What were you listening to? (CLOSED)

[karlhenning]

Henning
Exaltabo te, Deus

Tallis
I heard the voice of Jesus say

[Coopmv]

Very curious about that, comes from distinguished quarters.
Minkowski and Bach - should be an interesting and surprising combination!

Q

I have been wondering if I should check out Marc Minkowski, as I do not own any of his recordings.  My baroque collection has been largely built around the ensembles conducted by Hogwood, Gardiner, Pinnock, Harnoncourt, Rilling, K. Richter with a few recordings by Christe and Herreweghe.

[Kullervo]

Disc 5: Maskarade overture, Saga Drøm, Pan og Syrinx, Flute Concerto, Rhapsody Overture, Clarinet Concerto

(Blomstedt/DRSO/et al)

[ChamberNut]

I have this. Haven't listened yet. Thoughts?

Alwyn String Quartets - Maggini SQ (Naxos)

You should crack it open today, Corey!  I've had a great first impression of # 1 and # 2 so far.

The first quartet actually has a bit of a Czech flavour to it. 

I haven't yet listened to # 3, and probably won't have time today, as we're putting on Easter supper.  (Perogies, cabbage rolls, caesar and pasta salad, whole wheat buns, stuffed turkey breast, honey ham, cranberry sauce....and trifle for dessert.    Plus, have to clean the house....busy day!  )

[karlhenning]

Tallis
If ye love me

de Victoria
Ave Maria

[karlhenning]

A little 'out of time', admittedly:

di Lasso
Miserere

[springrite]

Here's Tommasini's review.  As much as I like (lukewarm) Salonen, I say bring on the Golden Boy.  Can't wait for October.

From New York Times:

April 11, 2009
Music Review | Los Angeles Philharmonic
Moving on, a Music Director Leaves an Imprint, and a New Hall
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

LOS ANGELES — On Thursday night Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted his next-to-last program as the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. And the most tangible manifestation of his galvanizing 17-year tenure with the orchestra may be the place the program was performed: Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic's home since 2003.

Within a few years of taking charge, Mr. Salonen was advancing the case that the orchestra needed a contemporary hall to match the adventurous spirit that he was generating with the musicians. This move would enable the Philharmonic, he said, not only to realize its full potential as an orchestra but also to become a cultural and educational force in the city. At the time, it was sharing the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a 1964 auditorium that was well appointed but too big and acoustically drab for the innovative ensemble that the Los Angeles Philharmonic was becoming under Mr. Salonen.

Board members, patrons, civic officials and corporate sponsors eventually agreed. When Disney Hall, one of Frank Gehry's most inspired creations, opened, it immediately became America's coolest concert hall, with an auditorium that seats 2,265 but feels much more intimate. Audiences surround the orchestra, and the acoustics are ideal. Building the hall was a vote of confidence by the city, signaling that a symphony orchestra could excite the public and revitalize a downtown Los Angeles neighborhood.

With a $95 million operating budget, the largest of any American orchestra, the Philharmonic seems to be thriving. Even during the economic downturn, concerts have had a 92 percent attendance rate, according to Deborah Borda, the orchestra's president and chief executive.

The other way that Thursday's concert was emblematic of Mr. Salonen's success here was in the typically adventurous program he chose. He began with a rapturous account of a bold work from the 1970s by Gyorgy Ligeti, the towering master who died in 2006. Then came the premiere of Mr. Salonen's own Violin Concerto, written for and played with stunning brilliance by Leila Josefowicz. The program concluded with a bracing performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

Mixing old and new works so the pieces interact in intriguing ways has been a hallmark of Mr. Salonen's programming. The orchestra's audiences have come to expect no less, and Thursday's packed house erupted in ovations after each performance, starting with Ligeti's "Clocks and Clouds."

Ligeti took the title for this piece from an essay by the philosopher Karl Popper, which describes two kinds of processes in nature, one that can be measured in time, another that is amorphous but no less continual. Here Ligeti uses precise rhythmic and harmonic shapes that "gradually change into diffuse sound textures and vice versa," in his own words.

It begins with rhythmically clipped two-note and three-note riffs, as if the instruments are stuttering. The clocks are relentless but irregular. The pulsating music evolves into hazy passages of layered sonorities and piercingly dissonant harmonies. The women of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, seated in the rows where the first violins are typically located, contributed an array of haunting vocal sounds: hushed hums, sustained high tones, sputterings and more. Mr. Salonen, a Ligeti champion, led a riveting performance.

