What were you listening to? (CLOSED)

[adamdavid80]

Bowen's string quartets are excellent works.  Concerning his solo piano music, I have the two Chandos discs and enjoy them even more than the quartets.  Bowen's music has a late romantic aesthetic combined with a very mild dissonance.

Sounds like a recommendation to me.  What are the titles of the Chandos discs, and which one is the one to start with?

(I'm interested in the recent hyperion disc, Complete Works For Viola and Piano, it's gotten a number of good reviews, but it's expensive as hell...$47.98 on Amazon...yikes!!!)

[bhodges]

Over the weekend I was listening to Fleming's new recording of these songs, and reminded that I haven't heard Isokoski's, which has gotten more positive reviews than perhaps any other recent version.  How do you like it? 

--Bruce

[Bulldog]

bruce, it's deeply moving and SO well-done, beautiful singing, excellent band, vividly recorded....if you love those works you should pick it up, you will not regret it, believe me.

I second the Isokoski recommendation.

[mozartsneighbor]

[Bulldog]

Sounds like a recommendation to me.  What are the titles of the Chandos discs, and which one is the one to start with?

(I'm interested in the recent hyperion disc, Complete Works For Viola and Piano, it's gotten a number of good reviews, but it's expensive as hell...$47.98 on Amazon...yikes!!!)

For the Chandos, I'd start with Vol. 1 that has the 24 preludes.  Concerning the 2-cd Hyperion disc, I wouldn't get that one until you already knew you considered Bowen one of your favorites.  Almost $50 is too much to pay for the unknown.

[Harry]

Tell me a little about this music and recording Tasos

[Drasko]

Piazzolla - Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night

[Keemun]

Mahler: Symphony No. 5 (Barenboim/CSO)

[The new erato]

[Ugh!]

Meytuss: Dniepr Power Plant

[Christo]

Vaughan Williams

Symphony No. 8 in D minor

London Philharmonic Orchestra
Bernard Haitink

You know David Hurwitz' review of this rather abysmal recording, don't you? Still, it might be fun for others to read it:


The accolades that Bernard Haitink's wretchedly dreary Vaughan Williams cycle consistently receives in the UK only serve to prove, as if further proof were necessary, just what poor custodians of their musical culture so many British critics are. The performances in this cycle have been uniformly dismal, but this last disc in the series plumbs new depths of dullness. Perhaps you thought that Haitink already had hit bottom with his unspeakably boring Covent Garden La Forza del Destino a couple of years ago. No such luck. If he keeps on this way, the only fitting epitaph when he finally goes will be Dorothy Parker's celebrated line on being told that Calvin Coolidge had died: "How can they tell?" she quipped.

[ChamberNut]

You know David Hurwitz' review of this rather abysmal recording, don't you? Still, it might be fun for others to read it:


The accolades that Bernard Haitink's wretchedly dreary Vaughan Williams cycle consistently receives in the UK only serve to prove, as if further proof were necessary, just what poor custodians of their musical culture so many British critics are. The performances in this cycle have been uniformly dismal, but this last disc in the series plumbs new depths of dullness. Perhaps you thought that Haitink already had hit bottom with his unspeakably boring Covent Garden La Forza del Destino a couple of years ago. No such luck. If he keeps on this way, the only fitting epitaph when he finally goes will be Dorothy Parker's celebrated line on being told that Calvin Coolidge had died: "How can they tell?" she quipped.

Nope, I didn't know about this.  Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[Christo]

Nope, I didn't know about this.  Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

The whole review is actually fun, compulsory reading (especially because I tend to agree with it  ). To quote some more:

To summarize, this music never has been so poorly interpreted--ever, anywhere, anytime, anyplace. And we've still another symphony to go.

What we have, though, is simply a boring, unidiomatic, colorless, flaccid, witless, tasteless, tiresome run-through at rehearsal tempos. Faced with what Haitink has done here and elsewhere in this worst-ever cycle of Vaughan Williams symphonies with none other than THE orchestra most associated with this composer's music, the shades of RVW and Sir Adrian Boult must be spinning in their graves.

The complete review at Classicstoday: http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=3272

[mahler10th]

Meytuss: Dniepr Power Plant

I got hold of that as well. You can hear the massive, dark pounding of the power station and a background of heavy duty Russian artisans working hard to keep the massive power of the USSR alive - I can only think of a gigantic dam powered station in the depths of a then unknown Russia and all the hard work going into it at all hours of the night not long after the horrors of the Russian revolution...It has the age to prove it.
Great.

[AnthonyAthletic]

Where from? I did a quick skim of Google Shopping but came up blank (lowest was $22 not inc delivery).

This was an offer from Caimanzone UK, it was new-used but when it came it was new-sealed £10.23p delivered   I ordered it last Thursday, came today.

Did you by any chance get the Martinu set by Valek?  That too was up for offer for around a fiver by UK sellers, the week after I paid the £11 or so for a Stateside delivery to the UK.

[Drasko]

Meytuss: Dniepr Power Plant

Have you (or anyone else) heard anything from Julius Meytuss apart from this piece? I couldn't even find any info about him as a person.

[Lethevich]

Did you by any chance get the Martinu set by Valek?  That too was up for offer for around a fiver by UK sellers, the week after I paid the £11 or so for a Stateside delivery to the UK.

Non, I am very slow keeping up with good deals, it seems

[mahler10th]

Have you (or anyone else) heard anything from Julius Meytuss apart from this piece? I couldn't even find any info about him as a person.

Yuli (Julius) Meytus(s) was born in 1903 in Elisavetgrad. In 1919-20 he was a pianist in the First Cavalry Army. In 1923-24 he was the leader in Kharkov Opera Theatre and the manager of the musical part of Proletcult theatre. He died in April 1997 in Kiev.
© Chris Goddard
http://www.webrarian.co.uk/music/mp3s.html

[Catison]

As I trek through the Simpson symphonies, I am trying to find some interesting pieces to surround this with.  Here is the latest program this afternoon:

Edmund Rubbra - Symphony No. 3 (Hickox)
George Crumb - Star Child (On Bridge)
Robert Simpson - Symphony No. 5 (Handley)

I hadn't listened to Star Child in a long time.  I remember only be completely freaked out by the bone chilling music.  The Apocalypse is captured quite uniquely here, and in no more frightening a way.

[bhodges]

Michael Finnissy: Traum des Sängers (1994) (Finnissy/Ixion Ensemble) - Liking this very much.  Somehow more delicate than I would have expected from this composer.

--Bruce