What do you hear these days?

[Ivor]

  Yes, Dvorak is higher up my league table than Brahms, tho' Big B. isfar more tuneful than I used to think.



      Ivor

[barry guerrero]

Just an update. I'm listening to a budget price EMI reissue of Albert Roussell's "Padmavati". The booklet describes it as half ballet, half opera. If that's true, I think it could make for a terrific DVD someday - something like Rimsky's "Mlada". Obviously, with a name like Padmavati, the music is full of pseudo, quasi orientalisms. Faster bits remind me a tad of Ravel's "Daphnis & Chloe", but with more pentatonic and whole tone scales and such (Roussell's music tends to be very rhythmic anyway). The slower, quieter bits remind me of Debussy's "Martyrdom Of St. Sebastian". There are a few choral passages sprinkled about, both with words and wordless (hence, the Daphnis connection). The cast on this EMI production is quite stellar:  Marilyn Horne (in good voice); Nicolai Gedda; Jose Van Dam, as well as a few unknown French singers. Nice music.

I've also been listening to a pair of goodies that are buried in a two-disc set titled, "Martha Argerich and Friends - Live from the 2006 Lugano Festival:  Chamber Music". There's a whole bunch of stuff in here, but the two items that have caught my attention are a Concerto For Cello and Wind Orchestra by Friedrich Gulda, as well as a lush sounding Piano Quintet by the Russian composer Sergei Taneyev. The Gulda work is real fun - a total hodgepodge that alternates between a jazz/rock/funk feel, and good-old Viennese classicism. The second movement begins and ends with a very effective brass chorale. This is a fun and well put together work that doesn't extend beyond its potential (length wise). The Taneyev is just lush and decadent sounding.

Thanks for reading. Check these out, for something different.

[david johnson]

i've been concetrating on listening through some recent acquisitions -

emi budget boxes:
jochum/bruckner
boult/vaughan williams
klemperer/beethoven

dg:
friscay/beethoven 9 & egmont
friscay/mozart

rca:
jankowski/wagner ring

dj

[ggl]

Yesterday, I bought 5 used CDs:  Stravinsky & Bach violin/piano, L. Kavakos/P. Nagy (ecm);  Brahms cello sonatas, Wispelwey/Lazic (channel);  Janacek, Tara Bulba, Suite from The House of the Dead, Arming, Janacek Phil. Orch. (arte nova); Schubert, String Quintet, Rostropovich/Melos Quartet (dg); and The Clash, Sandinista! (sony).

Two recent Mahler CDs are in rotation in my system, and I recommend both.

First, Jansons/RCO Mahler 1 (rco). 

This is an exciting live version (actually, a recording made from more than one performance) in outstanding sound.  It has rapidly risen to become one of my favorite M1's, together with Kubelik and Tennstedt.  I have some quibbles, particularly re: the final movement, but Janson's energy, the RCO's superb playing, and the recording's terrific modern sound sweep them away.

Second, Schubert's Der Tod und das Madchen Quartet (arr. for string orchestra by G. Mahler) and Mahler's Adagietto from M5, R. Kofman, Kiev Chamber Orchestra (mdg).  This is another sonically excellent recording.  I have never listened carefully to the original version of this Schubert piece.  With that said, this is a dramatic and compelling recording, with a deeply resonant and rich acoustic space.   I take the CD off after the Schubert; the stand-alone M5 Adagietto doesn't work for me.  Even so, this is one of my personal favorite CD acquisitions of 2007. 

[barry guerrero]

I heard the Jansons/RCOA M1 just once, but it struck me as being really, really good. I'll pick it up someday.

I really like the prelude from Janacek's "From The House Of The Dead". That's always been a favorite of mine.

[sperlsco]

Two recent Mahler CDs are in rotation in my system, and I recommend both.

First, Jansons/RCO Mahler 1 (rco). 

This is an exciting live version (actually, a recording made from more than one performance) in outstanding sound.  It has rapidly risen to become one of my favorite M1's, together with Kubelik and Tennstedt.  I have some quibbles, particularly re: the final movement, but Janson's energy, the RCO's superb playing, and the recording's terrific modern sound sweep them away.

I just listened to this again this morning.  It was my second spin and I enjoyed it much more than the first time (I wasn't really in the mood when it originally arrived, but I gave it a cursory listen at the time). 

Most of the last few days, though, I've been trying (again) to get into Shostakovich's symphonies.  I've had a few false starts with his works over the last several years.  I discovered eMusic.com downloads and have been listening to Shosty by Bychkov/WDR, Rostropovich/LSO, and Cataeni/Milan.  Shosty looks promising afterall. 

[barry guerrero]

Scott,

I feel strongly that S2 and S3 (Shostakovich) are quite skip-able. They're both fairly experimental symphonies, with socialist realist texts for the choral bits (and it's questionalbe as to how sincere Shostakovich was with those texts). But his first symphony is a wonderful and precocious little creation for a composer who so young. I think he was 18 or 19. For us Mahler buffs, the big payoff comes with the fourth symphony. It's both a musical tribute to Mahler, and Shostakovich's first - and heaviest - expose' or indictment of Stalin's doings in Russia. As we all know now, rehearsals had already begun for the fourth symphony. But the conductor, Fritz Stiedry, was absolutely afraid for his life. This was after the first comdemnation of Shostakovich in Pravda; mostly for his opera "Lady McBeth". After the premiere performance was cancelled, S4 sat in draw until well after Stalin's death - sometime in the early 60s, I believe. I think it's a very good thing that S4 never got played while Stalin was still around. While I'm certain that a number of latter Shostakovich symphonies received their premiere performances from Mravinsky, I'm fairly certain that it was Kondrashin who gave the 4th its premiere. Regardless, he made a very good recording of it. So did Ormandy, and now there are a number of good ones.

We all know S5 - a wonderful tribute to Tchaikovsky in a totally unintended way - but S6 is not nearly as well known. I think S6 would be worth lending your ears and attention as well. It's in an unusual slow-fast-faster, three movement form; the first movement being a full blown adagio or largo. Assuming that you already know S5; give S1, S4, and S6 a spin.

[John Kim]

I concur that S4 is a GREAT piece. If I were to select one composition that shows Shostakovich's greatness as a composer I'd not hesitate to pick this symphony. A deeply melancholic, ironic, strangely haunting, and ultimately tragic, are words that come to my mind whenever I listen to this music.

John,