What are you listening to now?

[Brian]

Bartók
Piano Concerto No. 3, Sz. 119
Grimaud, Boulez & LSO

Coincidence! I just queued that up for my Naxos Music Library Decca/DG celebration marathon. But some Mullova Vivaldi is up first.

EDIT:

[North Star]

Coincidence! I just queued that up for my Naxos Music Library Decca/DG celebration marathon. But some Mullova Vivaldi is up first.

I'm sure you won't be disappointed. (do tell how Mullova's Vivaldi is)

All of my listening today after the Martin has been revisiting old favourites that I haven't heard in a long while.

[SonicMan46]

Glazunov, Alexander - String Quartets V.4/5 w/ the Utrecht String Quartet - new arrivals to complete the set of five for me - Dave

 

[Mandryka]

I don't have this one. What do you think of his take on the Partitas?

I don't recall that they were interesting in any way.

[North Star]

Satie
Piano Music
Reinbert De Leeuw
[asin]B0000589MR[/asin]

[Karl Henning]

Satie
Piano Music
Reinbert De Leeuw

[asin]B0000589MR[/asin]

Just the thought of listening to this, exerts a calming influence upon me . . . .

[North Star]

Just the thought of listening to this, exerts a calming influence upon me . . . .

A marvelous sedative indeed.

[Karl Henning]

First-Listen Fridays!

Aho
Symphonic Dances « Hommage à Uuno Klami » (2001)
Sonfonia Lahti
Vänskä

[asin]B0001FYR76[/asin]

[North Star]

First-Listen Fridays!

Aho
Symphonic Dances « Hommage à Uuno Klami » (2001)
Sonfonia Lahti
Vänskä

Oh, I'll definitely want a report on this. 

[Karl Henning]

Oh, I'll definitely want a report on this. 

Enjoyed it entirely, beautifully scored.  Thanks for the suggestion!

[North Star]

Enjoyed it entirely, beautifully scored.  Thanks for the suggestion!

Excellent!

Thread duty

Chopin
Mazurkas
Luisada (RCA)

[Todd]

[Brian]

I'm sure you won't be disappointed. (do tell how Mullova's Vivaldi is)

Double concertos with Giuliano Carmignola - just as lively and vivid as it sounds. Some really awesome Vivaldi, too. That dude knew what he was doing. 

[North Star]

Double concertos with Giuliano Carmignola - just as lively and vivid as it sounds. Some really awesome Vivaldi, too. That dude knew what he was doing. 

Very nice. And yes indeed - practice makes perfect, regardless of what Stravinsky might have said. 

[Brian]

Naxos Music Library Decca/DG celebration marathon

Well into the second day of classic Decca/DG/Mercury recordings I had never heard before.



Particular favorites so far: the Giulini Faure Requiem, and Kun Woo Paik's Schubert.

Coming up later: Debussy's Nocturnes (Cleveland/Ashkenazy) and Preludes Book 1 (Maurizio Pollini), Liszt's Second Concerto (Richter/Kondrashin), and Mozart #41 (Frans Bruggen HIP).

[Cato]

Aho: Symphonic Dances, Sym. XI

Enjoyed it entirely, beautifully scored.  Thanks for the suggestion!

Nobody needs me to say it, but again I find it fascinating how so many of the best composers of the last decades have come from Scandinavia, particularly Finland.

[San Antone]

Aho: Symphonic Dances, Sym. XI

Nobody needs me to say it, but again I find it fascinating how so many of the best composers of the last decades have come from Scandinavia, particularly Finland.

Finalnd's state support for composers might have something to do with it.  Here's an excerpt from a web article written by one of them, Pehr Henrik Nordgren:

In Finland the powers-that-be are not — luckily — concerned about the contents of art. It simply lays the foundations and thereby ensures the artist freedom to express his art and his outlook on life. This is something we take for granted, but we do not always remember just how privileged we are. For not so long ago, art was being suppressed on ideological grounds only just across the border from us.

Being a 'full-time' composer
(thanks to my grant and all it implies), I have had a steady stream of commissions. Maybe I have been lucky, but I do not believe I am a rare exception in Finland, since various institutions and even individual musicians are constantly commissioning new music from us composers. This vast enthusiasm is perhaps due to the youth of our musical culture: we have an unconscious desire to be the initiators of musical deeds and to fill in gaps that do not exist in the ancient civilised countries. The composer undoubtedly feels a genuine need.

[North Star]

Finalnd's state support for composers might have something to do with it.  Here's an excerpt from a web article written by one of them, Pehr Henrik Nordgren:

And the music education here might, too - as is implicit in what Nordgren writes in the article:

"You can have some shoes from Shostakovich"

We Finnish composers are also extremely lucky in that our world-famous conductors – Paavo Berglund, Leif Segerstam, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Osmo Vänska and co. – are all eager to conduct Finnish music. Jorma Panula, who has in the course of his long career done perhaps most of all to promote new music, has acquired a legendary reputation as a teacher of conducting. I am quite sure that Finland will in the future continue to produce good conductors who value the work of Finnish composers.

[Karl Henning]

No word yet that the music director of the BSO is at all eager to conduct Henning.

[Sadko]

I should probably type this in the smallest, least noticeable font (the Gilels is so universally loved), but:

Daniel Adni's is my preferred set of Lyric Pieces, in fact another desert island album for me.

In fact I quite feel like playing that again now, and so:

Thanks for writing it in legible print I think I have never heard of it, so I'll put it on my watch list .