What are you listening 2 now?

[foxandpeng]

It's a gorgeous work and for someone who appreciates Vasks or those violin/orchestra works from Sibelius (sans the VC) would, I imagine, find enjoyment in this work.

Already in my Rautavaara playlist, apparently, but now on my radar.

Thanks 😁

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

Already in my Rautavaara playlist, apparently, but now on my radar.

Thanks 😁

My pleasure. Aho did a marvelous job on the completion of the second movement. I think he honored his teacher to beautiful effect.

[foxandpeng]

Errki Melartin
Complete Symphonies
Symphony #1
Leonid Grin
Tampere PO
Ondine

Late Romantic, Early Modern composers this evening, apparently 🤷�♂️

Why not? First time I have really been able to listen to anything of any note for a bit, tonight, so it is nice to explore.

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

NP: Aho Concerto for Recorder and Chamber Orchestra



This might be a first-listen. Lovely piece so far.

[DavidW]

Back to Atterberg's 5th:

[JBS]

Originally issued as

[Linz]

Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 5 in B Flat Major, 1878 Version Ed. Leopold Nowak
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski

[brewski]

An absorbingly assembled concert, live from the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine:

Mozart: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor                                             
Robin Scott, violin • Melissa Reardon, viola • Ahrim Kim, cello • Julian Martin, piano

Caroline Shaw: Boris Kerner (2017)
Keiko Ying, cello • Luke Rinderknecht, percussion

Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring                                                  
Soyeon Kate Lee, Ran Dank, piano

[AnotherSpin]

Roused around 3 am by the familiar rumble of air defences. Yet another nocturnal performance from our Russian neighbours. A few calming drops (purely medicinal), a bit of Bach, and back to pretending all was perfectly ordinary.

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

NP: MacMillan The Exorcism of Rio Sumpúl

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

NP: MacMillan String Quartet No. 1, "Visions of a November Spring"

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

NP: Koechlin Symphony No. 1, Op. 57bis

[Symphonic Addict]

Three string quartets and other miscellaneous pieces by Gibbs. I liked them more than expected. Very good pieces. I hope his other quartets will have the same luck as these ones to be recorded.

[Symphonic Addict]

Concertante works for cello by Malipiero, Ghedini, and Casella. Nikolay Shugaev (cello, joined on a second cello by Dimitrii Prokofiev in Ghedini's L'Olmeneta), Rostov Academic Symphony Orchestra, Valentin Uryupin (cond.).

The Ghedini is an incredible composition, quite different from any other style I know.

[JBS]

Letzbor 1994 doing Biber 1681

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

NP: Kancheli Symphony No. 2, "Chants"

From this set -

[Symphonic Addict]

Martinu: Suites from 'Istar'

Wonderful music and now I want to hear the complete ballet. Is there any work by Martinu I don't like?

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

NP: Janáček String Quartet No. 2, "Intimate Letters"



I haven't listened to any Janáček in quite some time. Love this composer's music dearly.

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

Now playing for a first-listen --- MacMillan Symphony No. 5 "Le grand Inconnu"



About MacMillan's Symphony No. 5 "Le grand Inconnu" -

The symphonic tradition, and Beethoven's monumental impact on it, is an imposing legacy which looms like a giant ghost over the shoulder of any living composer foolhardy enough to consider adding to it. Perhaps not fully knowing what writing a symphony "means" any more, some of us are drawn towards it like moths flapping around a candle flame.

My fifth symphony turned out to be a choral symphony, if very different to Beethoven's. It came on the back of my Stabat Mater and was commissioned from the same source and involved the same performers. The philanthropist John Studzinski has taken a great interest in The Sixteen and has a special concern for sacred music. It was he who, along with Harry Christophers, suggested I write my own Stabat Mater. After that he began talking to me about how the concept of the Holy Spirit has been handled in music.

There are, of course, many great motets from the past which set texts devoted to the Third Person of the Trinity, and in the 20th century the one piece which sticks out is the setting of the Veni Creator Spiritus in the first movement of Mahler's Eighth Symphony. But it still feels like relatively unexplored territory, so perhaps now is the time to explore this mysterious avenue, where concepts of creativity and spirituality overlap? There is a real burgeoning interest in spirituality in our contemporary post-religious and now post-secular society, especially in relation to the arts. Music is described as the most spiritual of the arts, even by non-religious music lovers, and there is today a genuinely universal understanding that music can reach deep into the human soul.

It makes sense surely that a Catholic artist like myself might want to explore this in music, perhaps even beyond the usual hymnody and paeans of praise associated with liturgy. My fifth symphony is not a liturgical work. It is an attempt to explore the mystery discussed above in music for two choirs and orchestra. It began when John Studzinski gave me a copy of 'The Holy Spirit, Fire of Divine Love' by the Belgian Carmelite Wilfred Stinissen. It was a good point of entry, theologically, but it also called to my attention some visionary poetry by St John of the Cross. This line from the book in particular drew me in; "Even his name reveals that the Holy Spirit is mysterious. The Hebrew word 'ruah', the Greek word 'pneuma' and the Latin 'spiritus' mean both 'wind' and 'breath'", and these words provided the very first sounds heard in my symphony.

The work, to begin with, is less a traditional setting of text and more an exploration of elemental and primal sounds and words associated with the Spirit. The first movement is called 'Ruah', the second 'Zao' (ancient Greek for living water) and the third is 'Igne vel Igne' (Latin for fire or fire). So, each has associations with the physical elements connected to the Holy Spirit (wind, water, fire). These became vivid sources of visual and sonic inspiration. The fifth symphony has a subtitle – 'Le grand Inconnu' a French term used to describe the mystery of the Holy Spirit which I cannot find replicated in the English spiritual tradition.

Sound associations and impressions guided the choice of texts in each of the three movements and often dictated the overall structure; which bits of St John of the Cross to use, which corresponding moment in Scripture might amplify or reflect the general direction, which sounds to use in the orchestra as well as extended vocal sounds in the choir which were not necessarily sung. As well as breathing noises, there are whisperings and murmurings, devised to paint the required element from moment to moment.

The two choirs in the fifth symphony are a chamber choir and a large chorus. At the end of the second movement I divide these two ensembles into 20 parts, offering a parallel to the multi-voice writing of Vidi Aquam, a 40-part companion piece to Tallis's Spem in Alium that I was composing at the same time as the symphony, and providing a means to continue communing with the English Renaissance master.

James MacMillan, 2019

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

Last work for the night --- Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 25 in G, Op. 79, "Cuckoo"