john cage's 'in a landscape'

The solo and orchestral versions of Heures Persanes both urgent and key. I don't think Henck's disc of the piano version on wergo is obtainable anymore; the one on chandos (stott) got a bad review from Fanfare's koechlin maven Adrian Corleonis. Van Raat on Naxos maybe? Idk if Korstick has recorded it in his series of koechlin piano yet.

Since getting into this thing I have really wanted to read the namesake literary work in English but it does not seem to have been translated.

so i listened to the koechlin but i need to play that a couple more times

there is a tradition of french orientalism going through debussy's gamelan love, satie, messiaen's vedic fetishim, boulez etc and 90% of this stuff i love

re gaspard -- that is such a sinisterpiece of music that the less unhomely qualities of that movement are overlooked -- i don't share jon's extrensive knowledge of recordings but argerich's version of it is sublime

D'oh, it's that Chandos disc of 'Les Heures Persanes' I happen to have making its way to my mailbox currently. :) Thanks Jon, and others, for past wordage on Koechlin by the way; has been impressive so far.

I haven't heard the chandos disc-- it's just one reviewers opinion and stott is a fine pianist.

Koechlin was a very very interesting dude who venn'd across several eras much like R Strauss did. There is a biography of him by robert orledge which seems to only exist in a few libraries and not at all on ebook. I would love to read it.

there is a tradition of french orientalism going through debussy's gamelan love, satie, messiaen's vedic fetishim, boulez etc and 90% of this stuff i love

Me too, I have such a weakness for that stuff. I know it's somewhat indefensible from a political standpoint. I swear I'm a good person in every other way.

See also szymanowski and a surprisingly large percentage of holsts oeuvre.

how do you feel about this, is it ever acceptable to ignore the bpm notation? this is more of a 'thing' in late romantic music -- conductors playing the mahler symhony 5 adagietto at feldman-like tempi and so forth

with someone like cage it feels like the license is perhaps more tolerable? henck was personally acquainted with him too

I wasn't really saying that it's unacceptable (although I'm not sold on it in this case) as much as that its pacing is actually fairly different from the Ravel piece imo. On the whole, though, I personally tend not to favour these sorts of liberties outside of cases where it is part of an interpretive tradition or where the composer has actually endorsed it, although "acceptable" isn't the word I'd use.

The ultra-slow Liszt trend that started afaict in emulation of Richter's glacial Schubert interpretations drives me crazy. I'm not even sure I liked it when Richter did it.

terry jennings

john tilbury's take on terry jennings' pieces, on Lost Daylight, is sublime. def in this vein, some of the finest piano music out there.

thank you, they are wonderful

jennings' biographical information on the internet is fairly scant, apparently he played cage's sonata and interludes as a 13 yr old, studied at ucla and was an acolyte of lamonte young before seemingly falling on hard times and dying at 41 in 'altercation following a drug deal'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS6TJuZxa3U

this is the most entrancing bit of pseudo eastern chicanery in les heures persanes

and i am still entranced, though the rest of it while fine is not quite the same

the henck recording has gone but usefully someone has uploaded the raat version (the one i have been playing)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1sRuRaLSHs

the last half of it

koechlin's unique harmonic language is what sets his best music apart from mere fin du siecle fetishizing (unlike say ibert) but his work would maybe have benefited from more formal rigor/less peripateticism

although tbh i find koechlin in orientalist mode much more compelling than debussy in similar moments

this implausibly dinks its way into the same eternal field we find 'in a landscape' floating around in imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1Ob7jTzzEI

tick.jpg

looking forward to music for amplified toy pianos.flac now

am i right in recollecting that you have an academic interest in cage?

correct

purely academic tho

although tbh i find koechlin in orientalist mode much more compelling than debussy in similar moments

Koechlin is a superb exoticist and did it more times, at greater length and to greater alien extent but cmon man, "et la lune descend...""la terrasse des audiences..." and "cloches a travers..." are all time pillars of the project!!!

those are certainly unfuckwithable