New releases

[Bryn]

The Honeck B9 arrived, and I’ve listened once. It is superlatively played and recorded. I didn’t find the finale as sounding slow. There are times where it feels contemplative, others appropriately powerful and mystical.

"finale"? I did not realise this was a recording with a completion of the final movement.

[richardfinegold]

Yeah, I was wondering if I should label III as a finale, Burt it always will be for me, so...

[jayne lee wilson]

The Honeck B9 arrived, and I’ve listened once. It is superlatively played and recorded. I didn’t find the finale as sounding slow. There are times where it feels contemplative, others appropriately powerful and mystical.

Do you know the-late-and-of-last-things Luzern/Abbado, Richard? It is remarkable, one of the truly essential, all-time greats of Bruckner performances....a lifetime of love, experience, and finally a sense of the conductor's own mortality run through it as veins in the marbling flesh...as I said above, the Abbado adagio is in another world of intuitive, insightful and intimate feeling... any indulgence in grandeur of sound, let alone grandiosity, is absent here, and entirely irrelevant to it. Which for me is the hallmark of all the greatest Bruckner I've heard.

The latest Accentus release has the 1890 Revision of the 1st included, bizarrely fascinating in itself...

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/bruckner-symphonies-nos-1-9-claudio-abbado-lucerne-festival-orchestra/hbo9eorqvd7gb

...scroll down for a most eloquent note....

That outstanding Musica Saeculorum period-instrument "Linz" 1877 1st I highlighted recently was inspired by these late Abbado performances, and played by many of the Luzern FO players themselves, less than a year later (2013)...

***

In other news....

Great to see these Hindemith charmers finally getting attention again....

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/hindemith-kammermusik-vol-1-christoph-eschenbach-schleswig-holstein-festival-orchestra-kronberg-academy-soloists/hxva8zz9q1syb

....excellent first impressions, playing now, perfect balance of the hot and the cool....

And another treasure of mine, the Enescu Octet with very promising performers....

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/felix-mendelssohn-enescu-octets-meta4-gringolts-quartet/oze7g1galoaqa

....joy of joys, the BIS SACD out later..... I didn't warm to the other two recent recordings of this, always much preferred the various Romanian releases, but this could well hit the spot....

[pastoralguy]

I see Stephen Hough has recorded the Beethoven Piano Concertos for Hyperion. Due out in May, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra is Conducted by Hannu Linto.

Would be well worth hearing.

[kea]

Going to highlight a couple I've been listening to a lot:



Also, definitely not a new recording, but always a pleasure to revisit—perhaps if I had to pick a single favourite Beethoven cycle it would be this one:

[Bryn]

A disc I got a pre-release copy of a couple of months ago has now been officially released: https://shop.diatribe.ie/album/morto...-for-john-cage . Highly recommended. If bought tomorrow, there is not only a discount available on all Diatribe recordings purchased via Bandcamp but all proceeds will go to the artists concerned within 24 hours. Use the code DIACOV to claim the discount. See Darragh Morgan's FB page, https://www.facebook.com/fidelio.trio , for more info.

[akiralx]

I said this on the Listening thread 15/09/19:

.... Qobuz Studio playback of the 24/192 stream of the Pittsburgh/Honeck Bruckner 9 [.....]
Excellent recorded sound, though the reading was too slow and steady for my current tastes - prefer something more urgent or volatile now. I missed a sense of cathartic mortality at the adagio climax/coda (very slow here...) too.

The recent Luzern/Abbado release on Accentus takes a little less time (25'16 to Honeck's 27'46) but seems to me more compellingly lyrical, urgent and varied in its expression, a lovely flow to it. Not monumental at all. Hard not to prefer those Luzern strings and the orchestral character: old-world Bruckner against new-world, perhaps.
Above all, a keener apprehension of last things... and no wonder; this was Abbado's last concert, on 26/08/13. He died on 20/01/14. The contrast between the stark cut-off of the adagio's climax, and the infinitely gentle coda after the silence, is heartbreaking, as is the sweetly sung intimacy of the 7th/8th Symphony quotes at the end.

Are the DG and Accentus identical releases, apart of the inclusion of the First with the latter?

[Dave2002]

A disc I got a pre-release copy of a couple of months ago has now been officially released: https://shop.diatribe.ie/album/morto...-for-john-cage . Highly recommended. If bought tomorrow, there is not only a discount available on all Diatribe recordings purchased via Bandcamp but all proceeds will go to the artists concerned within 24 hours. Use the code DIACOV to claim the discount. See Darragh Morgan's FB page, https://www.facebook.com/fidelio.trio , for more info.

Don't you find that a bit tedious? Not unpleasant, but not too upliting either - but that's just my opinion.

