What are you listening 2 now?

[Mirror Image]

Hah! This is indeed bad but let me explain to you why I find it to be bad.

Strigoii in Romanian means "The Male Ghosts" so any cover featuring girls / women is badly mismatched. Now, if we had Strigoaicele instead, that is "The Female Ghosts", it would have made more sense.

(Gender in Romanian is very important; one of the funniest thing for a Romanian is to hear them mismatched  --- Transylvanian Hungarians are particularly prone to this as Hungarian has no gender distinction at all.)

Very interesting! Thanks for the information, Andrei. Yes, I can see how, as a Romanian, this cover would be considered bad. It reminds me how Spanish is also gender specific like, for example, 'The Male Ghosts' is 'Los fantasmas masculinos' whereas 'The Female Ghosts' is 'Las fantasmas femeninas' or something along these lines. My Spanish is horrific and it's been ages since I studied it. You'd think with such a large Hispanic population where I live, I'd pick up on something.

[Karl Henning]

Tell me John, is this music truly as sensuous and sensual as the cover suggests? Is what you see truly what you get? If yes to both I'm really tempted. 

A great deal of the Lieder in this box is earlier Schoenberg, Andrei.  I think you'll find it an attractive risk::reward venture.

(* typo *)

[Karl Henning]

Schoenberg
String Quartet № 3, Op. 30
String Quartet № 4, Op. 37
New Vienna String Quartet

[Florestan]

A great deal of the Lieder in this box is earlier Schoenberg, Andrei.  I think you'll find it an attractive risk::reward venture.

(* typo *)

If I can find it my way, I'll take the plunge and report back, Karl.

[Florestan]

Very interesting! Thanks for the information, Andrei. Yes, I can see how, as a Romanian, this cover would be considered bad. It reminds me how Spanish is also gender specific like, for example, 'The Male Ghosts' is 'Los fantasmas masculinos' whereas 'The Female Ghosts' is 'Las fantasmas femeninas' or something along these lines. My Spanish is horrific and it's been ages since I studied it. You'd think with such a large Hispanic population where I live, I'd pick up on something.

iI believe Los fantasmas and Las fantasmas should suffice to identify the gender (male for the former, female for the latter) --- but only Rafael can enlighten us and I hope he will.

[Florestan]

I know this is not teh right thread but ---

If I like Wolf's Lieder, would I like Webern's as well? Which one of these would you recommend?

[Karl Henning]

I know this is not teh right thread but ---

If I like Wolf's Lieder, would I like Webern's as well? Which one of these would you recommend?

I cannot truly address your q., Andrei, not having heard either set.  But, I have heard Christiane Oelze sing the Webern Cantatas, and she enjoys my confidence.


The style is quite a bit more spare than Wolf. For a taste, these are the 5 Canons on Latin Texts for voice, clarinet & bass clarinet, Op. 16
This clarinetist loves the colors, natürlich.

https://www.youtube.com/v/aUX0Y5s15MI

[71 dB]

I like the music of Sergey Taneyev.
I like chamber music with piano.
This well performed and recorded CPO twofer combines both aspects.
I listened to this set work by work during the last few days.

[asin]B00ITN5M3U[/asin]

[ritter]

iI believe Los fantasmas and Las fantasmas should suffice to identify the gender (male for the former, female for the latter) --- but only Rafael can enlighten us and I hope he will.

Good evening, John & Andrei. I've been summoned...

Unfortunately, "fantasma" (ghost) is not the best example, as it's always a masculine noun. For a fantasma to be female, it would have to be specified. E.g. "un fantasma femenino", "los fantasmas femeninos", "el fantasma de una  mujer" (the ghost of a woman). Since the noun is masculine, adjectives related to it must  remain masculine: el fantasma de la mujer era blanco.

Hope the above helps (I'm no linguist, so probably haven't explained it the best way  ).

BTW, I never paid much attention to that cover of the Enesco CD on Capriccio, but boy is it bad! 

[Florestan]

Good evening, John & Andrei. I've been summoned...

Wirklich, Samiel. Guten Abend!

Unfortunately, "fantasma" (ghost) is not the best example, as it's always a masculine noun. For a fantasma to be female, it would have to be specified. E.g. "un fantasma femenino", "los fantasmas femeninos", "el fantasma de una  mujer" (the ghost of a woman). Since the noun is masculine, adjectives related to it must  remain masculine: el fantasma de la mujer era blanco]

Hope the above helps (I'm no linguist, so probably haven't explained it the best way  ).

Clear enough for me.

BTW, I never paid much attention to that cover of the Enesco CD on Capriccio, but boy is it bad! 

The conductor and the vocals are all Romanian, they hould have known better. 

