Off The Beaten Track

[Beef Oven!]

Elliott Carter - Clarinet Concerto (1996)
Michael Collins, Clarinet; London Sinfonietta, Oliver Knussen. Deutsche Grammophon.

[EdgeleyRob]

I don't think Weinberg is off the beaten track nowadays.
However there can't be too many sonatas for unaccompanied Bassoon out there (cue Roehre with a list )
Quite a substantial piece at over 20 minutes which,to Weinberg's credit,maintains it's interest IMO.

[Bryn]

I don't think Weinberg is off the beaten track nowadays.
However there can't be too many sonatas for unaccompanied Bassoon out there (cue Roehre with a list )
Quite a substantial piece at over 20 minutes which,to Weinberg's credit,maintains it's interest IMO.

Tempting. Indeed, just grabbed a used copy for £5.26 including p&p.

[EdgeleyRob]

Tempting. Indeed, just grabbed a used copy for £5.26 including p&p.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I have Bryn.

[teamsaint]

Aribert Reimann
Requiem.

Never available on CD, a work that grabs you from the off.
Can't say I have made sense of it though.

As Ferney mentioned on the Nielsen thread, I feel that one is in the presence of a big talent when listening to this.

[Beef Oven!]

Aribert Reimann
Requiem.

Never available on CD, a work that grabs you from the off.
Can't say I have made sense of it though.

As Ferney mentioned on the Nielsen thread, I feel that one is in the presence of a big talent when listening to this.

Many thanks for posting this. I listened to it last night and was gripped throughout. Wonderful music and singing.

It astonishes me how such amazing music just gets totally ignored. Content to give a bit of room to Schoenberg, Berg and Webern (but not in the concert hall).

The serious/classical music audience (call it what you will) seems to have no curiosity or sense of discovery in its palate.

[teamsaint]

yes, I should have mentioned what a fine performance this gets from Friedrich F_D, amongst others.

This is also installment 11 of the AGP, which includes some very helpful liner notes.

Great stuff.

Just having a listen to Reimann's Piano Concerto on Youtube, which seems a very intense work.

[jayne lee wilson]

Got into this one yet?



The title piece (composed 2009) is a large, brilliantly dramatic & inventive piano concerto, over 30' long, with the second movement sounding like a snaking, explosive passacaglia on a piano theme of 40 notes!

When I first saw it listed on Qobuz, I was drawn by the titling "Blank Reflecting Black"... any curious cat wants to know about that, right?
Pretty avant-garde in feel and sound, yet there's a flow, a musical current to both large movements that really keeps you gripped...
Highly recommended to the adventurous....

[Serial_Apologist]

Just having a listen to Reimann's Piano Concerto on Youtube, which seems a very intense work.

I must confess to not having heard of Reimann before - quite possibly because he is the sort of composer whose music, being harmonically if not melodically abstract and quite possibly organised around tone rows, would once have been regarded by the musical commentariat as modern and progressive in this country, and therefore worthy of publicity, but is no longer so.

I say: cheers to music in which you can't predict what's coming next until after a number of listenings.

[Roehre]

I must confess to not having heard of Reimann before - quite possibly because he is the sort of composer whose music, being harmonically if not melodically abstract and quite possibly organised around tone rows, would once have been regarded by the musical commentariat as modern and progressive in this country, and therefore worthy of publicity, but is no longer so.

I say: cheers to music in which you can't predict what's coming next until after a number of listenings.

The Requiem (1980/'82) is a gripping work indeed, but there are more Reimann pieces which deserve much more attention than what they receive now.Wolkenloses Christfest (cloudless Christmas) is another Requiem - IMO even more gripping, for bariton, cello and orchestra.
Two of his operas must be mentioned hear, one, premiered with FischerDieskau and recorded by EMI, is Lear (1978,after Shakespeare), the other Das Schloss (1992, after Kafka). From Lear a kind of suite exists as Fragmente for baritone and orchestra (1978), also recorded by DFD and EMI. Strongly recommended.

His Symphony (1964) is an independent orchestral work, but based on his opera Traumspiel (1964) in the manner Prokofiev's and Henze's symphonies are linked to their respective operas.

I also like to point out the works based on and commentating other composers' works.
R3 broadcast in 2012 ...oder soll es Tod bedeuten (2006), 8 songs and 1 unfinished fragment by Mendelssohn set for string quartet and voice and connected by 6 commentating Intermezzi.
7 Fragmente für Orchester in Memoriam Robert Schumann (1988) is another example, as is Nahe Ferne, an orchestral commentary on Beethoven's piano piece in B-flat WoO 60.
His Metamorphosen über ein Menuett von Franz Schubert (1997) is a chamber piece for 10 instruments.

Like the Berio Sequenzas we find a series of solo pieces among Reimann's output: solo for Cello (1981, solo II 2001), solo for Viola (1996), solo for clarinet (2000), solo for oboe (2001)

Only a small selection of what springs to mind mentioning Reimann (who's 80th birthday we hopefully can celebrate in 2016).

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks once again, Roehr - most interesting.

[teamsaint]

Got into this one yet?



The title piece (composed 2009) is a large, brilliantly dramatic & inventive piano concerto, over 30' long, with the second movement sounding like a snaking, explosive passacaglia on a piano theme of 40 notes!

When I first saw it listed on Qobuz, I was drawn by the titling "Blank Reflecting Black"... any curious cat wants to know about that, right?
Pretty avant-garde in feel and sound, yet there's a flow, a musical current to both large movements that really keeps you gripped...
Highly recommended to the adventurous....

and available on Spotty........

and the problem , if there is one , with being adventurous is just where to go, and how best to spend the time.
But a good problem, for sure.

and yes, thanks Roehre for the potted Reimann.

[Roehre]

........

and the problem , if there is one , with being adventurous is just where to go, and how best to spend the time.
But a good problem, for sure.
...

It's not a problem, it's an attitude

[EdgeleyRob]

Vissarion Shebalin

String Quartets Nos 5 and 6

Krasni Quartet.

Apparently DSCH had portraits of just 3 composers in his study.Mahler,Mussorgsky and Shebalin.
Marvelous stuff,a little reminiscent of Myaskovsky and at times Prokofiev to my ears.
No 5 won a Stalin prize,not sure if that's a good thing.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Reimann's Lear (recorded by DG, not EMI, Roehre) is still available - not exactly cheap, unless you don't mind downloads:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reimann-Lear-Gerd-Albrecht/dp/B00004T765

... or samples available (of both the DG recording and a performance given by the Staatsoper Hamburg):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bluK2OIyFmQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ5srOEgJFQ

DF-D kept asking Britten to write a Lear for him - like an Anna Karenina for Visnnest ... Vishnetskay ... Mrs Rostropovich; never to be, alas.

But young Aribert didn't do a bad job at all!

His Medea ain't bad, either:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVHGGygEt1A