What were you listening to? (CLOSED)

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Great you do! But beware: the MP cycle is often, but not always, first choice.

Mine would be:
First, Second, Fourth and Sixth symphonies: Cassuto, Marco Polo
Third: Cassuto on Portugalsom (with the LSO)
Fifth: also one of the older Portugalsom recordings.
Sinfonietta, Divertimento no. 1 : also Portugalsom recordings, not the Marco Polo's

&c. So for a real encounter with the Third and Fifth, especially, you will have to look further, imho.

Hello, Christo! One obstacle, though - those Portugalsom CDs are OOP... So I'm afraid Harry and all other latecomers (like myself) to the Braga Santos love-in will have to settle for MP...

[Harry]

String Quintet opus 6 No. 1 by Joseph Eybler, again, for its so gorgeous.

[Harry]

Hello, Christo! One obstacle, though - those Portugalsom CDs are OOP... So I'm afraid Harry and all other latecomers (like myself) to the Braga Santos love-in will have to settle for MP...

Yes I found that out too, to my chagrin!

[Harry]

Simon Le Duc. (1742-1777)
Complete Symphonic Works.

Symphony No. 1-3.
Orchestral Trio opus 2 No. 1-3
La Stagione Frankfurt, Michael Schneider.

"ll joue bien"-He plays well. It was thus that Leopold Mozart wrote of Monsieur Le Duc in his traveling notes from a Paris journey of 1763-64, and this was rare praise from his strict mouth. The Violinist he was referring was Simon Le Duc.
Werther this praise helped me in appreciating this composer is highly doubtful, I found him to be altogether very refreshing, this shaper of beautiful singing phrases on the strings, and a fine sense for proportion in his scoring, that brings out quite a few surprises. He was often called the "French Mozart", and in a sense that is not far from the truth.
Sturm und Drang it is then, and absolutely worthwhile your attention, although it is full price!
It is played on period instruments, and well it sounds. the performance leaves no wishes open either.

[Christo]

Hello, Christo! One obstacle, though - those Portugalsom CDs are OOP... So I'm afraid Harry and all other latecomers (like myself) to the Braga Santos love-in will have to settle for MP...

Of course, my only aim being to boast my own proud ownership of all those legendary Portugalsoms  0:)

(I actually bought them all together, when an Amsterdam record shop tried to get rid of them for 3 euros each, back in the blessed year 1999. Nobody had ever heard about one Braga Santos, in those days.). 

[rickardg]

Witold Lutosławski
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra
Andrzej Bauer, cello
Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Antoni Wit

First listen to this composer for me.

The Cello Concerto is the highpoint of this disc (also including Livre pour orchestre, Novelette and Chain No. 3) IMHO. There is some interesting dialog between the cello and the orchestra and the louder tutti sections are imposing, probably quite an experience live. It does benefit from earphone listening, the softer moments of the cello parts almost disappears when heard on my speakers, but of course, through earphones I can hear the cellist breathe.

[Harry]

Eduard Erdmann. (1896-1958)

Rondo, opus 9.
Symphony no. 1, opus 1, & 2, opus 12.
Rundfunk SO Saarbrucken, Israel Yinon.

His teacher was Heinz Tiessen, a much admired composer by me, this disc came as a complete surprise, for I knew the composer, but never saw anything recorded by him, until this disc marched in, and I snapped it up right away. Three of his finest works arranged together, beginning with the Rondo, when premiered was a phenomenal success, and he was much applauded for it, as his first Symphony. The second dedicated to his friend Krenek, is for me a absolute winner on all counts.
Tonal, with a enormous spectrum for colors mystique, and a image which creates all kinds of magic around you in the first pages of the first Symphony, gives you a composer that was well aware of the possibilities a grand orchestra could give him. And he uses all to great effect. Immersed deeply into this sound world it allows me to escape the mundane, and enter into the fantastic landscape Erdmann creates.
Simply wonderful, boy, am I a lucky fellow or not........

[Harry]

Charles Koechlin.
Chamber Music for Flute, Clarinet, and Piano.
Irmela Nolte, Flutes.
Deborah Marshall, Clarinet.
Sabine Liebner, Piano.

One of the few Koechlin discs I own, but one which is dear to my heart. These works are melodious and uplifting, and I find the scoring for all three instruments simply gorgeous. The recording is fine, but a little forward in the loud passages.

[Harry]

Antonín Dvořák
String Quartet No 9 in Dm
The Prague String Quartet

I think that still the best set to be had.....

[springrite]

Over the last two days I have been listening to nothing but Lutoslawski. Somehow I find his music to be the most appropriate to my ear and my soul in these three days of mourning in China.

