What are you listening 2 now?

[Madiel]

Mozart, Piano Concerto no.25 in C

[André]

Disc 9. Trios nos 24-26. Haydn's music is the acme of the Classical period.

[JBS]

I have finally begun listening to this set
[asin]B07JZB1VWN[/asin]
Tonight CDs 4/5
Romeo et Juliette
Philadelphia Orchestra/Westminster Choir
Riccardo Muti, conducting
Vocal soloists: Jessye Norman, John Aler, Simon Estes

CD 5 is filled out by
Grande Symphonie Funebre et Triomphale (Chorale Populaire de Paris, Music des Gardiens de la Paix, Desire Dondeyne conducting), Reverie et Caprice (Renaud Capucon, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Daniel Harding conducting), two fugues for organ never recorded before now (Matthieu Baboulene-Fossey organist), and Trois Morceaux pour l'orgue melodium d'Alexandre (Neil Wright organist)

[SimonNZ]

Nice! Thanks for posting this, I'll put it on my wish list. Especially if you recommend it ?

Yes, I'd say that's a safe purchase if the composer/work is of interest.

[Todd]

After a long workweek, is there anything better than a young Juliane Banse's voice, captured in concert, and backed up by Giuseppe Sinopoli and crew, to offer relaxation?  Perhaps, but not too terribly many things.  The other two singers - even Deborah Voigt - aren't up to the same level, but that's a tall order, and the rest of the disc is quite excellent.

[vers la flamme]

After a long workweek, is there anything better than a young Juliane Banse's voice, captured in concert, and backed up by Giuseppe Sinopoli and crew, to offer relaxation?  Perhaps, but not too terribly many things.  The other two singers - even Deborah Voigt - aren't up to the same level, but that's a tall order, and the rest of the disc is quite excellent.

I just got the new Sinopoli Second Viennese School box, and (of course) that CD is included but I have yet to listen to it. Anyway, you've got me pumped to check it out. I too love Ms. Banse's voice. She has a great recent CD of Hindemith's Marienleben, and has also sung Berg's Altenberglieder with Abbado and the Vienna Philharmonic.

[Madiel]

Beethoven op.5 cello sonatas (planning on listening to both)

[Karl Henning]

The Weinberg On the Threshold of Hope album.

[SimonNZ]

Damn, this holds up well.

I especially like the way Alice Harnoncourt sounds like a member of the group and fully integrated into the rest of their sound and approach and not balanced forward, rather than a flashy star soloist standing alone or outside.

[Que]

Morning listening:

[asin]B01MZDAZM4[/asin]
Jean Guyot is perhaps not the most striking example of originality amongst Franco-Flemish composers, but this is still beautiful music, beautifully done. 

Q

[SimonNZ]

[Moonfish]

Bellini: Norma

[asin] B001APK8P6[/asin]

[Tsaraslondon]

Bellini: Norma

[asin] B001APK8P6[/asin]

The best of Callas's recorded Normas, which makes it, by default, the best performance of the opera ever recorded. It came at the end of 1955, which might be considered her "annus mirabilis" -the Visconti/Bernstein La Sonnambula, the Visconti/Giulini La Traviata and the Zeffirelli/Gavazzeni Il Turco in Italiaall at La Scala, the Berlin Lucia di Lammermoor with Karajan, I Puritani, Il Trovatore (with Bjoerling) and Madama Butterfly in Chicago, and studio recordings of Madama Butterfly (Karajan), Rigoletto and Aida (Serafin).

Many singers don't achieve that much success in a whole career.

[Tsaraslondon]

Zinman's Beethoven cycle  was very well received when issued in 1999, with the first two symphonies being singled out for special praise; on modern instruments but with eighteenth century manners.

Very enjoyable.

[SimonNZ]

The best of Callas's recorded Normas, which makes it, by default, the best performance of the opera ever recorded.

Why "by default"?

[Tsaraslondon]

Why "by default"?

Because nobody has since challenged her hegemony in the role, not even Sutherland or Caballé, and certainly not Bartoli.

During the last thirty years or so Norma has three times been the subject of BBC Radio 3's Building a Library. Though the reviewers were different on each occasion, Callas's studio recordings came out  well ahead of the competition, the first one taking the top spot for two of the reviwers and the second for the other. One of the recordings is usually named as top choice in any survey of the opera. So, given that Callas's Norma has yet to be challenged, and given that this is, for most of us, Callas's best performance in the role, it makes it by default the best performance of the opera on disc.

According to Lord Harewood in Kobbé;

In the two periods before and after the 1939-45 war, Norma acquired two great protagonists: Rosa Ponselle and Maria Callas, something I know from first-hand knowledge in the one case and from reliable hearsay and gramophone records in the other. With such exponents, Norma, above all Bellini's operas, flowers, gains in expressiveness and dramatic impact and the music grows to full stature as it cannot when the performance is in lesser hands. Partly, this gain is general and the result of technical attainments, of superior, more penetrating imagination; partly, it is peculiar and the product of an ability to colour and weight every phrase individually and leave nothing open to the risks of the automatic or the routine. But, whatever the reason, let no one imagine he has genuinely heard Norma without a truly great singer in the title role. Not to have one is as dire in its consequences as a performance of Götterdämmerung with an inadequate Brünnhilde. The trouble, as far as Bellini is concerned is that, in the twentieth century, there have been fewer great Normas than fine Brünnhildes.

He would probably note that in the twenty-first century there has been a paucity of both.

[Tsaraslondon]

Decca recordings of classical pops made in the 1960s and 1970s with a variety of different orchestras.

[Traverso]

Bach

CD 13

[Harry]

Clara Schumann, The complete Piano Works. CD II.

Trois romances, opus 11.
Sonate in G minor.
Romanze in A minor.
Quatre pieces caracteristiques, opus 5.

Susanne Grutzmann, Piano.

Like CD I, absolute delightful music, and emotionally very satisfying. She was a good composer, and knows how to write a good piece. Its is performed on a high level, and has an atmospheric recording.
If you are inclined towards this music, I would highly recommend it.

[Traverso]