What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[Stanfordian]

'Edition Günter Wand' – Schumann & Mozart
Schumann
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
Mozart
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K550
Gerhard Oppitz (piano)
NDR Sinfonieorchester / Günter Wand
Recorded Live, 1983 (Schumann) & 1990 (Mozart), Musikhalle, Hamburg
Profil, Edition Günter Hänssler, CD

Francois Couperin
'Exultent superin' – 'Motets Choisis'
Collegium Novum:
Jonty Ward (dessus); Inigo Jones (dessus); Guy Cutting (haute-contre); Nick Pritchard (basse-taille);
George Coltart (basse); Tom Edwards (basse); Duncan Saunderson (basse)
Choir of New College Oxford / Edward Higginbottom (organ)
Recorded 2011, St. Michael and All Angels Church, Summertown, Oxford, England
Novum, CD

[gradus]

Mostly Debussy preludes on his own Bluthner played by Anthony Tobin culminating in a really splendid Feux d'Artifice. Sounds very different to a modern Steinway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LZZ81sUu7k

[french frank]

"Unashamedly romantic" covers everything I've heard by Korngold! I was seriously put off at one point by his violin concerto which I heard in a concert a couple of years ago and which gave me the impression of acres of forgettable note-spinning, but I'm finding that his chamber music is perhaps a different matter.

Thank you. I didn't know the chamber music at all (which would be my favourite genre).

[Mandryka]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoKxVaVYKKs&ab_channel=Jean-RodolpheKars-Topic

Jean-Rodolphe Kars playing La Cathédrale Englutie. In Jean Barraqué's book on Debussy he says: A very young piano player, Jean-Rodolphe Kars, has just reinvented this music which has been played over and over again by other pianists in the past. He proposes a new version which is so rich in effects, colours and accents -- it's an interpretation which is both personal and insightful -- that it's tempting to put at at the top of the pile. (My (very bad probably) translation.)

[Joseph K]

Carter - Clarinet Concerto

I'm enjoying this a lot.

[smittims]

Schubert. Symphony no.9 (well, it used to be, after it was no.7) in C. The Berlin Philharmonic/ Furtwangler, a Berlin concert from 1952 in the Titania Palast. Magnificent in every way.

[RichardB]

Now playing: a recent (December 2022) release on Brilliant Classics of chamber music by Salvatore Sciarrino (1947-), quite unusual repertoire for this label, but an inexpensive place to begin for anyone who doesn't know the work of this prolific and fascinating composer. As usual with Sciarrino, each piece focuses obsessively on a few sounds, mostly strange and unexpected timbres, often rather ghostly in quality, a musical world he has made completely his own. Don't take too much notice of the liner notes though, they're awkwardly translated (I wouldn't be surprised if Google Translate was used) from a typically flowery Italian original which expends large amounts of pretentious verbiage on saying virtually nothing. The music doesn't need explaining, just attentive listening.

[Stanfordian]

Richard Strauss – Staatskapelle Dresden – Otmar Suitner
Orchestral suite Der Bürger als Edelmann, Op. 60
Salome's Dance from Salome,
Waltz sequence from act 3 of Der Rosenkavalier
Symphonic interludes from Intermezzo
Prelude to Act 3 of Arabella
Interlude ‘Moonshine music’ from Capriccio
Staatskapelle Dresden / Otmar Suitner
Recorded 1963 Rundfunk der DDR, Dresden
Edition Staatskapelle Dresden vol. 36
Profil, CD

Rossini
‘Messa di Gloria’
Eleonora Buratto (soprano), Teresa Iervolino (mezzo-soprano),
Lawrence Brownlee (tenor), Michael Spyres (tenor), Carlo Lepore (bass)
Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia / Antonio Pappano
Recorded 2022 live/studio, Auditorium Parco della musica, Rome
Warner Classics, CD

[Mandryka]

Now playing: a recent (December 2022) release on Brilliant Classics of chamber music by Salvatore Sciarrino (1947-), quite unusual repertoire for this label, but an inexpensive place to begin for anyone who doesn't know the work of this prolific and fascinating composer. As usual with Sciarrino, each piece focuses obsessively on a few sounds, mostly strange and unexpected timbres, often rather ghostly in quality, a musical world he has made completely his own. Don't take too much notice of the liner notes though, they're awkwardly translated (I wouldn't be surprised if Google Translate was used) from a typically flowery Italian original which expends large amounts of pretentious verbiage on saying virtually nothing. The music doesn't need explaining, just attentive listening.

