What are you listening 2 now?

[Mapman]

Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante, K 364
Stern, Primrose; Casals: Perpignan Festival

[Madiel]

A very, very rare appearance of Handel chez ritter. Semele, conducted by John Nelson and with a stellar cast: Battle, Horne, Ramey, et al.

Yeah. You say it's rare, but the next thing you know you'll be presenting with another case of Handelitis.

[KevinP]

Zyman's first Flute Sonata.

I bought this yesterday on a whim, on a disc of flute sonatas by various composers, none of whom I'd ever heard of. So far I've only listened to the Zyman, but I liked it a lot and listened to it several times and then purchased a disc of his concertos. Turns out the sonata is his most performed piece.

Not the version purchased:

[JBS]

Ah...you are an educated man.....

Let me put it this way:
I know enough German to ask where the bathroom is, but not enough to understand whatever directions I would be given in response.

[Mapman]

Schubert: String Quartet D 810 "Der Tod Und Das Mädchen"
Emerson Quartet

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

NP:

Handel
Acis and Galatea, HWV 49
Norma Burrowes (Galatea), Anthony Rolfe Johnson (Acis), Martyn Hill (Damon), Willard White (Polyphemus)
English Baroque Soloists
Gardiner

From this set -




About Handel's Acis and Galatea:

The ancient tale of Acis and Galatea -- perhaps invented by Theocritus in the third century, B.C. but preserved and made famous by Ovid in his Metamorphoses -- was one that occupied George Frideric Handel many times during his long career as a musical dramatist. In 1708, a few years into his Italian residency, Handel composed a dramatic cantata based on the tale (Aci, Galatea e Polifemo); then in 1718, while enjoying the position of composer-in-residence at Cannons, the luxurious English home of James Brydges, shortly thereafter named Duke of Chandos, he composed the first version of a much more famous work -- the English oratorio (or more properly a masque -- a kind of miniature opera), Acis and Galatea, HWV 49b, to a libretto written by John Gay. By 1732, Handel was very probably the best-known composer in England, and when a rival opera company decided to present the 1718 Acis and Galatea, he decided to best those rivals by mounting his own revised version of the masque at King's Theatre. For this 1732 version, Handel augmented the instrumental forces employed and added new music, some taken from the 1708 cantata. Today, however, it is usually the original 1718 version of Acis and Galatea that audiences are presented with, though very often the orchestra and chorus used are of sizes that would have been impossible at Cannons.

Acis and Galatea is a pastorale in the truest sense of the word; it is the tale of the love of a sea nymph (Galatea, soprano) for a young shepherd (Acis, tenor), and that love's destruction at the hands of the jealous cyclops, Polyphemus (bass). To these three principal parts is added the role of the kind and thoughtful shepherd Damon (tenor or countertenor). A chorus of shepherds and shepherdesses chimes in from time to time.

After the opening instrumental sinfonia, the chorus extols the pleasures of pastoral life in a gentle chorus constructed over a pedal tone. The first of many recitatives/arias is given to Galatea; the aria portion, "Hush, ye pretty warbling choir," is perhaps the most famous number from the entire masque, and, like each of the other arias in Acis and Galatea, is an example of da capo aria form (ABA in both music and text). After both Acis and Damon offer their own thoughts in aria form and Acis is united with his beloved Galatea, Act I concludes with the joyful duet "Happy we."

At the opening of Act II, the chorus warns Acis and Galatea of rageful Polyphemus' approach. The cyclops' first utterances are a fevered recitative and the firmly articulated aria "O ruddier than the cherry," setting the stage for a heated argument, in recitative form, between Polyphemus and Galatea. Tempers flare in two further arias, and are partly doused by Damon in the aria "Consider, fond shepherd" -- a number not found in the original 1718 version. In an electric trio, Galatea and Acis' affirmations of eternal love are juxtaposed with Polyphemus' growing anger, climaxing in the violent murder of Acis -- here Handel provides a passionate recitative for Acis, in which he cries out to both Galatea and his own divine parents to save him, but to no avail. Galatea's final aria, sung to the gentle accompaniment of violins and recorders, tells of Acis' new immortality, achieved by Galatea's own effort; pulsating, dotted-rhythm melismas manage to rekindle something of the innocent pastoral feel that opened the masque.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

[steve ridgway]

Let me put it this way:
I know enough German to ask where the bathroom is, but not enough to understand whatever directions I would be given in response.

