What are you listening 2 now?

[ritter]

The Quatuor Ludwig play Franck's Piano Quintet in F minor (with Michaël Levinas) and Chausson's String Quartet in C minor, op. 35.

[Mandryka]

When you have one leg in the grave already, you can afford a little public smile.

Foot. The expression is one foot in the grave.

(Sorry, couldn't resist -- your English is normally so perfect it's strange to see even this slight mistake. That's why I thought it must be Romanian!)

[Florestan]

Foot. The expression is one foot in the grave.

(Sorry, couldn't resist -- your English is normally so perfect it's strange to see even this slight mistake. That's why I thought it must be Romanian!)

Hah! 

[Mandryka]

Difficult to commit myself to a preference because it doesn't do justice to the many compositions I appreciate  that fall outside of that.
Yet it is the simple melodies that touch me the most, such as the example in the attached video.
The joy in the Bach sonatas for Traverso, the English and French suites, you almost drown in the overwhelming richness that the Baroque has given us.
According to Gustav leonhardt, with the advent of the "aufklärung", Voltaire and his followers destroyed much that was dear to him. The world was determined more horizontally and this had a wide influence on thinking and the cultural world.
It was a curse in Leonhard's eyes, because at the same time man had turned away more from God." Man was incapable of love, God was love". It is precisely Leonhardt who saw himself simply as a servant and mediator who nevertheless with his sober approach could enchant the listener .
I am very attracted to the Baroque era as there are, Sweelinck, Bach, Telemann, Scarlatti, Schütz, Vivaldi, Monteverdi, Purcell and many others.
The Renaissance is equally loved by me. Dufay is also one of my dear ones. It is striking how contemporary his songs sound, at least to my ears.
I am thinking of Telemann's 'Ino' cantata sung by Gundula Janowitz.
I have it all enclosed in my heart and as much as I can enjoy for example Boulez, it will never be like that for me  .
All in all, I think you're right, I feel most at home in the world of the Baroque and the periods before that. 



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

There's a lot to think about here for me, because somehow I've always seen HIP as a project derived from enlightenment ideals. The quest for understanding about the how the score would have been turned into sound by musicians at the time of its composition. The anti enlightenment position you attribute to Leonhardt reminds me of ideas I've seen attributed to Furtwangler in fact.

Of course, there is no necessary incompatibility between enlightenment values and religion. Descartes himself believed in God, so did Locke and Berkeley and Leibniz.

[Florestan]

Of course, there is no necessary incompatibility between enlightenment values and religion. Descartes himself believed in God, so did Locke and Berkeley and Leibniz.

I prefer Pascal over any of the above.

[Mandryka]

I prefer Pascal over any of the above.

I wager you do.

[Florestan]

I wager you do.

Very good. 

[foxandpeng]

Robert Simpson
Symphony #5 and #6
Andrew Davis
Charles Groves
LSO
Lyrita

Weekend listening often wanders a fair distance from what I am listening to during the week. Apart from revisiting Bruckner, I've also been getting to know William Alwyn, Malcolm Lipkin, Elizabeth Maconchy,  and drilling down into as much Peter Maxwell Davies as my attention can stand. Really enjoying it. I guess it was only a matter of time before I circled back to Robert Simpson, who seems to me to be far too neglected.

I like what I have heard from Simpson's symphonies over time. He's hardly a tunesmith, but that doesn't often figure so highly in my listening, and he isn't always an easy listen, but again, that's not a problem. I don't know his work nearly well enough, so today has been positive in starting to put right my oversight with the pulsing and thunderous #5, and the excellent #6.Whoever bought Simpson drums and brass as a child, was a star (oblique pun intended). 

Great British symphonist who shouldn't be allowed to gather dust.

[Que]

I have it Que,it is superb indeed! 

Excellent. I should have known. 

The new Leonardt edition has regrettable no surprises.

Since I passed on the previous edition, I have another opportunity to consider!

[Karl Henning]

I wager you do.

(* chortle *)

TD: Time I resume and wrap up the wonderful OCO box ... I'll repeat this 'un, especially as I recall marveling over the K. 32:

CD 34
"Wolferl"
Ein musikalischer Spaß, K. 522
Der Sieg vom Helden Koburg, K. 587
Das Donnerwetter, K. 534
La Bataille, K. 535
6 German Dances, K. 567
Galimathias musicum, quodlibet, K. 32
March in D, K. 335 (320a)
Les filles malicieuses, K. 610
Il trionfo delle donne K. 607 (605a)
Die Leyerer, K. 611
3 German Dances, K. 605

[André]

[Symphonic Addict]

Krenek: Concerto grosso No. 2, Op. 25

I have to admit that I did my best to understand this music. The style is something like Hindemith meets Berg. It's unpredictable, serious, has a personality of its own.

