What were you listening to? (CLOSED)

[Bulldog]

Yeah, they didn't come cheap but I like the way MDG records quartets. Lovely recordings from Leipzig and the Mandelring Quartet (my homies) too. It's hard to believe, though, that the Cherubini Quartet and Ysaye screwed up. Maybe the music just didn't appeal to you. I can't imagine you not liking the op.80 though.

Sarge

Neither the Cherubini nor the Ysaye screwed up; same goes for all the other full sets on the market.  Perhaps Scarpia would prefer a period istruments approach such as the Eroica on Harmonia Mundi ( not inexpensive).

[jlaurson]

How can I tell?  Presumably the performances.  I also recall having owned the Ysaye, which sucked big time.  You Leipziger's sound good, but cost a kings ransom, if I recall.

I find the Ysaye quartet recordings (Decca Trio, no?) quite good, actually. (And I like the quartet generally, having heard them live on occasion.)

Stupendous works, in any case! Some of Mendelssohn's best. http://www.weta.org/fmblog/?p=476

My favorite recording, though, is the Talich Quartet (on Caliope) followed by Pacifica (Cedille), Eroica (Harmonia Mundi) and then the Leipzigers (MDG).
Here's a review from MusicWeb: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2009/Sept09/Mendelssohn_SQ_MDG3071571.htm

The Leipzig String Quartet counters with solidity and the most homogenous, integrated quartet sound. They slacken the tension in the slow movements and make haste in the fast movements, although not nearly enough to call either tempi "extremes". Their articulation is superb, although not with as much character as the cursive Talich Quartet performances which remain my favorite, achieve. And they take every repeat.
Op. 80 is one of the most intense, harrowing, and fist-clenching works Mendelssohn ever wrote; compared to much of his squeaky clean charming music, it's like an unshaven, boozing Mendelssohn's announcement of "No More Mister Nice Guy". A clearer acoustic and keener separation of voices, like that of the Henschel or Talich Quartets, makes the fast movements more detailed; the very atmospheric, rich sound of the MDG recording tends towards mild muddiness on anything except very good, very detailed speakers, especially at the Leipziger's speed. When, and only when, listened to on HiFi equipment with an analytic bent, the wealth of information contained on the MDG recording does reveal audiophile material.


Read more: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2009/Sept09/Mendelssohn_SQ_MDG3071571.htm#ixzz0t84trYPD

[Saul]

Michlango's Symphony Antigua In G minor Op.103

Sir David McCalies conducts the London Chamber Orchestra.

[Sergeant Rock]

Ysaye didn't have the intensity I was looking....

The Leipzigers do not lack intensity. Just finished listening to op.80. Their last movement is incredible.

Leaping ahead a hundred years now but staying with the Leipziger Quartet: Schoenberg's String Quartet #4 op.37:




Sarge

[kishnevi]

MDG is tops in chamber music recordings, and I like the recordings I have of the Leipzig.

Ysaye didn't have the intensity I was looking (well, listening) for.  Cherubini seems shrill, maybe EMI is at fault.  Maybe I should pick up one disc of the Leipsig series, the one with Opus 80.

I would blame the Cherubini, at least.  Their Schumann sounded superficial and sometimes just plain boring to me.  I have SQ 1 and 2 from Cherubini, which I haven't played for at least two years, I think, and have no remembrance of how it sounded. 

However, if the Ysaye is bad here, then apparently they were having an off day.  They are great in the Schumann and good in the Mozart, the two recordings I have of them.

That said,  I find myself always going for the piano trios and not the string quartets when it comes to Mendelssohn's chamber music.

[Bulldog]

Michlango's Symphony Antigua In G minor Op.103

Sir David McCalies conducts the London Chamber Orchestra.

Who is Michlango?

[The new erato]

The Arnie/Felix Marathon continues with Bartholdy's String Quartet in F minor, Op.80, a work which, like late Mozart, makes one wish the composer had lived much, much longer.

Op 80 is probably his best work, and that fact is probably connected to the fact that he had lost interest in living. I somehow doubt it would have been as good if he had been in excellent health.

[prémont]

To day I have listened to one half of Helmut Walcha´s second recording of WTC, the one he made for DG Archive (1974). Book I is played on a harpsichord by Hans Ruckers the younger (1640) and Book II on a harpsichord by Henri Hemsch (1755).   Walcha´s insistent and almost invariable touch and his strict and ascetic style as well as his rather un-baroque articulation and agogics make a strange contrast with the used period instruments, resulting in an impression much less period than usual, when instruments of that kind is used.

Interesting additional listening if you own a number of other recordings of this work, but mandatory only for Walcha-maniacs, I think.

