What are you listening to now?

[Spineur]

I have been listening to more J.-S. Bach lately.  After a couple Suzuki cantatas, returning to this beauty

[asin]B0009JXN88[/asin]

[Spineur]

glad to see you got a copy of the Sgambati piano pieces.  Was it what you expected ?

[aligreto]

Sallinen: Cello Concerto [Gustafson/Rasilainen]....





My first time to hear this work and my thoughts on it are still in the Ponder Pouch. I will need to hear it again at least once more to formulate a sustainable opinion.

[aligreto]

Going to see them live this evening.

I have no doubt that you will enjoy them. Do share your thoughts at a later stage on the performance.

[aligreto]

I would like to hear that one.

[Mandryka]

Häkkinen/Höbarth Bach 1018 and 1019. These are loud and proud performances in a style which made me think of middle period Beethoven symphonies. This is Bach as Prometheus, heroically swaggering forward.

Aapo Häkkinen can drive a harpsichord, and he has a good feel for stylus phantasticus. The result is an incandescent solo movement of 1019.

Erich Höbarth is dramatic and expressive. Soulful in a way which makes me think of opera  - it would be uncharitable to suggest that he is melodramatic or maudlin. He uses a palpable vibrato, I think inoffensive. He makes a rich chocolate sound in the slow movements, a silvery sound in the faster movements.

Good sound engineering, but I think the violin often dominates the proceedings.

[Karl Henning]

https://www.youtube.com/v/HtFMxFQrKc4

[André]

I have been listening to more J.-S. Bach lately.  After a couple Suzuki cantatas, returning to this beauty

[asin]B0009JXN88[/asin]

Such a beautiful concept, perfectly realized  0:).

................................................................................

Disc 18 of this altogether disappointing set(*): Dallapiccola's Canti di prigiona; Markevitch's own Flight of Icarus and Le nouvel âge



(*) The snag is the recorded sound. Markevitch was a Pathé (EMI) artist, and these early-mid fifties recordings cruelly suffer from wiry, tight sound and the all too frequent congestion at climaxes. Later on he recorded for DGG in much more favourable acoustics and engineeering.

[Karl Henning]

https://www.youtube.com/v/2dkfs3ZrpQA

[Spineur]

Félicien David: portrait.  CD 2 Sacred and symphonic works.  La perle du Brésil, is a very nice symphonic poem.  It has all the qualities of Le désert.  The rest of the CD did not.interest me all that much

[San Antone]

Ginés Pérez : Officium Defunctorum
Victoria Musicae

[amw]

Well, I also think that the set of Haydn Quartets is not a high point in Mozart's chamber music output. The sense that anything can happen at any moment is not there. Mozart is being too conscientious about his motivic development, the logical working out of his themes, etc. Trying to make Papa Haydn proud, I imagine. Doesn't quite have the magic of the last four quartets or the string quintets.

The Haydn Quartets were an important step in Mozart's development of the "grand style" but I am very much hot and cold on them—or at least on specific works; I find K458 (no.17) somewhat irritating but seem to listen to K387 (no.14) three or four times in a row every time it comes up for example.

[Spineur]

Disagree with both of you.  The Haydn quartets are some of the finest quartets ever written.  And such modernity (dissonance quartet)
TD
Katia & Maria Labèque fantasia K448 for 2 pianos.

[asin]B01M8HKJZC[/asin]

[San Antone]

John Cage : Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano
Herbert Henck

[Baron Scarpia]

Disagree with both of you.  The Haydn quartets are some of the finest quartets ever written.  And such modernity (dissonance quartet)

I don't disagree with you. Just that they don't appeal to me as much as some other things by Mozart. Maybe the problem is that the Italiano Quartet's approach to Mozart doesn't work for me.

[aligreto]

Gorecki: Kleines Requiem fur eine Polka [Zinman]....





There is a haunting beauty to this wonderful music and Zinman portrays it very well in this version. The tone and pace of the performance are excellent. The presentation is always lyrical, and when required, is robust and ebullient thus creating a very atmospheric, captivating and oftentimes dramatic performance.

[Spineur]

More Bach before going to bed: suites for Luth - Konrad Junghanel



Bach spectrum is huge indeed.  From the cantatas, to the orchestral suite to this...  Hard to believe it is the same person behind these works.

[aligreto]

Handel: Recorder Sonatas Op. 1 Nos. 4 & 7 [Bruggen]....

[Baron Scarpia]

Bach spectrum is huge indeed.  From the cantatas, to the orchestral suite to this...  Hard to believe it is the same person behind these works.

Careful, you can trigger a conspiracy theory that way....

[Draško]