What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[richardfinegold]

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 am intrigued by the “Esoteric “ comment. Is it a CD, or enhanced CD, issued by that company?

[HighlandDougie]

I am intrigued by the “Esoteric “ comment. Is it a CD, or enhanced CD, issued by that company?

Esoteric (as in one of the divisions of TEAC) has been releasing SACD hybrid re-mastered discs (but not multichannel that I know of) for a reasonable number of years. Their choice of repertoire sometimes seems a bit quixotic, not to say 'esoteric', but the results, in my experience, are worth all the care which they seem to devote to the process. They are not cheap, although my "new" CD shop find in Hong Kong was much more reasonable in that regard than other sources, such as elusivedisc.com.

I bought a supposedly ex-dem Esoteric SACD for here (France) from a dealer in Madrid last year and I was pleasantly surprised to discover an Esoteric SACD in the box (it turned out that it was brand-new, rather than ex-dem). I also have an Esoteric SACD player in Scotland, which was most definitely "pre-loved" and certainly didn't come with a free SACD. I can't see myself ever buying other players in the future.

[smittims]

Well, there's nothing esoteric about my fifty-year-old American hi-fi, on which I've just listened to some even older HMV LPs:

Paisiello and Rossini string concertos (at least they say it's a concerto by Paisiello: hmm...) : Virtuosi di Roma.
Mozart: Divertimento in D, K 131: RPO/Beecham.
Sibelius: Romance in C : RPO/Anthony Collins.

All went down well with a couple of glasses of chilled Sauvignon Blanc. What fun...

[Bryn]

Well, there's nothing esoteric about my fifty-year-old American hi-fi, on which I've just listened to some even older HMV LPs:

Paisiello and Rossini string concertos (at least they say it's a concerto by Paisiello: hmm...) : Virtuosi di Roma.
Mozart: Divertimento in D, K 131: RPO/Beecham.
Sibelius: Romance in C : RPO/Anthony Collins.

All went down well with a couple of glasses of chilled Sauvignon Blanc. What fun...

My backup turntable, a Goldring Lenco GL75, bought early in 1969 on the basis of this review: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4L...PWZPX07iDH0ygA, could do with a new idler wheel but, otherwise, still does a fine job (AT95SE cartridge fitted), as is also the case with my main turntable, a Thorens TD 160 Super with Linn Basic arm, purchased, used, around 50 years ago (in need of a new drive belt and some mains and phono rewiring). I really must put some time aside to get that rewiring done as I have a couple of LPs purchased to replace fire-damaged copies of recordings not, so far, issued on CD or as downloads. I plan to digitise them at 96/24, tidy those recordings up with Sound Forge, and then store the LPs safely in the loft.

[Serial_Apologist]

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.

I often feel that tragedy and hoped for redemption were the themes that inspired Henze to his powerfullest music - I remember him speaking heartrendingly and at the same time reluctantly to Rattle of the inspiration for the violent third movement of Symphony No 7, namely the inhuman treatment meted out to the poet Hölderlin - lashing him to a revolving wheel, to "cure" him of his madness - and of the image evoked of a calm lake in unsullied nature set against the clamour of war and flags flapping in the momentarily almost tonally resolving final movement. And of the Rhine carrying the wounded soldier to final freedom at the close of either the Ninth or the Tenth. The "jollier" Henze of the Eighth for me represents a self-indulgent escape route it is difficult for me to indentify with, one which I suspect Henze indulged as a means to try to cope with the aftermath of betrayals he and some of his closest friends and associates suffered, most especially from the Castro régime. That whole period (from say Medusa to Come To the River) had represented a re-birth, wouldn't one say? Retrieving the subtexts buried deep in German culture and philosophy the way a postmodern Mahler might have done. I have no knowledge of any bearing his own homosexuality had on all this in terms of how he was treated by contemporaries, though I would have my suspicions.

[RichardB]

I often feel that tragedy and hoped for redemption were the themes that inspired Henze to his powerfullest music - I remember him speaking heartrendingly and at the same time reluctantly to Rattle of the inspiration for the violent third movement of Symphony No 7, namely the inhuman treatment meted out to the poet Hölderlin - lashing him to a revolving wheel, to "cure" him of his madness - and of the image evoked of a calm lake in unsullied nature set against the clamour of war and flags flapping in the momentarily almost tonally resolving final movement. And of the Rhine carrying the wounded soldier to final freedom at the close of either the Ninth or the Tenth. The "jollier" Henze of the Eighth for me represents a self-indulgent escape route it is difficult for me to indentify with, one which I suspect Henze indulged as a means to try to cope with the aftermath of betrayals he and some of his closest friends and associates suffered, most especially from the Castro régime. That whole period (from say Medusa to Come To the River) had represented a re-birth, wouldn't one say? Retrieving the subtexts buried deep in German culture and philosophy the way a postmodern Mahler might have done. I have no knowledge of any bearing his own homosexuality had on all this in terms of how he was treated by contemporaries, though I would have my suspicions.

