What are you listening 2 now?

[Toni Bernet]

Between 1849 and 1853, Liszt completed Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, a cycle of piano pieces based on poems by Lamartine and texts from the Catholic liturgy. As musicologists are increasingly pointing out today, the entire cycle has a spiritual dramaturgy that is intended to lead to a religiously relivable transformation from suffering to joy.

Liszt adopted the preface that Lamartine placed at the beginning of his poetry cycles for his piano cycle in order to express what art, poetry and, indeed, his music might achieve in the Romantic self-image:
"There are contemplative souls who, in quiet solitude and contemplation, feel irresistibly drawn to supernatural ideas, to religion. Every thought becomes enthusiasm and prayer for them, and their whole being and life is a silent hymn to the deity and to hope. In themselves and in the surrounding creation, they seek steps to ascend to God; words and images to reveal him to themselves and themselves to him. May I have succeeded in offering them something of this kind in these harmonies!
There are hearts that, broken by pain, trampled by the world, flee into the world of their thoughts, into the solitude of their souls, to weep, to wait or to worship. May they gladly be visited by a muse who is lonely, like them; may they find harmony and accord in her tones, and sometimes exclaim in her song: We pray with your words, we weep with your tears, we implore with your songs."
Alphonse de Lamartine – from the preface to the 'Harmonies poétiques et religieuses'

More information and a listening companion see:
https://www.discoveringsacredmusic.ch/19th-century/liszt-harmonies

[vandermolen]

Bax 'Paen' (Passacaglia orchestral version).
+ Symphony No.3
LPO Bryden Thomson:

[Que]

[Iota]

Scriabin:
Piano Sonata No. 6, Op. 62
Piano Sonata No. 7 ("White Mass"), Op. 64
Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano)

Ashkenazy in authoritative and highly impressive form. Excellent.

[Madiel]

Nielsen: Piano Music for Young and Old



My 2nd recording. McCabe is possibly a fraction softer-edged and tends to be a little faster, but really it doesn't make much difference in this sort of music.

Nielsen's piano output is a bit curious, in that there is a group of epic works that tend to be quite challenging to listen to, a group of fairly simple works meant for students that are no more than mildly pleasant, and very little in between.

[Madiel]

Vivaldi: Violin sonata in D minor, RV 15



On the whole this is the kind of music where I prefer to listen to only a sonata or two at a time, not blaze through the whole album. It does rather remind me, though, that I want to go back to the Naive Vivaldi series at some point and explore even more. I think I'd got through 40-odd volumes but that was some years ago.

[Madiel]

ADDENDUM: As a first step, I'm rearranging my notes on the Naive Vivaldi Edition into a table so I can see more clearly what's what. The website breaks it down into instrumental, opera, sacred, vocal and other.

Doing things like this and reading the website's little notes on each album make it easier to see things like how volumes 1, 5, 12, 16 and 19 constitute a series within the overall edition. Which is helpful if I like or don't like the genre and the group performing those works.

[Karl Henning]

Between 1849 and 1853, Liszt completed Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, a cycle of piano pieces based on poems by Lamartine and texts from the Catholic liturgy. As musicologists are increasingly pointing out today, the entire cycle has a spiritual dramaturgy that is intended to lead to a religiously relivable transformation from suffering to joy.

Liszt adopted the preface that Lamartine placed at the beginning of his poetry cycles for his piano cycle in order to express what art, poetry and, indeed, his music might achieve in the Romantic self-image:
"There are contemplative souls who, in quiet solitude and contemplation, feel irresistibly drawn to supernatural ideas, to religion. Every thought becomes enthusiasm and prayer for them, and their whole being and life is a silent hymn to the deity and to hope. In themselves and in the surrounding creation, they seek steps to ascend to God; words and images to reveal him to themselves and themselves to him. May I have succeeded in offering them something of this kind in these harmonies!
There are hearts that, broken by pain, trampled by the world, flee into the world of their thoughts, into the solitude of their souls, to weep, to wait or to worship. May they gladly be visited by a muse who is lonely, like them; may they find harmony and accord in her tones, and sometimes exclaim in her song: We pray with your words, we weep with your tears, we implore with your songs."
Alphonse de Lamartine – from the preface to the 'Harmonies poétiques et religieuses'

More information and a listening companion see:
https://www.discoveringsacredmusic.ch/19th-century/liszt-harmonies

Love that Liszt opus!

TD:

[DavidW]

Finally getting around to this:


Really good! I usually listen to

[Madiel]

Starting on, but certainly not finishing just now, the first violin concertos volume:



In part because there's a lot of them (11 so far). One interesting thing is that for a good long while the series had different performers in each violin volume (in contrast to what happened for cello and bassoon concertos). The pattern broke down later on.

The playing in the first concerto, RV 208 in D major, is darn good.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

De Falla: 7 Canciones populares españolas; Albéniz: Catalonia; Halffter: Fanfare; Granados: Spanish Dances.

Orquesta Sinfónica RTVE & Igor Markevitch.

[AnotherSpin]

Music by Mancini, Gabrielli, Paisible, Vivaldi, Loeillet, Bach, Telemann

[pjme]

De Falla: 7 Canciones populares españolas; Albéniz: Catalonia; Halffter: Fanfare; Granados: Spanish Dances.

Orquesta Sinfónica RTVE & Igor Markevitch.

Has this LP ever been reissued on CD?

[ritter]

Has this LP ever been reissued on CD?

Yes. In the Markevitch "The Philips Legacy" set on Australian Eloquence:

[Karl Henning]

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Has this LP ever been reissued on CD?

It's only in digital format. There is De Falla's La Vida Breve in the equivalent cd I have, but not in this digital issue.


Ed: Ritter sounds right. I stand corrected.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Yes. In the Markevitch "The Philips Legacy" set on Australian Eloquence:

Matkevitch is one of my favorite conductors.

[ritter]

Matkevitch is one of my favorite conductors.

I got the Eloquence set for the Spanish discs. Markevitch was the first music director of the Spanish National Radio and Television ("RTVE") Symphony Orchestra when it was founded in 1965, but his tenure was very brief. I should revisit this set, as it contains some interesting stuff I still haven't explored.

I since managed to secure a copy of the long OOP and difficult to obtain autobiography Markevitch wrote in French and was published by Gallimard in 1980, but I still haven't had the time to read it.

[Karl Henning]

An eight-number suite from RVW's score to Coastal Command.

[Henk]

Disc 1