[HighlandDougie]

Are the DG and Accentus identical releases, apart of the inclusion of the First with the latter?

Yes - posts about this on ‘What am I listening ....” last October. DG issued the First separately in 2014 then included it rather than the VPO version in the Abbado Symphonies box.

[MrGongGong]

A disc I got a pre-release copy of a couple of months ago has now been officially released: https://shop.diatribe.ie/album/morto...-for-john-cage . Highly recommended. If bought tomorrow, there is not only a discount available on all Diatribe recordings purchased via Bandcamp but all proceeds will go to the artists concerned within 24 hours. Use the code DIACOV to claim the discount. See Darragh Morgan's FB page, https://www.facebook.com/fidelio.trio , for more info.

Thanks for this
Wonderful music and great performers

[Bryn]

Don't you find that a bit tedious? Not unpleasant, but not too upliting either - but that's just my opinion.

Tedious? Not in the least. Their earlier ('live') recording from the HCMF, on the Matchless Recordings label (audio DVD), was no car crash but one did occur outside the venue during the performance. The relevant section was replaced with a clip from the rehearsal sessions but the subtle change in ambience is perceptible. In the interim between that and the new recording made in the studios as City University, they have played the work in various places around the world and developed their approach to it. I'm sufficiently fond of the work, which I got to know, via the first recording by Paul Zukofsky and Marianne Schroeder, back in the '80s and now have half a dozen different recordings on optical disc. This new recording and that from Aisha Orazbayeva, Mark Knoop on the "all that dust" label. Darragh Morgan's use of a baroque bow to help achieve the very low dynamics called for by Feldman, tips his recordings in their favour.

[teamsaint]

Recommendations from this months Gramophone lined up here:

Bruckner 6. Bergen PO Dausgaard
Lutoslawski 2 and 3. Finnish RSO/ Lintu.
British Cello Works ( Clarke/ Lutyens/ Maconchy/ Smyth) Lionel Hardy and Jennifer Hughes
Vladigerov.Bulgarian Suite and other works. Rousse PO/ Todorov.

Marks out of 10 to follow........

[Edgy 2]

Recommendations from this months Gramophone lined up here:

Bruckner 6. Bergen PO Dausgaard
Lutoslwaski 2 and 3. Finnish RSO/ Lintu.
British Cello Works ( Clarke/ Lutyens/ Maconchy/ Smyth) Lionel Hardy and Jennifer Hughes
Vladigerov.Bulgarian Suite and other works. Rousse PO/ Todorov.

Marks out of 10 to follow........

The Lyrita British Cello music disc has been out a while I think.
Absolute winner IMHO,10 from me.

[teamsaint]

The Lyrita British Cello music disc has been out a while I think.
Absolute winner IMHO,10 from me.

Yes, i noticed that a couple of those discs are from 2019.

Looking forward to the Cello music disc even more now !

[jayne lee wilson]

Recommendations from this months Gramophone lined up here:

Bruckner 6. Bergen PO Dausgaard
Lutoslwaski 2 and 3. Finnish RSO/ Lintu.
British Cello Works ( Clarke/ Lutyens/ Maconchy/ Smyth) Lionel Hardy and Jennifer Hughes
Vladigerov.Bulgarian Suite and other works. Rousse PO/ Todorov.

Marks out of 10 to follow........

...from the Listening thread, 29/02/20 (seems a whole world away from where we are now......)

Bruckner Symphony No.6.
Bergen SO/Dausgaard. BIS SACD New Release.

Vital, incisive, and so full of interpretative interest and originality as to be fairly described as radical, the only earlier readings I’m reminded of are the similarly volatile Andreae or Venzago.
Dausgaard shapes the music very individually (far more so than the recent LSO/Rattle, outstanding as that was) so although the timings look very quick, there’s plenty of time for the gesangs to sing and breathe and relax - very wide-ranging tempi here. Agile and light on its feet, wide-open punchy climaxes. Wide dynamics too, with some breathless pps (the ending of the adagio is marvellously drawn-out in its hushed raptness).....

Exceptional textural transparency from the glorious BIS sonics.... Dausgaard ensures every detail musically tells...…
So gosh wow… far too much to take in, in one go; only one thing to do then…..

(the online BIS note says: "with further Bruckner instalments to come...." ...so even more wow....looks at least as promising as the Rouvali Sibelius....)

***
Lintu/Luto SACD awaiting play......(a bit stuck on Carter just now...).. RW wasn't too keen on the Lintu No.2 was he? Surprised given Lintu's usual qualities....but I'll see what happens here later...

This looks intriguing....
https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/be.../at2x24lq86qfc