, p. 608, Christian Bourgois Éditeur, Paris 2005 — but the text was originally published in English in the program notes of the concerts of the NYPO in memory of Stravinsky three weeks after his death on 6 April 1971).

Scènes de ballet is an entirely different affair. Stravinsky himself wrote that "the recapitulation of the Pas de deux with the full orchestra now sounds to me like movie music: the happy homesteaders, having massacred the Indians, begin to plant their corn" and that the work is "featherweight and sugared, my sweet tooth not yet being carious", however to immediately add "but I will not deprecate it" (Stravinsky and Craft, Memories and Commentaries —new one-volume edition—, pp. 233-234, Faber and Faber, London 2002). In any case, as I mentioned in my earlier post, Scènes de ballet has —kitsch and all— some charming moments. 

[Florestan]

We probably have a different perception of what "kitsch" means, Andrei (at least in this instance). In my view, Stravinsky's quotes from Lanner (and also from the popular song Elle avait une jambe en bois, which he thought was in the public domain, but the author was alive and kicking, leading to a hefty financial cost for Igor Feodorovich  ) are eminently ironic, not kitschy by any means. And in Pulcinella, the quotations from Gallo and Pergolesi can only be described as "lovingly humorous", and the result is simply extraordinary (miraculous, actually). As Boulez wrote, in Pulcinella Stravinsky "definitively imposed his look on the contemporary world: this unheard of mixture of vigour, aggressiveness, poetry, good humour, familiarity, candour, pessimism and melancholy" (my translation from Boulez's book Regards sur autruip. 608, Christian Bourgois Éditeur, Paris 2005 — but the text was originally published in English in the program notes of the concerts of the NYPO in memory of Stravinsky three weeks after his death on 6 April 1971).

Scènes de ballet is an entirely different affair. Stravinsky himself wrote that "the recapitulation of the Pas de deux with the full orchestra now sounds to me like movie music: the happy homesteaders, having massacred the Indians, begin to plant their corn" and that is "featherweight and sugared, my sweet to not yet being carious", to the immediately add "but I will not deprécate it" (Stravinsky and Craft, Memories and Commentaries —new one-volume edition—, pp. 233-234, Faber and Faber, London 2002). In any case, as I mentioned in my earlier post, Scènes de ballet has —kitsch and all— some charming moments. 

You took my comment much too seriously, Rafael. 

[Mirror Image]

I'm 14 minutes into track one (Hamlet overture). I'll report back at lunchtime. 

But it is a very good Hamlet, direct, exciting, and the Japanese orchestra, which I didn't know well at all, has a really nice brass section. The sound does favor brass over winds to a degree.

Looking forward reading more of your opinion of these Shostakovich Lazarev performances, Brian.