What are you listening 2 now?

[SonicMan46]

Continuing my re-listening to the box below, just doing 2-4 discs per day:

Bach, JS - French & English Suites w/ Ivo Janssen on piano - for those interested, a short bio HERE; also several reviews attached including one from about ten years ago by our :Premont: in the GMG Bach piano thread.  Dave

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Concerto de Lieja. Brouwer.

[kyjo]

Saint-Saëns: Cello Sonata Nr. 1 in C minor
Reger: String Sextet in F major

The Saint-Saëns is a stunning work; it's quite dramatic and intense with great themes. It's becoming one of my favorite works by him. I don't find his 2nd cello sonata to be as engaging, however.

How's the Reger? I'm generally not a huge fan of his chamber music, finding it to be too dense and lacking memorable themes. Even the highly regarded Clarinet Quintet didn't really impress me. My favorite works by him remain the Hiller and Mozart Variations, the Böcklin Pictures (despite a rather disappointing 4th movement), and a few of his orchestral songs. The Romantic Suite and 3 suites for solo cello are pretty good, too.

[Mirror Image]

NP:

Zemlinsky
Lyrische Symphonie, Op. 18
Alessandra Marc, Håkan Hagegård
Royal Concertgebouw
Chailly



The comparisons between this work and Mahler's Das Lied are completely unfounded and these two works sound nothing alike.

[kyjo]

Raff: 'Sinfonie VIII, Fruehlingsklaenge' /Lehel

At best, perhaps with a slight hint of for example Dvorak, but this work didn't convert me to Raff either ...

If you're looking to be converted to Raff, look no further than the great 5th Symphony, specifically in the stunning Järvi recording on Chandos. Beyond that, his symphonies nos. 2-4 and 9, Cello Concerto no. 2, Piano Quintet, String Sextet, both piano quartets, all 4 piano trios, and String Quartet no. 7 are all excellent. He's a composer whose unpretentiously enjoyable and expertly crafted music I've really come to love recently.

[Karl Henning]

I don't believe in rating things, but with a gun to my head I would say that Beethoven quartets and Bach cantatas are the most consistently great music ever written amongst major volumes of works. There are some gret runners up but a much closer race, so I won't go into that.

Put the gun down, and listen to some Bach!

[kyjo]

Leoš Janáček
Jealousy
Violin Concerto 'Wandering of a Little Soul'
Ballad of Blaník
The Fiddler's Child
The Danube
Taras Bulba

James Ehnes - violin
Edward Gardner - Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra



Edward Gardner isn't the first conductor I would search out for the music of Janáček, but this recording filled some holes I had in the collection. The Bergen PO sound fabulous regardless; I will definitely search out more of their recordings!

The Bergen PO is absolutely one of my favorite orchestras - they sound fabulous no matter who is conducting them and there is a not a weak section in the orchestra. They have amassed a really impressive discography over the past few years especially!

[Karl Henning]

Joh. Strauss II
An der schönen, blauen Donau, Op. 314
Wiener Blut, Op. 354
Perpetuum mobile, Op. 257
Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, Op. 214
G'schichten aus dem Wienerwald, Op. 325
Kaiser-Walzer, Op. 437
Frühlingsstimmen, Op. 410
Künstlerleben, Op. 316
Auf der Jagd, Op. 373
Rosen aus dem Süden, Op.388

Joh. Strauss I
Radetzky-Marsch, Op. 228
NY Phil
Lenny

[Mirror Image]

R. Strauss
Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30
Till Eulenspiegels lustige streiche, Op. 28
Don Juan, Op. 20
NY Phil
Lenny

Fantastic, Karl. I need to dig these recordings out. I have them somewhere. I bought the Royal Edition of these recordings many years ago. I recall Bernstein being quite a good Straussian. He certainly wowed me Der Rosenkavalier.

[Karl Henning]

Fantastic, Karl. I need to dig these recordings out. I have them somewhere. I bought the Royal Edition of these recordings many years ago. I recall Bernstein being quite a good Straussian. He certainly wowed me Der Rosenkavalier.

This is the best I have ever liked Also spracht Zarathustra!

[Mirror Image]

This is the best I have ever liked Also spracht Zarathustra!

Wow. It must be something indeed, but, then again, I don't really know your history with Strauss. I'd assumed you have heard several performances of Also sprach Zarathustra at this juncture.

[Mirror Image]

Now playing this entire recording from the Strauss Karajan set:



Arguably, this is one of the great Strauss recordings of all-time. It certainly remains a favorite of mine.

[TheGSMoeller]

This is the best I have ever liked Also spracht Zarathustra!

The Henning Seal of Approval! Must now search my collection to see if I own this one.

[vandermolen]

New arrival: Piano Trio No.2
Fabulous performance and recording - deeply moving.
Love the cover photo:

[vandermolen]

Listening to this work yet again:

Respighi
Concerto gregoriano
Lydia Mordkovitch, violin
BBC Philharmonic
Downes

Wonderful work! When I first heard it on the radio I was sure that it must be by a British composer like Finzi! 

[SonicMan46]

Several new arrivals this afternoon, one a replacement and the other an addition:

Milhaud, Darius - La Creation.., Le Boeuf.. & Harp Concerto w/ Kent Nagano - my previous Naxos disc had a 20 min vocal work that did not interest me much, but I wanted the first two works on this disc in my collection, so a replacement.

Boccherini, Luigi - String Quartets, Op. 8 w/ Quartetto D'Archi Di Venezia - I own about 30 String Quartets by Luigi but not these 'early' ones written in 1769 (he was in his mid-20s); also about three dozen String Quintets, but he wrote much more, i.e. 91 String Quartets & 113 String Quintets (for two cellos) w/ Opus numbers (Source), and even more (mainly transcriptions) w/o Opus numbers - amazing!  Dave

 

[Mirror Image]

Wonderful work! When I first heard it on the radio I was sure that it must be by a British composer like Finzi! 

Yes, indeed. The Poema autumnale also has a British quality to the writing that recalled Vaughan Williams or Moeran.

[MusicTurner]

If you're looking to be converted to Raff, look no further than the great 5th Symphony, specifically in the stunning Järvi recording on Chandos. Beyond that, his symphonies nos. 2-4 and 9, Cello Concerto no. 2, Piano Quintet, String Sextet, both piano quartets, all 4 piano trios, and String Quartet no. 7 are all excellent. He's a composer whose unpretentiously enjoyable and expertly crafted music I've really come to love recently.

Thank you for the suggestions. I haven't collected Raff that intensively, but do own some of the stuff you mention - that is, symphonies 1, 3, 4, 5 + 8, the 'Piano Concerto' & the 'Ode to Spring' concertante piece, plus the piano trios set. I seem to remember the piano trios as vaguely good, but might revisit some of the music.

[Florestan]

[Alla Pavlova's] style looks backward to a neo-romantic style that is less popular among lovers of serious music,

I have never ever understood why Rachmaninoff's music is less serious than [insert your anti-Rachmaninoff]'s. If anyone cared to enlghten me, I'd be sincerely grateful.

[Karl Henning]

I have never ever understood why Rachmaninoff's music is less serious than [insert your anti-Rachmaninoff]'s. If anyone cared to enlghten me, I'd be sincerely grateful.

As someone who has always liked Schoenberg, Stravinsky & Rachmaninoff, I cannot hazard any guess.