What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[Antonmb]

‘Love Songs’ - Angela Hewitt
Hyperion (2021), 24/96 files

Hewitt’s lock-down recording - beautiful music for a rainy Sunday morning.
Hyperion doesn’t license their recordings for streaming, so you have to buy the download or disc. This one’s well worth the £13.50 from the Hyperion website.

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[Antonmb]

‘My European Journey’ - Alexandra Whittingham, guitar
Delphian Records (2021)

Another nice new guitar recording, Whittingham’s first commercial release (apparently she’s popular online). She covers a couple of Spanish pieces, including the de rigueur Recuerdos de la Alhambra, but also plays selections from a number of composers from other countries. It’s a very nice selection, and very well played. The sound is also quite good, better than the Franz Halász I played yesterday.

It’s interesting to compare renditions of Recuerdos. Whittingham does well, but she has room to grow her technique. The tell for me is the consistency and evenness of the tremolo. Listen to Narcisso Yepes or Julian Bream and there’s a beautiful flow to the tremolo, and an emotional expressiveness. Whittingham has a lovely tone, but she has trouble maintaining consistent rhythm - her tremolo becomes ‘da-da-da, da-da-da’ instead of the fluid ‘da-da-da-da-da-da’ the greats like Bream are capable of. Critical I know, but overall I think she holds a lot of promise.

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[Antonmb]

William Byrd & John Bull: The Visionaries of Piano Music
Kit Armstrong, piano
DG (2021), via Qobuz

The title is a bit bold, but the album lives up to it. This is not your typical dry, academic harpsichord study of Byrd and Bull. Armstrong brings just a bit of passion, and that combined with the resonance of his piano makes this music very engaging and enjoyable. Not for die-hard HIPsters, but worked for me[emoji41]

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[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Jacques Arcadett - Madrigali - Chansons - Motetti
Cappella Mediterranea
Doulce Mémoire
Choeur de Chambre de Namur
via Qobuz




New release.
An unknown composer to me, but I knew the ensembles, so I guessed I was in for a treat.
I proved to be right.
This composer from Namur (Belgium) is magnificently brought by 3 ensembles here (from Belgium, France and Switzerland).
His style is close to Josquin Desprez.


Brought up in the French-Flemish tradition but fed with the milk of Renaissance Italian madrigalism since he was about eighteen years old, Jacques Arcadelt (1507-1568) left behind him many gems whose importance has been realized only recently. Let’s acclaim this magnificent album gathering the Chœur de Chambre de Namur, the ensemble Doulce Mémoire and the Cappella Mediterranea, to give us not the complete marigals, songs and motets by Arcadelt, of course, but a large selection of his most stupefying pieces. These are thus madrigals from his First and Fourth Books released during his Italian years around 1540, songs from the various Livres de Chansons (Books of Songs) released between 1550 and 1565 when he was living in Paris, and motets from various eras in his career—mostly Italian, a bit French too since he moved from court to court depending on the jobs, the political assassinations, the change in alliances and, generally, the implausible chaos between the various power players at the time. As a nod, we also hear an Ave Maria “according to Arcadelt”, in truth an imitation by Louis Dietsch, a composer from the 19th Century, and the comical Ave Maria d’Arcadelt … by Liszt, inspired by the Dietsch imitation, for solo organ, an exercise in returning to your ancient roots like people loved to imagine them during the Romantic era. We could even wonder if Saint-Saëns didn’t use the head of the main theme to recycle it into his ”Organ” Symphony, incidentally. © SM/Qobuz

Over 3 hours of heavenly music.

[bart]

Originally Posted by Toccata

Despite apparently shopping at Hookers R Us, Ms. Wang demonstrates some mighty impressive piano playing and powerful interpretations. The sound is great too--very present but with some hall sound. (24/96 FLAC) The audience is remarkably silent until the uproarious applause after the Prokofiev 8th Sonata.

We enjoyed this again this morning.
Top performance!

