What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[FRJames]

Prokofiev - Sonatas for Piano
Anne-Marie McDermott
Bridge, 2009 (3xCD)

Sonatas 3 - 5 from this excellent set.

[Bryn]

Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie (Michel Béroff, Jeanne Loriod, LSO, Previn) - 24-bit 4-channel lossless surround EMI 7243 4 92398 9 0 DVD Audio.

I had forgotten just how awkward this double-sided DVD was to navigate (one side DVD Video standard, the obverse DVD Audio, each side with surround and 2-channel stereo options but a right faff to navigate to the option you want to listen to). One hell of a good performance and recording, though.

[pastoralguy]

Ravel. Bolero.
Glinka. Jots Aragonesa.
Tchaikovsky. Italian Caprice.
Chabrier. España.

The Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by Neville Marriner. Philips.

Another addition to my Philips ‘Blue Face’ collection.

[smittims]

That's interesting . I didn't know Marriner conducted the Dresden orchestra. It's good to hear him stepping outside the box, as when he did Bax, Warlock,etc.

[CallMePaul]

Sir Neville conducted a number of German orchestras in the later stages of his career. I saw him conduct the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra some years ago in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. I cannot recall the full programme but it contained the Schumann Piano Concerto with Alfred Brendel as soloist - the only time I saw Brendel live.

[Stanfordian]

Schubert
Piano Sonata No. 18 in G major, D894 ‘Fantasie’
Hungarian Melody in B minor, D817
Fantasia in F minor for Piano Four Hands, D940
Allegro in A minor, ‘Lebensstürme’, for Piano Four Hands, D947
David Fray (piano)
Jacques Rouvier (piano) (D940, D947)
Recorded 2014, Église Notre Dame du Liban, Paris
Erato, CD

[Jonathan]

A couple of new CDs arrived in the post yesterday, thanks to the ongoing "Inflation busting" sale of Acte Prelable at MusicWeb's website. Currently listening to Josef Wieniawski's PIano works, volume 3. I was not much impressed by the Sonata but the remainder of the disc includes some rather wonderful little pieces, well worth listening to and evocatively played by Elzbieta Tyszecka.

[Joseph K]

Bartok - string quartet no. 6 - Alban Berg Quartett

[smittims]

I've been re-hearing Arnold Bax' 1907 'Symphony in F' which I read about many years ago in his autobiography and heard for the first time when Martin Yates' splendid orchestration (Bax left it in piano score) was recorded. At 78 minutes, this sprawling and diffuse work needs a sympathetic ear . Perhaps inevitably the finale (the longest movement ) is the least successful, but the first two movements are quite engaging.

I'm glad Mr. Yates didn't shorten the work to make it more accessible (and to ease his task). It was right to present it 'warts and all'.

[CallMePaul]

Schubert - Piano Sonata in D major D850
Paul Badura-Skoda (piano)

This is the last of PB-S's recordings of this piece, recorded in 2015 at Bosendorfer's studio in Wiener Neustadt. I also have his earlier recording on a 1823 Graf fortepiano, but not his earlier modern piano recording.

[Pulcinella]

Copland: The red pony
Britten: Sinfonia da requiem

St Louis Symphony Orchestra/Andre Previn

One of his first recordings.

[Stanfordian]

Schubert & JS Bach – Sacred Choral Works
Schubert
Mass No. 6 in E flat, D950
Pilar Lorengar (soprano), Betty Allen (contralto),
Fritz Wunderlich & Manfred Schmidt (tenors),
Josef Greindl (bass)
Choir of St. Hedwig's Cathedral Berlin
Berliner Philharmoniker / Erich Leinsdorf
Recorded 1960 Jesus Christ Church, Dahlem, Berlin
JS Bach
'Jesu, meine Freude' motet for 5-part chorus, BWV227
Pilar Lorengar (soprano), Betty Allen (contralto), Fritz Wunderlich & Manfred Schmidt (tenors), Josef Greindl (bass)
Choir of St. Hedwig's Cathedral, Berlin / Karl Forster
Recorded 1957 Grunewaldkirche, Berlin
Testament (Remastered) 2 CD set.

[smittims]

Tippett: Concerto for Orchestra. The BBC S.O. , Andrew Gourlay. A superb rendering which replaces, in my affection,the classic Colin Davis disc.

Stephen Hough: Missa Mirabilis. Tonal and at times reminiscent of Poulenc or Stravibnsky, it's nonetheless an ambitious but successful attempt to give this much-set text some vital and original music, and in my view reveals Hough as a real composer rather than just a pianist who composes.

[Serial_Apologist]

I've been re-hearing Arnold Bax' 1907 'Symphony in F' which I read about many years ago in his autobiography and heard for the first time when Martin Yates' splendid orchestration (Bax left it in piano score) was recorded. At 78 minutes, this sprawling and diffuse work needs a sympathetic ear . Perhaps inevitably the finale (the longest movement ) is the least successful, but the first two movements are quite engaging.

I'm glad Mr. Yates didn't shorten the work to make it more accessible (and to ease his task). It was right to present it 'warts and all'.

As a qualified fan of Bax's music, I would be very interested to hear that, pre-dating as it presumably must the powerful effect Ravel and Debussy's musics had on reconfiguring the composer's harmonic language and orchestration, notably in "In the Faery Hills" of 1909. Few works from this early period get heard, the 1905 tone poem "Cathleen ni Houlihan" being one, and there the Celtic folk influences heroically boulstered in Wagnerian splendour might offer some indication of the symphony?

The whole issue of when and how French Impressionist influences started being exerted on English composers has long obsessed me: are instances such as whole-tone harmonies and parallel added-note chord sequences in earlyish Vaughan Williams, Delius or Cyril Scott matters of anticipation, correlation or causation, etc...

[edashtav]

As a qualified fan of Bax's music, I would be very interested to hear that, pre-dating as it presumably must the powerful effect Ravel and Debussy's musics had on reconfiguring the composer's harmonic language and orchestration, notably in "In the Faery Hills" of 1909. Few works from this early period get heard, the 1905 tone poem "Cathleen ni Houlihan" being one, and there the Celtic folk influences heroically boulstered in Wagnerian splendour might offer some indication of the symphony?

The whole issue of when and how French Impressionist influences started being exerted on English composers has long obsessed me: are instances such as whole-tone harmonies and parallel added-note chord sequences in earlyish Vaughan Williams, Delius or Cyril Scott matters of anticipation, correlation or causation, etc...

By 1907, AB had heard the first German performance in Dresden of Debussy’s ‘L’Après- Midi’ [“Even the great Schuch ( an Austrian conductor who conducted the f.p. of four of R.Strauss’s operas) could make little of it, and actual catastrophe seemed imminent,”(AB)], had been impressed by one of the first performances of Strauus’s ‘Salome’,and been exposed to the middle movements of Mahler’s 6th Symphony ( “The restless perversity of the very individual orchestration excited me tremendously”) . He gave a warm welcome to Rubinstein’s Opera ‘The Demon].
Here’s an aria from that work:

https://youtu.be/f5YpFidW9U0