What are you listening 2 now?

[Mandryka]

Chiar crezi asta? Personal nu sunt un mare fan. 

It's not Mozart - it made me think of Xenakis!

[Lisztianwagner]

Frank Bridge
Phantasy Piano Quartet
String Quartet No.4

Martin Roscoe (piano)
Maggini Quartet

[Mandryka]

I liked this when it came out in 2023, though I think I was the only one. I remember arguing with Todd McComb about it.  I like it even more now. They're going to release another Josquin CD in January 2026.

[hopefullytrusting]

Today's a slew of brand, spankin' new Beethoven Op. 109, which only live on because of YouTube.

Erina Ishiyama (2024): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvDrXzNzF-U (spectacular, still need to listen to the rest)

Yağmur Ak (2025): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBJ6oleOn6Q
Nicole Loretan (2025): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HYXspwfLes
Benita Rose (2025): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43YLLZY_vk

Wow! These were all excellent. Rose's was the weakest, but there was still a lot to love in it (hers was the most resonant, in my opinion - a nice little jaunt).

Now,

Giesen's Mass Procession: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hHNqdHk6_E
Giesen's Tranquility Base: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAiUIdF3uUQ
Holz's MACH for Accordion : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejzL80TcxbE
Holz'z LATAH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiydCnbI3wU

[Todd]

[JBS]

Naxos re-issued this CD without the Serenata, which was performed by the "New York Chamber Symphony of the 92nd Street Y". Perhaps they couldn't locate the rights holder?

[Symphonic Addict]

Puts: Symphony No. 4 'From Mission San Juan'
Gubaidulina: The Light of the End and The Wrath of God

[Mister Sharpe]

Picked this up at a public library sale late this afternoon. Must listen immediately to the Serenade for Strings, courtesy of Stokowski and the LSO from Sept.'74, a performance I haven't heard, or don't think so.  This is a work I never tire of and never have enough different recordings of, but freely admit part of the attraction is pure nostalgia.  In the late '60s and early '70s, its opening strains were used to introduce a daily late-night CJBC program I used to stay up for from Toronto called Pensées de la nuit, a brief inspirational talk. For years I wondered what that music was ... then in '75 or '6, heard it performed by a high school orchestra! "So, that's what it was...I ought to have guessed!"

[Karl Henning]

Picked this up at a public library sale late this afternoon. Must listen immediately to the Serenade for Strings, courtesy of Stokowski and the LSO from Sept.'74, a performance I haven't heard, or don't think so.  This is a work I never tire of and never have enough different recordings of, but freely admit part of the attraction is pure nostalgia.  In the late '60s and early '70s, its opening strains were used to introduce a daily late-night CJBC program I used to stay up for from Toronto called Pensées de la nuit, a brief inspirational talk. For years I wondered what that music was ... then in '75 or '6, heard it performed by a high school orchestra! "So, that's what it was...I ought to have guessed!"

Anyone who loves the Serenade for Strings is a friend of mine!

[Symphonic Addict]

Kuhlau keeps surprising for good with four of his violin sonatas.

[Mister Sharpe]

Anyone who loves the Serenade for Strings is a friend of mine!

As they say in French Canada, from where I first heard the Serenade, "C'est pour ça qu'on est meilleurs potes." Happy to be blood bros in that work.  Tchaikovsky himself knew it was good stuff and unusually proud of it. So majestic, yet humble, lively yet reverent is it that my affection remains unflagging after all these years, even when I didn't know what the heck it was!  (I was thinking in '69 maybe movie music!) And the waltz! If anything could get me out on the dance floor, it's that.

[JBS]

[brewski]

Just now at Banff, the Arete Quartet (from Seoul) was breathtaking in Jörg Widmann's highly theatrical String Quartet No. 3, Jagdquartett (2003). Here's a brief note from the composer.

[brewski]

As they say in French Canada, from where I first heard the Serenade, "C'est pour ça qu'on est meilleurs potes." Happy to be blood bros in that work.  Tchaikovsky himself knew it was good stuff and unusually proud of it. So majestic, yet humble, lively yet reverent is it that my affection remains unflagging after all these years, even when I didn't know what the heck it was!  (I was thinking in '69 maybe movie music!) And the waltz! If anything could get me out on the dance floor, it's that.

Another longtime fan of the Serenade here, after growing up with the Ormandy/Philadelphia recording. I sort of inhaled the whole album, which included Borodin's Nocturne, Barber's Adagio, and Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on Greensleeves. But of all of those, the Tchaikovsky was my favorite.

Hoping it puts you on the dance floor. More dancing is a good thing. 

[Symphonic Addict]

Leshnoff: String Quartets 1 and 2

First listen ever to anything by this American composer and I'm sold. These are remarkably good pieces. Fortunately there are many contemporary composers who still write tonal music with purpose.

[hopefullytrusting]

Giesen's Mass Procession: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hHNqdHk6_E
Giesen's Tranquility Base: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAiUIdF3uUQ
Holz's MACH for Accordion : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejzL80TcxbE
Holz'z LATAH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiydCnbI3wU

All these pieces were excellent, especially Giesen's Mass Procession.

Upcoming,

Lang's The Little Match Girl Passion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDSnTsdH75A
Lang's Death Speaks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1y3qo0YnO8
Schnittke's Psalms of Repentance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxvvqsMRsrk
Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpwZB9sZ-Wc

[steve ridgway]

Murail – Mémoire / Erosion

[Que]

Another run of this:



https://www.resonando.de/en/products/rn-10013-orlando-di-lasso

[Que]

Doing a little Léon Berben listening project, focused on the recordings I haven't heard yet.

[Florestan]

George Coulton's Medieval Panorama p 606.  The context is a discussion of pagan practices in medieval France.  Paris University was trying to get the King of France to ban it, and he did ban it eventually -- to what extent the practices actually stopped is not clear to me.

Okay, I did investigate and here's what I found.

George Coulton himself gives no source for that quote. He simply says "the character which the feast had assumed may be judged from the formal letter of the University of Paris to the King of France" and then proceeds to quote. When was the letter written, who where the signatories, what King of France was it addressed to, and most important, where can it be read in its entirety? Nobody but Coulton knows. By contemporary academic standards this is unacceptable.

Be it as it may, it's clear from the context of that paragraph that both Coulton and the letter refer to the Feast of Fools (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_Fools). Now, that occurred at a precise time of the year and for a very limited duration. To extrapolate the behavior of the (lesser) clergy during that episode to the whole liturgical year and assume or imagine that what happened then was regular behavior for all masses and any and all other divine services at any given time during the year is a big stretch, warranted by nothing.