What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[Pulcinella]

I tend to agree with regards to Nielsen. For me basing one's foundations on middle-period Beethoven rather than launching from his contemporaries of the time has always seemed analagous to had Beethoven ignored Mozart, Haydn and CPE Bach and their development of sonata-type forms. My guess is that this had to do with a feeling on Nielsen's part that the evolution of 19th century Romantic music had failed to fulfil its early spirit of optimism, although, to give him credit, one hears an openness to more modernist impulses from the 4th symphony onwards, albeit sometimes similarly couched in anachronistic battling-through gestures. I have the same problems with much of Robert Simpson's music.

Me too: I have the Hyperion symphony set but it's a real endurance test to get through it, however much I feel I should try once more.

[Joseph K]

Ferneyhough - Umbrations

[pastoralguy]

Steve Reich. ‘Different Trains’

Mivos Quartet. DG

[Bryn]

A bit of nostalgia: Terry Riley's Rainbow in Curved Air + Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band.

[RichardB]

A bit of nostalgia: Terry Riley's Rainbow in Curved Air + Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band.

I always find it refreshing to come back to that album, even though every moment of it is indelibly imprinted on my memory.

[Alison]

I always find it refreshing to come back to that album, even though every moment of it is indelibly imprinted on my memory.

[Bryn]

I always find it refreshing to come back to that album, even though every moment of it is indelibly imprinted on my memory.

I do, indeed, feel duly refreshed.

[jayne lee wilson]

Nielsen
Symphonies
Danish National Symphony Orchestra
Fabio Luisi

I can understand the attraction of these recordings (I fear there was a glitch in the streaming at one point) but as ever most Nielsen leaves me completely unmoved (or irritated by the incessant side drum).

So it goes.... one just doesn't click with some figures.....
Did you ever find a response to the startlingly original flute and clarinet concertos?

....I would just point out gently that only the 5th and 6th Symphonies use the snare drum, and not incessantly, but at key emotional/structural/climactic points. In the 5th (Part 1) it is very much a solo or obbligato role, and builds up to overwhelming..... until the point of its defeat!

In the 6th, a very different dramatis persona, a satirical or sardonic commentator in the 2nd and 4th movements on the musical landscapes around it....

Nielsen always uses the snare drum with very specific expressive aims. Perhaps most brilliantly and imaginatively in the last, late wonderful Clarinet Concerto, where again it is a dramatic foil to the wind soloist....

[RichardB]

(or irritated by the incessant side drum)

It may not be incessant but a little side drum goes a very long way with me. I reckon I've written about fifty compositions that feature percussion in one form or another, including four pieces for orchestra, three percussion solos and a percussion trio, and there isn't a trace of snare drum in any of them. I suppose it's partly the military connotations that I find offputting, and it's a serious obstacle in the way of my appreciating Nielsen's music in general, and his fifth symphony in particular... Simpson's symphonies on the other hand don't have that irritating character but I find it very hard to retain interest in what's happening in them.

[Serial_Apologist]

So it goes.... one just doesn't click with some figures.....
Did you ever find a response to the startlingly original flute and clarinet concertos?

....I would just point out gently that only the 5th and 6th Symphonies use the snare drum, and not incessantly, but at key emotional/structural/climactic points. In the 5th (Part 1) it is very much a solo or obbligato role, and builds up to overwhelming..... until the point of its defeat!

In the 6th, a very different dramatis persona, a satirical or sardonic commentator in the 2nd and 4th movements on the musical landscapes around it....

Nielsen always uses the snare drum with very specific expressive aims. Perhaps most brilliantly and imaginatively in the last, late wonderful Clarinet Concerto, where again it is a dramatic foil to the wind soloist....

I certainly go along with you on the clarinet and flute concertos. And the sixth symphony. But that is partly due to the tacit acknowledgement of modernist influences of the time in them that Nielsen would have cast aside earlier - Hindemith especially, occasionally Bartok, even Shostakovitch. The music sounds less Nielsonian in that last stage as a result, but I guess that's why I prefer it to that of his output up to the early 1920s.

[Pulcinella]

So it goes.... one just doesn't click with some figures.....
Did you ever find a response to the startlingly original flute and clarinet concertos?

....I would just point out gently that only the 5th and 6th Symphonies use the snare drum, and not incessantly, but at key emotional/structural/climactic points. In the 5th (Part 1) it is very much a solo or obbligato role, and builds up to overwhelming..... until the point of its defeat!

In the 6th, a very different dramatis persona, a satirical or sardonic commentator in the 2nd and 4th movements on the musical landscapes around it....

Nielsen always uses the snare drum with very specific expressive aims. Perhaps most brilliantly and imaginatively in the last, late wonderful Clarinet Concerto, where again it is a dramatic foil to the wind soloist....

And so it goes, indeed (which featured in our concert last week!).
I don't get on with the clarinet concerto at all, dramatic though the 'foil' may be; but I do like the violin concerto, and certainly accept that my comment was a bit of a sweeping generalisation.
I find Rubbra's use of timps in much of his music similarly off-putting, though the sound not to be as irritating as that of the side/snare drum. Richard might have hit (no pun intended) on something when he mentions the militaristic connotations.

[Alison]

Perhaps Mahler was the supreme side drum composer.

[Pulcinella]

Nielsen
Concertos

Violin (Kim Sjøgren)
Flute (Toke Lund Christiansen)
Clarinet (Niels Thomsen)
Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
Michael Schønwandt

Chandos CHAN8894

[Bryn]

It may not be incessant but a little side drum goes a very long way with me. I reckon I've written about fifty compositions that feature percussion in one form or another, including four pieces for orchestra, three percussion solos and a percussion trio, and there isn't a trace of snare drum in any of them. I suppose it's partly the military connotations that I find offputting, and it's a serious obstacle in the way of my appreciating Nielsen's music in general, and his fifth symphony in particular... Simpson's symphonies on the other hand don't have that irritating character but I find it very hard to retain interest in what's happening in them.

Your point regarding military connotations is well-taken. When Cardew made his revised/combined version of the first two paragraphs of his The Great Learning for the 1972 proms performance, he made a very significant change of ethos when it came to the 26 rhythmic cycles played by the drummers. In the published 'original' version of Paragraph 2, the type of drum used by each drummer is not specified but for the Proms version, snare drums were used by a now specified four drummers who were instructed to end with the same cycle in strict canon. That cycle has the most militaristic feel to it of all 26 available. Whereas the published score has a ragged end, the final rhythm being chosen from the 26 by each drummer independently, their varying length and tempo meant that a little after the singers finish their contribution, at a signal from a 'conductor' each drummer completes their current cycle and then stops, the drums thus petering out, in the Proms version the final drum strikes are coordinated. The effect is quite different and lends a decidedly regimented feel where, in the published score, something more like anarchy reigns. The revisions for the Proms performance reflected Cardew's then-developing 'Maoist' political outlook. As far as I recall, the revised version of Paragraph 2 was only performed publically one more time, in the "spielstraße" at the 1972 Munich Olympic games.

[richardfinegold]

Bruckner, Seventh Symphony, Wand/NDR SO. A well played, beautifully moving account. Wand tends to be taken for granted in Bruckner discussions, and the Orchestra is very good if not the equal of the very best who have recorded Bruckner, but I could happily live with this cycle as my only Bruckner set