What are you listening 2 now?

[Roasted Swan]

Kats-Chernin: Concertino for violin and ensemble, Concerto for percussion and orchestra 'Golden Kitsch' and Concerto for 8 double basses and orchestra 'The Witching Hour'

This is quite the compilation: 10 discs that gather together piano music, orchestral works, concertos, etc. As for the music, I love it. Kats-Chernin unleashes her inner child in these works. The sense of fantasy, naivety and colour that runs through these works is lovely, including minimalistic gestures. The Concertino is more gritty and discordant, though.

Its an excellent set - and even more appealing when it can be downloaded as either FLAC or Hi-Res via Presto for just £11.52 or £13.57 - not bad for 10 discs-worth running to over 11 hours of fine music and performances....

[Madiel]

This is technically excellent*, magnificently recorded, featuring a beautiful-sounding Steinway. Pure ear candy. BUT. There are really only two moments of distinctive personality. In Op. 110, the repeated chords that lead to the reprised fugue are played staccato, with great restraint, and don't explode out of the piano like some performances do. In Op. 111, he favors a high-contrast approach between a very fast first movement (8:12) and very slow second (17:40) that stays remarkably measured and mellow until the boogie breaks out. And when the boogie does hit, he speeds up dramatically: too rushed for its own good, the syncopations de-weirded.

Otherwise, there are little moments where Wee might go for a little greater contrast than normal, but not a lot of new or original choices. He's mostly content to do straightforward, polished, "museum-quality" Beethoven. There's a lot of great beauty to it, but unlike something like Alkan where he can absolutely rule the music, here he is on very well-traveled territory.

I would be quite curious to hear what our sonata experts think of that moment in Op. 110.

*except that Wee slips juuuuust a little bit on the trills in the finales of Opp. 109 and 111...just enough so you know he's human.

I am firmly of the view that it's a mistake to keep expecting performers to deliver novelty, when Beethoven has not revised the music on the page any time recently.

Musical notation is not, in most cases, so exact that there is no room for variation. But the quest for constant novelty in music can only end up encouraging performers to disobey the score in order to deliver something "different".

[Madiel]

Kats-Chernin: Concertino for violin and ensemble, Concerto for percussion and orchestra 'Golden Kitsch' and Concerto for 8 double basses and orchestra 'The Witching Hour'

This is quite the compilation: 10 discs that gather together piano music, orchestral works, concertos, etc. As for the music, I love it. Kats-Chernin unleashes her inner child in these works. The sense of fantasy, naivety and colour that runs through these works is lovely, including minimalistic gestures. The Concertino is more gritty and discordant, though.

I wasn't aware that ABC's Kats-Chernin obsession extended to a 10-disc box. But nor am I surprised.

[Papy Oli]

Its an excellent set - and even more appealing when it can be downloaded as either FLAC or Hi-Res via Presto for just £11.52 or £13.57 - not bad for 10 discs-worth running to over 11 hours of fine music and performances....

Re Kats-Chernin.

Isn't she the one that did that quirky tune for our (UK) Lloyds TSB train cartoon ad a few years back? I might be wrong.

[VonStupp]

Johann Neruda
Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major (1750)

FJ Haydn
Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major, Hob. VIIe::1

Johann Nepomuk Hummel
Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major, WoO 1

Alexander Arutiunian (1950)
Trumpet Concerto in A-flat Major

Harry James
Trumpet Concerto

Lucienne Renaudin Vary, trumpet
Lucerne SO - Michael Sanderling

I think I have come to enjoy the 'tighter' sound of an E-flat trumpet in the earlier works. The B-flat doesn't do as much for me. The Arutiunian was a delightful surprise.
VS

[Symphonic Addict]

Its an excellent set - and even more appealing when it can be downloaded as either FLAC or Hi-Res via Presto for just £11.52 or £13.57 - not bad for 10 discs-worth running to over 11 hours of fine music and performances....

Another fan of Kats-Chernin, very nice!

I won't listen to the entire box, but some pieces do interest me, especially the larger ones.

[AnotherSpin]

William Lawes - Consort Music

Fretwork

[Linz]

Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, 1894 Original Version. Ed. Leopold Nowak
China NCPA Orchestra, LÜ Jia

[Symphonic Addict]

Foerster: Cyrano de Bergerac, suite for large orchestra, Op. 55 (1903)

Ostrčil: Calvary, Variations for Large Orchestra, Op. 24 (1928)

Via Qobuz

Great both works. Ostrcil's Sinfonietta is a barn-burner of a piece. A misleading title for a quite muscular and dramatic composition.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Roslavets.

[JBS]

Second listen

[brewski]

The final movement of Scriabin's First Symphony, done with incandescent splendor by Riccardo Muti, the Philadelphia Orchestra, soprano Stefania Toczyska, tenor Michael Myers, and the Westminster Choir — one of my favorite recordings.

[Madiel]

There are really only two moments of distinctive personality. In Op. 110, the repeated chords that lead to the reprised fugue are played staccato, with great restraint, and don't explode out of the piano like some performances do.

To expand on my previous point: I know op.110 particularly well so I went and looked. My edition of the score has a pedal marking across all of those chords. The notated chords are short, but there's a continuous pedal across all of the "rests".

Now I acknowledge it's possible that Paul Wee has an edition that does not have that pedal marking or there might be some other reason for a musicological debate about whether the pedal marking is authentic. But what you're describing as a moment of "distinctive personality", might also be characterised, if the pedal mark is correct, as "a mistake that nobody else makes" or "a deliberate departure from what Beethoven wrote".

[Madiel]

Beethoven: String quartet in C minor, op.18/4



Interesting. The opening movement is a little heavier-footed than the other recording I own, but I think it works.

[Madiel]

Haydn

Capriccio on  "Acht Sauschneider müssen sein"
Theme with Variations in C

[Roasted Swan]

Re Kats-Chernin.

Isn't she the one that did that quirky tune for our (UK) Lloyds TSB train cartoon ad a few years back? I might be wrong.

Exactly right - "Eliza's Aria" from the Ballet Wild Swans.  She has a great ear for instrumentation and texture.  Well worth a listen.

[Que]

Revisiting this Lassus recording:



PS With just under 34 mins of music, nobody in his/her right mind would buy this on disc for 20 euros...

[Que]

Wonderful recorder ensemble with adventurous programming, which does not always work out.
But this definitely does...    Special mention of the participation of Matthias Havinga on organ and harpsichord.

[Irons]

John Ireland: Sonatina.



Endless fun trawling through Ireland's substantial oeuvre of piano pieces. Like mini tone poems for piano, indeed many are inspired by actual poems by the likes of Housman and Tennyson. Cherry picking a few, after Sarnia the next to impress being Sonatina which is more then title suggests with a dark, disturbing middle movement sandwiched between light and jolly one's - but are they?   

[Mandryka]

Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe - Pappano/London Symphony Orchestra in the Barbican, in Dolby Atmos.

A chaste Daphnis?  The end is very exciting, though.

(Yours is the only reference I can find to it.)

I don't hear it as chaste at all! I like what Pappano does actually, a lot.