What are you listening 2 now?

[Karl Henning]

TD:
Lenny leading RVW's Serenade to Music, texts from The Merchant of Venice.

[AnotherSpin]

[Mister Sharpe]

TD:
Lenny leading RVW's Serenade to Music, texts from The Merchant of Venice.

THAT is a great performance of one of my favorite works; Lenny - as so often in his career - didn't just feel the music (and in this instance, the text), he lived it. 

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Ripening. Symphonic Poem for Large Orchestra, Op.34 · Josef Suk · Ženský sbor Pražského filharmonického sboru/Josef Veselka.

[Karl Henning]

THAT is a great performance of one of my favorite works; Lenny - as so often in his career - didn't just feel the music (and in this instance, the text), he lived it. 

Entire commitment! He's an inspiration. 

[Mister Sharpe]

Inspired by Karl, my favorite performance of VW's Serenade to Music. (Just say no to those orchestral versions, sez I).  Matthew Best, very sadly, is no longer with us.  He died in May of this year. He was the Best.

 

[Karl Henning]

Inspired by Karl, my favorite performance of VW's Serenade to Music. (Just say no to those orchestral versions, sez I).  Matthew Best, very sadly, is no longer with us.  He died in May of this year. He was the Best.

 

An exquisite recording!

[Harry]

Elsa Barraine (1910–1999)

Symphony No. 2 Voïna (1938)
Illustration symphonique pour Pogromes d'André Spire (1933)
Symphony No. 1 (1931)
Musique funèbre pour la Mise au tombeau du Titien (1953)

Alberto Carnevale Ricci, piano [Musique funèbre]
WDR Sinfonieorchester – Elena Schwarz.
Recorded 2024 – Venue not specified,
Streaming: FLAC 96kHz/24 bit,
Label: CPO-No PDF file attached to this recording.

Elsa Barraine will be, to most listeners, a name without a face—one of those figures swept aside by time's indifferent broom. To be frank, until this CPO release I had not encountered her music at all, nor found any living link between her and the better-known names of her generation. Her output appears modest, and beyond the works recorded here, I am unaware of anything else that has reached the catalogues. All the more reason to hail this disc for what it is: a rescue from oblivion, and perhaps the first firm stone in the foundation of a posthumous reputation.

What is striking—indeed, miraculous—is the singularity of Barraine's voice. These two symphonies do not try to ingratiate themselves through imitation, yet they speak in a tonal language whose ancestry is rich with audible influences: hints of Roussel's clarity, of Honegger's muscularity, and an occasional fleeting shadow of early Messiaen. Yet the fingerprint is entirely her own. Her sense of rhythm has a pulse that can send a shiver down the spine; her detailing is seamless, stitched so tightly into the melodic fabric that one scarcely notices the join.

The Illustration symphonique (1933), written in response to André Spire's harrowing poem on pogroms, is both solemn and vividly pictorial—a work that breathes empathy without a hint of the sentimental. The Musique funèbre for Titian's tomb stretches tonality further than the rest, but never into dissolution; it remains tethered to a deep emotional clarity, like a grief that refuses to abandon dignity.

I have lived with this disc for some time, returning to it repeatedly—six times in a year, which is saying something in my listening habits—and each time it surprises, delights, and mesmerises anew. This is music of warmth and depth, the work of a hugely gifted composer whose rediscovery feels overdue.

The sound is, in audiophile terms, SOTA: an open stage of exemplary depth, detail, and balance, with each instrument given its rightful space. The WDR Sinfonieorchester under Elena Schwarz plays as though the score were already an established classic—which, if there is any justice, it may one day be.

Whether the wider public will rush to embrace Barraine on the basis of this release is doubtful. But if my words spark even a small curiosity, the reward for the adventurous listener will be considerable.


Some ifo about her
Elsa Barraine (1910–1999) remains one of the more elusive figures in 20th-century French music. A pupil of Paul Dukas at the Paris Conservatoire and winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1929, she combined a refined sense of orchestral colour with a willingness to confront human and political realities. Her Illustration symphonique pour Pogromes d'André Spire is a striking example of her moral engagement, responding to the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the 1930s. Despite early acclaim, her catalogue is modest and her works seldom performed, perhaps due to her independence from fashionable trends — neither wholly conservative nor fully avant-garde. What emerges from these rediscovered scores is a voice at once lucid and personal: rhythmically alert, melodically supple, and imbued with an emotional sincerity that feels timeless.

[Iota]

Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K216
Isabelle Faust (violin), Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini

Th first movement of this concerto seems sort of perfect to me. I love Faust and Antonini's way with the concerto too, and the cadenzas, which were specially written for these recordings by Andreas Staier.

[AnotherSpin]

Robert Schumann - Jens E. Christensen

[Linz]

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 "Choral"
London Classical Players, Roger Norrington

[Iota]

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 "Choral"
London Classical Players, Roger Norrington

Excellent!

[Symphonic Addict]

Two Hungarian masterpieces in peerless performances:

Dohnányi: Serenade for string trio
Bartók: Piano Quintet

[Lisztianwagner]

Arnold Schönberg
Violin Concerto

Hilary Hahn (violin)
Esa-Pekka Salonen & Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

William Walton viola concerto. Nobuko Imai et al..

[Linz]

Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 3 in D Minor, 1889 Version (aka 1888/89) Ed. Leopold Nowak
Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Lorin Maazel 

[JBS]

Robert Schumann - Jens E. Christensen

I have this recording


Which also contains Four Sketches Op. 58.

There's at least one recording out there in which all three Opera are played on a pedal piano.

I have to admit they aren't music that made me say Schumann should have written more for organ.

[Linz]

Jean Sibelius Complete Recordings on DG, CD2
Symphony No. 5 in E flat major
Tapiola Op. 112
Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan

[Symphonic Addict]

Petrassi: Concertos for orchestra 6-8

[hopefullytrusting]

Lebyadkin is something of a comic relief character in the very dark Dostoyevsky novel, The Devils.

I don't think that was an accidental choice by Shostakovich to make that his final cycle. His life seems like one that was largely outside of his control, and I know that would make me embittered (and sardonic).