Mr. Salonen has said that the main reason he is moving on from the Philharmonic is that he wants more time for composing. In a program note about his new Violin Concerto, a 30-minute work in four movements, he writes that it is in some ways a "summary of my experiences as a musician and a human being at the watershed age of 50." If that sounds like a big agenda for one piece, the concerto comes across as a rhapsodic, inspired and restless work, too immediate to weigh down listeners with philosophical musings

The first movement opens with a long stretch for the solo violin that could be a neo-Baroque toccata, with nonstop spans of rippling 16th notes, until the orchestra begins to comment and respond. Soon, in a heaving eruption, the orchestra seems to tell the violin, "Slow down, take a breath, let's consider all this," which the violin does.

The back and forth continues throughout the movements, where the orchestra zooms in, ponders and rattles the soloist. The third movement, Pulse II, is the most raucous, with fractured tunes and heady orchestral wildness. It sounds like some hip West Coast answer to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."

Mr. Salonen, with his vast experience as a conductor, is so skilled at orchestration that every piece he writes, including this concerto, has a brilliant surface and wondrous sound. In the late 1990s he had a sort of California epiphany, realizing that without his modernist mentors looking over his shoulder, he could write the way he wanted to. Like many of his recent scores, this concerto is afire with determination to reach the audience, perhaps too much so. The music lacks the sinewy toughness of Mr. Salonen's more modernist days. The most affecting movement may be the final "Adieu," a pensive, elusive and harmonically quizzical rumination, though still spiked with virtuosic violin flights.

Ms. Josefowicz gave a thrilling performance of this daunting work, playing with gleaming sound, supple technique and, amazingly, from memory. The orchestra sounded great. Some 54 players, about half of the current roster, were recruited during the Salonen years. So the Los Angeles Philharmonic is truly his band, and the collaborative connection comes through in every performance.

After these two works were performed, it was somehow exactly the moment to hear Beethoven's Fifth. Mr. Salonen and his players were not striving for a performance to enter the annals of immortal Beethoven playing. Rather, here were adventurous musicians eager to bring freshness and enthusiasm to a repertory staple. And what a relief this well-played, vigorous and lucid performance was.

The final performance of this program by the Los Angeles Philharmonic is Saturday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles; Esa-Pekka Salonen concludes his tenure as music director next week with an all-Stravinsky program; laphil.com.

Thank you for posting this. It's been 7 years since I left Los Angeles. I was there at his first concert as a guest conductor, his first concert as MD as well. I feel deeply attached to his conducting and his music, as well as the legacy he left in Los Angeles. Wish I was there for this one. I will go to Disney Hall for a concert someday. I will await new recordings of his music with interest.

[Coopmv]

Thank you for posting this. It's been 7 years since I left Los Angeles. I was there at his first concert as a guest conductor, his first concert as MD as well. I feel deeply attached to his conducting and his music, as well as the legacy he left in Los Angeles. Wish I was there for this one. I will go to Disney Hall for a concert someday. I will await new recordings of his music with interest.

I like Esa-Pekka Salonen but only when he conducted the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.  While I generally do not like CBS/Sony, I do own all the Nielsen Symphonies conducted by Salonen. 

[rubio]

Mahler
Symphony no. 3
Jean Martinon
Chicago Symphony Orchestra

This rather unknown Mahler 3 performance is right up there with the best for me. Martinon brings humanity, wamth and coherence to this gigantic work. CSO is in top shape and this 1967 live performance was the orchestra's premiere of the work. Mesmerising it is. It exists in the below super-expensive CSO set or on rmcr...

[rubio]

Beethoven Op. 2/3, Op. 10/3 and Op. 26 from the below set.

[haydnguy]

It's a very nice set.
Tallis is no Desprez, but who is? And it's interesting for me to hear the British Renaissance School.
Performances and recordings are excellent. The set comes with a CD-ROM with full liner notes and texts on a pdf file - 75 pages!  (conveniently in A4 format)

Q

I just noticed that the original of that Tallis is selling new on Amazon for $241.00US.     (That's NOT the one I ordered!)   

[Gurn Blanston]

For my Sunday morning listening pleasure, I finally broke down and followed the always good advice of member Donwyn and got the Czech PO / Kletzki set with Beethoven 7-9. Haven't listened to 7 or 8 yet, but 9 is a peach. Recorded app. 1967, it is typical in style of that period where good conductors were shaking off some of the baggage of post-Romantic interpretations and starting to slim down the ensemble a bit and to play as written more than their predecessors. In many ways this resembles the RCO/Jochum of 1968, except for the distinctive playing of the Czech's, with great winds in particular. It is well recorded, no muddiness, you can clearly hear all the individual sections giving their all to a great performance. Highly recommended.



