2016 Rolling Classical Listening Thread

i looooove the way those are recorded. His mercury cd of the bach cello suites is my favorite one to listen to.

(takes notes)

btw i just posted a huge post abt shostakovich to the star wars 7 spoilers thread

jon, i have to admit, i can't fathom anyone preferring anything over rostropovich's bach cello suites, but each to his own!

i was just listening to yo-yo ma doing them. i dunno, more than one person has done good versions. starker was a beast.

one of my favorite boxed sets of all time is henri honegger doing solo bach on telefunken. but some of that is due to the recordings/vinyl that just make you fall out of your chair they sound so amazing.

Fave cello suites recordings of the ones I know

Starker (Mercury)
Queyras (harmonia mundi)
Cohen (virgin)

I wasn't crazy about the Rostropovich ones. I guess for a heavy breathing type approach I might go for maisky?

Oh and Wispelwey! (Channel Classics)

i can't connect with starker's cell suites, personally. they certainly sound nice but i guess i'm just partial to rostro's colouring

try cohen, he is playing on a historical instrument but using a pretty romantic/expressive style. But generally uptempo.

Anyway: MUST BUY ALERT FOR ALL LISZTIANS

I just got a recent Liszt recital CD on Avie Classics by the Australian pianist Olivia Sham, titled Liszt: The Art Of Remembering. This might be her first CD? IDK.

It is maybe the best Liszt recital recording I have heard of the entire digital era. Run don't walk if you like Liszt solo piano music at all. I think it's on Spotify and iTunes.

The selection of pieces is so smart and impeccable. She has all 4 of the Valses Oubliees (I have been obsessed with these pieces especially the amazing and underrecorded #3) sprinkled across a program that mixes up the grim and dissonant late pieces with a few of the earlier filigree-arabesque nocturnes, three of the Transcendental Etudes, the perkily atonal Bagatelle Sans Tonalite, and Liszt's famous transcription of the satanic finale of Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique (she has a programme for her recital sequence, actually: she wrote the liner notes herself, which are a straight faced remix of the concert notes Berlioz wrote for Symphonie Fantastique except with Berlioz' 'artist' protagonist replaced by Liszt himself. She justifies each piece on the disc with a short paragraph describing its place in the surreal berlioz-style 'story').

The pianos: she performs on two different absolutely beautiful-sounding 19th century pianos, with a few pieces played on a modern Steinway grand. Cool move - it's a playlist of pianos as well as pieces.

The playing: holy crap this pianist has the goods. The swashbuckling flurries, the swooning dreaminess, the strange sideways shifts into twinkling surrealism, the medieval tunefulness, the inconsolable depression, the Debussy-etude-anticipating modernness of the 3rd Valse Oubliee. Always with wonderful rubato even in the most daredevil pieces ('The Wild Hunt', the Berlioz finale) and none of the implacable steely sherman tankness you get from so so many modern pianists who play the difficult Liszt stuff.

I feel bad that I bought this used. I want to vote for this pianist to record more Liszt!

try cohen, he is playing on a historical instrument but using a pretty romantic/expressive style. But generally uptempo.

― major tom's cabin (Jon not Jon), Thursday, January 21, 2016 9:43 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

will do, jon. cheers for the recommendation. the uptempo thing might put me off a bit. we're all so picky, aren't we!

listened to nielsen's symphonies 4 & 5 (blomstedt/san fran) which totally put me in a shoegaze dreamstate.

then i played rossini's stabat mater (pavarotti/kertesz/london symph and chorus) which was totally AWESOME and made me want to build and/or burn a church.

now i'm playing dvorak 1st symphony. cracked open a cd box of kubelik/berlin phil doing all 9 symphonies. which will take me until closing time at the olde recorde shoppe...

from last year's discovery of Music of the Spheres, decided to check out some recent recordings of the Rued Langgaard's string quartets (Nightengale Quartet, Da Capo). Wow, these are lovely, and other than the fact they do seem awfully "retro" in places, it's hard to believe that even in the face of modernist attitudes of the day, they didn't find some kind of audience. His slow movements in particular are gorgeous, and there are passages that he uses repetition in a way that, to my ears, clearly has some kinship with minimalism. Also, his forms can be weirdly simple, in almost a pop song kind of way, so things recur at moments that seem instinctively right to my ears, where they might have seemed different to someone in 1914 or thereabouts. Highly recommended, and the recordings are beautiful to boot.

okay the kubelik box sounds bad. took it off. really mushy sound. the recordings are from 1966 to 1977, so, you know, the sound will vary. but the first disc was making me snooze.

i put on van beinum/concertgebouw doing bruckner no.7 and it sounds MUCH better. and it was recorded in 1953...(sounds more alive anyway...)

