What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? IV

[pastoralguy]

Mozart. Sinfonia Concertante. K.364. Haydn. Violin Concertos in G & C.

Rachel Podger, violin & Pavlo Beznosiuk, viola. Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Surprised to see the Mozart gets rather a lukewarm review in the 2009 Gramophone.

[AuntDaisy]

Oh come now, don't be a wimp!

Just sampled some parts via the Naxos Music Library (courtesy of our library).
Some of the sounds / harmonics are very unsettling, particularly near the start of the Sanctus & Agnus Dei.
Sorry, not for me. I live run away another day.

[Mandryka]

OK, it is late at night, but I'll go for the full force on this one, and chance the consequences:

Harrison Birtwistle

Punch and Judy

Bryn-Julson / DeGaetani / Langridge / Roberts / Wilson Johnson / Tomlinson

London Sinfonietta

David Atherton

Etcetra KTC 2014

The words "stellar" are nothing at all for the soloists but they are too. It is quite difficult to understand, but it is true. And I've got it

There's a song where Punch seems to laugh in an evil way and uses words like "nicey" - I used to love. I last heard it maybe 30 years ago though.

[richardfinegold]

Beethoven, Appasionata Sonata, Brendel mid 70s

[smittims]

Beethoven for me too, the second symphony in a really cracking performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Otto Klemperer at Maida Vale in 1955, courtesy of Richard Itter and ICA .

Until now, Beecham has always been my ideal in this symphony, but Klemperer really makes a case for it as a major work, not just a predecessor of the Eroica. .

[richardfinegold]

Beethoven for me too, the second symphony in a really cracking performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Otto Klemperer at Maida Vale in 1955, courtesy of Richard Itter and ICA .

Until now, Beecham has always been my ideal in this symphony, but Klemperer really makes a case for it as a major work, not just a predecessor of the Eroica. .

I learned the Second from an Everest LP with Krips and the LSO. That performance is still as good as any and I don’t think that it is a matter of imprinting on my part. Meanwhile that cycle, which I bought for $5 on Amazon, and probably spent 99 cents for the lp in the early seventies, acquired the niche of being an audiophile classic and is available in all kinds of gimmicky reissues and remasters

[Mario]

Comparing

S PROKOFIEV

PS No 2 in D min Op 14

Bronfman Y
Richter S

Someone on this forum once said (unfortunately, I cannot remember who it was) that you should listen to a new work around a dozen times, before you form an opinion. I’m listening to this for the eighth time, and I promise to hear it again.

[Stanfordian]

Puccini – 'Messa di Gloria'
'Messa di Gloria' for tenor, baritone, 4-part chorus & orchestra
'Preludio sinfonica',
'Crisantemi' (arranged for string orchestra by Lucas Drew)
Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunk,
Tomislav Mužek (tenor) & George Petean (baritone)
Münchner Rundfunkorchester / Ivan Repušić
Recorded: Live, 2024 Herz-Jesu-Kirche, Munich (Messa di Gloria) & 2023 Studio 1, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich (Preludio sinfonica, Crisantemi)
BR Klassik, new CD

[Stanfordian]

Aigul Akhmetshina – 'Aigul'
Arias by Bizet, Massenet, Bellini, Rossini & traditional Bashkir
Aigul Akhmetshina (mezzo-soprano)
Apollo Voices,
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Daniele Rustioni
Recorded 2023-24, St Jude on-the-Hill, London
Decca, CD recent release

Chopin
Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11
(arranged by Richard Hofmann for piano & string quartet plus double bass)
Dvořák
Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, Op. 81
Talich Quartet,
with Jean-Marc Luisada (piano) & Benjamin Berlioz (double bass)
Recorded 1998 Studio Tibor Varga, Sion, Switzerland
RCA Red Seal, CD

[frankbridge]

Cyril Scott: Violin Sonatas 1 and 3

Howick / Rahman

Naxos 8.572290

This is quite wonderful and very well performed by the two. Sterling work!

[frankbridge]

Puccini – 'Messa di Gloria'
'Messa di Gloria' for tenor, baritone, 4-part chorus & orchestra
'Preludio sinfonica',
'Crisantemi' (arranged for string orchestra by Lucas Drew)
Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunk,
Tomislav Mužek (tenor) & George Petean (baritone)
Münchner Rundfunkorchester / Ivan Repušić
Recorded: Live, 2024 Herz-Jesu-Kirche, Munich (Messa di Gloria) & 2023 Studio 1, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich (Preludio sinfonica, Crisantemi)
BR Klassik, new CD

I was actually at the Last of the Proms in 1986 for the first time when Ray Leppard conducted the Puccini 'Missa di Gloria' in full (those were the days when they had the dare to do full performances in the first part on BBC two, before the second part of jollies over on BBC 1 after the news.

I only got in because I was part of the "BBC Symphony Club" long gone alas, but there were ballots drawn and I was lucky . It seems a lot time ago and it was...

[vinteuil]

Mozart : Requiem, in the version for piano four hands by Carl Czerny; Kerstin Straßburg and Jürgen Appell

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Opus-summum-viri-summi-Wolfgang/dp/B0CQ771SWV

loving every moment...

.

[smittims]

Ernst Toch: Symphony no.1. The Berlin Radio S.O. Alun Francis.

Toch is unusual in that all his symphonies were written in later lafe after his emigration to the USA. His first symphony is opus 72, possibly the latest 'first' symphony apart from Kodaly's . Toch's style is very original . This is the longest and most lyrical of his symphonies, less formally-correct than Hindemith, less wacky than Otto Klemperer.

[smittims]

Bruckner: Symphony no.4 in E flat. The Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Franz Konwitschny. An Ariola-Eurodisc recording dating , I guess, from the late 1950s and issued in Britain by the World Record Club as part of their 'Recorded Music Circle.' Older collectors may recall the generic sleeve with red type on a fake wood-grain background. It's a remarkably good recording for its age. Konwitschny is not well-known outside German-speaking countries, his best-known recording perhaps being a HMV Tannhauser which stayed in the catalogue for many years.

This Bruckner 4 has a personal significance for me. Forty-five years ago I entered a classical music record shop in Kingston, just by the river, called '1812' and the proprietor was playing it, with the sleeve I described on display. I never saw a copy again until last week, when I found this one in a second-hand shop, in virtually mint-condition. I often wonder how such discs came to survive in this way.


.

[oliver sudden]

Other acclaimed Konwitschny recordings include his Shostakovich 11 (although not personally my thing) and a very fine Strauss Domestica (which is my thing although the piece normally isn’t).

Here it’s Blandine Verlet’s superb Louis Couperin in an ICE crawling its way across Germany from Berlin (venue for last night’s concert) to Bonn (venue for this afternoon’s). Currently 40 minutes late and that’s in the wide open spaces of the east where the trains normally if anything make up some time. The suspense is mounting!