What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[Toccata]

Wow--this is not for the faint of heart! The music is seemingly chaotic and hardly melodic in a traditional sense, but the visceral energy is quite gripping. Excellent SACD sound.

[eljr]

Vilde Frang
Mozart: Violin Concertos 1 & 5; Sinfonia Concertante

Listened to this just a few days ago, as it's new. thought I'd spin it again.

[eljr]

Originally Posted by bart

Ed, this is the newer edition:



4$ on Amazon.com
She can stand next to Savall!

I see. This was released in 97 and reworked for 2012 release.

[Kaliar]

Album : Messe Nostre Dame - Motets et Estampies
Composer : Guillaume de Machaut et alii
Artist : Ensemble Obsidienne (Emmanuel Bonnardot)
Released : 2011
Label : Calliope
Format : FLAC (16-bit/44KHz) from eClassical



Nicely played and recorded!

[Toccata]

What a delightful disc! She plays with extraordinary élan and virtuosity. The sound is a bit distant for my taste, but it is certainly good.

[Kaliar]

Album : Ouvertures pittoresques
Composer : Georg Philipp Telemann
Artist : Arte dei Suonatori (Martin Gester)
Released : 2013
Label : BIS
Format : FLAC (24-bit/44KHz) downloaded from eClassical

10/10/10 Klassik-heute.de
Choc de Classica, 04/2013
CD des Tages vom 25.04.2013, Radio Stephansdom

"This is state of the art Telemann and highly recommended.” classicstoday.com

Throughout a long and extremely productive career, Georg Philipp Telemann harboured a great affection for the overture-suite, consisting of a French overture followed by a number of dances and character movements. Tempering the rigid model inherited from the French tradition with his own rich powers of invention and playfulness, he remained true to the form long after it had gone out of fashion.
One variant of which he was particularly fond was the ouverture pittoresque, which offered a welcome opportunity to revel in tone-painting and characterization: ‘Nobody paints with stronger brushstrokes than him’ was the verdict by one of Telemann’s contemporaries. Instances here are the so-called ‘Völker-Ouvertüre’ where we are introduced to different nationalities (Turks, Swiss and Muscovites), and the Ouverture, jointes d'une Suite tragi-comique, in which Telemann depicts various ailments (hypochondria and gout being two of them) and their possible remedies. Another early influence was folk music, and specifically the Polish folk music of the Cracow region, where Telemann spent time in his youth, as Hofkapellmeister to Count Erdmann von Promnitz. In an early example of cross over, he experimented with clothing this music of a ‘true barbaric beauty’ in ‘Italian dress’. One result was the two ‘Polish’ concertos for strings, in which Telemann’s passion for Polish music can be felt from the very first note. Dignified, festive polonoises with chromatically tinged melodic twists begin both concertos, while the fast movements include many examples of Polish colours, such as drone-like effects reminiscent of the dudy, or Polish bagpipes.
With a number of highly praised recordings, the Polish band Arte dei Suonatori is firmly established as a leading ensemble performing on authentic instruments. Among the group’s recordings for BIS is a previous collaboration with Martin Gester: the set of Handel's Concerti grossi, Op.6, which was selected as ‘Orchestral Disc of the Month’ in BBC Music Magazine, and described as ‘a model of authentic Handel performance’ in the German early music magazine Toccata.

[eljr]

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Peter Maxwell Davies
Peter Maxwell Davies: Caroline Mathilde Ballet Suites; Chat Moss; Ojai Festival Overture

Spun this the other day, had to spin it again. It is a wonderful, even haunting, new release on the Naxos label .

Here is a blurb from the label.

"Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ ballet Caroline Mathilde premièred in 1991 and has been highly acclaimed ever since. Its story concerns the tragic marriage of Caroline to Christian VII of Denmark and is cast in a musical language that embraces expressionism, drama, parody, and overt lyricism. The two concert suites chart the young queen’s fall from grace and her eventual banishment into exile. Chat Moss is a richly textured tone poem, while by contrast the Ojai Festival Overture is a lively and extrovert concert piece reflecting Maxwell Davies’ fondness for American landscape and culture."

[Kaliar]

Album : Piano Concertos Nos 15 & 16
Composer : Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Artists : Die Kölner Akademie (Michael Alexander Willens); Ronald Brautigam, fortepiano
Released : 2015
Label : BIS
Format : FLAC (24-bit/96KHz) downloaded from eClassical

In May 1784, shortly after completing the two piano concertos recorded here, Mozart described them in a letter to his father as 'concertos which are bound to make the player sweat.’ In his correspondence he also pointed out the particular importance of the wind instruments in the two works. This is obvious already in the first movement of the Concerto in D major, K 451, which opens the disc: for long stretches Mozart revels in the soloistic capabilities of the winds and elsewhere he builds up chordal textures in which the winds’ distinctive colours dominate. In a similar manner, the winds take the lead from the very beginning of the B flat major concerto, K 450, with the strings answering. Throughout the movement, the woodwinds are absolutely vital to the narrative and Mozart playfully exploits the diverse colours of the winds, frequently featuring pairs of them playing in octaves: oboe/bassoon, oboe/horn or horn/bassoon. In the Andante the wind instruments are silent from start, but once they enter they again dominate in terms of colours. The delicacy of the piano writing throughout this movement adds to the very special quality of the concerto, in which Mozart seems to point the way towards Beethoven. Previous discs in this series have earned distinctions such as Editor’s Choice (Gramophone), IRR Outstanding (International Record Review), ‘10’ (klassik-heute.de) and Disco excepcional (Scherzo). On their eighth instalment, Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie have chosen to close the programme with a Rondo in D major, originally intended as a replacement finale for the Piano Concerto No.5, K 175. Offering a range of different moods and introducing a variety of quasi-operatic characters, the Rondo became greatly popular in Vienna and beyond, and was in fact sometimes published as a stand-alone work.

I have the eight albums published so far and can only say that Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie offer great performances. As usual with BIS, the recording quality is first rate!

[eljr]

Cello and Piano Music (British) - WORDSWORTH, W. / HOLBROOKE, J. / BUSCH, W. (Wallfisch, Terroni)

another new release from Naxos.

From their site,

"This survey of British cello music focuses on three composers whose critical fortunes have never quite matched their undoubted musical gifts. William Wordsworth always displayed independence of mind and considerable melodic invention, and his cello works reflect a kinship with the music of Bartók and, later, Shostakovich. The short-lived William Busch is represented by his Suite, both a passionate oration and a brilliant dance. Much earlier in the twentieth century the prolific Josef Holbrooke composed a Fantasie-Sonata that is irresistibly lively and virtuosic."

[eljr]

ANIMOSO MIO DESIRE - 16th-Century Italian Keyboard Favourites (Wilson)

Andrea Antico was a printer from Dalmatia who obtained, through the first Medici Pope, Leo X, a monopoly on printing keyboard music. His 1517 collection of frottole—a quasi-rustic word meaning a deceitful, silly story—contains highly advanced, but textually corrupt arrangements of part-songs for keyboard made by an anonymous musician. This world première recording of the complete Frottole Intabulate incorporates a new edition by harpsichordist Glen Wilson.