What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[cloughie]

Not as much as Alkers surely ...... ?????

Probably not but a croissant less Samedi last semaine c’est non bon!

[richardfinegold]

Started a bit of listening to the Kuchar Dvorak/ DSCH/ Smetana/ Nielsen box set download.
I thought the Czech suite was outstanding, may well become a favourite recording of a favourite work.

Might give some of the Nielsen a spin later.

Is that on Naxos?

[Stanfordian]

Krassimira Stoyanova - ‘Verismo’
Verismo arias by Puccini, Cilea, Mascagni, Catalani & Giordano
Krassimira Stoyanova (soprano)
Münchner Rundfunkorchester/Pavel Baleff
Recorded 2015/16 Studio 1, Bayerischen Rundfunk, Munich
Orfeo CD

French Works for cello and piano, Vol. 1
Widor
Suite (three pieces) in E minor, Op. 21
Cello Sonata in A major, Op. 80
Vierne
Cello Sonata in B flat minor, Op. 27
Peter Bruns (cello) & Annegret Kuttner (piano)
Recorded 2007 Siemensvilla, Lankwitz, Berlin
Hänssler Classic

[Mario]

BEETHOVEN

Horn S in F Maj Op 17

BPO Wind Soloists (J Demus / G Seifert)

A delightful little work, must try and track down a copy with Dennis Brain (in memory of the peppery forum contributor Hornspieler, who has now passed on).

Mario

[Bryn]

BEETHOVEN

Horn S in F Maj Op 17

BPO Wind Soloists (J Demus / G Seifert)

A delightful little work, must try and track down a copy with Dennis Brain (in memory of the peppery forum contributor Hornspieler, who has now passed on).

Mario

With due deference to Dennis Brain, it really calls for a natural horn to get the timbres Beethoven sought, surely?

[cloughie]

With due deference to Dennis Brain, it really calls for a natural horn to get the timbres Beethoven sought, suely?

Maybe or not!

[Mario]

With due deference to Dennis Brain, it really calls for a natural horn to get the timbres Beethoven sought, surely?

Sorry, quite correct of course.

I wasn’t quite yet after a sound that LvB would’ve heard, more to listen to this genius of that instrument whose performances I’ve not yet heard.

Would you be able to recommend any natural horn performances please Bryn?

Mario

[Mario]

Maybe or not!

Aha! So, not a HIPPster cloughie?

Mario

[Bryn]

Maybe or not!

No maybe. It's surely an insult to Beethoven not to recognise his familiarity with the properties of the instrument Giovanni Punto was a virtuoso performer on. Beethoven composed the work with those properties and the player's exploitation of them in mind.

[ahinton]

With due deference to Dennis Brain, it really calls for a natural horn to get the timbres Beethoven sought, suely?

"Sought"; this is an eternal problem where HIPPsterism is concerned (and I do not use that term pejoratively). Do composers only ever imagine their work played on what were/are modern instruments available at the time of composition or do they have a more laissez-faire attitude to such things or do they write in such ways as to encourage (as a byproduct of their work) new developments in instrumental design/manufacture? All three and more, no doubt, depending on the time and the aims and desires of the individual composer but, for example, whenever I have compared performances (however good or not so good in other respects) of Chopin's Op. 10 études on modern instruments (which of course themselves vary considerably) with those on instruments of the kind that Chopin would have known and played I cannot help but wonder to what extent Chopin - consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously - was conceiving music better suited for an instrument that had yet to be designed and made and even possibly providing in his music encouragement for such redesign and development; the morphing of performances from salons to ever more capacitous venues obviously figures here to some degree in terms of instruments' projection capacities but, in the end, who can say with certainty? Perhaps the organ world is the one where conflicts of this kind are most prevalent, with many performances of Bach and composers of, not long before or not long after his day being given on instruments of which those composers could not have conceived other than in their imaginations.

It's a minefield, of course, but...

[Bryn]

. . . It's a minefield, of course, but...

But the Horn Sonata was composed in particular circumstances for a particular performer of a particular type of instrument . . .

Then there the keyboard part . . .

[Bryn]

Sorry, quite correct of course.

I wasn’t quite yet after a sound that LvB would’ve heard, more to listen to this genius of that instrument whose performances I’ve not yet heard.

Would you be able to recommend any natural horn performances please Bryn?

Mario

The Steinar Granmo Nilsen recording is rather good and has the ironic benefit of having two of the keyboard and cello sonatas (Bjorn Solum). Ironic because the Horn SOnata is all too often adapted to the cello, though not in this instance.

[Richard Barrett]

But the Horn Sonata was composed in particular circumstances for a particular performer of a particular type of instrument . . .

Some people prefer it arranged for cello, others prefer it arranged for valved horn. The composer is unavailable for comment so those "particular circumstances" are all we have to go on.

[ahinton]

But the Horn Sonata was composed in particular circumstances for a particular performer of a particular type of instrument . . .

Then there the keyboard part . . .

Quite! But, as RB rightly points out, "the composer is unavailable for comment" (rather like Mr Cameron except that he wasn't lobbying for the redesign of the horn), so who can say whether he envisaged the work ONLY for such circumstances...

[Serial_Apologist]

Listening the other day to a crackly 78rpm recording Frank Bridge conducted of one of his own works in 1923 led me to wondering what thoughts Bridge might have had about the wider public impression his music would have made disseminated through the then-latest technology. Better than nothing?