(i've been struggling with bruckner since the 90's. i keep trying though. i'm plucky like that.)

Bruckner 9 is a good entry point IMO. He didn't finish it so it's shorter! And it has the most metal of his (always fairly metal) scherzo movements.

1960s berlin philharmonic recordings always sound mushy to me. Dvorak symphonies with classic stereo sound = the Rowicki recordings with the London SO on Philips. Nice dry and colorful sound, great performances.

Or anything pre-digital on Supraphon. The Karel Sejna recording of Dvorak 5 is heaven in a bottle even though it's mono.

You know how I feel about Nielsen 4 and 5. They should be as obligatory as the rite of spring! So good.

yah, supraphon dvorak i have on vinyl is all good.

would definitely be interested in hearing NEW dvorak on cd. will keep an eye out for the london/philips ones though.

Well, Jerusalem String Quartet have an awesome disc of Dvorak quartets on Harmonia Mundi. I don't have any recommendations for recent dvorak symphonic recordings though. I'll bet the Ivan Fischer ones on Channel Classics are good, he seldom disappoints.

i have a ton of dvorak on cd that i haven't even listened to yet but most of them are late 80's/early 90's reissues of old vinyl-era recordings. so, not much new. but i must have some that are cd-era contemporary. i will dig around.

harnoncourt did some dvorak discs not long ago w/concertgebouw that were supposed to be great

found a bruckner 9 cd in back with christoph von dohnanyi/cleveland. will check that out here tomorrow. (i am really digging all the dawn of CD discs i have. so many of them sound outstanding. classical people knew what was up. i'm actually a big fan of digital classical vinyl of the prehistoric era. rock people are still trying to figure it out...)

Dohnanyi/Cleveland are underrated. In fact, you need to hear them do bruckner!

felt bad for my vinyl so i put on a pristine 1st emi u.k. pressing of beecham doing schubert symphonies nos. 3 & 5. released in 1960. recorded in 1959. sounds like a dream. so nice. and yes i realize this thread will never be a hot spot if i go on about beecham playing schubert...

yeah i will listen to that bruckner disc tomorrow when i come in. will crank it to 11.

(also found haitink doing no.9 from 1981 on disc. if i am up for it maybe i'll compare and contrast.)

beecham and boulez are my two favorite conductors

well, more fair to say those two, monteux, ansermet and bernstein are my top 5

man, bruckner's 9th....i have a really hard time following the action. i keep drifting off...

i was playing haitink's version and i gave up and put on bruno walter's version.

i feel like bruno is holding my hand more. which i appreciate.

was bruckner on laudanum when he wrote this...

possibly!

But the rest of the symphonies are easily just as shoegazy as the 9th.

Even the scherzo isn't grabbing you?

bruno is definitely holding my attention. sometimes i forget it's playing though...

so, you know, i am in and out.

half simpleton, half god. that's what mahler called him.

you really have to let go of certain expectations of the usual argument and development structure. His paragraphs are real real long and you have to be willing to wallow in the stew. It's like thunderous ambient music.

idk i sound dumb

no, that sounds about right! yeah, i think it would help if i were stoned and not on coffee. i do see the appeal. that's why i've tried for so long. bruno really got me there for a minute. closer than anyone else has.

(but now i am listening to vaughan williams for some sweet relief....)

furtwangler's bruckner will make you feel like you're on the receiving end of real dramaturgy. None of it is well recorded enough to wallow in, but that may be to the better in a weird way.

the bruno walter is from 1960 and it sounds great.

the dying bruckner would get on his knees and pray to god that he could live long enough to finish the 9th. i like how it ends though.

I'm back on opera again, Rossini specifically

rossini was the best thing i heard yesterday. not an opera though. i was gonna crack open an opera after my vaughan williams interlude. i got a zillion of them and they will remain in my store forever.

the only rossini i have really rocked is a beecham album of the overtures. But that record is awesome.

more recent recordings of bruckner do him better justice imo -- my fave single recording is herreweghe's 5th

stabat mater is intense. that was the rossini i was rockin' yesterday.

i am going with bellini and callas right now though. la sonnambula.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJobIzO4uZM

so weird to be playing rachmaninoff and start singing eric carmen songs. i forget every time!

"Carmen thought that Rachmaninoff’s music was in the “public domain” and no copyright existed on it. Subsequent to the release of the album, he was contacted by the Rachmaninoff estate and informed otherwise. An agreement was reached in which the estate would receive 12 percent of the royalties from "All By Myself" as well as from "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again", which was based on the third movement from Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2."