What are you listening 2 now?

[Symphonic Addict]

Pärt: Te Deum

[Mapman]

Mendelssohn: String Quartet #6, Op. 80
Quatuor Talich

I was inspired to listen to this (for the first time) by recent discussions here. It's a wonderful piece. The first movement in particular has some distinctive Mendelssohn sound.

[AnotherSpin]

Pieces by Josquin Desprez, Obrecht, Ockeghem, Ribera and Wert.

Graindelavoix - Björn Schmelzer

Just when it seems Renaissance polyphony could not grow more arcane, Graindelavoix reemerges with a sonic meditation on creatio ex nihilo, that austere theological vision of summoning everything from sheer nothingness. Under Björn Schmelzer's direction, the ensemble offers motets that appear less to communicate than to reverberate, like sacred spaces constructed from semantic mist. For those who have ever desired music that resists comprehension as a matter of principle, this recording may well be the answer.

Christ automaton on the cover.

[Madiel]

Vivaldi: Griselda (Act One so far)



I know for certain that I've listened to this one before on streaming, but having a libretto handy does make a difference, especially in recitatives. Although this is the second opera in a row where the plot involves a baby taken away at birth, and another infant gets snatched near the end of Act One, so I'm very much wondering what the hell was going on in Venice during this period. 

Also, I completely love the liner notes in these opera releases. For me there's just the right amount of detail on the context in Vivaldi's career, the original singers, and the state of the score (relatively clear in the case of Griselda, but there's still a replacement aria that was to be recorded separately). This volume even has a handy list of all of the Vivaldi operas preserved in the Turin library, which enables me to see what's left to record.

All of the singers are very good, and Spinosi/the recording engineers have toned things down just a touch from La verita in cimento, which is great. There's plenty of punch but not the ultra-hard edge that other opera had. Act One highlight... well I'm already on record as thinking this performance of Ottone's aria "Vede orgogliosa l'onda" is one of the most gorgeous things I've ever heard, so duh. Although now I know that Ottone is going to be a nasty character (infant snatcher above), so that's disappointing.

[AnotherSpin]

Dreames & Imaginations - Poeticall Musicke to be sung to the Lyra viol - composed by Robert Jones, William Corkine, Tobias Hume, John Danyel, Thomas Ford, John Dowland

Anna-Lena Elbert, Evangelina Mascardi, Angélique Mauillon and Friederike Heumann

I have more than once seen with my own eyes the curious object shown on the cover, the so-called Krishna's Butterball, a huge rounded rock in Mahabalipuram, south of Chennai (formerly Madras) in southern India. How it manages to remain balanced on a sloping rock face is entirely unclear. Science has offered no explanation that could be called satisfactory, and every guess so far has remained unproven. There are stories of earnest but unsuccessful attempts to move it with teams of elephants, beginning in ancient times and continuing into the period of British rule. Yet what does it matter? It is only one among countless illusions in this world of appearances. I have never heard that great gurus such as Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo or J. Krishnamurti, each of whom spent at least part of his life in this part of the country, ever gave it much thought or spoke about it.

[Tsaraslondon]

Mackerras's blithely joyful 5th.

[hopefullytrusting]

Brahms's Rinaldo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYjyPJu9Neg
Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7ztzj1UcY
Barber's Prayers of Kierkegaard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j82VCzR5pyo

I had high expectations, as I love all these composers, and all these pieces fell short of those expectations, so I will not be revisiting these pieces again. Thankfully, when compared to the iceberg that is classical music - I'll never even get close to the surface.

Later this morning, (the order is alphabetical) (compiled the composers with copilot using Ben Johnston's String Quartets, angular and austere as my base)

Ferneyhough String Quartet 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nWH7uQohJM
Haas's ...Und...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeYKzBr6yQY
Haba's Quartete for Four Bassoons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efBzH-CWfRo
Sims's All Done from Memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IrTyCG91Nk
Tenney's in a large open space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoa0Yn595Hs
Vivier's Lonely Child: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QWt_hd6FNg
Wyschnegradsky's Méditation sur deux thèmes de La Journée de l'Existence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmM2QL1v01s

[Que]

A bit more of this:



Very eloquent performances by Léon Berben, beautiful organs, very well recorded (as always with Æolus)

[Que]

Graindelavoix - Björn Schmelzer

Just when it seems Renaissance polyphony could not grow more arcane, Graindelavoix reemerges with a sonic meditation on creatio ex nihilo, that austere theological vision of summoning everything from sheer nothingness. Under Björn Schmelzer's direction, the ensemble offers motets that appear less to communicate than to reverberate, like sacred spaces constructed from semantic mist. For those who have ever desired music that resists comprehension as a matter of principle, this recording may well be the answer.

