What are you listening to now?

[Roehre]

Today:

Mahler:
Symphony no.3 „Summer Morning Dream“: mvt 1 „Summer marches in“

Voormolen:
Een Zomerlied (A song of Summer, 1928)

Suk:
A Summer Tale op.29 (1908)

Kodaly:
Summer Evening (1906)

[Chris]

I have finished my trip through Haydn's baryton music. Listening to too much of it at once can seem repetitive, considering there are over 120 baryton trios alone, all with the same instruments (baryton, viola, cello), and only utilizing a few different keys (due to the design of the baryton and the abilities and wishes of Haydn's employer, Prince Esterhazy). But there are some real gems here. Haydn took this music seriously, and the music at times reaches the levels of his wonderful piano trios, even with the limits with which he had to work. And the baryton octets are just full of wonderful things.

This is the most recent box set in a line of excellent offerings from Brilliant Classics that I have recently experienced. I am very impressed with the level of completeness here - it is very, very complete, including even fragmentary pieces that are only 15 seconds long or so. It is great that there is a group of musicians willing to explore all this obscure music and that Brilliant Classics was willing to support it. And the playing was great, and the recording was perfect (done in Esterhazy Castle in Eisenstadt, even!) - just the way I like it, mic'd close enough to hear all the details and not bathed in reverb. Normally I do not care for period instruments in chamber music, but there really isn't such a thing as a modern baryton, so there really wasn't much choice here. But even so, it was a fantastic production, both musically and technically.

And now it is on to another large Haydn set from Brilliant Classics - the folksong arrangements. I've never heard any of them, but I absolutely love Beethoven's. We'll see how Haydn's stack up. There are 429 of them, so it will take a while The tenor on the front of the box is wearing a kilt, so I have the feeling they mean business here.

[Quijote]

And now it is on to another large Haydn set from Brilliant Classics - the folksong arrangements [...]. The tenor on the front of the box is wearing a kilt, so I have the feeling they mean business here.

A CD jacket featuring a tenor in a kilt? What marketing genius. Bound to sell millions. One should never judge a book by its cover, OK, but what about a CD? I know this is a bit off-thread, but you should all watch some regional German TV when/if you get the chance. Talk about "folkloric"!! Picture it : a hall full of Germans swaying en-masse (large beer glasses in hand) to the warblings of some bint in authentic Black Forest garb singing only-Goethe-knows-what words about love, hunting boars, procreation and so on, all to some anodyne sub-Straussian waltz theme with thinned down instrumentation. Pure, unadulterated horror. Love it.

[Quijote]

All this cod-folklore stuff has sent me scuttling back to more solid values :
I've been listening to Haydn (minus kilt) : Cello Concerto in C with Lluis Claret as soloist (decent Catalan fellow, he is). Talking of the 3rd movement, only Haydn could make so much of a C major scale !!

PS : Did you know that "claret" comes from the French "clairette" meaning light red wine / rosé?

[Quijote]

Back to Claret's performance of the Haydn concerto above : actually, to be frank, rather a "solid" performance (too strict a reading of the score, in other words ), but with very nice string crossing that unless one is careful can easily become blurred. So, a good "solid" performance, lacking a certain spontaneity that Christophe Coin and Jean-Guihen Queyras capture better.

[Preston]

I have been listening a lot to Beethoven's Piano Concerto's 1 & 2. Particularly the first movements. What technique and mastery, and structure and form, etc.! At least it seems to me like that? Everything seems to be very properly written. As far as challenging, the writing of the piano seems to be very much so.

I think Sorrano or someone said recently that people often overlook Beethoven's early period for the middle and late. It seems to me that this could be quite true, and is a serious problem?

[Sorrano]

Mostly what I meant on that is that people overlook the depth that exists among the earlier works because they are too focused on the later works. Of the first two piano concerti I can never get enough of the first.

[Preston]

Mostly what I meant on that is that people overlook the depth that exists among the earlier works because they are too focused on the later works. Of the first two piano concerti I can never get enough of the first.

