What are you listening to now?

[glindhot]

Lortzing: Zar und Zimmerman

Schoenberg: 6 Orchestral Songs
- my latest acquisition

[Megan]

Ralph Vaughan Williams
Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis

Orchestra: London Philharmonic Orchestra. Performer: Michael Davis. Conductor: Bryden Thomson.

[AeolianHarp]

I have to admit that I "blow hot and cold" concerning Britten. Sometimes I think "wow", other times I think "Hmm ...".
Never have that problem with Beethoven! Well, apart from 2 or 3 'lesser' works.

Beethoven has the wow factor in almost everything he wrote.

[Sorrano]

This morning:

Kabalevsky: "Colas Breugnon," Op 24

[Sorrano]

This morning:
Khachaturian: Incidental Music for Lermontov's "Masquerade" (1941) (Conducted by the composer)

[AeolianHarp]

Tchaikovsky- piano concerto No 1- I saw it played at a concert once- oooh was fabulous! T is the only one for me who gets close to the passion of B in music.

[Peter]

Dvorak symphony no.7 - how I love this work and yet at one time it used to leave me cold! How strange we are, it's as though we're different people at different times of our lives.

[AeolianHarp]

That's one I don't know- had a quick listen to the opening- sounds good. I like the New World- went to a concert of that recently.

[Peter]

That's one I don't know- had a quick listen to the opening- sounds good. I like the New World- went to a concert of that recently.

Do you know the 8th? Both the 7th and the 8th are superior to the 9th I think!

[AeolianHarp]

Do you know the 8th? Both the 7th and the 8th are superior to the 9th I think!

I have probably heard snippets on Classic FM but not familiar with them properly no.

[Enrique]

Edgar Varèse: Ionization (1931).
Beethoven: Mass in D major.

[Enrique]

I have been listening to the Mass in D major (LSO, Collin Davies) following it with the score (IMSLP, Petrucci library). What an experience, despite the fact that reading in the computer screen is so uncomfortable! How it enhances the enjoyment of listening!

Later on, Tchaikowsky's fourth symphony (NYP, L.Bernstein), with the lovely pizzicato sections in the 3rd movement (but the whole movement is wonderful) and the resounding final bars of the first one.

Yesterday I was watching the picture called Copying Beethoven, with Ed Harris, son of Richard Harris in the role of Beethoven and as a consequence I made up my mind to listen carefully to the Grosse Fuge. And so I did. Look at these words from the wikipedia article dedicated to it:

The Große Fuge was and remains widely considered one of the less immediately accessible of Beethoven's compositions (if not the most inaccessible), because of its combination of dissonance and contrapuntal complexity. It is "as incomprehensible as Chinese," wrote a critic of the first performance of the work.[11] "The attitude of mind in which most people listen to chamber music must undergo a radical change" in order to understand this piece, wrote Joseph de Marliave almost a century later.[12] Joseph de Marliave also wrote of it, "this fugue is one of the two works by Beethoven—the other being the fugue from the piano sonata, Op. 106—which should be excluded from performance." Marliave admits the fugue is "one of the greatest works of genius in existence", but that reading and studying the score "gives more pleasure than hearing". He further writes, "abandoning himself with an almost demoniacal pleasure to his mighty genius, Beethoven heaps one discordant effect upon another, and the general impression of tiresome waste cannot be dispelled by the marvel of its technical construction, nor by the perfection of detail".[13]

The Grosse Fuge and the opus 106. Two works I would like some day to be in a condition such that I could enjoy their audition.

[AeolianHarp]

The Grosse Fuge is brilliant- I also love to listen to the piano version of it.

[Enrique]

Listening to Tini Mathot and Ton Koopman, in harpsichords, play The Art of Fugue. One of the best renditions I've ever heard of this work! Judge by yourselves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tro_gaczCxw

[Megan]

Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor by Max Bruch