Schmelzer has a unique vision on and approach to Early Music. As I understand it, he wants to recreate the experience of the audience at the time of conception, but then for the modern listener. Whatever his philosophy is, his approach means he makes adjustments and does not aim for any authenticity of the performance as such. Suffice to say, this is not for me...

[Harry]

Schmelzer has a unique vision on and approach to Early Music. As I understand it, he wants to recreate the experience of the audience at the time of conception, but then for the modern listener. Whatever his philosophy is, his approach means he makes adjustments and does not aim for any authenticity of the performance as such. Suffice to say, this is not for me...

I agree, but still, some of his recordings I like, others I despise, what they call a love hate relationship.

[AnotherSpin]

I agree, but still, some of his recordings I like, others I despise, what they call a love hate relationship.

Which ones you love?)

[Florestan]

As I understand it, he wants to recreate the experience of the audience at the time of conception, but then for the modern listener.

Sounds like a wild goose chase to me.

[Florestan]

Alicia De Larrocha  The First Recordings  ( for American Decca 1954-55)

CD 1

 

Wrong mage, Jan! 

[Traverso]

Alicia De Larrocha  "The First Recordings  ( for American Decca 1954-55) "

CD 1

[Traverso]

Wrong mage, Jan! 

Indeed, I was just changing it.

[prémont]

Graindelavoix - Björn Schmelzer

Just when it seems Renaissance polyphony could not grow more arcane, Graindelavoix reemerges with a sonic meditation on creatio ex nihilo, that austere theological vision of summoning everything from sheer nothingness. Under Björn Schmelzer's direction, the ensemble offers motets that appear less to communicate than to reverberate, like sacred spaces constructed from semantic mist. For those who have ever desired music that resists comprehension as a matter of principle, this recording may well be the answer.

Schmelzer has a unique vision on and approach to Early Music. As I understand it, he wants to recreate the experience of the audience at the time of conception, but then for the modern listener. Whatever his philosophy is, his approach means he makes adjustments and does not aim for any authenticity of the performance as such. Suffice to say, this is not for me...

Well put by both. Not surprisingly I have a very ambivalent relationship to Schmelzer's recordings, of which I have a few, but rarely listen to. The first time I listened to his Machaut Messe my wife told me that this was the worst music I had listened to in the 35 years we had lived together by then.

[prémont]

Wrong mage, Jan! 

What's a mage? You seem to have got the wrong mage wrong. 

[hopefullytrusting]

Ferneyhough String Quartet 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nWH7uQohJM
Haas's ...Und...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeYKzBr6yQY
Haba's Quartet for Four Bassoons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efBzH-CWfRo
Sims's All Done from Memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IrTyCG91Nk
Tenney's in a large open space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoa0Yn595Hs
Vivier's Lonely Child: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QWt_hd6FNg
Wyschnegradsky's Méditation sur deux thèmes de La Journée de l'Existence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmM2QL1v01s

A wonderful mix, but not for everyone - that's for sure.

Haba's Quartet is the conservative, and, therefore, palatable for ears who enjoy traditional classical music (Baroque-Late Romanticism) - plus it is 4 bassoons, who does he think he is, Vivaldi?!

The rest are microtonal or spectral, and therefore tend to use dissonance and drones (some might even class it as noise, although I think that is unfair, but what kind of noise is music and what kind of noise is noise is a different post altogether).

Out of these, I enjoyed the Tenney the best - it felt expansive, and hollow, but a hollowness that was akin to the tabernacle before the presence of the lord - it grows inside of you, piercing the belly, and you bleed with it. Lovely piece.

My favorite discovery was Ezra Sims, who I had never heard of before because he demonstrates that no one hear likely qualifies as a "true" audiophile:

"I seem finally to have identified and made transcribable what my ear was after all along: a set of pitches ordered in an asymmetrical scale of 18 (or 19) notes, some of them acoustically more important than others, transposable through a chromatic of 72 pitches in the octave."

Now that is an ear!

I would relisten to all these pieces, but none of them feel like anything I would buy (except Tenney's), so they will be my next jumping off point.

[Madiel]

Griselda, Acts Two and Three. A summary.

The king is an absolute bastard until 2 minutes from the very end. And because he's king, everybody is just fine with it. They all sing a happy chorus.

[Harry]

Which ones you love?)

Ockeghem/2006.
Binchois/2007.
Ossuaires/2012.
De Machaut/2016.
Cypriot Vespers/2016.
Vecchi/2017.
De Rore/2017.
Josquin/ 2021.

The other recordings by them I sometimes like in part, but mostly reject because of the counters, or recordings, that happens too, and another thing is the choir balance, that is predominant in my considerations.