I like his stuff but there's a big but. In the chamber music esp. I find the gestures and sounds, though wonderful, become a bit too predictable. Like ...OK, cue a silence...now cue the cricket-like string riff...OK, now another silence...now cue the skittering woodwind key clicks..."Love Vanitas though, And Il suono e il tacere -- despite the predictability of the latter.

Someone once said to me the piano music's good, but I've never managed to get into it for some reason.

[RichardB]

the gestures and sounds ... become a bit too predictable

It's a music that depends on repetition and subtle variation, often between pieces as well as within them. The piece I found most engaging on his CD was Vagabond blu for solo accordion, which does some beautiful and mysterious things with the instrument that I'd never heard before. I actually love the way he keeps coming back to the same materials and seeking out new ways to combine and interrelate them. I don't find myself being particularly concerned about how "predictable" the results are. What I'm not so keen on is the way he sometimes makes direct references to other music, like the pseudo-Renaissance interludes in Luci mie traditrici or the fragments of Mendelssohn's violin concerto in Allegoria della Notte.

[Mandryka]

It's a music that depends on repetition and subtle variation, often between pieces as well as within them. The piece I found most engaging on his CD was Vagabond blu for solo accordion, which does some beautiful and mysterious things with the instrument that I'd never heard before.

Vagabond blu is cool, I agree. And I especially like it when it’s taken slowly like on that recording. There’s a haunting quiet and calm version, on a CD by Mikko Luoma.

What I'm not so keen on is the way he sometimes makes direct references to other music, like the pseudo-Renaissance interludes in Luci mie traditrici or the fragments of Mendelssohn's violin concerto in Allegoria della Notte.

Yes I remember you don’t like that stuff from a comment here about Schnittke. I can handle it sometimes -like in Schnittke Symphony 2, and the tango in Schnittke’s Faust cantata.

[Stanfordian]

Quintette Aquilon – ‘Bohemian wind quintets’
Foerster
Wind quintet in D major, Op. 95
Haas
Wind quintet, Op. 10
Pauer
Wind quintet
Feld
Wind quintet No. 2
Quintette Aquilon
Recorded 2009 Siemensvilla, Berlin
Crystal Classical, CD

Massenet – ‘Amoureuse’
Sacred and profane arias from Sainte Therese Prie, Amoureuse, La Grande Tante, Marie
Magdeleine, Eve, La Vierge, Hérodiade, Le Cid, Sappho, Grisélidis, Chérubin, Ariane
Rosamund Illing (soprano),
Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, Richard Bonynge
Recorded 1998 Eugene Goossens Hall, ABC Sydney, Australia
Melba Recordings, reissued 2006 remastered SACD

[richardfinegold]

Richard Strauss – Staatskapelle Dresden – Otmar Suitner
Orchestral suite Der Bürger als Edelmann, Op. 60
Salome's Dance from Salome,
Waltz sequence from act 3 of Der Rosenkavalier
Symphonic interludes from Intermezzo
Prelude to Act 3 of Arabella
Interlude ‘Moonshine music’ from Capriccio
Staatskapelle Dresden / Otmar Suitner
Recorded 1963 Rundfunk der DDR, Dresden
Edition Staatskapelle Dresden vol. 36
Profil, CD

Rossini
‘Messa di Gloria’
Eleonora Buratto (soprano), Teresa Iervolino (mezzo-soprano),
Lawrence Brownlee (tenor), Michael Spyres (tenor), Carlo Lepore (bass)
Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia / Antonio Pappano
Recorded 2022 live/studio, Auditorium Parco della musica, Rome
Warner Classics, CD

I’ve always liked every Suitner disc that I encountered, which isn’t very many. Did he make his career behind the Iron Curtain?

[smittims]

His Tchaikovsky Serenade (also from Dresden) on DG was a favourite of Rob Cowan, and mine too.

[Stanfordian]

‘Romantique’ – Elīna Garanča
Opera arias from Donizetti, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Gounod, Vacci, Berlioz & Lalo
Elīna Garanča (mezzo-soprano)
Filarmonica del Teatro Comunale di Bologna / YvesAbel
Recorded 2012 Salone Bolognini, Bologna
Deutsche Grammophon, CD

Shostakovich
Cello Concertos No’s 1 & 2
Gautier Capuçon (cello)
Mariinsky Orchestra / Valery Gergiev
Recorded 2013 Salle Pleyel, Paris (No. 1)
& 2014 Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg
Erato, CD