What are you listening to now?

[AeolianHarp]

Just finished Ormandy conducting Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. Now listening to Choral Fantasy.

EDIT: finished Beethoven Mass In C (Rilling).

Now I am listening to my new Messiah set:


This is a very wonderful Messiah and likely will be my favorite right alongside of my Dublin Messiah.

Gorgeous listening Harvey!

[AeolianHarp]

Beethoven Op.131 - the work Schubert requested to listen to on his death bed, no wonder as it isn't of this world.

It is something else!

[Harvey]

Here are sound clips from the Morten Topp Messiah I posted above. I have to listen to that Op 131 tonight. Have to run for now am in a class and it is half mile from hotel and resumes in 18 minutes!

[Chris]

More Cascade Beethoven Premium Edition today, and now I've gotten to the reason I bought this set. The Cascade Complete Beethoven set had some small pieces that I did not have in my collection, and it didn't seem worth buying the entire thing for those little scraps, but luckily I found this "Premium Edition" that seems to contain 40 discs from the complete set, including the disc that contains the pieces I did not have, and the whole thing only cost about what one normal CD would cost. So the question was, was it worth it for these few little pieces?

I think so. I was a bit worried considering the variable quality of the symphonies, concertos, and sonatas, but the recordings on these discs seem quite good. The playing and singing is good (though the English isn't perfect), and the recording quality is good. The voices are clear and close-mic'ed, and not awash in reverb. I suppose these were made just for this complete Beethoven project. The pieces on the two discs I listened to today are:

Hess 107, 133, 134, 210, 228, 230, 231
WoO 95
WoO 91 Nos. 1, 3a, 3c, 4b, 5b, 6, 7a, 9, 10a, 10b, 11
WoO 127
WoO 131 - This is Beethoven's setting of Erlkonig, and I am not aware of any other commercial recordings of this piece. I had never heard it before, and I quite liked it.
Welsh Songs WoO 155 Nos. 19, 20, 22, 23, 24
Scottish Songs WoO 156 Nos. 1-6, 8, 12
WoO 166, 170, 176, 189, 193, 194, 199, 201-205 - These little bits above 200 were new to me. Nothing amazing here, but it was nice to hear these little musical greetings from Beethoven. If my name were Tobias, I might set one of these as my computer's start-up sound!

Irish Songs WoO 152 Nos. 3, 4, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 18, 22, 25
Irish Songs WoO 153 Nos. 2, 3, 6, 12, 13, 14, 18
Miscellaneous Folk Songs WoO 157 Nos. 5-8, 11

This seems like a lot of music, but a lot of these pieces are well under a minute long.

Aside from the little pieces I did not have in my collection before, I enjoyed listening to the versions of the folk songs recorded here. I think DGG's set was better, with more consistent English and more verses included, but the ones here are nice alternate versions to have.

[AeolianHarp]

You certainly have been doing a lot of listening there Chris!

[Peter]

Op.135 - it's incredible that the more you listen to these late quartets the more they reveal - so much to discover. This last F major quartet is exquisite and I like the Alexander quartet's performance which doesn't make the trio sound completely mad as it so easily can!

[Sorrano]

This morning:
Still: Five Preludes (1962), #3
Khachaturian: "Gayaneh", Four Dances

[Megan]

Hildegard von Bingen - Voice of the Living Light


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

[Chris]

On with the Cascade Beethoven:

Irish Songs WoO 154 Nos. 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12
Welsh Songs WoO 155 Nos. 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18

Mass in C
Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (This one wasn't listed on the CD sleeve, so it was a surprise to hear it!)

Missa Solemnis

The folk song recordings were good, as on the previous discs. The mass and cantata recordings were also pretty good, I thought.

[Rocco]

Just finished the Choral Fantasy in C minor.

[AeolianHarp]

His piano concerto no 4 just been on his radio. Now it's his violin concerto.

[hal9000]

Beethoven Op.131 - the work Schubert requested to listen to on his death bed, no wonder as it isn't of this world.

I always felt the quartet balanced on the edge between the corporeal and the ethereal. The first movement is, for me, the most unearthly piece of music Beethoven ever wrote. There is a wonderful moment in the sixth variation of the fourth movement where the music is seemingly soaring into the ether, but for the cello interventions which brings the music back down to Earth. So incessant is the cello that the first violin, unable to escape its gravitational pull, mimics the cello's intervening motivic figure.

Fittingly, it is the cello that initiates the scherzo, with its unbridled rhythmic activity. This is music for the body. The sul ponticello section leading back into normal bowing positions to end the movement is like a microcosm of the mysterious and the physical. The last two movements are filled with the most human emotion in the entire quartet, and the most grounded in earthly realities.

Regarding Op.135 - I used to think it was Beethoven's lesser quartet of the late five, but the more I listen to it the more I am convinced it is as perfect as its siblings, even if Beethoven did say he had bigger plans for it. It feels as though having exhausted himself in the preceding four quartets, here we find Beethoven renewed and refreshed. There are certainly some "heavy" moments in this quartet but it doesn't seem to be concerned with the important statements found in the others (the middle three especially). I wonder if this quartet would have been a bridge to Beethoven's fourth compositional period*. The last movement is filled with pathos but also acceptance and joy. Must it be... It must be. It's also one of the reasons I don't often listen to the new revised ending of the Bb quartet as part of Op.130. That movement doesn't seem to me to belong to the same world as Op.130, but more a consequence of op. 135. There's just so much unbridled joy in that movement.

Or so that's how I see it, and I'm not immune to pretentious meanderings

Edit - *Having said that though, the last quartets don't really belong to any compositional style or period. They are sui generis and each is a completely self-referential body.

[hal9000]

My favourite Bagatelles- being played on his Broadwood piano!!!...I am in heaven...




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73SWpsVIb4s

Those really are unlike anything else he wrote for the piano. So songful. I read a quote that said if his Diabelli Variations was his art of the piano, the last bagatelles were his farewell to the piano, which I find rather fitting.

[Sorrano]

This morning:
Haydn: String Quartet in f, Op 20/5

[Peter]

Beethoven string quartet Op.59/1 - my favourite of the Razumovsky's. Also the wonderful 'Harp' quartet Op.74.