What are you listening 2 now?

[Todd]

[vers la flamme]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: String Quartet No.19 in C major, K 465. Éder Quartet

This was a really good find. It's an excellent performance of my favorite Mozart quartet. (Not that I'm terribly familiar with the set of them.) I'd collect the rest of the Éder Mozart series but I'm afraid it's probably not very cost effective at this point. Wonder why Naxos never boxed them up.

[Harry]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: String Quartet No.19 in C major, K 465. Éder Quartet

This was a really good find. It's an excellent performance of my favorite Mozart quartet. (Not that I'm terribly familiar with the set of them.) I'd collect the rest of the Éder Mozart series but I'm afraid it's probably not very cost effective at this point. Wonder why Naxos never boxed them up.

The Eder Quartet is a high quality ensemble, I have plenty of performances with them, and none of them was ever disappointing.

[Karl Henning]

Composer : Mieczysław Weinberg
Recording : Cello Concerto (Svedlund - 2011)
Performers : Thord Svedlund, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Claes Gunnarsson (cello)

I'm in! It's been too long since I listened to this.

[DavidW]

Beethoven's PCs 4 and 5.  Minnaar delivers a subtle, understated performance.  Not for everyone.  I liked it but I just don't think the magic is there in the concertos like it is in de Vriend's traversal of the symphonies.

[Florestan]

in the case of the violin sonatas I seem to have one of the best versions available

Which is...?

If everyone could stop having slightly different things in their favour, it would be very helpful...

[Florestan]

A Spanish afternoon



Iberia Books 1 & 2

[Lisztianwagner]

Sergei Rachmaninov
Variations on a Theme of Corelli

Pianist: Vladimir Ashkenazy

[Brahmsian]

A Spanish afternoon

Does Boccherini have Spanish blood?

[Karl Henning]

Sergei Rachmaninov
Variations on a Theme of Corelli

Pianist: Vladimir Ashkenazy

Love that piece!

[Florestan]

Does Boccherini have Spanish blood?

No, but he spent most of his life and career in Spain and his music is partially influenced by Spanish folk music (just like Domenico Scarlatti before him). This influence is apparent in some of those divertimenti.

[Tsaraslondon]

Disc 18 is all English music, the second side of A Pageant of English Song, the English songs from Favourites, the mezzo solo from Previn's recording of Brtten's Spring Symphony and a couple of excerpts from Walston's Troilus and Cressida, which he re-arranged for mezzo, specifically so she could sing it at Covent Garden. All of this is marvellous stuff. I have a special affection for her arrestingly dramatic singing of Stanford's La belle dame sans merci and her hauntingly mournful singing of Britten's arrangement of the Corpus Christi Carol, but all these English songs are superb.

[Traverso]

Brahms


This CD arrived today....thanks to Mandryka who recently posted this recording.

[aligreto]

Handel: Cantate & Duetti [Poulenard/Comoretto]





I do not like Poulenard's voice in this music; otherwise the CD is fine. Unfortunately onto the cull pile it goes as a result. 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Disc 18 is all English music, the second side of A Pageant of English Song, the English songs from Favourites, the mezzo solo from Previn's recording of Brtten's Spring Symphony and a couple of excerpts from Walston's Troilus and Cressida, which he re-arranged for mezzo, specifically so she could sing it at Covent Garden. All of this is marvellous stuff. I have a special affection for her arrestingly dramatic singing of Stanford's La belle dame sans merci and her hauntingly mournful singing of Britten's arrangement of the Corpus Christi Carol, but all these English songs are superb.

I had contemplated purchasing that set some years ago, but in the end decided that there was too much overlap with what I already owed (IIRC).

PD

[SonicMan46]

Some more recent arrivals from JPC:

Schubert, Franz - Piano Works w/ Andras Schiff on fortepiano (works recorded in bottom row below); both 2-disc sets - a restored Franz Brodmann (Vienna, c. 1820) fortepiano w/ 4 pedals is used; recordings made in 2014 & 2016 in the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn; Schiff now owns the piano which is on loan to the Bonn house; reviews attached if interested.  Dave

 

 

[Todd]

Digging into this set.  There was only one place to start: CD 17, the 1951 recording of Debussy's Preludes.  I have been waiting to hear this recording for over twenty years.  Was it worth the wait?  Kinda, kinda not.  I'll start with the problem: the recording itself.  There's overload and saturation aplenty, especially in Book I.  Fortissimo loses its impact.  It's obvious why the 1954 set is the oft reissued one.  The playing is very fine, as one would expect.  I've long preferred the 1930s recording to the 1954 recording, and in most ways, this is similar to the 1954 recording.  Gieseking is much swifter, nimbler, and flexible in the earlier recording, and here he actually takes some pieces at a slow tempo.  La cathédrale engloutie comes in at 7'11", for instance.  Some of the pianissimo playing really sticks out, though, more than my memories of his later set.  And at least once, due to playing and sound, the whole thing's almost a mess.  Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest sounds chaotic, but Gieseking is one of the few pianists who can salvage chaos. Somewhat against expectation, Book II is relatively better than Book I on first listen.  Giesking's Debussy is high quality stuff, but I long ago found that others are even more to my like - eg, Michel Beroff's Denon set.  This is good enough that it may make restart my comps of the seventy-plus recordings of Book I that I have amassed.

[Karl Henning]

Love that piece!

And for that reason, I'm pleased for this set not to be in strict chronological order:

CD 2

Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Op. 42

Mikhail Pletnev

Piano Sonata № 2, Op. 36 Original version (1913)

Zoltán Kocsis

[Pohjolas Daughter]

La Traviata (live from the Met).

PD

[foxandpeng]

Robert Simpson
Complete Symphonies
Symphonies 1 - 9
Vernon Handley
Bournemouth SO
Hyperion

Weekend hospital stays are obviously not lots of fun, particularly in a world of short visiting windows. Having said that, time to listen unhurriedly to these first 9 symphonies today has been stunning, and cements Simpson again in my mind as one of Britain's finest 20th century symphonists. His affinities with Holmboe, his brass, and the rewards that come from close listening, have all been a real pleasure.

I'm pretty convinced that his 9 is amongst the very top tier, and getting to know these works as a labour of love in the last 12 months, I'd put many others not far behind. In particular, 2, 4, 6 and 3 have really held their own.

Anyway. I know Simpson sometimes divides, but he's been great today, in my small corner.