What are you listening 2 now?

[kyjo]

Morton Gould as a conductor - let alone composer! - is seriously underated

+1 This set contains some outstanding recordings of mostly non-mainstream repertoire:

[kyjo]

Charles Loeffler: A Pagan Poem

Gaseous, music without any distinctive or interesting idea. Rather derivative a la Dukas (mostly). I much prefer his La Mort de Tintagiles to this vacuous piece.

Well, that's disappointing, as I greatly enjoyed his La Mort de Tintagiles from that recent Americascapes CD on Ondine.

[kyjo]

As far as I can recall Chout is not a work often mentioned here and certainly one I have not listened to in ages......



for which I hang my head in shame!  What a cracking score and it gets a suitably energised and aggressive performance here.  This multi-CD survey of the Diaghilev ballets are very good and this disc keeps up the good work.  A good Three-Cornered-Hat is trumped by an excellent Chout

You've reminded me - despite Prokofiev being one of my favorite composers, I barely know Chout at all (or most of his other lesser-known ballets, for that matter). Time to rectify that!

[kyjo]

Louis Glass: Symphony No. 4 in E minor

Just wanted to hear the 1st mov., the music doesn't hold good enough to keeping trying. Rather disappointing, actually.

What a pity, Cesar, as I greatly enjoy his 3nd and 5th symphonies. I guess L. Glass is one of those lesser-known composers who lacks consistency of quality across his output.

[JBS]

(Please don't make me listen to every single work in the Schubert catalogue. I'm begging you.)

There are far worse fates. After all, suppose one had to listen to the entire output of Stockhausen or Andre Rieu?

TD

[Madiel]

There are far worse fates. After all, suppose one had to listen to the entire output of Stockhausen or Andre Rieu?

Pass the Schubert. Yum.

[Mirror Image]

NP:

Korngold
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
Gil Shaham, violin
LSO
Previn



My love for this concerto has no bounds. Simply intoxicating, ravishing and heart-rendering. One of the best performances of this concerto, too. Shaham squeezed every ounce of emotion from his violin and Previn's accompaniment is right there to match Shaham's own interpretation.

[Madiel]

Pejacevic

Capriccio, op.47
Two piano sketches, op.44
Two intermezzi, op.38



As I navigate through this set I remain of the view that Pejacevic wrote piano miniatures as well as just about anyone.

[Operafreak]

Beethoven 'Diabelli Variations'- Alexander Romanovsky

[Operafreak]

Mendelssohn: Paulus, Op. 36

    Gundula Janowitz (soprano), Rosemarie Lang (contralto), Hermann-Christian Polster (bass), Hans Peter Blochwitz (tenor), Theo Adam-(bass), Gothart Stier (bass)
    Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Leipzig Radio Choir, GewandhausKinderchor-    Kurt Masur
   

[Que]

Back home, I unwrapped some of the spoils of my travels:

[Madiel]

Dvorak's obsessive, epic Stabat Mater. What a work.

[Operafreak]

Goossens - Orchestral Works- Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis

[Papy Oli]

Good morning all,
Bizet's Carmen
Act II

[pjme]

Well, that's disappointing, as I greatly enjoyed his La Mort de Tintagiles from that recent Americascapes CD on Ondine.

Do give "Pagan poem" a try. I think it is Loeffler at his most lush and exuberant: piano solo obligato, extended solos for the english horn,three extra trumpets in the finale! A late Romantic bijou presented in impressionistic colours.

"Besides several symphonic poems – including La Mort de Tintagiles (after Maeterlinck) with solo viola d'amore, op. 6 (1897, rev. 1900), and the Poem (1901, rev. 1915) - Loeffler left behind a large body of chamber music for a wide range of instruments, three operas, and roughly forty songs. Several of his works (including a Poème for cello and orchestra) are lost. A Pagan Poem (after Virgil) for orchestra with obligato piano, cor anglais, and three trumpets (1904-6) was originally composed in 1901-2 as Poème païen (d'après Virgil) for two flutes, oboe, clarinet, cor anglais, two horns, viola, double bass, piano, and three trumpets. Once again Loeffler applied the severe self-criticism that induced him time and again to give his works a final polish. The orchestral version was premièred on 29 October 1907 during a private concert in Fenway Court (the home of his friend, the musically-minded Isabella Stewart Gardner), with the pianist Heinrich Gebhard (an ardent champion of the piece) and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Karl Muck. The public première was given with the same performers in Boston Symphony Hall on 22 November 1907. The work received excellent reviews and quickly became popular – perhaps one reason why Loeffler did not venture on another orchestral work for a long time thereafter.

