Music you've known about but never heard until recently

[Serial_Apologist]

Of (very) special historical interest is the mono Juilliard Cycle from 1950-52, on United Archives, which surprises the purchaser with its grooved mini-LP design on the label side and - uniquely in my experience - shiny jet black on the other!
This valuable, richly sonorous set also includes the Berg Lyric Suite and Op.3 Quartet, and Webern's Op.5 Movements.

I've only ever heard the Webern Op 6 from this set when it was broadcast on the R3 Webern day a few years ago - mono of course, but the sense of discovery in the performance is palpable and makes of every next note the immediate experience that Webern needs to be to be appreciated. The listener is made to feel right inside the music. If the remainder of the set is of this standard I would very much second jayne's recommendation.

[jayne lee wilson]

Meant to add about the orchestral music - try and dig out some of Boulez's readings on Sony for a spikier, more aggressive view.

this any good please, you experts?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Simon-Rattle-Second-Viennese-School/dp/B003TYOAAU/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1328125497&sr=1-3

And this

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schoenberg-Berg-Webern-String-Quartets/dp/B001MUJSXW/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1328125684&sr=1-2

gets great reviews.... any thoughts?

[teamsaint]

Meant to add about the orchestral music - try and dig out some of Boulez's readings on Sony for a spikier, more aggressive view.

roll on xmas.........or a pay rise !!(or can you get Schoenberg on those illegal downloads that my kids are so partial to ?!)

Some of you must have good suggestions for my "listeners Recommendations" thread .............

[Bryn]

Of (very) special historical interest is the mono Juilliard Cycle from 1950-52, on United Archives, which surprises the purchaser with its grooved mini-LP design on the label side and - uniquely in my experience - shiny jet black on the other!
This valuable, richly sonorous set also includes the Berg Lyric Suite and Op.3 Quartet, and Webern's Op.5 Movements.

More recently remastered and boxed with the 1950 Bartok recordings, etc.

http://www.europadisc.co.uk/classical/99239/Juillard_String_Quartet:_The_Celebrated_Early_Recordings.htm

Bartók: String Quartets Nos. 1-6 (complete)

Berg: Lyric Suite - for string quartet (1926), String Quartet, Op. 3

Schoenberg: String Quartets Nos. 1 - 4 (complete)

Webern: Five movements for String Quartet, Op. 5 (1909)

[Chris Newman]

More recently remastered and boxed with the 1950 Bartok recordings, etc.

http://www.europadisc.co.uk/classical/99239/Juillard_String_Quartet:_The_Celebrated_Early_Recordings.htm

Bartók: String Quartets Nos. 1-6 (complete)

Berg: Lyric Suite - for string quartet (1926), String Quartet, Op. 3

Schoenberg: String Quartets Nos. 1 - 4 (complete)

Webern: Five movements for String Quartet, Op. 5 (1909)

Some of the sellers on Amazon advertise this set for £8.31 plus postage. That is a real bargain compared with the full price of around £24.00.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Of (very) special historical interest is the mono Juilliard Cycle from 1950-52, on United Archives, which surprises the purchaser with its grooved mini-LP design on the label side and - uniquely in my experience - shiny jet black on the other!
This valuable, richly sonorous set also includes the Berg Lyric Suite and Op.3 Quartet, and Webern's Op.5 Movements.

Excellent performances (and I love the New Vienna set, too) but if you want a really "very special historical" set, there are the Kolisch Quartet recordings (performed from memory ... a point I think deserves repeating: they played the works from memory ... with the exception of the fourth whose ink was still wet on the page) on archiphon. Recorded in one unedited "take" per movement, in the presence of the Composer - who'd also supervized the rehearsals - at the United Artists Film Studios, produced by the composer Alfred Newman and with terrible sound that makes it seem as if you're eating a Ginger Nut biscuit as you listen, these performances cut through the surface noise with an intensity, commitment and radiance that their successors cannot quite match. And you get 4 mins of Arnie wheezing his asthmatic thanks and comments. This is a genuinely "historic" recording event.

[Bryn]

Some of the sellers on Amazon advertise this set for £8.31 plus postage. That is a real bargain compared with the full price of around £24.00.

A link might help. The lowest price I could find for the set on amazon.co.uk was £32.32 including p&p

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Celebrated-Recordings-Juillard-String-Quartet/dp/B005KAAB54/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1328182201&sr=1-1

[Chris Newman]

Ah, sorry, Bryn. They must have multiple entry points. I searched Amazon through the Julliard String Quartet rather than the composers and came up with different offers. I hope this one works.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B000P6RB88/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1328182464&sr=8-1&condition=new

This has taught me to search different routes on Amazon, too, before plunging in with the plastic. A useful exercise.
bws
Chris.

[Bryn]

Ah, sorry, Bryn. They must have multiple entry points. I searched Amazon through the Julliard String Quartet rather than the composers and came up with different offers. I hope this one works.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B000P6RB88/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1328182464&sr=8-1&condition=new

This has taught me to search different routes on Amazon, too, before plunging in with the plastic. A useful exercise.
bws
Chris.

Ah, but that's just the Bartoks, not the Schoenberg, Berg and Webern.

[It's also the 1963, not the 1950s mono recordings.]

[Chris Newman]

Damn! Damn!! and thrice Damn!!! I really must get my specs checked. I notice the River People have added £10 to the 6cd set this morning. Do you think they read these pages?

[ahinton]

I meant to say earlier that it was very good to see a plug for Szymanowski's marvellous Second Symphony in this thread; why it's not performed much more often that it is I have no idea. The first has recently been assembled and recorded and it's not quite the failure that its composer claimed it to be but it does tend rather to struggle under the weight of its own effortfulness and the third is, of course, far better known.

[EdgeleyRob]

Martinu symphonies (and other works) only discovered by me last year. How can I have gone 40 odd years without ever hearing this music ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Martinu symphonies (and other works) only discovered by me last year. How can I have gone 40 odd years without ever hearing this music ?

I had heard this Music frequently in the preceeding 30-odd years without being moved in the slightest by it, Rob. Then, a couple of years ago, Belohlavek's BBCSO performances wiped the scales from my ears: glorious, radiantly dancing Music.

[EdgeleyRob]

I had heard this Music frequently in the preceeding 30-odd years without being moved in the slightest by it, Rob. Then, a couple of years ago, Belohlavek's BBCSO performances wiped the scales from my ears: glorious, radiantly dancing Music.

[jayne lee wilson]

I feel that Bryden Thomson never got the credit from British critics and listeners for his Martinu cycle, possibly due to carping early Gramophone reviews - they seem not to have returned to it when issued as a budget remaster, which release has a crystalline clarity and sheer beauty of tone, allied to a walloping dynamic range putting it among Chandos' finest engineering. It is more immediate than others from that label. Musically it's well-nigh flawless.
"Not worthy, not worthy!" (with suitable gesture).

I guess Behlolavek's set has remade the cycle for a new generation, it's certainly warmer and more varied in mood than many. But it doesn't always punch home the big moments in the 4th and 5th symphonies when it should - Martinu loves to create an opulent orchestral explosion as much as Ravel ever did! Thomson or Neumann (best thing he ever did - sounding much better on the Japanese Mastersonic issue) really do go the whole hog here!

Among separates, Ancerl in 5 and 6 is essential, and Munch's 1956 Boston SO 6th is simply one of the unsurpassable classics of the gramophone!