Ferneyhough

[Joseph K]

Can you offer a link, for those of us not on facebook, please?

https://www.facebook.com/RoyalBirmCons/

[Richard Barrett]

OK you cats, PM me for a link. (I'm travelling at the moment so it isn't likely to be ready until late this evening.)

Or perhaps tomorrow! when I've dug out the hard drive I hope it's lurking in.

[Bryn]

https://www.facebook.com/RoyalBirmCons/

Many thanks. Audio duly recorded for future listening. No such luck with the video as yet though.

[Joseph K]

Marie-Christine Zupancic explores Brian Ferneyhough's 'Cassandra's Dream Song'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUr_b4H8YKc&feature=share

[Joseph K]

This was uploaded a few hours ago:

[Joseph K]

Yesterday I listened to the first disk of Ferneyhough's opera Shadowtime, and today I'm listening to the second disk.

Contrary to what I've heard from some people, I actually think this is one of his more accessible/less inaccessible pieces - and I think this not only because it happens to be possibly my favourite work of his, but also the libretto, which IMO is a fine one, and the fact that much of the work is broken into small sections. I also very much like the singing on the one recording there is of it.

The harmonies here are incredible, deeply expressive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkmpdZTjb_8

I really like this, which features canon and heterophony:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSJIw98uG6Q

And this one - a passacaglia - features an uncharacteristic amount of repetition and is beautiful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfcUCrAylQU

[Mandryka]

What do you guys make of this?

[Joseph K]

IIRC that's the piece dedicated to Ferneyhough's cat or something?

It's ok.

edit: this piece came on after that one, and what a fine thing it's turning out to be -

[Mandryka]

For me, the "breakthrough piece" in which the full potential of this astonishing composer was first revealed. At the very least, it is the first significant work in the medium by a composer coming from the post-War "modernist" traditions - Maxwell Davies and Boulez notwithstanding - and opened new expressive possibilties for the String Quartet, possibilities followed up by subsequent works both by Ferneyhough himself and by later composers.

The work has been recorded twice; first by the Berne Quartet on RCA back in the early '80s and by the Ardittis a decade or so later. The Ardittis performance is the more accurate and they realize Ferneyhough's astonishing spectra of timbral and rhythmic subtleties with breathtaking fidelity, but the Berne performance has an "edge-of-seat" excitement of its own as the players slalom down the Cresta Run of the notes. The broadcast this Saturday is given by the Diotima Quartet, the French ensemble who have taken up the mantle of the Ardittis both in their programming, and in their totally Musical performances of "complex" modern scores. They have their own way with this Music: generally "warmer", more "lyrical" (wrong words, suggesting a lack of warmth and lyricism from the Arditti performances, which ain't the case!) and they were recorded at February's magnificent "Total Immersion" weekend.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01755p2

Can anyone share the Berne and Diotima Quartet recordings with me?

[Mandryka]

Enjoying the Missa Brevis, which seems to me to be unbuttoned in a sort of 1960s way - like the Ligeti Requiem, the Sciarrino madrigals and Barraqué’s Le Temps Resitué - but better!

[Joseph K]

Enjoying the Missa Brevis, which seems to me to be unbuttoned in a sort of 1960s way - like the Ligeti Requiem, the Sciarrino madrigals and Barraqué’s Le Temps Resitué - but better!

I'm giving it a proper listen - since, I admit, this has tended to be the one work I skip on the CD in question!

Rather grand, isn't it? Very striking.

[ahinton]

IIRC that's the piece dedicated to Ferneyhough's cat or something?

Yes.

[Mandryka]

I'm giving it a proper listen - since, I admit, this has tended to be the one work I skip on the CD in question!

Rather grand, isn't it? Very striking.

Yes I've gone back to it a lot this week. Love it in fact.

[Mandryka]

What exactly is Carceri d'invenzione? I can find three of them but somehow I suspect there are rather more. Is the whole cycle unavailable to hear?

[Mandryka]

Yes.

Do we know the name of said pussycat? It would make a good quiz question.