----------------
Listening to:
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 - Czech PO \ Kletzki - Op 125 Symphony #9 in d 4th mvmt - Presto - Allegro assai - "Ode to Joy"

[SonicMan46]

A couple of recommendations from the 'old instrument' thread - just arrived:

Franklin's Glass (H)Armonica - wide variety of composers; performed by Thomas Bloch - not sure that I'd want a 'large' box set of works on this instrument -     But, a nice introduction - bless the Naxos label!

Julian Arcas (1832-1882) - Various Works performed by Stefano Grondona on a famous guitar, called La Leona, which was used by Arcas, himself - 


 

[Gurn Blanston]

A couple of recommendations from the 'old instrument' thread - just arrived:

Franklin's Glass (H)Armonica - wide variety of composers; performed by Thomas Bloch - not sure that I'd want a 'large' box set of works on this instrument -     But, a nice introduction - bless the Naxos label!

 

Dave,
I have this disk too. It is, as you say, not something I would want to listen to in great chunks, but the Mozart is nice to hear on the real instrument it was composed for, and the Leonore Prohaska melodram of the Beethoven is really quite interesting too. AFAIK, this is the only "glass armonica" disk that uses the real instrument, the one pictured on the cover as devised by B. Franklin.



----------------
Listening to:
Symhonies 7-8-9 by Czech Philharmonic/Kletzki - Beethoven (Corrected) - Symphony No.7 in A major- II - Allegretto

[DavidRoss]

Aces. 

[Benji]

Ligeti - Atmosphères, for large orchestra, and Boulez - Notations. Wiener Philhamoniker - Claudio Abbado.

[Coopmv]

Now playing ONLY CD 1 from this set since I need to head out for a family Easter get-together in under an hour ...

[Dancing Divertimentian]

For my Sunday morning listening pleasure, I finally broke down and followed the always good advice of member Donwyn and got the Czech PO / Kletzki set with Beethoven 7-9. Haven't listened to 7 or 8 yet, but 9 is a peach. Recorded app. 1967, it is typical in style of that period where good conductors were shaking off some of the baggage of post-Romantic interpretations and starting to slim down the ensemble a bit and to play as written more than their predecessors. In many ways this resembles the RCO/Jochum of 1968, except for the distinctive playing of the Czech's, with great winds in particular. It is well recorded, no muddiness, you can clearly hear all the individual sections giving their all to a great performance. Highly recommended.



----------------
Listening to:
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 - Czech PO \ Kletzki - Op 125 Symphony #9 in d 4th mvmt - Presto - Allegro assai - "Ode to Joy"

Hadn't realized you'd bought this portion of Kletzki's cycle, Gurn. I'm happy it's working out for you so far. And I agree, this 9th is quite an achievement. 

Here's hoping the other syms (7 & 8 ) bring equal pleasure.

[Que]

For my Sunday morning listening pleasure, I finally broke down and followed the always good advice of member Donwyn and got the Czech PO / Kletzki set with Beethoven 7-9. Haven't listened to 7 or 8 yet, but 9 is a peach. Recorded app. 1967, it is typical in style of that period where good conductors were shaking off some of the baggage of post-Romantic interpretations and starting to slim down the ensemble a bit and to play as written more than their predecessors. In many ways this resembles the RCO/Jochum of 1968, except for the distinctive playing of the Czech's, with great winds in particular. It is well recorded, no muddiness, you can clearly hear all the individual sections giving their all to a great performance. Highly recommended.

There you have it - my two favourite LvB cycles and two of my favourite 9ths (out of three).

Q

[Gurn Blanston]

Hadn't realized you'd bought this portion of Kletzki's cycle, Gurn. I'm happy it's working out for you so far. And I agree, this 9th is quite an achievement. 

Here's hoping the other syms (7 & 8 ) bring equal pleasure.

Just got it Friday, Don, so this was my first full listening. You have been touting this set for a long time, but after my disappointment getting snarked by importcds on the full set, I had been tardy about taking another stab at it.   Glad I did now. Also listened to the great 7th afterwards, right up there near Kleiber's.



----------------
Listening to:
Harnoncourt  - The Seven Last Phrases of Christ on the Cross: IX. "Vater, in deine Hände"