[Irons]

Alwyn: Concerto Grosso no.2 and "Autumn Legend".

The Concerto Grosso consists of two fairly typical neo-baroque movements framing one of the strangest pieces of music I have heard - ghostly, hanging in the air without movement.

A short work but "Autumn Legend" is a gem. One of the best things I have heard from Alwyn.

[Florestan]

I cannot truly address your q., Andrei, not having heard either set.  But, I have heard Christiane Oelze sing the Webern Cantatas, and she enjoys my confidence.


The style is quite a bit more spare than Wolf. For a taste, these are the 5 Canons on Latin Texts for voice, clarinet & bass clarinet, Op. 16
This clarinetist loves the colors, natürlich.

https://www.youtube.com/v/aUX0Y5s15MI

Honestly, not my usual cup of tea but not bad either.   

[Karl Henning]

Good evening, John & Andrei. I've been summoned...

Unfortunately, "fantasma" (ghost) is not the best example, as it's always a masculine noun.

If I understand aright, there are a number of Greek nouns which (even though they end in -a) are considered masculine nouns in the Romance languages: e.g. el sistema, el problema en español; Le système, Le problème en français.

[Karl Henning]

Honestly, not my usual cup of tea but not bad either.   

Cool.

[Papy Oli]

Good afternoon to you, Olivier.

Reading Lewis Foreman's book (page 25) a Bax quote made in a 1949 broadcast stopped me dead in the tracks. "Yeats's poetry means more to me then all the music of the centuries".

Good evening Lol,
I am in a difficult position here  I haven't read the Foreman book yet (bar the introduction) and I don't do poetry, nor do I know anything about Yeats at all. I just know i'd keep all the music of the centuries as far as meself is concerned 0:)

[Stürmisch Bewegt]

Get it?  Ars Longa 

[vandermolen]

Alwyn: Concerto Grosso no.2 and "Autumn Legend".

The Concerto Grosso consists of two fairly typical neo-baroque movements framing one of the strangest pieces of music I have heard - ghostly, hanging in the air without movement.

A short work but "Autumn Legend" is a gem. One of the best things I have heard from Alwyn.

I've seen 'Autumn Legend' described as Alwyn's 'Swan of Tuonela' - it is a beautiful work.

Now playing:
Leshnoff, Symphony No.3 (inspired by World War One letters home). Both works here are very fine indeed - approachable and eloquent but not superficial:

[Papy Oli]

It's interesting to see you fall back on British composers as this is what I normally associate you with. I used to listen to a good bit of British music in my earlier classical listening, but I have found that there really are only a few Brit composers that I come back to: Britten, Tippett, Walton, RVW, Arnold and Alwyn. Even with these composers, I don't listen to them with any regularity these days. I suppose I'm more of a Francophile, but I also love the Germans/Austrians, Russians, Hungarians, Czechs Poles, and Italians. Sometimes I'll listen to some American music like Ives, Crawford Seeger, Ruggles, Copland, Bernstein, Carter, etc.

When I am not doing my exploration of French works, I just make a conscious effort at the moment to revisit my purchases of 2019 & 2020...which were basically mostly British, as a result of what I explored during that particular period.

When I am done with the main bulk of Ravel, Debussy & Fauré (and a couple more names in that French list - Berlioz, Bizet & Boulez come to mind), I think I will move on to another project. I am thinking of listening to everything Russian on my shelves...maybe Scandinavian or Czech after that, just to get more familiarity with particular disregarded chunks my own collection.

American composers are pretty much a blind spot for me (bar one Copland CD and whatever is in the Bernstein boxes...listened to once sadly  ) I should maybe address that down the line too.

[Stürmisch Bewegt]

Good evening Lol,
I am in a difficult position here  I haven't read the Foreman book yet (bar the introduction) and I don't do poetry, nor do I know anything about Yeats at all. I just know i'd keep all the music of the centuries as far as meself is concerned 0:)

Bax was expressing the inexpressible dimensions of his appreciation for Yeats (and the Irish culture he entrains).  While that poet certainly did have greater sway over him than anything else under the sun, including any single musical influence, one needn't read overmuch into his comment... It's a splendid metaphor, really, for "I really like Yeats."

[Florestan]

If I understand aright, there are a number of Greek nouns which (even though they end in -a) are considered masculine nouns in the Romance languages: e.g. el sistema, el problema en español; Le système, Le problème en français.

Not quite so in Romanian: sistem (system, singular masculine) but problemă (problem, singular feminine), teoremă (theorem, singular feminine),  as a rule of thumb, any noun ending on a vocal is feminine.

But then again: sisteme (systems, plural feminine)*

* ie, the neutral gender: masculine for singular, feminine for plural --- quite common in Romanian, virtually unkown in any other Romance language.