What were you listening to? (CLOSED)

[karlhenning]

Who's playing, Marvin?

[ChamberNut]

  It's Prokofiev Time  ! Two ballets, back to back oh my!

 

  marvin

Romeo & Juliet by Prokofiev is my favorite ballet, Marvin!    It's fantastic!

[ChamberNut]

Mendelssohn

Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 11
Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 107 Reformation*

Vladimir Ashkenazy
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Decca

*Favorite Mendelssohn symphony. 

Has anyone else noticed........Mendelssohn is probably by far one of the least talked about or listened to of the great famous composers on GMG (I'm just as guilty as anyone).  Why is that?

[Dana]

From the library

Beethoven

String Quartet No. 15 in F major, op. 135

Takacs Qt.
Decca

WOW!    A great performance, one that I actually prefer over my beloved Quartetto Italiano.  This is the late string quartet that I least enjoy (I still really enjoy Op. 135, don't get me wrong).

My favorite movement of this quartet has always been the quirky Vivace 2nd movement.  It is absolutely kick ass with the Takacs Qt.!!!!  Brilliant  

     How old is this recording? Takacs has always been one of my favorite quartets. I've heard them four or five times since they got their new violist, Geraldine Walther (IIRC, she's been with them for less than five years), and they keep getting better the longer they play together.

[George]

Schumann PC
cond by Krips

[karlhenning]

Has anyone else noticed........Mendelssohn is probably by far one of the least talked about or listened to of the great famous composers on GMG (I'm just as guilty as anyone).  Why is that?

Probably a temporary 'drying-out' period . . . formerly, there was a troll who spammed the forum with excessive praise of Mendelssohn.

[ChamberNut]

     How old is this recording? Takacs has always been one of my favorite quartets. I've heard them four or five times since they got their new violist, Geraldine Walther (IIRC, she's been with them for less than five years), and they keep getting better the longer they play together.

It's only 5 years old.

[Dana]

Rochberg Viola Sonata with Paul Cortese and Jon Klibonoff. This is a really tricky sonata.

[marvinbrown]

Who's playing, Marvin?

  London Symphony Orchestra, Andre Previn conducting- excellent sound, focused playing a real delight!

  marvin

[bhodges]

Last night, a little impromptu listening session with a couple of friends.  I wanted to play the Murail for them; they responded with the other two pieces. 

Murail: Gondwana (Yves Prin/Orchestre National de France)
Scelsi: Quattro Pezzi su una nota sola (Peter Rundel/Vienna Radio Symphony)
Scriabin: Prometheus (Alexander Toradze/Valery Gergiev/Kirov)

--Bruce

[Moldyoldie]

Moeran: Violin Concerto; Lonely Waters; Whythorne's Shadow
Lydia Mordkovitch, violin (in concerto)
Ulster Orchestra
Vernon Handley, cond.

Moeran: Cello Concerto
Raphael Wallfisch, cello
Bouremouth Sinfonietta
Norman Del Mar, cond.
CHANDOS

This is my introduction to E. J. Moeran (1894-1950) whom I first read about recently and whose music was described as being firmly entrenched in the "cowpat" school of twentieth century British music, a term derogatorally coined by English serialist composer Elisabeth Lutyens to describe the more idyllically inclined music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi, Hubert Parry, and the like.  Yes, the music here is nothing if not evocative of British and Irish vistas abetted by frequent none-too-subtle allusions to inherently familiar folk melodies and rhythms.  One can choose to either love this music for its simple summonings or be aloof to its seeming ubiquity and triteness; there's certainly nothing threatening nor overtly challenging to be heard.

The Violin Concerto of 1937 is probably the most attractive and substantive work here -- three varying movements traversing both a soberly Romantic and homespun musical landscape.  Soloist Lydia Mordkovitch produces a somewhat roughhewn sonority, especially in the lower register, but still displays an appropriately sweet-sounding rumination bookending the folksy jauntiness found in the middle movement.  In painting this beautiful and amiable picture, she's very well-balanced with the vividly recorded Ulster Orchestra led by Vernon Handley.

Handley and the Ulster also perform the near contemporaneous Lonely Waters and Whythorne's Shadow, the latter's namesake being an Elizabethan-era composer -- together representing about fifteen minutes of flowing, lovely, and mostly innocuous musical buffer.

The program ends with the Cello Concerto, a later work from around the end of World War II.  Soloist Raphael Wallfisch is accompanied by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta led by Norman Del Mar in a recording originally released a few years previous to the above in the mid-1980s and compellingly appended here to make for this chock-full 2004 re-release.  It's perhaps too easy to say this is musically more of the same as its earlier violin counterpart -- a beautiful and pastorally inspired rumination sandwiching and infused with some lilting Irish folk stylings, this time featuring the deeply rich sonority of Wallfisch's instrument.  If, perchance, there's an actual "expression" to be heard in this score, it's mostly latent in this performance, but it melds well with this uniformly peaceable and amiable program -- one, with small effort, I happened to take delight in this particular morning.

[Dr. Dread]

Chopin Polonaises
Frederic Chopin (Composer), Vladimir Ashkenazy (Performer)

[mahler10th]

Mahler - Symphony No. 5
Eschenbach, Houston Symphony Orchestra
Live 7 Dec 92
Vienna

This is fantastic.  Some overplay here and there, but just magnificent. 

[Fëanor]

...

This is my introduction to E. J. Moeran (1894-1950) whom I first read about recently and whose music was described as being firmly entrenched in the "cowpat" school of twentieth century British music, a term derogatorally coined by English serialist composer Elisabeth Lutyens to describe the more idyllically inclined music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi, Hubert Parry, and the like.
....

I love that title: it resonates for me.

Has anyone come up with a similarly resonant term for the grandiloquent Romanic composers such as Bruckner and Mahler?  

[karlhenning]

On-hold music at St Paul's Cathedral, my own anthem, Bless the Lord, O My Soul.

[Dr. Dread]

On-hold music at St Paul's Cathedral, my own anthem, Bless the Lord, O My Soul.

Neat.

[ChamberNut]

Mahler

Symphony No. 7 in E minor

Tennstedt
London Philharmonic Orchestra
EMI Classics

[The new erato]

Romeo & Juliet by Prokofiev is my favorite ballet, Marvin!    It's fantastic!

I've notivced on the release lists for Brilliant is also DGs fine Maazel recording of Zemlinskys Lyrischer Symphonie with Fi-Di and Varady.

[DavidW]

I've been listening to Brahms chamber works-- piano trios and quartets performed by BAT and company, a transcription of the clarinet trio for viola with Bashmet and others, string quartets performed by ABQ.  BAT's performances of the piano trios and quartets are thrilling, and almost orchestral in depth.

Also listened to Panocha Quartet on a couple of Dvorak's late string quartets, having heard the same for one of them performed by the ABQ, Panocha hands down delivers a better performance, a bit more passionate, but more importantly it captures the rhythmic dance like quality of Dvorak which is pivotal for an engaging performance.  ABQ's performance is so detached you would think that they were playing Dittersdorf!

[Haffner]

Was once again stunned by the 1962 Karajan recording of the Eroica. I can see where some might see this as being too "heavy metal" for their tastes. Their loss, I'll take this over the '70's Karajan recording of this piece any day.