What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[bart]

Ronn McFarlane - The Celtic Lute
Qobuz 24/192




Mostly traditionals, and pieces from O'Carolan and Oswald.
A warm, full sound from this instrument.
Gorgeous melodies...

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Graupner - Telemann - J.S. Bach - Kuhnau - Herzens-Lieder: German Baroque Cantatas
Miriam Feuersinger
Capricomus Consort Basel, Peter Bacczi
via Qobuz




She's a very good singer, and the ensemble is excellent.
Good sound too.

This is excellent quality in every aspect.

Graupner, Kuhnau and Telemann were good composers, but it once again shows how incredible Bach really was..

[Antonmb]

Les Défis de Monsieur Forqueray
Works of Forqueray, Corelli, Mascitti, LeClair, & de Visée

Lucile Boulanger, Pierre Gallon, Claire Gautrot, & Romain Falik
Harmonia Mundi (2018), via Qobuz

Very nice playing and beautiful music, but I thought the sound was a bit distant.

IMG_1536.jpg

[eljr]

Although I am not thrilled with the sound quality, this release which somehow eluded me until this week, I am enjoying thoroughly. The Choir and performance is wonderful.



Open the Kingdom
National Sinfonia, Crouch End Festival Chorus & David Temple

[jimtranr]

Jazz in classical clothing...though the late Russian composer insisted that all of the "improvisation" is written into the score. Delightful stuff.

A Capriccio-label 24/96 download.

[eljr]

Bottesini: Concerti e pezzi concertanti

Wies de Boevé (double bass)

Brussels Philharmonic, Joshua Weilerstein

Release Date: 7th Feb 2020
Catalogue No: 5419706173
Label: Warner Classics
Runtime: 1:04:00

It is extremely rare I click on a suggestion a steaming service offers in an "You Might Like" section. I am very deliberate in what and when I listen to.
Somehow I felt indecisive this morning and this looked interesting. It is, I am enjoying it.
These works are by Giovanni Bottesini.

[eljr]

Brahms: Piano Trios Nos. 2 & 3

David Haroutunian, Mikayel Hakhnazaryan, Sofya Malikyan

Release Date: 26th Nov 2021
Catalogue No: RCD1079
Label: Rubicon
Length: 49 minutes

this is the first album in a series that will see all the Brahms Piano Trios recorded

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Ludovico Einaudi - Passagio
Lavinia Meijer, harp
via Qobuz




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

She really does it better than the composer himself...

[bart]

Solo
Bach - Abel
Lucile Boulanger
Qobuz 24/192




This is really fantastic!
Bach's masterworks played on a viola da gamba gives them something extra.
This is such a wonderfully rich instrument - you all know I'm addicted to it - and it really adds to the experience.
Like Meijer playing Glass on the harp also tends to be more beautiful than on the piano.
The fact that Boulanger is such a great musician doesn't do harm either.
The sound is impeccable.

Familiar music heard through an unfamiliar prism. It was par for the course in the Baroque era, when transcription and pasticcio (patching together multifarious pieces by different composers to create a new work) were part of every musician and composer’s everyday musical toolkit. These days, though, not so much, meaning that when an artist does get as creative with 18th century repertoire as gambist Lucile Boulanger has been on this first solo recording of hers for Alpha, it’s all the more of a pleasure.

Those who know their viola da gamba repertoire will be unsurprised at the presence of pre-classical-era composer Carl Friedrich Abel on this solo programme, given his renown both in his day and now as one of the gamba greats. To pair him with J. S. Bach, though, is entirely unexpected, because while the king of Baroque did write three accompanied gamba sonatas, he never explored the instrument’s solo capabilities. Yet the two men were in fact linked both musically and personally. First, because Bach was Abel’s godfather, and probably also one of his musical instructors. Second, because of Abel’s friendship with Bach’s son Johann Christian, the tangible legacy of which was the Bach-Abel subscription concert series they founded together in 1760s London after Johann Christian followed Abel across the channel.

Boulanger’s aim therefore has been to make the link in a solo viola da gamba programme that existed between the two men in real life, juxtaposing original works for it from Abel’s famous Drexel manuscript, with her own new transcriptions of Bach works, presented as “pasticcio suites” reminiscent of the suites, sonatas and partitas Bach wrote for solo cello and violin. Cleverly, to give herself a head start as to how Bach himself may have gone about this transcription process, she’s selected pieces he worked his own transcriptions from – works such as the famous Prelude in C major BWV 846/846a, and the A minor Grave for keyboard or violin BWV 964/1003. Equally cleverly, she’s also looked closer to home by way of three dances from Bach’s final (6th) Solo Cello Suite in D major – because not only is D major a highly typical key for viola da gamba, but this particular suite was originally not for the standard four-stringed cello but instead a five-stringed one, bringing it closer to the viola da gamba with its five to seven strings.

