What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[Stanfordian]

‘Works for violin & piano by Dupuis, D’Indy & Bonnal’
Albert Dupuis
Violin Sonata
Vincent d'Indy
Andante, for violin & piano
Violin Sonata
Joseph-Ermend Bonnal
Après la tourmente, Romance for violin & piano
Gaëtane Prouvost (violin), Eliane Reyes (piano)
Recorded 2018, Studio de Stephen Paulello, Villethierry, France
En Phases, CD

[Bryn]

I was thinking of other works by Grieg. The Symphony was a disappointment, and there's a very dreary trio or quartet they used to play on Through the Night occasionally . Yes, Beethoven too was uneven, but I think that's because his best works are so good. I have a 35-minutes or so selection from 'Prometheus' (Eduard van Beinum) which is pleasant to hear occasionally. And 'Egmont' contains several short numbers recorded by Klemperer and Weingartner which are well-worth hearing.

More recently, there's:



Which is excellent.

[smittims]

Thanks , Bryn. I imagine John Malkovitch would do that very well. I haven't forgotten his chilling Osmond in 'The Portrait of a Lady'.

[Barbirollians]

Elgar: Violin Concerto. Alfredo Campoli, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult. LXT 5014.

The more I play this recording, the more I admire it, and it may end up being my favourite. It has a wonderful honesty and truth to it. There is a complete rapport between soloist and conductor, though I believe this was their only joint recording.

There is also an outstanding recording of the Mendelssohn is there not ?

[smittims]

Yes, thanks for reminding me. It was stereo , from 1958 (SXL 2026) coupled with the Bruch Scottish Rhapsody, as I discovered when I checked after posting! It is, I find, hazardous to clam 'first' , 'last' or 'only' in recording history!

[Stanfordian]

Ekaterina Siurina – ‘Where is my Beloved?’
Opera arias from Dvořák, Puccini, Cilea, Boito, Verdi & Tchaikovsky
Ekaterina Siurina (soprano)
Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra/Constantine Orbelian
Recorded Live 2022 Philharmonic Hall, Kaunas, Lithuania
Delos, new CD

[Dave2002]

Ligeti :Musica Ricercata

https://youtu.be/OfG8Y8qrtHs?si=2wWh_v31OexCPo1v

Really enjoying this one.

Where was the first performance and by whom?

[Mandryka]

Nelson Freire, Schumann Fantasy, Toronto 1984 - definitely a hit, a very palpable hit.

[HighlandDougie]

Ligeti :Musica Ricercata

https://youtu.be/OfG8Y8qrtHs?si=2wWh_v31OexCPo1v

Really enjoying this one.

Where was the first performance and by whom?

Although written in the early 1950s, the eleven pieces which make up 'Musica Ricercata' received their first public performance as an entity in 1969 in Sweden (according to Wikipedia). Six of them were arranged for wind quintet - Six Bagatelles - in the early 1950s. Ligeti had left Hungary in 1956, taking with him what are referred to as "bottom-drawer" manuscripts, including the eleven piano pieces. I'm not at all sure why it took so long for them to be performed as a complete cycle, given Ligeti's growing fames a composer in the 1960s - the performer was Liisa Pohjola. Perhaps Richard B might know more?

[RichardB]

Perhaps Richard B might know more?

These "formalist" pieces couldn't be performed in postwar Hungary, and when in 1957 Ligeti escaped to Germany, he felt that they were too simplistic and not "avant-garde" enough in comparison to the new music by people like Stockhausen and Boulez that he encountered there. By 1969 he'd built up a sufficient body of work and reputation in the West to provide a context for what he called "prehistoric" Ligeti, and so allowed them to be performed and published.

[pastoralguy]

Rachmaninov. Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Yuja Wang, piano. The Los Angles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. DG.

I’ve listened to this marvellous recording many times at work whilst doing chores. My iPhone does sterling work so it’s taken me this long to actually play the cd. Sounds terrific on the big Hi-Fi but I’m quite surprised that the Rhapsody only has one track as opposed to the download that has each variation banded separately. All the other recordings I have of this work have either separate tracks or at least groupings of three or four variations. Most odd.

[smittims]

I've always been puzzled by the diversity in the number of tracks on CDs. 'Job' on Everest is one track, of 44'39", but Brian's 25th symphony on Naxos, a work of 24 minutes, is divided into sixteen tracks. I suppose if they've got the technology they want to use it, but I've never wanted to play just one variation out of a set, whether it's Rachmaninov or Bach.

[Sir Velo]

Rachmaninov. Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Yuja Wang, piano. The Los Angles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. DG.

I’ve listened to this marvellous recording many times at work whilst doing chores. My iPhone does sterling work so it’s taken me this long to actually play the cd. Sounds terrific on the big Hi-Fi but I’m quite surprised that the Rhapsody only has one track as opposed to the download that has each variation banded separately. All the other recordings I have of this work have either separate tracks or at least groupings of three or four variations. Most odd.

Most odd. It's broken down into 25 separate tracks on Qobuz (ie by introduction and for each subsequent variation).

[Sir Velo]

I've always been puzzled by the diversity in the number of tracks on CDs. 'Job' on Everest is one track, of 44'39", but Brian's 25th symphony on Naxos, a work of 24 minutes, is divided into sixteen tracks. I suppose if they've got the technology they want to use it, but I've never wanted to play just one variation out of a set, whether it's Rachmaninov or Bach.

Of course, the beauty of streaming is that you can move the cursor to wherever you want to start listening with the duration clearly displayed. Handy for those occasions where listening is disrupted.

[RichardB]

I find it quite useful to have multisectional pieces divided into tracks, not because I want to listen to one variation in a series of them, but, especially in an unfamiliar composition, to have some idea of where we are in the sequence.