It's one of those cases where the music seems resembling the appearance (or at least the face) of the creator as for how cerebral and dour the music sounds like.

Anyway, I did enjoy this at the first attempt.

[Klavier1]

[kyjo]

Krenek: Concerto grosso No. 2, Op. 25

I have to admit that I did my best to understand this music. The style is something like Hindemith meets Berg. It's unpredictable, serious, has a personality of its own.

It's one of those cases where the music seems resembling the appearance (or at least the face) of the creator as for how cerebral and dour the music sounds like.

Anyway, I did enjoy this at the first attempt.

I've strongly disliked pretty much every piece I've heard by this composer. Arid and soulless music.

[Symphonic Addict]

Agree about Mai-Dun Cesar and I also love The Forgotten Rite. Those Previn/Britten and Boult/Ireland CDs are very special.

Superb programs in both composers indeed, Jeffrey. I wish Ireland would have composed a symphony.

[Symphonic Addict]

+1 John Ireland felt, I believe, a spiritual connection with ancient history.

Something similar I felt yesterday as well. Ireland had a great hear for orchestration, and this work is a solid proof of it.

[Symphonic Addict]

Lipkin is worth a listen, IMO. The first symphony is more atonal than the following two, but there is a fair dissonance in there.

MusicWeb puts it better than I can... 

The comprehensive and informative booklet notes by Paul Conway describe the First Symphony as "atonal" but this should not be taken to imply that they are in the same modernist style of many other British works of the 1960s. Indeed, although there is no definite sense of key, the music is frequently harmonically based around a distinct series of notes and the overall effect is no more unapproachable than (say) Bartók, showing the evidence of the composer's four years of study with Bernard Stevens. The symphony has elements of a tone poem, and the original inspiration came from Lipkin's experience of a traffic jam in Rome in the 1950s. The work stands on its own feet as a purely musical unit, with the description of the traffic jam — taken as a symbol for modern life with its noise and bustle — forming a central scherzo-like movement surrounded by a slow introduction and a disturbed concluding nocturne. Like all the symphonies on this disc, the music is continuous throughout. Paul Conway rightly describes it in his notes as "a powerfully cogent symphonic statement".

The other two symphonies here are similarly descriptive. The Second Symphony takes its inspiration from four lines by Andrew Marvell:

But at my back I alwaies hear
Times winged Charriot hurrying near
And yonder all before us lye
Desarts of vast Eternity

The sense of pursuit is palpable during the opening section, with a static centre before what Paul Conway describes as "a massive peroration". Throughout these symphonies one is aware of Lipkin's confident deployment of large orchestral forces, which are splendidly realised by the BBC orchestras under their various conductors. The first performance of The Pursuit was given on 9 February 1983, with this studio reading for broadcast made in a session the following day; and the sense of identification of the performers with the music is tangible.

The Third Symphony also derives its programmatic intent from a poem, this time by Robert Herrick:

The Glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a getting;
The sooner will his Race be run,
And neerer he's to Setting.

This lyric does not seem in itself to hold out much promise in terms of purely musical content, but Lipkin takes it as a metaphor for human life. He writes that its "spiritual essence is also concerned with that other arc of man's own race: the morning of life, its zenith and its evening." This is much more fertile territory for musical development, and the results are magnificently realised. Again Lipkin displays a masterly control of his orchestral forces, and the tapes taken from the first concert performance are marvellously detailed.
     
On the basis of this disc it is clear that Lipkin is a major symphonist whose music deserves to be better known. This new release may reduplicate material available elsewhere, but the fact that the recordings come from the original BBC master tapes makes a major difference to their impact. This disc is a must for anyone interested in the British symphony in the twentieth century, and should attract many others as well.
     
Paul Corfield Godfrey

Looks significantly convincing to try it soon. Very helpful, thank you!

[Symphonic Addict]

I've strongly disliked pretty much every piece I've heard by this composer. Arid and soulless music.

I get your point, Kyle. Definitely not appealing for everybody.

[Symphonic Addict]

Bloch: America

It belongs to that "epic" and visionary period of his career. It's a better work than I had thought. All the 3 movements have their moments. I highlight the 3rd movement 1926: The Present - The Future (Anthem) because has more creativeness methinks, and that superb use of jazz and American rhythms combined like in an "industrial" era grabs me quite well.

[Mirror Image]

NP:

Respighi
Violin Sonata in B minor
Becker-Bender, Nagy