2019 Listening projects

[teamsaint]

Anybody got any lined up ?
I’m trying to work my way through the huge Karajan box, by pulling out 10 at a time. And I thought I might apply the same criteria to a more structured assault on the Avant Garde Project. Plus of course, the various unfinished boxes of yesteryear !

I was going to have a serious crack at York Bowen in 2017 (?) but that never materialised.
And the big Verdi opera box seems unlikely to get the full attention that it deserves in the near future.

[pastoralguy]

I was thinking about tackling Leslie Howard's Liszt survey on Hyperion. I'm not sure how easy it'll be to buy individual discs although Hyperion often have them for sale in their 'please buy me...' Section.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Verdi was one of my own "projects" for this year - I'll eventually start a Thread on the "Composers" Board.

Next year - Fauré chamber Music; Shostakovich S4tets; Operas by Schreker, Schmidt, & Korngold. All works I've known very superficially for some time, always meaning to put some time aside to get to know them properly. 2019 is it!

[teamsaint]

Verdi was one of my own "projects" for this year - I'll eventually start a Thread on the "Composers" Board.

Next year - Fauré chamber Music; Shostakovich S4tets; Operas by Schreker, Schmidt, & Korngold. All works I've known very superficially for some time, always meaning to put some time aside to get to know them properly. 2019 is it!

As you may have guessed, this thread was , in part, my oh -so - subtle way of asking you how the Verdi went/ didn’t went.

[jayne lee wilson]

Deep into the Profil set Richter Plays Schubert Live in Moscow, (10 discs! I nearly fainted...), so could move onto the Beethoven set of similar provenance, but not yet - it would only confuse me to get it now & I wouldn't know what to play next....(hearted on Qobuz for dipping...)

Otherwise I follow the wind - New Releases on Qobuz/Gramophone, my own whims, associations and forum-comments from others....

[Lat-Literal]

Try to attend the Judy Collins concert for which I have a ticket.

Finally get to my first opera. I've been into Ronnie Scott's once - in the 1980s - and am wondering if I want to have a second experience. Van Morrison again before he is too old. Salif Keita if there is to be a final tour. Personal circumstances and commitments for the foreseeable future are likely to be a barrier to any future festivals. Womad is the biggest loss - it must be almost a decade now - and I have never been to a folk festival such as Cambridge although only appealing vintage performers would provide a draw. There are people who I have never seen live and would have liked to though it now seems increasingly unlikely - Tom Waits, Randy Newman, Colin Blunstone, June Tabor, Yasmin Levy, among them.

There are others who I would be intrigued to see again so many years on from the last time - Bob Dylan, Manu Chao, Mick Jones etc. There must be quite a few more and across the widest of genres. Not sure if there will ever be an 11th Glastonbury. I'm very keen to attend a live performance of Faure's Requiem and Copland's 3rd Symphony along with Old American Songs. Also, Ramirez's Misa Criolla but that seems almost unachievable. Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto. Perhaps Rodrigo's Aranjuez. A brass band. Probably Grimethorpe.

At home, I'm reviewing choral music and to some extent piano concertos which are regarded as the best of all time. I do have big issues here, ie with the Des Prezs and the Bachs and the Beethovens and the Mozarts (and the Shostakovichs and the Prokofievs). While open minded, I do not necessarily always take to them readily. Probably in all music including classical music I am very much 20th Century Man and while that doesn't represent a dilemma in other areas apart from disappointment with much that is new, I wrestle with the notion that there is absolute validity in my classical music interests if earlier giants are not embraced wholeheartedly. It almost feels I need advice or reassurance from forum members here.

I'm still not satisfied where I am on jazz and I find this frustrating. It is the only musical area in which I feel like a dimwit although I do know a reasonable amount about it. Other areas. I could if selecting the right topic talk with certainty until the cows come home but with jazz I just feel that I dabble on the ring roads rather than being in the town. There is a sense that with the best of it I was just too young and really needed to be there. This is not an issue elsewhere. I have approached it in a number of ways. Very early jazz. 1960s etc avant-garde. Certainly latin and global crossover where it comes more easily though definitely not in a Gilles Peterson dance way. Things that seem more authentic. I'm thinking of going back in with a jazz ballad perspective which so far I have resisted for being a bit trite. That 1940s thing. I may well have a look again at links to R3 programmes about specific artists.

In general terms, I feel that 2018 was one of the stronger music years of the 21st Century but finding the gems among the dross takes huge amounts of effort. I'm also conscious of the fact that there are few people in the popular fields especially who really impress me and I don't like that situation at all. I can put it down to my age. I can say that at my time in life there are unlikely to be too many deities on a personal level but what I know deep down is that it was never about the people per se or their ages although that was a part of it in some ways. It was about their music. The originality. The ability to move emotionally. Proficiency in genre which one can find in identifiable niches in the modern age is not enough to cut it.

I am currently re-orientating in terms of radio. Trying to maximise listening by updating what I like and knowing where it is but all this cross-platforming and placing the unexpected on various stations just drives me up the wall. Whoever thinks that they are making it all more accessible. Wrong. So very wrong. It is just such hard work in following it all. Plus the constant obsessions with news and trailers and commercials as a compulsory part of the mix. It puts me off. I try. I go to it. Then I leave it until I can try again. Which can take months.

[Petrushka]

Ear problems plagued much of my listening throughout most of 2018 (eustachian tube issues coming and going) so I've an awful lot to catch up on and hope for better things in 2019.

First up is the big Szell box, followed by the Boskovsky box with some classic chamber music recordings to get me started on a genre I've never really found the time to get to grips with. Retirement awaits at the end of next year so my focus will be on that!

[cloughie]

Maybe for me it will be to try to listen to all the CDs that are on my shelves yet to be given a listen, and even try to do this before adding to them. Big boxes, smaller boxes and so many individual cds and twofers inc a number of Australian Eloquence - what a great label that has turned out to be!

[Richard Barrett]

I'm a bit like Jayne in following wherever the music leads (which for me makes a nice change from what I do the rest of the time!) although I think it's time for me to make a more thorough investigation of Mendelssohn's chamber music. That won't take very long though. There's so much other music I feel I should know better, or that I feel I should revisit and reconsider, and of course there's new music being written all the time as well...

[richardfinegold]

I'd like to investigate more Alkan

[Joseph K]

Finish my Columbia Boulez box which for some reason I stopped roughly half way through earlier this year. Try and listen to more of my neglected CD collection rather than re-listening to familiar jazz-fusion records/performances often via youtube.

[MickyD]

I should go through the complete Scarlatti sonatas by Belder again - I acquired the box for peanuts some years ago and have only listened to it once. Ditto the complete Haydn Baryton trios.

[Jonathan]

I'd like to investigate more Alkan

Good choice - start with Marc-Andre Hamelin on Hyperion but for the complete Op.39 Etudes, Jack Gibbons, Vincenzo Maltempo or Stephanie MaCallum. Generally, the old Marco Polo discs are ok but I find the sound a little thin nowadays compared to more recent recordings. Mark Viner's Op.35 set are amazing!

As for me, I'm considering Carlo Grante's Godowsky Edition (I have some of it already and am looking into the remainder) and Sgambati Piano Music with Francesco Caramiello - I have only one of the 7 CDs and the remainder are on Spotify...