The whole works wonderfully well. On the linguistic front, while Abel may have been a generation onwards of Bach, and with a trailblazing outlook that saw his symphonies influence Mozart, he adopted a more retro language for the viola da gamba. So, when Bach was an enthusiastic follower and imitator of the latest styles right up to his 1750 death, their respective works are effortlessly mutually complimentary here. Ultimately though, the joy of this album is Boulanger’s playing: the elegant legato flow and melancholically improvisatory feel to Abel’s Adagio in D minor, WK 209; the delicacy with which she articulates Bach’s aforementioned C major Prelude, and the array of shapes, light and shade she’s brought to its “arpeggio” figures; her rivetingly developed musical argument in Abel’s Vivace in D major, WK 190, fingers dancing with feather-like grace over its fast-figurations and embellishments, and double-stopped passages executed to perfection.

This is one that’ll have you spotting fresh things to appreciate on each repeated listen. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

[bart]

Jean-Marie Leclair - Concerti per Violino Opp 7 & 10 - Nos 4 & 5
Leila Schayegh
La Cetra Barockorchester Basel
Qobuz 24/96




Lovely music for a Sunday morning (I'm quite late today ).
I like Leclair's Violin Concertos.
They're not masterpieces like Mozart's but they're really highly enjoyable.
Schayegh is doing them a favour!

It’s almost impossible not to be fascinated by the life and music of Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764), such are its colourful contradictions. A career that began as a dancer but which ultimately saw him become one of France’s greatest violinist-composers, famed for not only for his breathtakingly virtuosic technique but also for the exquisite sweetness and good taste of his playing – hence the much-documented 1739 concert showdown in Amsterdam between him and the Italian virtuoso Locatelli, declared a draw after Locatelli played like the devil and Leclair like an angel. Then in the 1740s his abandonment of the violin for an unsuccessful career as an opera composer, followed in time by a move to lodgings in one of Paris’s dodgier areas, and finally being stabbed to death outside his own front door in a murder case that has never been solved.

For this concertos programme, warmly recorded in Basel’s Martinskirche, Leila Schayegh and La Cetra Barockorchester Basel have chosen numbers 4 and 5 from each of Leclair’s two sets of violin concertos, the Op. 7 first of which dates from that aforementioned Amsterdam adventure, and the Op. 10 second from the early 1740s. The first thing worth pointing out is the project’s period-instrument decisions, because the ensemble strings are using the lighter baroque bows with clipped-in frogs (rather than screw-type), and also gut strings – because although silver-wound gut appeared in the 1700s, even by the 1740s it would still have been prohibitively expensive for most musicians. Plus, they’re tuned at A=408 Hz, i.e. even lower than the Baroque standard of 415 Hz. This goal here has been to reflect the variety of pitch in France at the time, which could range from as low as 390 Hz to above today’s standard 440 Hz. Also to create a darker, slightly rougher orchestral sound onto which the solo violins with their screw-type bows – Schayegh as principal soloist and Christoph Rudolf on second – can provide subtle colouristic and timbral contrast. And all of that has been achieved, because there’s a gorgeously soft, velvety darkness to the overall ensemble sound, while equally being incredibly light of tread, while the soloists are sounding especially sweet and bright on top.

The pleasure continues with the musicians’ palpable awareness of Leclair’s dance roots and overall elegance. Rhythms are crisp and springing, articulation unfailingly neat, and when Leclair was known for disliking runaway speeds, the tempi here are all correspondingly dignified, typified by the steady grace Op. 10 No. 5 in E minor’s concluding Allegro. “Grace” is likewise the operative word for all the solo work. Just listen to the sweet-voiced, easy legato lyricism with which Schayegh meets the succession of virtuoso techniques thrown at her in the impishly sunny major-keyed section of Op. 7 No. 5’s concluding Allegro assai; or, to return to Op. 10 No. 5, her endless double-stops, bariolage and leaps in its opening Allegro ma poco. Perhaps the greatest achievement, though, is the fact that all of this neatly articulated tastefulness has, from one and all, been achieved without for one single second sounding bland or coolly academic. Instead, it verily brims with life, colour and joy. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz