What are you listening to now?

[Todd]

The C Major.

[Brian]

Then get it, you must.

To suggestions such as these, I am susceptible!

[TheGSMoeller]

To suggestions such as these, I am susceptible!

Sorry, I'll come back down to Earth for a bit...

It's a very good collection with some music of Faure's that I was unfamiliar with.

[Karl Henning]

Sorry, I'll come back down to Earth for a bit...

Delighted that the Doodles brought you to another plane  0:)

[Mirror Image]

Now:

[asin]B000056TKF[/asin]

Listening to Piston's Symphony No. 2. Excellent performance. Much better than Schwarz's performance IMHO.

[kyjo]

Now:

[asin]B000056TKF[/asin]

Listening to Piston's Symphony No. 2. Excellent performance. Much better than Schwarz's performance IMHO.

Pounds the table! What do you think of the slow movement, John? I think it is a most moving creation. Piston's slow movements have an understated emotion that I find quite affecting.

[Mirror Image]

Pounds the table! What do you think of the slow movement, John? I think it is a most moving creation. Piston's slow movements have an understated emotion that I find quite affecting.

I've certainly enjoyed all of the Piston I've heard, Kyle. A beautiful, lyrical movement in this Symphony No. 2 indeed. I believe I own all the Piston available or at least most of the recordings anyway. Great composer.

[Mirror Image]

Now:



Listening to Concerto Grosso No. 3. A cool work.

[Todd]

The 1949-1950 Nocturnes.  Superb.  Comparatively swift, and quite tense for Nocturnes.  Outstanding sound for the age.

[Mirror Image]

Now:



Listening to String Quartet No. 2. Great! I didn't know this until a reviewer pointed out that Steve Reich was inspired by the Agitato movement from this SQ. Pretty cool!

[listener]

MONIUSZKO: collection of opera overtures:  Halka, Flis, Hrabina, Paria, Verbum Nobile, Jawnuta, Baijka
Philharmonia Pomorska Bydgoszcz        Robert Satanowski, cond.
MOZART: arias for soprano with obbligato instrument
Helen Donath, sop.,  Suk Chamber Orch., Prague      Klaus Donath, cond.
Dieter Klöcker, clarinet  Josef Suk, violin   Karl-Otto Hartmann, bassoon
I don't have anything else with Karl Donath conducting, he was principal conductor at the Darmstadt Theatre 1967 - 1971.
(Yes, the singer's husband).

[Mirror Image]

Now:



Although I prefer Haitink's 8th to all other performances, this is still a very fine performance IMHO.

[Mandryka]

I do not know this recording. Where did you find it?

Tuma`s Bach, of which I own a bit (WTC, Goldbergs, AoF, Orgelbüchlein and CÛ III), has generally underwhelmed me (except the WTC). Maybe he is so introvert, that the expression does not fully materialize.

On spotify. It's not so very introvert (Muffat defies introvertion!), and  I was very impressed. I also played his AoF whiich I thought was tremendous, again not introvert, at least that wasn't something that came to mind when I was listening. I like the organs he uses in AoF and the Muffat.

By the way, I ordered a Froberger CD he recorded, a clavichord recital which appears to contain some music by Froberger and some improvisations by Mr. Tuma.

Tell me, did Muffat write a preface to Apparatus Musico Organisticus? Does he talk about what his aim was in writing those toccatas? I think it's really fantastic music, a real high point of baroque organ music.

[North Star]

Martinů
Julietta
Krombholc
[asin]B00008HAUT[/asin]

Last night:
Janáček
The Cunning Little Vixen
Neumann
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[amw]

Listened yesterday - nothing

Listened today -

Josquin - Ave Maria (Hilliard Ensemble)
I imagine the early music crowd is rolling their eyes right about now. "So you like Josquin's Ave Maria, do you? Is your favourite Mozart piece Eine kleine Nachtmusik? Do all the CDs you own have titles like "The Most Beautiful Classical Music Ever"?" I mentally hear them saying. (Actually, what with Kronos Quartet and Fifty Shades of Grey, Spem in alium might be even worse these days.) When I first started listening to Renaissance music, I was one of those people with a sadly shallow appreciation of the style, unable to tell apart Dufay and Palestrina and so forth, so I gravitated more to the stuff that was really weird (e.g. Codex Chantilly) or close enough to modern music to be "accessible" (e.g. Byrd). Josquin's Ave Maria was kind of a breakthrough piece for me because it was one of the first I felt I really understood—I suppose it's a very understandable piece, between the frequent imitation, gradual building of excitement and memorable head-motive.