Gerade arsch?➡️

[Madiel]

Haydn: Keyboard sonata no.58 in C major



The first of the 5 late-period sonatas, written in 1789. The first movement is wonderfully inventive, one of Haydn's double variations with a huge amount of ornamentation of the theme.

[Madiel]

Granados: Goyescas/El Pelele/Escenas Romanticas



I'm fairly sure this the latest iteration of a 1963 recording. Her 2nd recording of all of this music, and by no means the last.

The performance in the first couple of pieces is big and Romantic and tempestuous. The sound quality is not quite as good as the 1977 Decca Goyescas, which is one of the better sounding records in the Decca 2-disc sets I picked up, but it's still pretty decent.

EDIT: Okay, all of that was fabulous.

[Wanderer]

Let me put it this way:
I know enough German to ask where the bathroom is, but not enough to understand whatever directions I would be given in response.

As long as you know to enter the door with the sign "Herren" (and not the other one), you're good. 

[steve ridgway]

Schoenberg: String Quartet 1

Very relaxing 😎.

[Que]

Nicolas Gombert liked his polyphony complex and dense...

The challenge of listening can be either very satisfying or off putting.

Advanced Early Music listening, I'd say.

[Mandryka]

Nicolas Gombert liked his polyphony complex and dense...

The challenge of listening can be either very satisfying or off putting.

Advanced Early Music listening, I'd say.

For me it helps to orientate yourself around the caesura in each motet. But really, I don't rate this sort of post- Josquin music very highly. Too academic. And it's certainly not suited to a whole CD IMO, one motet in a programme more like.

[Madiel]

Mozart: Piano concerto no.15 in B flat



Apparently one of the most difficult of Mozart's concertos. The tricky scale passages are audible.

[Mandryka]

Wolfgang Rihm's massive poème dansé Tutuguri. Patrice Bollon conducts the Stuttgart SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart (whose choir master, Rupert Huber, also appears as speaker).



Based by the poem Tutuguri, le rite du soleil noir (extracted from Antonin Artaud's Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu — "To Have Done With The Judgement of God"), this is one of Rihm's many works inspired by Artaud, and is IMHO a superb musical "reflection" of and on the French surrealist author-actor-painter's troubled but fascinating literary output.



At two hours, it's as if Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and much  of Varèse's work had somehow merged and expanded. And it's a must for anyone who likes OTT percussion writing.

Quite wonderful!

Have you seen this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gQAF0WAP5I

And this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2LcICOg_9s

(The fourth quartet is a in similar style I think.)

[Mandryka]

Gerade arsch?➡️

Quelle poésie

[prémont]

For me it helps to orientate yourself around the caesura in each motet. But really, I don't rate this sort of post- Josquin music very highly. Too academic. And it's certainly not suited to a whole CD [LP] IMO, one motet in a programme more like.

Fifty-five years ago I thought similarly about The Art of Fugue.

[ritter]

Have you seen this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gQAF0WAP5I

And this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2LcICOg_9s

(The fourth quartet is a in similar style I think.)

I have the whole 1947 broadcast of Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu on CD. I believe the first video you linked is an excerpt from it. You can also find the whole thing on YouTube:

Thanks for mentioning this. I should relisten to Pour en finir... sometime soon, text in hand.

I didn't know that fragmentary recording of Rihm's Tutuguri under Chailly. Thanks!

[Mandryka]

Fifty-five years ago I thought similarly about The Art of Fugue.

It's not the same because AoF has an internal organisation, it's a systematic exploration of a form, and the recurring themes give the whole a structure which is easy to recognise just by listening. The motets are just a random bunch of motets which happen to have been written by Gombert. 

[Madiel]

Schumann

3 Poems of Emanuel Geibel, op.30
12 Poems of Justinus Kerner, op.35



Judging from this and other opuses, Schumann regards Geibel as a poet for light entertainment. Kerner is quite a different matter. I think Stirb', Lieb' und Freud! is one of Schumann's masterpiece songs, but there are plenty of other ones in op.35 with a lot of depth to them.