What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[Bryn]

Steve Reich: Drumming (live recording of an early (3rd) public performance, New York Town Hall, 6 December 1971 - reissued on Superior Viaduct SV097).



Like the later DG studio recording, it is split over 2 CDs. With today's achievable CD durations, it could have been squeezed onto a single 82'47" CD, probably slightly less, as I think there is a slight fade out and in again overlap. I plan to rip and edit together, this afternoon and, maybe, burn to an overburn CD-R, though I might just put it on a USB stick. Not a recording for those who worry about incidental sounds as the musicians move around, etc.

[pastoralguy]

Bach.
The Organ Toccatas and Transcriptions.

Christopher Hedrick, organ

Metzler organ of the Stadtkirche Zofingen, Switzerland. Hyperion label.

50p charity shop find!

5

[Jonathan]

I've had a migraine since I got home from work yesterday and, in the absence of anything I could do, I listened to Mariam Batsashvili's lunchtime concert from Monday. What a wonderful concert!

Migraine seems to have departed for now.

[gradus]

Daniel Gortler Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes

A sense of restlessness, impetuousness, which I appreciate in this music

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kPhFuYArytlVWzWup2Jg_RkuQQ6wx7yZE&playnext=1&index=1

I first came across him in Mendelssohn, and I went back to his Songs without Words just yesterday. I like it more than ever - in fact I like it more than any other I’ve heard, because of the lyricism and lightness of his interpretations.

He finds a different voice for the Schumann, which I’ve only discovered myself, but it’s certainly made me prick up my ears. Listen, for example, to what he makes of the posthumous Var III.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nFOPeI2gPaM

His only other recording as far as I know is some some Schubert songs with a singer called Sharon Rostorf - Zamir. I’ve started to listen to it too. Whatever you make of her voice, everyone will appreciate Gortler’s piano playing for sure. He was made for Schubert.

Th e Schumann Arabeske is just the style of Schumann playing I like, in fact this performance reminds me of Horowitz Carnegie Hall version. Lovely playing.

[MickyD]

Bach.
The Organ Toccatas and Transcriptions.

Christopher Hedrick, organ

Metzler organ of the Stadtkirche Zofingen, Switzerland. Hyperion label.

50p charity shop find!

5

That is a nice series that Herrick did.. I'm fond of the Trio Sonatas disc.

[smittims]

My choice today, Constantin Silvestri's Dvorak 9 , his 1959 stereo recording with the ORTF orchestra, who were recording with Thomas Beecham about the same time. Silvestri had recorded the work two years ealrlier in mono, same room , same orchestra, but remarkably different tempi, e.g. over two minutes' difference in the slow movement.

[HighlandDougie]

Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky Op.78/Scythian Suite Op.20/Lieutenant Kijé Op.60

Elena Obraztsova (Mezzo)/London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra/Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Claudio Abbado (Esoteric Japan SACD Re-Mastering)

Another Esoteric re-mastered gem, listenable to at a decent volume while TOH is off in Monte-Carlo "enjoying" Orff's Carmina Burana (which I loathe). I'd forgotten just how potent a combination Watford Town Hall, the LSO and Abbado make, not forgetting Madame Obrazstova in full Slavonic splendour. An ideologically unsound part of me has a mental picture of Putin and Co as the Teutons disappearing as the ice gives way ....

[Pulcinella]

Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky Op.78/Scythian Suite Op.20/Lieutenant Kijé Op.60

Elena Obraztsova (Mezzo)/London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra/Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Claudio Abbado (Esoteric Japan SACD Re-Mastering)

Another Esoteric re-mastered gem, listenable to at a decent volume while TOH is off in Monte-Carlo "enjoying" Orff's Carmina Burana (which I loathe). I'd forgotten just how potent a combination Watford Town Hall, the LSO and Abbado make, not forgetting Madame Obrazstova in full Slavonic splendour. An ideologically unsound part of me has a mental picture of Putin and Co as the Teutons disappearing as the ice gives way ....

I'm currently streaming
Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances
Orchestre de Paris/Paavo Järvi
A recent BaL that made me sit up and listen then, and has continued to do so since.

