Off The Beaten Track

[Beef Oven!]

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.

Another completely new one on me. Interesting anecdote about DSCH.

[Beef Oven!]

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

Going by the Amazon reviews etc of Lear, I'll be putting on my definite to buy list, but will wait to see if the price goes easy.

Thanks for the heads up, ferney

[Bryn]

Going by the Amazon reviews etc of Lear, I'll be putting on my definite to buy list, but will wait to see if the price goes easy.

Thanks for the heads up, ferney

The lossless download is €20.79 from QOBUZ, but no downloadable booklet notes.

[Beef Oven!]

The lossless download is 20.79 Euros from Qobuz, but no downloadability booklet notes.

Thanks Bryn, but I'm being strict with myself. Would need to be a CD with booklet and max £20.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

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....

The slightly cautious adventurous might wish to sample the works on this CD via youTube:

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf3b94surJo

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opcndHDN6NQ

(the second link above goes straight to the second "tableau"(/movement) described in jayne's post.

[Bryn]

Thanks Bryn, but I'm being strict with myself. Would need to be a CD with booklet and max £20.

If you must have the ready-made CDs, it might be worth waiting and hoping for the recording to be re-issued with the 81'28" of Part 1 being squeezed onto the first CD, rather than split over two discs as is currently the case. Of course, with the download option, the 81'28" (more like 81'17" after editing the fade out and in again) can be fitted onto a single nominal 80 minute CD-R using Nero Burning Rom and a compatible burner.

[MarkG]

Possibly one of this year's less well known composer anniversaries...

[Beef Oven!]

Robinson Crusoe Suite - Robert Mellin C1964

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Possibly one of this year's less well known composer anniversaries...

This is a superb piece, MarkG - somewhere between the two Schus (that's double N, suffy ). I've encountered Volkmann's name (I think!) in books on Early German Romanticism, but I've never heard a note by him until now. If his other work is as good as this, then a real master has been seriously neglected. Many thanks for the Post

[Jonathan]

Ferney, there's a very good 2CD set on CPO of works by Volkmann here https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/...e/hnum/6019596 - it's well worth a listen! This is also a very good disc: https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/...5/hnum/5824830
Happy listening...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Many thanks to you, too, Jonathan - yet another reason to be grateful to CPO.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Volkmann is completely overlooked and a fine composer, I've heard about 7 or 8 of his works and none of them could be called weak in any way. Much like Kalliwoda, a near contemporary, much of whose music I've heard is of really high quality and in same cases IMO much finer than better known works of the time.

[teamsaint]

The Volkmann Quartet linked above really is a find.
One of the joys of the modern so called age is to find a piece like that to hear, and a score to follow at the click of a mouse.

thanks to MarkG and others for flagging this up.

[EdgeleyRob]

Moritz Moszkowski

via you tube

Piano Concerto Op 3

Goes on a bit,surely too long at best part of a hour,not in a hurry to hear this again.

Etudes Op 72 & 92

Marvelous,exhilarating.

[Beef Oven!]

Guy Reibel - Suite Pour Edgar Poe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Reibel