The Poem is dedicated to the memory of Gustave Schirmer, who died of acute appendicitis on 17 July 1907, and with whose wife Loeffler was on terms of friendship. The work was published roughly two years later by G. Schirmer (the autograph score is preserved in the Library of Congress, Washington DC) and also appeared in an edition for two pianos, arranged by Heinrich Gebhard. The only extra-musical references in the score are the short subtitle "after Virgil" and the addendum Poème antique in the piano part. Loeffler once said that he loved "the word 'pagan' connected with the ancients."2 He left no statements regarding the work's genesis or "program": "When I am ready to write," he once claimed in an interview, "the ideas are likely to be clear in my head. More often than not they come from something I have read, an impression received, perhaps from a single line. [...] 'A Pagan Poem' was the result of the chant of the sorceress as recited in Virgil's Eclogue. From that the rest grew."3

Virgil's Bucolics, like the Aeneid, were popular reading-matter in France; a new edition of 1912 contained woodcuts by Aristide Maillol. In their range and variety, the Bucolics sing of the full panoply of "pagan" rural life, which was later stereotyped into an ideal world in Symbolism and the Lebensreform movement. Many compositions of the fin de siècle reflect this ideal in all its variety, especially in the anglophone world, where it was a much-beloved subject (John Ireland, Arnold Bax, Granville Bantock). But the best-known works along these lines were unquestionably Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé. Although there is no precise reference in the orchestral score, Loeffler referred to [Damon seu] Pharmaceutria – Damon or The Sorceress (Virgil's Eighth Eclogue) in the first version of 1901-2. The work is prefixed with a quotation from this poem.

Loeffler's composition opens with a slow "mystic" introduction from which there arises, first in the flutes and solo viola, an initial melody whose elements are of cardinal importance for the work as a whole. Moods and timbres follow in rich succession, reverting time and again to the motivic material of the opening. In the Lento assai (pp. 35 ff.) a prominent role is assigned to the piano, which is used, not as an orchestral instrument, but concertante in the same manner as the cor anglais. Perhaps the climax of the work is the entrance of the three off-stage trumpets, da lontano, accompanied only by timpani and piano (p. 66, rehearsal no. 1). Though only fifteen bars long, it has an extraordinary timbral and musical allure.

A choreographed version of A Pagan Poem was mounted in New York in 1930, with choreography by Irene Lewisohn, but some time after 1960 the work's popularity seems to have entered a rapid decline. To date there have been three recordings of the Pagan Poem, all predating this year, but none thereafter: one with Leopold Stokowski and his symphony orchestra (Seraphim S 60080), another with Howard Hanson and the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra (Victor Red Seal), and a third with Manuel Rosenthal and the Paris Philharmonic Orchestra (Capitol P 8188). The Stokowski and Rosenthal recordings have both been transferred to CD and released by EMI."
https://repertoire-explorer.musikmph.de/wp-content/uploads/vorworte_prefaces/802.html
I love it!

[Traverso]

Bach


Preise Dein Glücke,Gesegnetes Sachsen, BWV 215

Was Mir Behagt,Ist Nur Die Muntre Jagd, BWV 208

[steve ridgway]

Penderecki - Fonogrammi.

[Christo]

The Dutch New Spirituality composer  Joep Fransens, Harmony of the Spheres

[vandermolen]

Finzi: Intimations of Immortality
Langridge, Hickox: Liverpool

A work with many beautiful and emotional moments, but much of it not particularly memorable. The percussion seems excessive: every climax doesn't need a cymbal crash.

I largely agree. I don't think that it lives up to the opening.
TD

[vandermolen]

The Dutch New Spirituality composer  Joep Fransens, Harmony of the Spheres

Sounds interesting Johan. What do you think of it?