Yesterday's 3 minutes when the whole country stopped to honor the dead was the most moving experience in my entire life.

[Harry]

Over the last two days I have been listening to nothing but Lutoslawski. Somehow I find his music to be the most appropriate to my ear and my soul in these three days of mourning in China.

Yesterday's 3 minutes when the whole country stopped to honor the dead was the most moving experience in my entire life.

Saw it on television! Indeed most moving!

[Keemun]

[Moldyoldie]

Yesterday's 3 minutes when the whole country stopped to honor the dead was the most moving experience in my entire life.

I can only imagine...and say an understated "wow".


Schumann: Symphony No. 4, Op. 120
Vienna Philharmonic
Leonard Bernstein, cond.
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON (2-CD with comp. symphonies)
Bernstein certainly does apply the hyper-Romantic "stop & go" to this work, but I hardly find it as disconcerting as many have asserted -- now that I'm familiar with the work.  However, given a choice, I'd still prefer a more Classical, straightforward approach to this music and would probably recommend such to a novice listener.

Brahms:  String Sextet No. 1, Op. 18
Raphael Ensemble
HYPERION (inc. Sextet No. 2)
The chamber string ensemble has become an inviting form for me lately, especially after hearing Tchaikovsky's Souvenir of Florence.  A revisit of this one was certainly in order this morning. The Sextet No. 1 is early Brahms, very tuneful and mostly devoid of his mature convolutedness.  I swear I could hear what sounded like bagpipes in the beautiful Andante, a delightful mimicry!

Beethoven: Violin Concerto, Op. 61
Nigel Kennedy, violin
North German Radio Symphony Orchestra
Klaus Tennstedt, cond.
EMI
This is recorded in live performance replete with opening and concluding applause -- a truly individual take on the perhaps overly familiar Beethoven Concerto -- distended and emotive in nearly all facets with Kennedy adding some interesting improvisations, especially in the Finale, and Tennstedt adding understated and sympathetic accompaniment.  I loved hearing it this morning!

[Cato]

Allegri's famous Miserere: I will be hearing it 5 times today!   

I am playing it for my Latin classes, not only to show them the grammar and vocabulary of the text, which they can handle up to a point, but also to give them an idea of what guitar-strumming folk groups have replaced in too many Catholic Churches in its querulous quest for relevance.   

[SonicMan46]

Small Caiman (Amazon Marketplace) order arrived yesterday - first two 'new' CDs for the morning:

Eichner, Ernst (1740-1777) - Flute Quartets, Op. 4 w/ Jan De Winne on transverse flute - Fanfare (May-Jun '08) recommendation; classical galant style - light, elegant, & relaxing - well played w/ the flute up front - my first exposure to this composer; not sure 'how much' this composer wrote but this CD is one of the few apparently devoted solely to him!

Kiel, Friedrich (1821-1885) - Piano Quartets, Nos. 1-3 w/ Mathe et al; a TOP recommendation by Jerry Dubins in the same issue of Fanfare; also, CLICK on the image for an excellent review on Amazon by Scott Morrison - own a number of his chamber works, including the Piano Trios, also shown below, but may be OOP?  Outstanding chamber music writing of the latter 19th century - 

   

[Hector]

Herz's Piano Concertos 3, 4 and 5 which will be my last listening for the afternoon and which I dedicate to all those who enjoy good music away from the beaten track and do not think that any artistic truth has been compromised.

We are legion

Howard Shelley in Tasmania (he's not, actually, he's in my iPod)!

[MN Dave]

Renaissance Choral Music

[rubio]

This classic recording.

[MN Dave]

This classic recording.

Man, I think that's THE classic recording.   

[Harry]

Pavel Haas. (1899-1944)

Scherzo triste, opus 5.
Suite from the opera "Charlatan", opus 14.
Symphony-Unfinished. (Instrumentation/Orchestration Zdenek Zouhar.

Brno State Philharmonic/ Israel Yinon.

Another composer I am totally in awe with, represented with this wonderful recording with a few of his Orchestral works, having dipped my foot in his Chamber music a while ago. Tonal, with a huge range of colors, dreamy and fierce at the same time, harmonic dissonances, stark contrasts, chiseled details that are brittle as paper, and details that oozes extreme power. Gentle mutterings, loud shouting, absurdity and sarcasm, sun and clouds, just name it its there.
In the reconstructed Symphony, second movement Haas quotes the Nazi song, "the Horst Wessel Lied", boldly, at first in a brazenly aggressive form, although with hints of irony in the diminution at the close, and later on in a parodistically caricatured form, and in the third movement it is contrapuntally combined with a allusive quote from Chopin funeral march. Very bizarre, but o so effective.
The performance is idiomatic and well conceived by Yinon.