Nikolay Myaskovsky - Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 6 (Murray MacLachlan)
This remains one of my favourite Myaskovsky sonatas—perhaps it's not entirely convincing on a structural level, and certainly it is rather indebted to Skryabin (above all) and Lyadov and Medtner, but one thing that appeals to me about it is the use of a powerful late Romantic music language completely devoid of sentimentality, nostalgia or melancholy. It is clearly a work of great youthful enthusiasm that's often missing from the later (and usually either much darker, or ostentatiously cheerful) works Myaskovsky wrote after 1917.

Per Nørgård - Turn; Achilles and the Tortoise (Per Salo, piano) (first listens)
I'm never entirely sure what to expect from Nørgård. In this case Turn is a quasi-minimalist exploration of expanding and contracting patterns (presumably his famous "infinity series") with an attractive exploitation of piano resonance but which (at 15 minutes) somewhat overstayed its welcome, and Achilles and the Tortoise is similar in principle but compressed into 9 minutes and much more active, even boisterous, somewhat reminiscent of the Ligeti etudes. It was the more appealing of the two for me, on first listen. The disc contains two other works, a longer piece called Grooving and an early, presumably more neoclassical Sonata, neither of which I've heard yet.

Tristan Murail - Le déscenchantement du monde (Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano; Concertgebouw Orchestra dir. Peter Eötvös) (first listen)
I've heard hardly any of Murail's recent music, and in fact very little of it seems to be on CD (this is a broadcast recording of a live performance I found, for some reason, on a Russian file-sharing site). I put this on while making dinner so was often a bit distracted, so my impressions aren't very coherent right now, but it sounds oddly un-"spectral" and reminded me vaguely of Elliott Carter. Certainly there were some lovely sounds so perhaps I'll listen again the next time I have half an hour free and see if there isn't more I can get out of it.

[Wanderer]

.[asin]B001PPLL2K[/asin]

[Willow Pattern]

Now:



Listening to String Quartet No. 2. Great! I didn't know this until a reviewer pointed out that Steve Reich was inspired by the Agitato movement from this SQ. Pretty cool!

I have this set too - its awesome! 

[Willow Pattern]

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 In D Minor, Op. 125, "Choral"

Ive been enjoying Classical Symphonies this week - just bought Vanska's Beethoven cycle yesterday and have listened to the first Disc (Symphonies Nos. 1 & 6) a few times already. Next I will play the 9th:

[North Star]

Janacek
Violin Sonata
Faust & Kupiec
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String Quartets
Gabrieli Quartet
[asin]B0001Y4JH0[/asin]

[Lisztianwagner]

Pounds the table until it shatters!!! Excellent recording! I can't remember; is this your first exposure to Karlowicz's music, Ilaria?

No, actually I had already heard Episode at a Masquerade.
I completely agree about the Noseda set, I haven't listened to it entirely, but it is absolutely gorgeous so far; Episode at a Masquerade is such an incredible, hauntingly beautiful piece and A Sorrowful Tale is very impressive too, I liked both them very much.
Karlowicz's music sounds really attractive, it's quite original and expressive, but at the same time it also shows an interesting blend of the dreamy, floating Impressionistic atmospheres with wagnerian and tchaikovskian influences for the colourful orchestration, harmonic richness, strong emotional power, vivid chromatic whirls as well as for the great elegance and the delicacy of the melodies often dominated by a poetical sense of tragedy and melancholy (in this way, just like Tchaikovsky and other Russian composers).