Originally posted by Joseph K
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A beautiful work indeed. -
Isn't it just! - although quite a challenge for the pianist! That said, it appears that Brahms did not know how to write a chamber work at much less than his best although, if anything, the three string quartets, fine as they are, don't seem quite to come up to the exalted level of all of the others.Originally posted by Joseph K View PostComment
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And that is the performance....Originally posted by Joseph K View Post
Do you know the Gaia Scienza's Schumann album, in the bright yellow corrugated cover, of OP 44/56?
If anything even more wonderful....
I guess I better add caveat emptor....
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Blimey George - you are a brave man, Stan! I couldn't listen to Brahms, Strauss, Ravel and Stravinsky together in the same session. Too much of an aesthetic mismatch!Originally posted by Stanfordian View PostComment
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Fauré - Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15
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Messiaen (reconsructed* Muraro): Fauvettes de l'Hérault - Concert des garrigues (Roger Muraro, piano).
* as in 'constructed from sketches left unfinished by Messiaen'.
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Well, Brahms, Strauss, Ravel and Stravinsky is part of the album's programme. It's all parlour/salon music sung by Magdalena Kožená with hubby Sir Simon making his recording debut on the piano.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View Post
Certainly the Weinberg CD makes a contrast.Comment
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Bruckner: Symphony No. 9
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra / Manfred Honeck
What a wonderful partnership this is! I've been singing the praises of their Eroica recording recently and now they come up with this magnificent Bruckner. I listened on headphones to the (16/44) Qobuz stream via Audirvana, which sounded magnificent, and now can't wait to hear the high-res download when I get it (can it really be 24/192?).
This is a wondrous performance and recording which vies with Abbado's Lucerne offerings.Comment
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Not a popular composer around here but I was listening to David Matthews's 9th Symphony recently and consulting the online perusal score and it struck me how much more "conservative" it is than the first works I heard by him (the CD with The Music of Dawn/Concerto in Azzurro/A Vision and A Journey). This seems to be something that applies to most of his recent work, I've listened to the latest volumes of his string quartets and the impression holds up.
I'm not even sure if "conservative" is the right word but the earlier works I'm thinking of have an orchestration and use of harmony and timbre that is highly reminiscent of e.g. Ravel or Scriabin, very Late Romantic, and a tendency for continuous single movement forms and so on, whereas the recent symphony has the texture and orchestration of a Brahms symphony and is not much harmonically different either, a return to functional tonality (including key signatures) and "sonata form" etc. It's not strictly a pastiche because it doesn't sound precisely like Brahms (just as A Vision and A Journey doesn't sound precisely like Scriabin) but in terms of which stylistic mainstream it evokes, it seems like a step backwards from the 1910s to the 1880s. I have no idea how intentional this is, but it's very disconcerting to listen to in a way that his music of the 70s/80s/90s isn't (to the extent that I know it, again).
edit: On reflection, I think part of why it "doesn't work" for me is because despite his self proclaimed attempt to revive traditional tonality Matthews doesn't really have a good instinctual sense of tonality, of what chords can resolve to what, what kind of voice leading makes aural sense etc. For example the final cadences of the 9th Symphony are C/G - Em/G - Ebm9/G - C followed by Db/F - C/Eb - Bbm7/Db - Bbø7/F - Cø7/Bb - Bbm7/Ab - C. The chords sound arbitrary, the bass line (especially the final F-Bb-Ab-C) and treble (Db-Eb-F-E) even more so. I realised this while listening to another British symphony composer, Edmund Rubbra, who does have a good instinctual sense of tonality and harmonic voice leading, and whose music is just as harmonically/timbrally conservative as Matthews's but sounds much more "inevitable" and less anachronistic.
Almost no contemporary composers cultivate a sense of functional tonality because it's not really needed anymore: most concert music has moved beyond it, film and popular music use the chords of functional tonality in a nonfunctional way (for example even in a highly unadventurous pop song that uses only I, V and IV chords, there is absolutely no pressure for a V to resolve to a I and the song can end on any of the three chords it desires). A lot of the composers who write "tonal" music these days are writing it without functional harmony, so "consonant" music is usually a better term (e.g. Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, David Lang etc). So I don't necessarily fault Matthews for not having that sense, except in that he's then trying to "revive functional tonality" somehow.Last edited by kea; 26-08-19, 08:50.Comment
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Gustav Holst
A Fugal Overture, Op.40
A Somerset Rhapsody, Op.21
Beni mora, Op.29
Hammersmith, Op.52
Scherzo; Japanese Suite, Op.33
LPO, Sir Adrian Boult
Ernest J Moeran
Cello Concerto
Cello Sonata in A minor*
Prelude for Cello & Piaano*
Piers Coetmore(Cello)
Eric Parkin(Piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Adrian Boult
Sir Malcolm Williamson
Organ Concerto
Piano Concerto No.3
Sonata for two Pianos*
Composer(organ and piano)
*Richard Rodney Bennett(Piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Adrian BoultDon’t cry for me
I go where music was born
J S Bach 1685-1750Comment
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Oh Lyrita, you sound sweeter, you sound well, well, well.Originally posted by BBMmk2 View PostComment
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Ravel: Complete piano and orchestral works
Samson François, André Cluytens
(Daphnis and Chloe still to come; reputedly Cluytens' finest recording.)
Interesting to hear a different (earlier) take on Ravel than the recordings I'm more familiar with.Comment
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John Ireland - Cello sonata. Lowri Blake and Caroline Palmer.
It's on an old cassette - one of a collection that I'm digitising at the moment. It was recorded from R3, think in the early '80s. It's the best performance of this work - by a long way - which I've ever heard: somehow they manage to capture the dark, gritty energy of the piece without sacrificing the melancholy reflectiveness. Blake's passionate eloquence is matched by Palmer's poetic mastery of the (very challenging) piano part. Very sad that - as far as I know - they never recorded this work (which in my opinion is Ireland's masterpiece.)
(I suppose that the recording could still be sitting in the archives, and at some point it might get re-broadcast, or even issued on a CD. Yes, unlikely, I know. Watch out for it, anyway.)Last edited by peterthekeys; 26-08-19, 14:23.Comment
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Messiaen, Vingt regards... in a live recording from 1976 (but released only a couple of years ago) by Jean-Rodolphe Kars, who was an unfamiliar name to me. There's a bit of coughing here and there but the recording is pretty good and the performance is (I use the word in its true sense) awesome. Anyone who's interested in this music should give it a listen.Comment
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