What are you listening 2 now?

[hopefullytrusting]

@Mandryka regarding Gekic in Japan

This is a lovely rendition, and I especially like how it accumulates and builds up through the crescendo of notes, but as @prémont hints to and as poco makes clear below - I prefer "bombastic brutality," but only when I am listening to this work purely as an etude, and I think Sokolov is tops when it comes to that kind of bravura, but that is not the only rendition I am seeking.

See Poco's post.

And this hints toward the other kind of rendition I am looking for - the artistic interpretation. For me, I view this etude as one of two tales. The first is the Sokolov route - the etude route, and that always blows my mind because I cannot even air piano at close to that speed and they all are playing it for real.

The second is the artistic, as I view this etude as the progenitor of my favorite Rachmaninoff Prelude - Op. 32, No. 10 - "The Return" - as I think they share the same tragic element regarding exile and the fear of the possibility of never being able to return home. I have not yet come across this rendition, so I am still in search of it, and I am also open that there might be a third rendition - the Chopinesque, but I've only slightly gone down that path by listening to his pupils or the pupils of his pupils play his music to see if there is some pattern or sound I can detect that connects them somehow.

@Mandryka on Sokolov's playing

I wanted to highlight this post because it highlights something that I value a lot in Sokolov - the liveness - aliveness - of his playing. I don't think any of his recordings capture that, in fact, I can see the recording process stifling him - sort of like the anti-Gould.

[hopefullytrusting]

Listening to another piece of programmatic music by Noskowski, who I just discovered yesterday.

The Steppe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3WSILIrCUM

I do not know the steppes, so I cannot say how reflective they are. If I recall, they are Asian, and there is nothing "Asian" about this work - not even in a superficial way, but I also find these kind of literary connections a bit tenuous, so I will leave that there. As a piece of music, it is stupendous, as Noskowski is a master craftsperson when it comes to drawing or evoking emotions out of the orchestra. There is a tinge of melancholy - a sort of haunting ether, but there still is a motive drive pushing the music forward through the slough. There is excellent balance and control, and I am unbothered by its tonic ending, which normally rubs me the wrong way.

All in all, I will be exploring more of these works, as I have truly enjoyed my experience of the two I've listened to thus far.

[Todd]

[Roasted Swan]

The Hallowe'en Goblins, everywhere lurking, prevented me from attaching the VW LP to the above post. Here 'tis:

There is another great RVW song setting - a folksong this time called "The Unquiet Grave" or "How Cold the Wind Doth Blow" (so in line with your Halloween theme!) which is for piano and voice with a wonderful and unexpected solo violin obligato.  One of the very few recordings is played - again - by the superlative Hugh Bean

[Brian]

Plucked from the new release listings, two opposite soundworlds!

Also found this in the new releases, and have high hopes because of my positive experiences with Clyne's Cello Concerto ("Dance") and her Piano Concerto, of which I attended the world premiere and rehearsals:



Abstractions is a 5-movement work based on art, so it could be considered a successor to Pictures at an Exhibition. Restless Oceans is a four-minute miniature, and Color Field is a triptych set in orchestral versions of yellow, red, and orange. The final work, Within Her Arms, is an appealing string orchestra lament that has been recorded twice before.

[Karl Henning]

This CD with world-première recordings of unpublished juvenilia (plus two later piano pieces — the composer did not write for solo piano after 1963 for more than 20 years) by Pierre Boulez, played by Ralph van Raat, was released last Friday, and delivered to me today. 

Nice!

[AnotherSpin]

[ritter]

Early piano music by John Cage, played by Herbert Henck (who died at the beginning of this year).



The CD starts with the original version of The Seasons —dedicated to Lincoln Kirstein—. The work was orchestrated (according to the liner notes of this CD, with the help of Virgil Thomson and Lou Harrison, a fact I was unaware of) and performed as a ballet by Kirstein's Ballet Society, choreographed by Merce Cunningham and with decors by Isamu Noguchi.

[hopefullytrusting]

Amongst the dominant genres, I would say that string quartets are the ones I struggle with the most - this is mainly because it is composed of instruments I like the least in the orchestra - violins - violas, I like a bit more than violins - cello, I like the cello, as it is a bass instrument, so this genre is often one which I am not drawn to immediately. Admittedly, this is a bias of mine - I am pro brass by accident - my great-grandfather had a  trombone, which meant it was free for me, so that was my instrument I played in the orchestra, lol - wish I still had that thing, but I was too young to appreciate it.

