What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[Bryn]

Not sure I van imagine the Fantaisies symphoniques conducted as if it were be Haydn! - but I will certainly find out. I didn't like the Meister at first but it's been growing on me.

This week I am being detained at the pleasure of the Serbian health service, for a minor operation that took place yesterday. As I may have mentioned before, a striking difference with the NHS is that patients have to be in the ward two days before the procedure and two days after! - so there's nothing much to do. There's no public wifi but I can access the internet through my academic credentials since it's a teaching hospital, but anyway I downloaded a complete set of Beethoven quartets as my listening materials so that's what I've been doing: Chiaroscuro (op.18), Kuijken (op.51, and indeed op.29 which I think deserves to be included), Eroica (opp.74 and 95) and Mosaïques (the rest). Yesterday I got as far as op.51/1, which was certainly the highlight of the day. What an amazing performance! I'm not sure about the players' decision to set aside their usual HIPP principles, but it doesn't really matter especially as they do keep vibrato very much under control, which is almost always the deciding issue for me in Beethoven quartet performances. Will I get through the rest before going home tomorrow morning? Depends on how blurry from sedation everything is...

That would be 51 as in 59, eh? If you're able to receive them, I could send m4a files of Op. 59s played by the QM (in concert).

[RichardB]

That would be 51 as in 59, eh?

I did say everything was a bit blurry at the moment.

[BBMmk2]

A friend of mine recommended this recording.

Respighi
The Roman Trilogy
Boston Symphony
Seiji Ozawa.

Hindemith
KammermusikNo.5, for Viola & Chamber Orchestra
Concertgebouworkest
Riccardo Chailly

Yesterday’s listening.

Today’s listening.

Mahler - Boulez
CD 12
12 Lieder to Poems from ‘Des Knaben Wundderhorn”
Symphony No.10 - Adagio
Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano)
Christian Gerharder (baritone)
The Cleveland Orchestra
Pierre Boulez

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen *
5 Rückert Lieder **
Kindertotenlieder ***
Thomas Quasthoff (bass-baritone) *
Violeta Urmana (soprano) **
Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo-soprano) ***
Wiener Philharmoniker
Pierre Boulez

Das Lied von der Erde
Violeta Urmana (mezzo-soprano)
Michael Schade (tenor)
Wiener Philharmoniker
Pierre Boulez

[Stanfordian]

Howells
Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 21
Fantasy String Quartet, Op. 25
Rhapsodic Quintet for clarinet, two violins, viola and cello, Op. 31
Richards Piano Quartet & Richards Ensemble & Thea King (clarinet)
Recorded 1973 Walthamstow, London
Lyrita, CD
This Howells CD on Lyrita is the best played and recorded single album of British chamber music I know.
In my view the ‘Rhapsodic Quintet’ is a masterwork and the other two works are praiseworthy too.

‘A New Heaven’ – The Sixteen
Sacred choral music in the Anglican church tradition by Parry, Wood, Harris, Stanford, Bairstow,
Balfour Gardiner, Goodall, Bainton, Stainer, Howells & Rutter
The Sixteen / Harry Christophers
Robert Quinney (organ)
Recorded 2008, St Peter’s Italian Church, Clerkenwell, London
Universal Classics, CD

[richardfinegold]

Not sure I van imagine the Fantaisies symphoniques conducted as if it were be Haydn! - but I will certainly find out. I didn't like the Meister at first but it's been growing on me.

This week I am being detained at the pleasure of the Serbian health service, for a minor operation that took place yesterday. As I may have mentioned before, a striking difference with the NHS is that patients have to be in the ward two days before the procedure and two days after! - so there's nothing much to do. There's no public wifi but I can access the internet through my academic credentials since it's a teaching hospital, but anyway I downloaded a complete set of Beethoven quartets as my listening materials so that's what I've been doing: Chiaroscuro (op.18), Kuijken (op.51, and indeed op.29 which I think deserves to be included), Eroica (opp.74 and 95) and Mosaïques (the rest). Yesterday I got as far as op.51/1, which was certainly the highlight of the day. What an amazing performance! I'm not sure about the players' decision to set aside their usual HIPP principles, but it doesn't really matter especially as they do keep vibrato very much under control, which is almost always the deciding issue for me in Beethoven quartet performances. Will I get through the rest before going home tomorrow morning? Depends on how blurry from sedation everything is...

