What were you listening to? (CLOSED)

[karlhenning]

Good morning, Bill!  Seeing you check in, prompts me again to:

Copland
El salón México
Detroit Symphony / Doráti

¡Olé!

[greg]

Schoenberg-
(yesterday)
op. 18 The Lucky Hand (wow, really nice stuff)
op.14 Two Songs for Voice and Piano (sounds like my favorite Schoenberg, op.15)

now-
op.26 Quintet for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn

[not edward]

Sibelius: Tapiola, Symphony No 4 (VPO/Maazel).

[karlhenning]

now-
op.26 Quintet for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn

How do you like the Quintet, Greg?

[Lilas Pastia]

Has anyone heard Schubert's Mass No 6 in  E flat, performed by Karl Böhm and the VPO ? It's a DVD release from the mid-seventies, coupled with the symphony No 9 (VPO also - his well-known recorded versions are with the BPO and SD Orchestra). I've read a glowing review in ARG and am curious to know more.

Yesterday: Beethoven's Pastorale, played by the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen. It doesn't come better than that - or hardly. The first movement tempo takes a while to get used to (not an allegro non troppo by any stretch of the imagination!). However even at that speed there are myriad details that come out and the felicities pile up until I couldn't think it should be played any other way. Playing is magnificent, and the recorded sound is still very good after 50 years: wide ranging, never cluttered, with very obvious stereo separation.

Sibelius: Symphony No. 3. Leningrad Phil, Mrawinsky (live recording, on the Elatus label). This goes straight into the OMG category. It does not displace my longtime favourite, Rozhdestevensky and the Mother-of All-Russias Extra Large Radio Symphony, but it definitely elbowed it to share the top spot. They're markedly different performances, though. Mrawinsky goes for extremes of dynamics (timpani rolls heard across the Neva), and adopts a style that closely relates this 'small' symphony to the savage, desolate world of the 4th and 7th . Rozhdestvensky is more of a story teller, with a sweep (in I) that I find unexcelled. And he's better recorded too, even though it doesn't deserve an engineering award. The Mrawinsky is a live affair (some nasty coughs here and there, but they're few and far between). Very wide dynamic range, plenty of tape hiss, overall a very creditable sound picture (recorded 1962).

[George]

Elgar

Symphony #1

Solti

Decca

0:)

[Drasko]

Beethoven's Pastorale, played by the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen. It doesn't come better than that - or hardly. The first movement tempo takes a while to get used to (not an allegro non troppo by any stretch of the imagination!). However even at that speed there are myriad details that come out and the felicities pile up until I couldn't think it should be played any other way. Playing is magnificent, and the recorded sound is still very good after 50 years: wide ranging, never cluttered, with very obvious stereo separation.

Is that mono ('53) or stereo ('58)

[Harry]

It is well, Andy, that she knows that Wagner will be a part of the picture, before the wedding 

So true.......................

[Harry]

Beethoven Symphony No. 6 Furtwängler/BPO (Music & Arts/1944)

Good morning friends. 

Good morning Bill, for me afternoon!

[Harry]

Elgar

Symphony #1

Solti

Decca

0:)

That is the best!

[George]

That is the best!

Indeed Harry, I am beginning to suspect that we share the same pair of ears. 

[Harry]

Indeed Harry, I am beginning to suspect that we share the same pair of ears. 

O, dear that means for you, 16 hours listening a day!

[wintersway]

[bhodges]

Last night, an excellent recital by soprano Karita Mattila and pianist Martin Katz, in this program.  They did three encores: the most popular (No. 4) from Dvorak's Seven Gypsy Songs, a short Finnish number, and a very dramatic and effective version of Gershwin's "The Man I Love." 



--Bruce

[Lilas Pastia]

Is that mono ('53) or stereo ('58)

1958. Here's the disc: 

And a reader's review of the sound (interpretation reviews range from Horror! to Sublime!... )

The Westminster engineers were ahead of the pack in 1958 and the re-mastering results in a spacious sound-picture faithful at the same time to the details. This is a CD worth the tariff. I recommend to interested Scherchenites or Beethovenians to take the plunge.

[George]

O, dear that means for you, 16 hours listening a day!

No, I meant that we are sharing, whicn means that I get them for the other 8! 

[Charles]

Listening to the Ruggles and the Piston later for now ...

[bhodges]

Listening to the Ruggles and the Piston later for now ...

How is this?  I heard it years ago in its LP incarnation, but haven't heard it in decades.

--Bruce

[George]

Listening to the Ruggles and the Piston later for now ...

I will never forget the first day I heard that CD. I had just had a fight w/my girlfriend and she left. I put this one pretty loud and it just sounded Soooooo good! Like the end of the world.

[Choo Choo]

I have this disc [Holmboe Symphony No.3], which was bought in an attempt to familiarise myself with the composer, and this is the most approachable music of the three symphonies.

I like him but he is, clearly, no Neilsen and I doubt that I will dip further into this cycle which, I think, has just been reissued by BIS as a complete set.

As for me, a 'Danish' composer of a past generation, Kuhlau. German by birth and one-eyed he became one of Denmark's most feted.

This disc is of Schonwandt with the DNSO in the overtures. Lively and tuneful they fairly fly by and leave not one impression afterwards.

Another Dane who is a worthy successor to Nielsen is Herman Koppel.   In fact his Symphony #1 follows on so naturally from Nielsen #6, that the composer went so far as to try to suppress it, as being too derivative of CN.

But no such worries about this one, which gets a lot of airplay here:


In fact I think I'll go give it another spin right now...