What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[DoctorT]

Sandrine Piau – Handel – ‘Enchantresses’
Sandrine Piau (soprano)
Les Paladins / Jérôme Correas (direction)
Recorded 2020 Théâtre de Poissy, Paris
Linn Records

New CD release:

Snap! It’s wonderful. Enchanting, in fact! What a singer

[Serial_Apologist]

A new Naxos release: Henze - Nachtstücke und Arien, Los Caprichos and Englische Liebeslieder conducted by Marin Alsop

Nachtstücke und Arien, on texts by Henze's regular collaborator Ingeborg Bachmann, has been recorded a few times before and is remembered for causing Henze's colleagues Nono, Boulez and Stockhausen ostentatiously to walk out of its premiere at Darmstadt in 1957 owing to its nostalgically lyrical style and Henze's characteristic way of using twelve-tone techniques to create a kind of out-of-focus tonality, which actually I've always found highly attractive. This recording features very nice contributions from Alsop and the ORF orchestra, but I found Juliane Banse's vocals wobbly and lacking in focus, which is a major problem in music like this when you have to sort of guess which pitch she thinks she's singing. What you need in this piece is something more like the luminous precision of Edda Moser, who recorded this piece with Christoph van Dohnányi back in the 1960s. The instrumental pieces on this CD are more successful but also less memorable. What stuck in my mind about Nachtstücke, though, is a curious paradox: while in 1957 this music seemed retrospective and irrelevant in the face of compositional innovations taking place at that time, in 2021 it actually sounds a lot more "modern" than what many much younger composers are writing today.

We've previously mentioned Moser in previous conversation about Henze's Cantata della fiaba estrema. (I think it was Schwarzkopf when I first heard Nachstucke back in the mid-60s on the radio, my intro to Henze). When does vibrato become tremolando??!! In relation to the works negative reception from erstwhile friends I've been given to wonder whether or not the, to me, obvious quotation from the Dresden Amen might have had something to do with it as well. Looking back Henze said he never could make out what the cause of the schism with fellow CP-er Nono had been. There would probably have been other "inconsistencies", in Henze's music from their point of view around that time, when they could lay claim to the "new" Stravinsky and maybe later on tut-tut the one or two veiled references to Oedipus Rex popping up in Novae de Infinito Laudes

[pastoralguy]

Snap! It’s wonderful. Enchanting, in fact! What a singer

I believe she’s singing a Wigmore Hall recital next Monday.

[RichardB]

We've previously mentioned Moser in previous conversation about Henze's Cantata della fiaba estrema.

Indeed, an unforgettable sound. But... Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing Henze??? are you absolutely sure about that? It seems completely unlikely to me. Surely she never sang anything more "contemporary" than Strauss.

[Joseph K]

Both sets of Brahms symphony cycles arrived today - Sanderling and Ticciati.

Currently spinning the first under Sanderling.

Now the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Ticciati.

[pastoralguy]

Peter Maxwell-Davies. Piano Concerto.

Kathryn Stott, piano. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the composer. Naxos.

[RichardB]

How about a new thread "What Contemporary Music are you listening to?"

Go for it!

Not wishing to get into yet another discussion of genre and what it means, I think it might be easier to do that because sometimes I miss posts that would otherwise be of interest because the pages in this thread go by so quickly.

[DoctorT]

I believe she’s singing a Wigmore Hall recital next Monday.

Wrong side of the Irish Sea unfortunately!

[Bryn]

Go for it!

Not wishing to get into yet another discussion of genre and what it means, I think it might be easier to do that because sometimes I miss posts that would otherwise be of interest because the pages in this thread go by so quickly.

It would make a handy place to post comments on non-composed new music, too, rather than confining it to the "What Rock/Pop/Jazz-rock/Fusion/Prog/Experimental etc album are you listening to?" thread.

[Joseph K]

Now the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Ticciati.

This has just finished. I think I prefer this to the Staatskappelle Dresden under Sanderling, which is a bit chunky by comparison. In Ticciati, and this was to do with the phrasing more than anything else, that melody in the finale didn't sound as cheesy and derivative from Beethoven 9 as it normally might do. Looking forward to listening to the other symphonies.

Now, I'm going to put on Haydn's eighteenth symphony in G major (yes, I've been keeping up with this one-a-day...)

[Joseph K]

It would make a handy place to post comments on non-composed new music, too, rather than confining it to the "What Rock/Pop/Jazz-rock/Fusion/Prog/Experimental etc album are you listening to?" thread.

There was this thread... http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...tion-on-Record

[Bryn]

There was this thread... http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...tion-on-Record

But not best suited to live performance gigs, etc.

[Serial_Apologist]

Indeed, an unforgettable sound. But... Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing Henze??? are you absolutely sure about that? It seems completely unlikely to me. Surely she never sang anything more "contemporary" than Strauss.

Hmmm - probably false memory syndrome on my part then.

[Serial_Apologist]

It would make a handy place to post comments on non-composed new music, too, rather than confining it to the "What Rock/Pop/Jazz-rock/Fusion/Prog/Experimental etc album are you listening to?" thread.

The latter thread title has always seemed too broad for the range of musics under it.

[pastoralguy]

Wrong side of the Irish Sea unfortunately!

It’s being broadcast on Radio3.