Previously, some RVW and Holst (featuring in our forthcoming concert),

Vaughan Williams: Ca' the Yowes

Ian Partridge (tenor)
London Madrigal Singers
Christopher Bishop
Recorded: 1969-11-21
Recording Venue: 19-21 November 1969, Kingsway Hall, London

and

Holst: Six Choral Folk Songs, H.136 (1995 - Remaster) [though only 5 got included]

Baccholian Singers of London (vocal ensemble)
Recorded: 1974-09-18
Recording Venue: 16-18 September 1974, No. 1 Studio, Abbey Road, London

Oh dear.

[RichardB]

Now playing: Hans Werner Henze, Piano Concerto no.2 - Christoph Eschenbach with the LPO conducted by the composer.

As I've said here before, I think this is one of Henze's most powerful works, a massive tragic utterance.

[teamsaint]

Now playing: Hans Werner Henze, Piano Concerto no.2 - Christoph Eschenbach with the LPO conducted by the composer.

As I've said here before, I think this is one of Henze's most powerful works, a massive tragic utterance.

Ah, just the thing when one is in the mood for a massive tragic uttererance, which these days is perhaps more often than is ideal.
Anyway, my experience of Henze is limited to the symphonies I think, which I have never really got to grips with. So may give the work you mention a go.

Currently, Krenek, Symphony #2, RPH des NDR/ Ukigaya
Critics of this work are a bit mixed in their views of this large scale work, ( a bit of a mess ,might be a fair summary ?) although some of the more negative comments do sort of act as a challenge, which is fine.

Maybe I will be the one to find the underlying unity and reveal its hidden secrets. Or something.
Or perhaps we can pop it somewhere in the “ Massive tragic utterance “part of the venn diagram.

[RichardB]

my experience of Henze is limited to the symphonies I think, which I have never really got to grips with. So may give the work you mention a go.

Henze's symphonies are an extremely mixed bag in my opinion: 1-6 all have something special going for them, and 4 and 6 are particular favourites of mine, but from 7 onwards I'm not so keen. The 2nd Piano Concerto is to my mind on a higher level than any of his symphonies. Krenek's 2nd Symphony on the other hand... I must listen to it again one of these days, I remember it as being like taking Webern's compressed style and re-inflating it to Mahler-like proportions, which isn't a bad idea in itself.

[smittims]

Yes, I listened again to my old LP of the second piano concerto recently and was pleasantly surprised by it. I've always found all his symphonies interesting (though I don't think I've heard no.9) but I cannot get any pleasure from his vocal works for some reason.

I'm just listeneing to Grainger's 'Hill Song no.1' from this morning's TTN, a recording which reappears from time to time (Melbourne/ Geoffrey Simon).

[ahinton]

Now playing: Hans Werner Henze, Piano Concerto no.2 - Christoph Eschenbach with the LPO conducted by the composer.

As I've said here before, I think this is one of Henze's most powerful works, a massive tragic utterance.

It is indeed - along, I think, with the seventh symphony.

[ahinton]

Henze's symphonies are an extremely mixed bag in my opinion: 1-6 all have something special going for them, and 4 and 6 are particular favourites of mine, but from 7 onwards I'm not so keen. The 2nd Piano Concerto is to my mind on a higher level than any of his symphonies. Krenek's 2nd Symphony on the other hand... I must listen to it again one of these days, I remember it as being like taking Webern's compressed style and re-inflating it to Mahler-like proportions, which isn't a bad idea in itself.

His first three symphonies, all written in his early 20s, are marvellous yet for some reason (or none) so rarely performed; of them, the second seems to me to be the finest.

[RichardB]

Yes, I listened again to my old LP of the second piano concerto recently and was pleasantly surprised by it. I've always found all his symphonies interesting (though I don't think I've heard no.9) but I cannot get any pleasure from his vocal works for some reason.

That surprises me since voices were so central to his musical thinking - I always think of Edda Moser's beautiful recording of the ecstatic high soprano part in Cantata della fiaba estrema (or the figure of Death in Das Floß der Medusa) or, at the opposite extreme, William Pearson's embodiment of the narrator in El Cimarrón. As with his orchestral music, I think his creativity went a bit off the boil after the 1970s though.