What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[bart]

Ludovico Einaudi - Passagio
Lavinia Meijer, harp
via Qobuz




Everything she touches is good.
She makes these rather simple compositions sound like real classics.

[bart]

Bruce Brubaker - Max Cooper - Glassforms
Qobuz 24/44.1





Although I like minimalism as pure as possible, the synthesizers here certainly add something.

After Glass Cage in 2000 and Glass Piano in 2015, New York Julliard graduate pianist Bruce Brubaker returns to his obsession with Philip Glass. Brubaker taught Francesco Tristano, who went on to create many bridges between classical and electronic music. He is also one of Philip Glass’ specialists, a composer that he has played and reinterpreted many times.

This time, Brubaker chose to team up with Irish musician Max Cooper, the flagship of IDM. Cooper who, on his last album, Yearning for the Infinite, invented a sort of “chaos generator”, was the perfect candidate for a tribute to one of the masters of minimalism. In the album, the seminal piece Two Pages (1968) acts as a “single track” (provided that this concept has any meaning here). It is a ten-minute hypnotic piano solo deepened by the modular synthesizer that Cooper adds to the background. The record opens and closes with two key pieces: Metamorphosis 2, a cathartic composition, and one of Glass’ major “hits,” and the Opening of Glassworks where Max Cooper’s discrete work reinforces the piece’s contemplative feel. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

[Petronius]

Colleagues,
I just received via the U.S. Post, Jerry Goldsmith's music from The Blue Max. The score is performed by the City of Prague Orchestra and is conducted by Nic Raine.
I will be enjoying a right brain experience later this evening.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Philip Glass - The Glass Effect
Lavinia Meijer, harp
Qobuz 24/96




I really love this recording.
It's quite addictive.
Playing it at least once a month since Ed suggested it.

I think I've been playing this indeed once a month for the last 2 years.
Fantastic!


addicted | əˈdiktəd |
adjective
physically and mentally dependent on a particular substance, and unable to stop taking it without incurring adverse effects: she became addicted to alcohol and diet pills.

[PHC1]

Originally Posted by bart

I think I've been playing this indeed once a month for the last 2 years.
Fantastic!


addicted | əˈdiktəd |
adjective
physically and mentally dependent on a particular substance, and unable to stop taking it without incurring adverse effects: she became addicted to alcohol and diet pills.

Will give it a listen this evening Bart.

[jimtranr]

A DSD64 download featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning compositions by Morton Gould ("Stringmusic" [1995]), Howard Hanson ("Symphony No. 4: Requiem" [1943]), and Walter Piston ("Symphony No. 7" [1961]), with Carlos Kalmar conducting the Oregon Symphony.

Gorgeous sonics, with sterling live performances of the Gould and Piston. The Hanson is a competent reading, but lacks the drive and passion that make Gerard Schwarz's traversal with the Seattle Symphony on Delos so gut-punch compelling.

[Antonmb]

Martinů: Violin Concertos No. 1 &2; Bartók: Solo Violin Sonata
Frank Peter Zimmermann – Violin
Bamberger Symphoniker
Jakub Hruša – Conductor
BIS (2020), via Qobuz

The Martinu is brilliant: beautiful music, well played and recorded. The Bartok is also well played, unfortunately Bartok doesn’t particularly move me.

[bart]

Jean-Marie Leclair - A Portrait - Sonatas and dances
Le Concert Universel
Juliette Roumailhac
Qobuz 24/88.2




This is energetic, uplifting baroque, enthusiastically played by the ensemble!
Nice new release and another interesting discovery.

A brilliant dancer before becoming “famous throughout Europe for his learned and elaborate sonatas, and for the elegance of his performance on the violin1”, Jean-Marie Leclair is far more than the sum of his talents. His music is woven with the multiple threads of his life, carrying within it all the facets of his technical and musical explorations, his travels, his impressions, which have moulded man as much as musician.
“You should have seen him, at sixty-seven years of age, performing with astonishing gusto, communicating his energy to the whole orchestra, and [...] savouring the pleasure of being admired, with that modest and pure joy that so befits a young man being praised for the first time2 “.
It is the man, of “noble simplicity “, alert and passionate to the end of his life, as much as the musician-dancer, fertile creator of virtuoso elegance, that this recording wishes to portray.
His music, too rarely played, brings together the brightness of Italy, French taste without the rigidity of etiquette, love of the violin, of sound, and virtuosity that always allows poetry and beauty to take precedence.

[bart]

Willem De Fesch - Concerti Grossi and Violin Concerto
La Sfera Armoniosa, Mike Fentross
Lidewij van der Voort, violin
Qobuz 24/44.1




Another unknown composer who wrote beautiful baroque.
Impeccable sound (Bert van der Wolf!).

Willem De Fesch was born in Alkmaar in 1687. He deserves an honorable place alongside such greats as Vivaldi and Handel, as his works sound at least as colorful, playful, inventive and sparkling as those of his contemporaries. Sometime after 1700 his parents returned with him to Amsterdam. By then, the city had become an epicentre of music publishers. Many Italian composers published their work in the city; Vivaldi made public appearances and in 1729, Pietro Locatelli even opted to move there. In 1708, De Fesch was appointed violinist in the orchestra of the Amsterdam City Theatre. He composed a lot of music for stage performances himself, such as the concerts in C and A minor of this recording. As far as we know, orchestral works only started to appear again in 1741: the audibly matured Opus 10, also on this recording. © Challenge Records

[bart]

Originally Posted by Antonmb

The Berlin Album: Trio Sonatas From Berlin
Ensemble Diderot, Johannes Pramsohler
Aidas (2020), via Qobuz

Ensemble Diderot’s latest installment in their cities series, this is a very nice album.

Tony, a perfect album while I was doing some preparation work for a lecture!