It would be very nice to have a recording of We Come to the River, which I listened to on the radio back in the day, I thought it was really the culmination of all the radical tendencies in Henze's music during the 1970s, apart from taking place in an opera house. The only time I've really appreciated his 7th Symphony was in a live performance - what I thought of as muddy scoring after hearing the recording was not a problem in the concert hall. As for whether being gay had an influence on the way he was treated by contemporaries, he did of course have this in common with Boulez who was one of his most vociferous detractors.

[Serial_Apologist]

It would be very nice to have a recording of We Come to the River, which I listened to on the radio back in the day, I thought it was really the culmination of all the radical tendencies in Henze's music during the 1970s, apart from taking place in an opera house. The only time I've really appreciated his 7th Symphony was in a live performance - what I thought of as muddy scoring after hearing the recording was not a problem in the concert hall. As for whether being gay had an influence on the way he was treated by contemporaries, he did of course have this in common with Boulez who was one of his most vociferous detractors.

How "out" was Boulez about his own gayness? - genuinely ignorant question.

[HighlandDougie]

Well, there's nothing esoteric about my fifty-year-old American hi-fi, on which I've just listened to some even older HMV LPs:

Paisiello and Rossini string concertos (at least they say it's a concerto by Paisiello: hmm...) : Virtuosi di Roma.
Mozart: Divertimento in D, K 131: RPO/Beecham.
Sibelius: Romance in C : RPO/Anthony Collins.

All went down well with a couple of glasses of chilled Sauvignon Blanc. What fun...

I'm intrigued by the American Hi-Fi! I've recently "de-cluttered" an American valve Pre/Power Amp combination (which still sounds very fine). Anyway, the idea of listening to LPs while sipping chilled SB sounds delightful. My recent re-discovery is the Nicolai Malko Borodin 2/3 (although the latter is Borodin re-orch. Rimsky-Korsakov) on a B-List HMV LP (CLP, not ALP, 1075). I have it on CD but the LP in all its un-remastered splendour definitely sounds better.

[RichardB]

How "out" was Boulez about his own gayness? - genuinely ignorant question.

He didn't talk about it in public, but all his composer colleagues in the 1950s knew. (I have this from the late Konrad Boehmer, who was one of the youngest composers attending the Darmstadt Courses in the late 1950s and a Stockhausen pupil at the time.)

[HighlandDougie]

for the violent third movement of Symphony No 7

I've posted before about this but a very dismaying moment was sitting listening and then watching a (ceramic) speaker cone disintegrate in front of me when subject to the Markus Stenz recording of that movement. Speaker duly replaced but I'm not sure that I've listened to that recording since then. This exchange has prompted me to get the DG box down from the shelves and start to work my way through it.

[JasonPalmer]

Listening to classical mix on radio 3, used to avoid this interval before the evening concert but was tempted to give it a go from all the trailers for it on radio 3.

[RichardB]

I've posted before about this but a very dismaying moment was sitting listening and then watching a (ceramic) speaker cone disintegrate in front of me when subject to the Markus Stenz recording of that movement. Speaker duly replaced but I'm not sure that I've listened to that recording since then.

Oh dear. This evening I've been listening to Sylvain Cambreling's recording of the 7th. It's much clearer in texture than the original Rattle recording. I'm not sure that SR was really at home with the density of this piece, while Cambreling (along with the recording engineers) seems to have a clear idea of how everything should balance and how to achieve it. The Cambreling CD also scores over Rattle's in combining the symphony with the beautiful 1963 Ariosi for soprano, violin and orchestra rather than the murky Barcarola for orchestra of 1979, although maybe a different conductor would have made more of that too.

[smittims]

The much-missed Oliver Knussen gave a fine peformance of the Barcarola at the 2013 Proms. From the way he spoke about it I guessed he had a special affection for it. It was in one of those carefully-assembled mixed programmes he used to offer.

[RichardB]

The much-missed Oliver Knussen gave a fine peformance of the Barcarola at the 2013 Proms. From the way he spoke about it I guessed he had a special affection for it. It was in one of those carefully-assembled mixed programmes he used to offer.

Nobody conducted the music of Elliott Carter as well as Knussen, but I find his performances of Henze somewhat bloodless. I don't think he was really attuned to the expressive world of that music at all.

[smittims]

Well, you may be right; as I suggested, I don't know Henze's music well, though I like to give it a fair hearing .