What were you listening to? (CLOSED)

[Brian]

BERLIOZ | Symphonie fantastique
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Charles Dutoit

Again, a live recording from OperaShare, and again, I can hardly believe how great it is.

Oh no! He skipped the repeat in the March to the Scaffold! But that's okay - it was already a little fast for me; I was getting motion-sick [TT 4:35].

EDIT: Oh no! Part II. The bells in the final movement are ridiculously high-pitched - they're not scary at all, just kind of goofy. That just about completely ruins it, even though the first three movements were absolutely flawless.

[Coopmv]

Now playing CD 9 Triple Concerto, Rondo in B Flat Major and Choral Fantasy from this set ...

[Brian]

DEBUSSY | Images
Philadelphia Orchestra
Charles Dutoit

The live-broadcast Dutoit-a-thon continues! What a conductor! 

[Coopmv]

DEBUSSY | Images
Philadelphia Orchestra
Charles Dutoit

The live-broadcast Dutoit-a-thon continues! What a conductor! 

I have about 10 CD's by Dutoit out of about 2700.  Still not bad since I do not even have a single CD for James Levine or Sinopoli ...

[Senta]

Right now, I'm listening to the KUSC live LA Phil broadcast tonite - celebrating Salonen's next to last weekend of concerts as MD.

First was Ligeti's Clocks and Clouds (LOVE Ligeti!! great piece). Music you feel more than listen to...

Then was the World Premiere of Salonen's Violin Concerto. written especially for Leila Josefowicz...boy, that girl can PLAY. Amazing. I liked much of the piece though not the whole thing...but she easily dispatched a terribly difficult and virtuosic part, and from memory it was reported.

Now it's onto Beethoven 5...rather out of place in the program, although I do get the visceral connection. Haven't always been a big fan of his LvB but this is an excellent performance - graceful and grand, stylish and energetic...certainly infused with the moment. For a live aircheck, this band sounds exceptional too!

I look forward to the broadcast tomorrow, which features Salonen's Nov. 1984 debut in LA with Luto's 3rd back when the ink was still wet...

[Brian]

My night tonight is eerily similar to my night last night!:

Heh, indeed, it is 1 in the morning. 

JANACEK | Sinfonietta
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Karel Ancerl

[Brian]

My night tonight is eerily similar to my night last night!:

Dang it, now I'm playing it again ... for the 4th time in 25 hours 

[Eddie Williamson]

Bach: Mass in B minor, BWV 232 - Marc Minkowski/Les Musiciens du Louvre.

Lucy Crowe, Joanne Lunn   sopranos I
Julia Lezhneva, Blandine Staskiewicz   sopranos II
Nathalie Stutzmann, Terry Wey   altos
Colin Balzer, Markus Brutscher   ténors
Christian Immler, Luca Tittoto   basses

Superb.

[Eddie Williamson]

Right now, I'm listening to the KUSC live LA Phil broadcast tonite - celebrating Salonen's next to last weekend of concerts as MD.

First was Ligeti's Clocks and Clouds (LOVE Ligeti!! great piece). Music you feel more than listen to...

Then was the World Premiere of Salonen's Violin Concerto. written especially for Leila Josefowicz...boy, that girl can PLAY. Amazing. I liked much of the piece though not the whole thing...but she easily dispatched a terribly difficult and virtuosic part, and from memory it was reported.

Now it's onto Beethoven 5...rather out of place in the program, although I do get the visceral connection. Haven't always been a big fan of his LvB but this is an excellent performance - graceful and grand, stylish and energetic...certainly infused with the moment. For a live aircheck, this band sounds exceptional too!

I look forward to the broadcast tomorrow, which features Salonen's Nov. 1984 debut in LA with Luto's 3rd back when the ink was still wet...

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.

[Que]

Disc IV: Music for the Divine Office, part 1

Q

[Que]

Bach: Mass in B minor, BWV 232 - Marc Minkowski/Les Musiciens du Louvre.



Lucy Crowe, Joanne Lunn   sopranos I
Julia Lezhneva, Blandine Staskiewicz   sopranos II
Nathalie Stutzmann, Terry Wey   altos
Colin Balzer, Markus Brutscher   ténors
Christian Immler, Luca Tittoto   basses

Superb.

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

Q

[haydnguy]

Disc IV: Music for the Divine Office, part 1

Q

Nice, Q !     

[Que]

Nice, Q !     

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)

NOW:



Disc 4: trios nos. 25 - 31.

Q

[rubio]

Annie Fischer. I enjoy the small sonatas, Op. 79 and Op. 49, most this time around from Annie.

[hildegard]

The Russian Easter Overture

Favorite music for an Easter morning!

Can spring finally be far behind?

[karlhenning]

Oh no! He skipped the repeat in the March to the Scaffold! But that's okay - it was already a little fast for me; I was getting motion-sick [TT 4:35].

EDIT: Oh no! Part II. The bells in the final movement are ridiculously high-pitched - they're not scary at all, just kind of goofy. That just about completely ruins it, even though the first three movements were absolutely flawless.

Hmm.  Curious mis-reads on Dutoit's part, Brian.

[karlhenning]

The Russian Easter Overture

Favorite music for an Easter morning!

But . . . Russian Easter is next week (just saying) . . . .

[hildegard]

But . . . Russian Easter is next week (just saying) . . . .

I know, but this way, I can celebrate twice. 

[karlhenning]

 

Thread duty:

Pascha nostrum

[Coopmv]

Now playing ... A recently acquired CD which has quickly become a favorite for me.