Yes, I agree. The early works are full of depth. What is great art without depth?

[Michael]

I have been listening a lot to Beethoven's Piano Concerto's 1 & 2. Particularly the first movements. What technique and mastery, and structure and form, etc.! At least it seems to me like that? Everything seems to be very properly written. As far as challenging, the writing of the piano seems to be very much so.

I think Sorrano or someone said recently that people often overlook Beethoven's early period for the middle and late. It seems to me that this could be quite true, and is a serious problem?

Most people seem to start with middle-period Beethoven, then go forward to the late works and finally settle for the "lesser" earlier works. Well, that's what happened with me and it took me a while to realise that most of the earlier compositions are masterpieces in their own right. Like you, Preston, I have become fascinated by the first two piano concertos, which can so easily be overshadowed by the last three.
And, as you say, Beethoven's early writing for piano demands enormous skill. Ronald Brautigam quite candidly admitted that he has immense difficulty in playing the very early E flat concerto (written in Beethoven's early teens) and even allowed himself to be filmed while making a mess of it.
I think Basil Lam puts Beethoven's musical development most succinctly:
".... what is unique to Beethoven is the unhurried, calm progression, in so many genres, from perfect early works to not less perfect deeper ones which never invalidate or supersede their predecessors."

[Roehre]

Today:

Quilter:
New Serenade (1907)

Brian:
The Tigers: Shadow Dance (1917)

Varese/ Chou Wen-Chung
Tuning Up (1947/2009)

Arriaga,
Stabat Mater (R3: TtN)

Sibelius: (1909)
Piano pieces opus 58
Composer’s piano versions of
-Pelleas and melisande op.46 and
-Belshazzar’s Feast op.51

[Bonn1827]

Tonight listening to:

Feverish radio and television reports that our Prime Minister is about to be sacked by his party! (My son is in the thick of it in parliament house, as a political media adviser.) Beethoven to one side on this night!

[Roehre]

Today:

Sibelius:
Piano sonatinas opus 67
Rondinos opus 68

Liszt:
Zigeuner –epos S.695b (1948)
For the Album of Princess Marie zu Sayn-Wittgenstein S.166n (1847)

Mathias:
Jubilate Deo op.90/2 (1983)

[Chris]

The Haydn folksong arrangements I've been listening to are excellent. Anyone who loves the Beethoven arrangements should check these out. In fact, I think it's time for a quiz...

[Roehre]

Today:

Mendelssohn:
Fingal’s Cave (op.26)
The first version (1930) of the Hebrides-overture (1832).
Listening to this piece I am far from convinced that it is inferior to the Hebrides as we know it.
The climaxes are very different, there is other melodic material (in counterpoint as well), and the piece is more classically constructed as a sonata form than in the Hebrides.
IMO it deserves an own place in the orchestral repertoire, like the different Beethovenian Leonore-overtures, and as the different versions of Bruckner’s symphonies.


Mendelssohn:
Symphony for strings no.8 in D “Swiss” (1822)
Symphony for strings and winds in D after string symphony no.8 “Swiss” (1822/’23)
Interesting how Mendelssohn thinned the string body in especially the 1st and 4th mvts to create space for the winds. The 2nd mvt is nearly unchanged, but the trio in the scherzo (in the string symphony faster than the scherzo proper) is replaced by a completely new waltz-like trio, in which the winds have got the leading role.

Sibelius:
Lyric pieces op.74
Piano pieces op. 75 “Trees”

R3: Po3
Bridge/Britten:
There is a Willow grows aslant a Brook

John Woolrich:
A Farewell (1992)
Sestina (1997)
For me these pieces raise the question: Is Woolrich capable of composing quick, let alone fast, music?

Britten:
Gemini Variations

[Quijote]

Today:

Mendelssohn:
Fingal’s Cave (op.26)
The first version (1930) of the Hebrides-overture (1832) [...]

Was this a test of my proof-reading skills, Roehre? Or did Felix work out the time-space problem? [Add the smiling icon thingy]