Serbia sounds like the U.S. standard of medicine circa 1982.

[RichardB]

Serbia sounds like the U.S. standard of medicine circa 1982.

I wouldn't know about the USA in 1982, but the system in Serbia seems to be more or less afloat despite being in a poor country with poor infrastructure. I have to have private health insurance here, since I don't have a job in Serbia that would qualify me for free healthcare, so I know exactly how much it costs for a hospital stay for five days with a minor procedure under general anaesthetic: around £1300, or $1550.

[RichardB]

I have finally come to the end of my Beethoven quartet marathon and feel like nothing more than starting it all over again.

[Pulcinella]

I have finally come to the end of my Beethoven quartet marathon and feel like nothing more than starting it all over again.

Good grief!
What drugs are you on?

[RichardB]

Good grief! What drugs are you on?

Painkillers and antibiotics! (edit: and anticoagulant!)

I'm not going to do it though, not because I don't want to hear the music again but because I need a break from closed headphones, I should have brought the better (open) ones but I didn't want to disturb my wardmates.

[gurnemanz]

New hip installed on Monday and back home by Wed morning. Great to have my phone app to play music from various sources from armchair. Currently Schubert String Quartet D804 in A min. Lovely sound and playing from the Diogenes on Brilliant. A prelude to Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau doing Winterreise from Edinburgh at 11 am.

[Bryn]

New hip installed on Monday and back home by Wed morning. Great to have my phone app to play music from various sources from armchair. Currently Schubert String Quartet D804 in A min. Lovely sound and playing from the Diogenes on Brilliant. A prelude to Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau doing Winterreise from Edinburgh at 11 am.

Armchair? Armchair?! Get out and walk. I was amazed and extremely grateful to find I was able to walk (with crutches) a couple of miles, up hill and down dale through the local woodland, the day after my discharge from hospital (four days after the hip replacement (having broken the left femur at its neck). It would have been earlier but I caught the weekend, when the physiotherapists were off, so my discharge was delayed for a day.

[BBMmk2]

Catching up with last night’s Prom. Very good indeed.

[Stanfordian]

Véronique Gens & Sandrine Piau – ‘Rivales’
Airs and duets by heroines of Gluck, Grétry, Persuis, Monsigny, J.C. Bach, Sacchini,
Edelmann, Dalayrac & Cherubini
In honour of Madame Saint-Huberty (1756-1812) & Madame Dugazon (1755-1821)
Véronique Gens (soprano) & Sandrine Piau (soprano)
Le Concert de La Loge / Julien Chauvin (baroque violinist/direction)
Recorded 2021, Abbaye de Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache, France
Alpha Classics, CD

Florent Schmitt
Piano Quintet, Op. 51
À tour d'anches, quartet for oboe, clarinet, bassoon & piano, Op. 97
Solisten-Ensemble Berlin
(Matthias Wollong (violin I); Petra Schwieger (violin II); Ulrich Knörzer (viola);
Andreas Grünkorn (cello); Matthias Bäcker (oboe); Richard Obermayer (clarinet);
Frank Forst (bassoon), Birgitta Wollenweber (piano)
Recorded 2008 Villa Siemens, Berlin
Naxos, CD

[Bryn]

Sorabji - Transcendental Studies, 1 to 25 (the other 75 to follow, over the next few days) - Fredrik Ullén (piano).

[RichardB]

Sorabji - Transcendental Studies, 1 to 25 (the other 75 to follow, over the next few days) - Fredrik Ullén (piano).

It's a tough job but I guess someone has to do it... my impression (having only sampled the series here and there) is that it begins very well, but runs out of new ideas about halfway through, or maybe it's just me, and of course Feldman's 2nd Quartet also more or less abandons new ideas before the halfway mark, but that's really part of the point of it.