What were you listening to? (CLOSED)

[Air]

I just listened to Janowitz's Four Last Songs with Karajan.  Rapturous performance!

[Coopmv]

I just listened to Janowitz's Four Last Songs with Karajan.  Rapturous performance!

I have Janowitz performing the Brahms' Requiem under karajan on a DVD.  The DVD is excellent.  Janowitz was truly a top soloist of her generation ...

[Conor71]

I really do not know Andrew Davis.  I last heard one of his recordings on the local FM years ago but was not too impressed with it.  It also appears many local classical FM stations do not play his recordings much compared with the much more famous Colin Davis.  BTW, I also have many recordings by Colin Davis ...

I have a couple of Box sets with Andrew Davis (the Dvorak a couple of posts back and an Elgar set) and quite like him - he is a pretty sedate Conductor on these recordings I have so I can understand him not being to everyones taste . One of the first Classical recordings I bought a few years back (The Planets) was with Andrew Davis and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and its still one of my fave versions.
Andrew appears to be no relation to the more famous Colin either! .

[Coopmv]

I have a couple of Box sets with Andrew Davis (the Dvorak a couple of posts back and an Elgar set) and quite like him - he is a pretty sedate Conductor on these recordings I have so I can understand him not being to everyones taste . One of the first Classical recordings I bought a few years back (The Planets) was with Andrew Davis and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and its still one of my fave versions.
Andrew appears to be no relation to the more famous Colin either! .

I knew the two Davises are unrelated.  Sir Colin is a regular guest to many US orchestras while Andrew Davis tends to be much less of a traveling conductor ...

[Wanderer]

Congratulations Coopmv on Reply #60000!



An assignment for MusicWeb, and a tough one ... it is hard to find enough words for something that is very good, competent, and a nice listen, without being excellent, outstanding, or a true experience. The trick is not to sound lukewarm while you're lowering people's expectations, a very tough thing to do. Ugh. But I shouldn't say "Ugh," because this IS very good. If you buy it, you will really like it. But you don't need to buy it. See the dilemma?

Looks interesting...

[Lethevich]

More music by Georgy Sviridov. I can't find any English translations for this CD, so bar a few pieces I recognise, it's all a glorious mystery to me.

This composer is bizarre. The more I listen the less I can understand how the music came to be written. It is very fun, but also very stupid - it makes a lot rock music sound texturally sophisticated - even the drumming, versus his sub-Bolero style use of timpani. I suppose at last it's very unique, but stuff like Time, Forward! and the piece that ends the Snow-Storm suite (which is either featured solo on this CD as the opening track, or was recycled into another piece) are just so simultaneously simplistic and overblown as to be breathtaking.

Edit: something else strange - the more I listen to this, the more it seems that this music has "inspired" a lot of Japanese videogame soundtracks. I am hearing bits of Metal Gear Solid, Soul Calibur, etc.

[Que]

Since I'm in the mood for sacred music, I'm skipping the disc with music from Matteo Flecha's Las Ensaladas for the moment and continue this set with CD9 with music from the Reniassance by the Italian composer Costanzo Festa (c.1490-1545).

 

Q

[Wanderer]

[The new erato]

Since I'm in the mood for sacred music, I'm skipping the disc with music from Matteo Flecha's Las Ensaladas for the moment and continue this set with CD9 with music from the Reniassance by the Italian composer Costanzo Festa (c.1490-1545).

 

Q

One of the highligths of a set with many superb things!

[Conor71]

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 1 In G Minor, Op. 13, "Winter Daydreams"

[val]

CAVALLI:       "L'ORMINDO"             / Soloists, Les Paladins, Jerome Correas

Not Cavalli's best opera, because of a very conventional libretto, very far from the quality of La Calisto. But even so the music is very inspired.

The interpreters are decent, some of them are even really good: Howard Crook or Dominique Visse.

But operas like this one need singers with much more personality, able to impose their characters.

[listener]

setting up for the day  Kurt Weill: The Tsar Has His Photograph Taken 1-act comic opera
and early Russian orchestral music  Aliabiev: a ballet suite from The Magic Drum, or a Sequel to The Magic Flute  (notes give no idea of the plot line),  Bortniansky: Sinfonia Concertante for 2 violins, viola da gamba, bassoon, harp and piano, and some shorter pieces  (not choral for which he is better known), and Fomin (1761-1800) orchestral selections to the melodrama Orpheus and Eurydice) from 1792.
Someone was looking for early Russian classical music, and this may be an answer.

edit: The Bortniansky has a harpsichord, not harp as stated on the cover, and it sounds like an oboe replaces one of the violins.   

[mahler10th]

RUBBRA
Symphony 3
Hickox - BBC SO Wales



A thoughtful little symphony - more in it than meets the eye...er...ear.

[Henk]

[CD]

Prokofiev - Symphonies 1 and 3 (Muti/Philadelphia Orch)

[Keemun]

Elgar
Enigma Variations
Adrian Boult
London Symphony Orchestra

[Henk]

[Coopmv]

Now playing CD8 from this set - PC Nos 3 & 4

[George]

Thus far unable to see what the fuss is about this performance. In fact, I haven't been impressed with any of Karajan's Bruckner for DG. (I also have the full set) 

[Coopmv]

Thus far unable to see what the fuss is about this performance. In fact, I haven't been impressed with any of Karajan's Bruckner for DG. (I also have the full set) 

I only have the DVD but it might have been recorded a few years earlier with the same VPO ...