What were you listening to? (CLOSED)

[Brahmsian]

Happy birthday, Ray.

Thanks, Stuart!

[karlhenning]

First-Listen Friday:

Birtwistle
Ritual Fragment
Aarhus Sinfonietta

[Todd]

Listened to Jordi Savall and company's take on the Brandenburgs, and found them quite enjoyable.  Nice, spacious, warm sound and excellent playing, if perhaps a bit less animated than some other versions.  Not a reference, perhaps, but quite fine.

[bhodges]

Thanks Karl and Opus106.  Just for the record, I was born in '74 and am now 36 years old.  Not born in '36 and turned 74.  Just to clarify. 

Hey, Happy Birthday 74-year-old  36-year-old! 

--Bruce

[Opus106]

Oh, the last movement of Mahler's 3rd sounds gorgeously mushy. As it turns out, I haven't listened to this symphony before, along with the 8th (the second part, anyway.)

[jlaurson]

Well, I was going to put a comment on the Mendelssohn thread, then I found there is no generic Mendelssohn thread in the composers section (not that I can find, anyway), and I'm am not about to start one with a post that says Mendelssohn is a turd.  But my prior impression holds.   Early Mendelssohn has a certain youthful exhuberance, but late Mendelssohn strikes me as emotionally clipped and supercilious.  Any plans to get further recordings of this work have been canceled, especially since I'll have to lay out several thousand Euros to listen to it, apparently.   

Get one of these recordings; and if you still really don't like it, send me the bill.

Talich Quartet

Pacifica Quartet

Mendelssohn String Quartets are really some of the best works he ever wrote; the most mature, probing... and op.80 rivals the best of Beethoven. (No kidding!)

[Brahmsian]

Oh, the last movement of Mahler's 3rd sounds gorgeously mushy.

That is a gorgeous movement of music! 

[Coopmv]

Listened to Jordi Savall and company's take on the Brandenburgs, and found them quite enjoyable.  Nice, spacious, warm sound and excellent playing, if perhaps a bit less animated than some other versions.  Not a reference, perhaps, but quite fine.

There are many excellent Brandenburg Concertos out there, including a few on DVD and it is impossible to name a reference version ...

[Scarpia]

Mendelssohn String Quartets are really some of the best works he ever wrote; the most mature, probing... and op.80 rivals the best of Beethoven. (No kidding!)

That is perhaps my problem.  When I listen to a Mozart quartet there is something in the back of my mind saying, "well, J. C. Bach would never have thought of that."  But when I listen to Mendelssohn, it's "someone who had heard Beethoven Opus 130 wrote this?"

[Sergeant Rock]

Well, I was going to put a comment on the Mendelssohn thread, then I found there is no generic Mendelssohn thread in the composers section

Obviously Saul is not doing his job.

Sarge

[karlhenning]

First-Listen Friday (this recording):

Tavener
The Protecting Veil
Raphael Wallisch, vc
Royal Phil
Justin Brown

[Scarpia]

Obviously Saul is not doing his job.

Sarge

There are several "X by Mendelssohn is the most magnificent work ever written" threads, but obviously my comments don't belong there.

[Brahmsian]

But when I listen to Mendelssohn, it's "someone who had heard Beethoven Opus 130 wrote this?"

Boy, I would sure be disappointed in nearly any string quartet I heard after hearing Beethoven's string quartets (especially the late quartets), if I tried to compare them to LVB's.  It's just not fair.

Don't expect any romantic era string quartet to be 'as good' as Beethoven, or even similar.  They stand in a world alone, in my opinion.

[Franco]

Well Scarpia, I have and really enjoy this recording of Mendelssohn's quartets.  I do admit that Mendelssohn's quartets took me a bit longer to warm up to (as did Brahms'), but they are definitely pearls of chamber music in my opinion.  I particularly warmed up once I heard the 2nd string quartet performed live.  That was a treat!

Perhaps the Emersons aren't your cup of tea, but I think this is one of their greatest performances, IMO, although I could have done without the 'cheesy' cover  .

I agree.  I have both the Emerson and Cerubini recordings and like both, but probably put on the Emerson more often.  If someone does not care for Mendelssohn's art, then I doubt the ensemble is the issue.

[Luke]

Don't expect any romantic era string quartet to be 'as good' as Beethoven, or even similar.  They stand in a world alone, in my opinion.

True, but OTOH there are several pieces by Mendelssohn, quartets amongst them that are explicitly, obviously and unashamedly modelled on pieces, including quartets, by Beethoven. The modelling is subsumed into Mendelssohn's own less iconclastic, more concilliatory style, and succesfully so as well, which is some compositional acheivement in its own right, if perhaps not an implicitly very exciting one, but it means that the boundary between these two worlds is blurred to say the least.

[Brahmsian]

Tchaikovsky

Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op.36
Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op.74 "Pathetique"

Riccardo Muti
Phiharmonia Orchestra
Brilliant Classics

[kishnevi]

First-Listen Friday (this recording):

Tavener
The Protecting Veil
Raphael Wallisch, vc
Royal Phil
Justin Brown

Have that one.  Much better performance than the budget price would suggest.

Thread duty: Warner's Ligeti Project box.  CD 2, which contains Lontano. Atmospheres, Apparitions, San Francisco Polyphony, and Romanian Concerto.

Nothing bad about any of the individual pieces, but nothing great about them either.  I do think it a negative, however, that I couldn't tell when one piece ended and the next one started, despite the fact that they were composed as much as 15 years apart.  The exception of course being the Romanian Concerto, which is pretty much different from everything else Ligeti composed.

[Guido]

First-Listen Friday (this recording):

Tavener
The Protecting Veil
Raphael Wallisch, vc
Royal Phil
Justin Brown

It's quite decent this one, though I still prefer the original Isserlis recording.

[listener]

CHAUSSON Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet, op. 21
Lorin Maazel, violin       Israela Margalit, piano      The Cleveland Orch.String Quartet
Ripe, Romantic music, as if a French Reger had arrived but without the fugal baggage.
The notes don't say anything about the performers: natural for the quartet to be from Cleveland as that  was the home of Telarc, Maazel did solo in a recording of the Méditation from Thaïs, but I don't know anything else about his possible aspirations as a player.    1979 recording, about 40 min.
CASELLA   Concerto op.56 for Piano, violin, cello and orch
Sonata a tre for Piano, violin and cello  op.62
Trio Kreisleriana      Orquestra Sinfonica de Castilla y Leon  Max Bragado Darman, cond.
Neo-Classic brittleness, like Respighi in a modal mood.   The playing is less intense than the Chausson but quite pleasant.
LISZT   Piano Sonata,  2 Ballades, 2 Polonaises, Berceuse
Stephen Hough, piano     a first listen, not to be confused with the similar-appearing Hyperion with Trevor Howard

[prémont]

There are many excellent Brandenburg Concertos out there, including a few on DVD and it is impossible to name a reference version ...

This is certainly true.  What one considers reference depends upon one´s taste, so I never use the term "reference recordung".