[bart]

Philip Glass - The Hours - Metamorphosis - Mad Rush
Valentina Lisitsa, piano
Qobuz 24/96




She's great!
Glass is addictive.
His compositions are mesmerising.
But she plays them better than he did on his recordings, in my opinion of course.

These pieces are also great on harp.
Lavinia Meijer is my favourite performer there.

[Audiofan1]

Listening to the 9th.
Loving new discoveries in music

[bart]

Silke Aichhorn
Mathias Johansen - Cello Meets Horn
via Qobuz




This was very enjoyable!


Rare but irresistible: "Cello Meets Harp" Singing melodies of the cello borne by the silvery splendor of the harp’s tonal cascades – Mathias Johansen and Silke Aichhorn formed their duo in 2018 in order to revive the rarely performed literature for these two instruments.

It is not clear why there are so few original compositions for this duo form. In the nineteenth century the tradition was for the harp to accompany virtuoso violinists. In his time Frederick the Great of Prussia employed a harpist to accompany his own flute solos and the violin sonatas of his violinists Benda and Graun. Prior to the French Revolution this combination was very much in vogue in the distinguished residences of the Parisian nobility, and then, in the early nineteenth century, it found its place on the German concert stage with the musical husband and wife Louis and Dorette Spohr. The combination of soft, bowed tones on the violin or the cello with sparkling runs on the harp is tonally irresistible – as Silke Aichhorn and Mathias Johansen demonstrate on their first joint album.

[bart]

Henri Dutilleux - Tout un monde lointain
Witold Roman Lutosławski - Cello Concerto
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jac Van Steen
Christian Poltéra, cello
Qobuz 24/44.1




These works are quite an exciting journey...

On this CD, Swiss cellist Christian Poltéra tackles the complete cello works by two of the leading independent-minded European modernists of the mid- to late-twentieth century, Henri Dutilleux and Witold Lutoslawski. Each of the works was written at the instigation of Mstislav Rostropovich, a concerto from each composer, both of which he premiered in 1970, and a solo cello tribute from each, written in 1975 in honor of the Swiss conductor and new music advocate, Paul Sacher. Dutilleux took the title of his concerto, Toute un monde lointain… (A Whole Distant World…), as well as the names of the movements, from the poetry of Baudelaire, the mystery and sensuality of whose writing is reflected in the music. While it has the harmonic sophistication characteristic of postwar European music, Dutilleux's five-movement concerto clearly falls in the lineage of Debussy in its evocative delicacy, essentially lyrical character, and gossamer but colorful orchestration. Lutoslawski's concerto, while idiomatically not too far from Dutilleux's, is more aggressive and emphatic, with a more traditionally competitive relationship between the soloist and the orchestra. These concertos are canonical cello works of the late twentieth century, but the solo pieces are also attractive and idiomatically written, and deserve to be better known. Poltéra delivers committed, virtuosic performances, but he doesn't quite have the radiant tone to make the Dutilleux shimmer and glisten as it can. The ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, led by Jac van Steen, is likewise more persuasive in the more formally and timbrally straightforward Lutoslawski concerto. The sound of BIS' SACD is clean, detailed, and vivid, but particularly in the Dutilleux, it could benefit from more warmth.

© TiVo

[bart]

Originally Posted by cma29

Just got this as well...

Beethoven: Missa Solemnis in D major, Op. 123
Ann-Helen Moen (soprano), Roxana Constantinescu (mezzo-soprano), James Gilchrist (tenor) & Benjamin Bevan (baritone)
Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki



A very satisfying performance by Suzuki and his Japanese forces. The small ensemble manages to pack a punch which is very nicely captured by the very natural and transparent BIS recording. Almost as good as their recent Mozart Mass in C minor SACD which is saying something.

Here is a video

https://youtu.be/uoap54sLvm4

Earlier today, I was revisiting this album.
Really well done, but I do prefer Beethoven's other work.
His symphonies, piano concertos, violin concerto, sonatas... almost everything in fact.