[Scarpia]

No, not silly, and for exactly that reason.  And again, the key is Bartók's miraculously inventive and apt scoring.  I don't really mean to find fault with (say) the Dvořák Slavonic Dances, or the Hungarian Dances which Brahms himself arranged for orchestra, or for Kodály's Dances of either Galanta or Marrószek.  But in comparison to Bartók's Táncszvit, their scoring is, well, conventional, and a little straitlaced.  With the Bartók, the scoring has a naturalistic color, a transparency and raw verve which brings to mind the 'dudel-sack' trios in some of the Beethoven scherzi.

Miraculously inventive and apt scoring of what?  Sadly, I can't remember a single thing about the music itself.  I remember a few fleeting moments when the orchestral texture sounded somewhat novel, but not enough to make it a worthwhile experience overall.   Neither the Dvorak nor Brahms dances do much for me, so there is a large margin between "more interesting than the Hungarian Dances" and "actually interesting" in my book.  Again, not bad particularly, but listening to it, I was driven to gaze longingly at my cache of compact discs that could have been in the cd player at that moment.

Anyway, my original theory is apparently right.  Someone likes them.

[Saul]

Who is Michlango?

Thank God that someone noticed it...Its only a test to see if the listeners here are really attentive...

Good Catch Bulldog...you sure know your stuff!

[jlaurson]

Cleverly worded dismissal just makes the dismisser feel good;  it doesn't actually put anything over the piece.  The art is always on a plane higher than the criticism.

I've never read a more carefully, almost apologetically worded dismissal of a piece of music than the above, where I quote myself... The idea that I wrote that dismissal to make myself feel better is absurd.

Thread duty:

Until now:

G.F. Handel
Concerti Grossi op.6
The Avison Ensemble
Pavlo Beznosiuk
3 Avie SACDs

Listened to it very loud. Must be great, because my downstairs neighbor came up and rang the doorbell -- presumably because he found it to be awesome. I didn't open the door, though... for fear he might want to borrow the disc.

Now listening:


Marcus Roberts
Blues for the New Millennium
Epic / Sony

I asked Wynton Marsalis, somewhat tongue in cheek, what disc he'd recommend to someone who already had all the Wynton Marsalis discs. So he recommended, pretty immediately, this (oop) disc of his buddy and student (?), Marcus Roberts.

[Saul]

WHAT A PERFORMANCE!

Ingrid Fliter - Chopin Piano Concerto n.2, Second Movement (year 2000)

http://www.youtube.com/v/3Tk6k92H7RQ&playnext_from=TL&videos=es5ODcL0O0Y&feature=grec_index

[greg]

Greg, you should definitely pick-up this recording:



This is the Karajan recording I was telling you about above and this disc also has a fantastic version of "Pelleas und Melisande" as well. It can be purchased rather cheaply through an Amazon Marketplace seller, which is where I have bought 99.9% of my music collection from in the past.

Yeah, that does look like a good one! 

[Sergeant Rock]

Listened to it very loud. Must be great, because my downstairs neighbor came up and rang the doorbell -- presumably because he found it to be awesome. I didn't open the door, though... for fear he might want to borrow the disc.

[George]

Yeah, that does look like a good one! 

It's awesome!! 

[Conor71]

Some eclectic listening this morning - the following Discs + some Xenakis clips (Eonta, Metastasis & Pithoprakta) on YouTube :

[Mirror Image]

I agree it blows away the competition you gave it, but it doesn't blow away the best.



I love Karajan's Honegger 3, but the Honegger 2 on that release is not on the same high standard, as I hear it.

As I mentioned in the Honegger thread, I'm still relatively new to his music. I only own the Plasson, Dutoit sets plus a few other recordings including the famous Munch BSO recording. I haven't heard that Baudo set yet, so I can't judge it, but I enjoy that Karajan recording a lot.

[Scarpia]

As I mentioned in the Honegger thread, I'm still relatively new to his music. I only own the Plasson, Dutoit sets plus a few other recordings including the famous Munch BSO recording. I haven't heard that Baudo set yet, so I can't judge it, but I enjoy that Karajan recording a lot.

Baudo I can't recommend highly enough.  Dutoit struck me as too limp and uncommitted.  Plasson, EMI gave him very bad, thin audio engineering.   Karajan is very good, particularly in 3, but not my favorite.  There are also a few recordings by Ansermet that are interesting.

[Franco]

Berg: Piano Sonata Op. 1
Glenn Gould

I generally don't listen much to Gould, but I think he does a good job on the Schoenberg & Berg he's recorded. 

[Mirror Image]

Amazing set of Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral works. Listening to Symphony No. 3 in C major right now. I think Rimsky-Korsakov's are so underrated. Beautiful in their spirit and, my goodness, the orchestration! I love it!

I love Svetlanov's conducting so much. He could take a mediocre orchestra and make them sound like a world-class one. Some of his recordings do suffer from questionable audio, but this particular set sounds really good as does the other sets I own: Miaskovsky, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, but I do have a recording of his Shostakovich that leaves much to be desired from an audio standpoint. The performances, however, are top-notch.