What are you listening 2 now?

[Kalevala]

I realize this isn't available in most places (by regular channels, anyway). I've just started it, but initial impression is     (Equivalent to Todd's very chunky pizza)

Don't know what you meant?

Nielsen: An Imaginary Journey to the Faroe Islands



It somehow manages to remind me of Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead. Only far less gloomy.

I don't know that Nielsen work, but am intrigued.  Will have to see if I can find it online. 

K

[SonicMan46]

Still listening to a LOT of Vivaldi but came across this fairly new acquisition (2019 recording date) - Martin Frost doing 'Clarinet Concertos' - transcriptions arranged and spliced together from various opera and oratorio arias (see reviews attached); also despite the picture of Frost's modern clarinet on the cover art, he plays a specially made boxwood instrument (see the video) - now Antonio never wrote clarinet concertos since the instrument was in its infancy but Frost's performances with Concerto Köln are enjoyable.  Dave

 

[Papy Oli]

Lionel Rogg plays Reger

[Traverso]

Rameau

Music with a sometimes tender melancholy, a welcome change from the raw beans that the daily news brings us. Courtesy and a certain civility radiate from this music. Elegant dance forms, grace... the music is in good hands with Gustav Leonhardt.

[Harry]

Benedetto Marcello.
Complete Cello sonatas.
New release. 2022, Studio Rosso.


Nice try but uninspired playing, and not that well recorded. It sounds flat and lacks belief in the music, the vibes are simple not present. A pity for in themselves the Cello concertos are worthwhile music, A missed chance I guess. It's primarily the Cellist Francesco Galligioni that makes it into a complete pudding of sameness.

[Que]

I'm re-listening to Mahler's 6th with Haitink, the Concertgebouw recording. I've often seen it criticized as too light, too superficial, too easy on the ear. My impression is that the people who say this are usually the ones who believe there is no Mahler without Bernstein, that is, without the exaggeration, the hypertrophy, the almost comical gesturing that Bernstein brought to the scores.

Yes, Haitink's Sixth is scandalously beautiful, flowing, and natural. Where's the scream? Where's the blood? Where's the apocalypse that some expect every time the hammer falls?

It's interesting to put this in historical perspective. If I remember correctly, Haitink's cycle was the very first complete studio cycle of Mahler symphonies in the modern era, a time when no real performance canon for Mahler had yet solidified in the recording age. In a way, Haitink was setting the rules, or at least proposing a possible grammar. But those rules were soon rewritten by conductors who felt Mahler needed more exaggeration, more visceral drama, more overt tragedy.

A personal note: for many years my absolute favorite Sixth was Barbirolli's with the New Philharmonia. Anyone who knows that recording knows what I'm talking about - the emotions are dialed up to eleven, the despair is almost operatic. Today it strikes me as somehow unnatural, forced, even a little hysterical. Perhaps that's exactly why Haitink's version feels so liberating and truthful to me right now: it trusts the music to speak without shouting, and it lets the tragedy emerge from clarity rather than from added histrionics. Less blood on the floor, more truth in the air.

Added: Btw, who decided that Mahler's Sixth Symphony is "Tragic"? As far as I know, Mahler himself never gave it that title, and the symphony was written during one of the happiest periods of his life. It is often said that this label came from Alma Mahler, but I am not so sure we should take her words seriously in this case.

I should revisit the Haitink on Philips! And am quite curious about his 2001 recording. 
My (current) favourite recording is Mitropoulos in Cologne, 1959 (Great conductors of the 20th c.) Intense, but neither brutal nor (melod)ramatic.

Found this overview an interesting read: https://www.musicweb-international.com/Mahler/Mahler6.htm

[AnotherSpin]

I should revisit the Haitink on Philips! And am quite curious about his 2001 recording. 
My (current) favourite recording is Mitropoulos in Cologne, 1959 (Great conductors of the 20th c.) Intense, but neither brutal nor (melod)ramatic.

Found this overview an interesting read: https://www.musicweb-international.com/Mahler/Mahler6.htm

I know the Mitropoulos recording, it's good.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Chopin works.

[Nostromo]

String concertos from the Baroque period.

[kyjo]

Grechaninov: Symphony No.3 (Chandos CD)
The cantata is rather moving as well - a nice discovery.

That's my favorite disc dedicated to Grechaninov's music that I know. The cantata Praise the Lord is a stirring work that is less overly conservative than the majority of his output. And the 3rd Symphony is probably the strongest of his five - a sunny and melodic work.

[Mandryka]

On Spotify:



Nice, very nice. The way I remembered it from the live concert, but then with a richer, better sounding harpsichord (or the church acoustic at the concert was not so great). Rondeau has a very considered, introspective but quite florid style.  The frequent use of hesitations is well judged and balanced with a good rhythmic pulse and a keen eye for the overall structure/musical architecture.

This is what I had expected Moroney (Harmonia Mundi) to sound like, but that was a big dissapointment... Which he made up for with his later recording of the organ works.

I just listened to an F major suite, the one with the famous allemande grave. The harpsichord is colourful, and he really uses it to separate out the counterpoint. The overall approach felt rather dramatic and confident and elegant.

[AnotherSpin]

CD 1

[Karl Henning]

[Nostromo]

This is a challenging listen at times, but I still enjoy it. I played my old LP, but I see it's available on Qobuz.

[Todd]

Disc one.

[DavidW]

[André]

Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov is one of the most original and important voices of the last 50 years. He started composing modern, avant-garde stuff. Around the mid sixties his style started to shift toward a more consonant idiom. His second symphony harbors elements of both styles but it still has a modernist bend to it. The move from avant-garde to new-agey harmonies continued in his third symphony, an attempt to put in sound the crisis brought by this shift.

With the 4th symphony (for strings and brass) he has abandoned any pretense at modernism. It's a beautiful, pensive one-movement work of some 25 minutes. There is no defined form, tones and harmonies float around freely, as if in a dream. It ends quietly.

The 5th (about 45 minutes long) is his most often played and recorded work, a gorgeous stream-of-consciousness infinite melody that plays itself as if improvised by the composer. No hint of form or compositional device can be detected as the music grows organically from one phrase to the other. There is a clear mood shift around 20 minutes in, where things suddenly acquire a darker hue before transitioning to calm and softness again. After about 15 minutes the initial strains of the work reappear. So, while there is no discernible form, a pattern of sorts underlays the structure.

It's the aural equivalent of watching a display of aurora borealis on a clear, cool night. I'm reminded of the Angel's soliloquy in Elgar's Dream of Gerontius : « Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul, In my most loving arms I now enfold thee, And o'er the penal waters, as they roll, I poise thee, and I lower thee« . Silvestrov's music here has a consoling, cleansing, redemptive tone.

The state of Silvestrov's recorded music is perplexing. There are no commercial recordings of his symphonies 1, 3 and 9. One each of 7 and 8 (on Naxos). Nos 2, 4 and 5 have been recorded a few times, the 5th being the most popular. Silvestrov also composed other orchestral works that bear the name 'symphony' as a subtitle: one for violin and orchestra, for cello and orchestra and one for baritone and orchestra. They are not part of the numbered works.

I wish a record company would take his orchestral output to the studio (or record performances), as CPO did for Pettersson.

[Nostromo]

No.9 from this excellent SACD set.

[Linz]

Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 4 in E Flat Major, 1880 (aka 1878/80) - Ed. Robert Haas
Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan

[Papy Oli]

Various
Favourite Violin Encores

Arthur Grumiaux (violin), István Hadju (piano)

(Philips)