Zygmunt Noskowski's String Quartet No. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4BVSFFOwqA, does nothing to disabuse me of this notion. The music is lovely, in fact, it has one of the biggest and brightest - almost like the breaking of dawn - openings of any string quartet I've heard. The interplay and the lines are all clear, and everything is articulated well, and the melody flows freely between all the instruments, but there is not enough grit for me to hold onto, when I think of the string quartets I enjoy - they are all rough - Beethoven's late and the ultimate angularity of Johnston's - this one is just too musical, too lyrical.

It is music I would recommend to pretty much everyone on this forum without hesitation, as it is excellent from all the points of view of someone who enjoys string quartets - even their "rhetorical" elements, but the knife's edge does not cut sharp enough for me or my ears.

I am digging this composer quite a lot though.

[Linz]

Antonin Dvořák Symphony No.9 in E minor Op.95 From the New World
Bedrich  Smetana Die Moldau

[Todd]

Disc four, a big blob of Chopin.

[Brian]

Also found this in the new releases, and have high hopes because of my positive experiences with Clyne's Cello Concerto ("Dance") and her Piano Concerto, of which I attended the world premiere and rehearsals:



Abstractions is a 5-movement work based on art, so it could be considered a successor to Pictures at an Exhibition. Restless Oceans is a four-minute miniature, and Color Field is a triptych set in orchestral versions of yellow, red, and orange. The final work, Within Her Arms, is an appealing string orchestra lament that has been recorded twice before.

In Restless Oceans, the orchestra members are encouraged to wordlessly sing along in certain parts. The booklet doesn't say they're required to, just encouraged. So it's a surprising little piece.

Color Field is probably Clyne at her most tonal and "easy." Although it is based on the synesthesia of Scriabin, and his associations of certain colors with keys, the music doesn't have anything in common with his sound world. The first movement is very much in the manner of Copland's slower, more elegiac stuff (Quiet City), the second is pure fantasy movie soundtrack (I think we're being chased by ogres!), and the third is calm, ethereal, "floating," like an O'Keeffe cloudscape.

My favorite piece on the program is Abstractions, where Clyne really changes her voice significantly to evoke each work of art, from crowd-pleasing stuff to spacey/new-agey sounds that made me think a bit of Neptune from the Planets.

[nico1616]

Great conducting and superb sound!

[Linz]

Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, 894 Original Version. Ed. Leopold Nowak
Wiener Philharmoniker, Carlo Maria Giulini

[Mister Sharpe]

If you asked me what classical work best served as a showcase for Hallowe'en it would come down to three works: Tartini's Devil's Trill; Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre; and Gounod's Marche funèbre d'une marionnette, the latter inevitably, powerfully, evoking Hitchockian dread.  Strong cases can be made for other works, of course, and so the choices are inevitably personal. I well remember the first time I heard the Devil's Trill on the radio; it was the damndest (literally) thing: the night before I'd dreamt of the Devil hisself only he wasn't playing the fiddle, he was conducting mad traffic in a tunnel, one of the most horrific nightmares I ever had and here was reality itself somehow making a diabolical connection, with ME!  

Picture of Anne-Sophie Mutter on the cover of her Carmen-Fantasie CD containing the Devil's Trill was strangely but perhaps understandably FORBIDDEN so please imagine it here.

[Linz]

Antonin Dvořák String Quartet No.12 in F major, op.96 B.179 The American
String Quartet No.13 in G major, op.106 B.192
Prager Streichquartett

[Symphonic Addict]

Glazunov: His two piano sonatas

[Linz]

Anton Bruckner Symphony  No. 6 in A Major, 1881 Version. Ed. Robert Haas
Berliner Philharmoniker; Herbert von Karajan

[Symphonic Addict]

Glazunov: His two piano sonatas

Two accomplished, remarkable, passionate pieces. I remember having heard them on other recordings and I wasn't impressed, but now the story is different. The Scherzo from No. 2 is an absolute gem.

[SonicMan46]

Onslow, George (1784-1853) - Cello Sonatas & Chamber Works on the CDs below - pulling out my Onslow recordings, about 30 discs w/ many string quartets & quintets!  Dave