What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[bart]

Originally Posted by Kal Rubinson

exa has some interesting new stuff in the pipeline.

Kal, you make me curious!

[eljr]

Beethoven: Für Elise and Bagatelles Opp. 33, 119 & 126

Paul Lewis (piano)

Release Date: 10th Jul 2020
Catalogue No: HMM902416
Label: Harmonia Mundi
Length: 71 minutes

Presto Recording of the Week
10th July 2020
Editor's Choice
Gramophone Magazine
September 2020
Editor's Choice
Instrumental Choice
BBC Music Magazine
October 2020
Instrumental Choice

[bart]

This was quite ideal music today in my practice:

Arcangelo Corelli - Sonate a Violino e Violino o Cimbalo op. V
Sigiswald & Wieland Kuijken, Robert Kohnen
via Qobuz

[bart]

More chamber music delight from the same composer.
Some are the same pieces as on the album above.

Arcangelo Corelli - Violin Sonatas Opus 5, 1 - 6
Brandywine Baroque
Cynthia Freivogel
Karen Flint
Douglas McNames
via Qobuz

[bart]

Les Voix Humaines - Folies
via Qobuz




Wonderful!
Works from Lebègue, Marais, Couperin and Rameau, arranged for 2 viols.
The two musicians did the arrangements themselves.
I own quite a few CDs with these women, their albums are of consistent high quality.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Ferdinand Ries - Chamber Music: Octet Op. 128 - Sextet Op. 142 - String Trio WoO 70.2
Franz Ensemble




A recommendation from Kal.
Lovely chamber music.
Listening in 5.0.

Strangely enough, this album is neither on Tidal nor Qobuz.

Meanwhile, this is available as download on Qobuz.
I'm enjoying the multichannel SACD.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Mendelssohn - IN TIME - Violin Concerto & Octet
Anima Eterna Brugge, Jakob Lehmann
Chouchane Siranossian, violin
Qobuz 24/88.2




Our beloved Concertgebouw Orchestra (the one from Bruges, where we are members) had to do it with young (assistent and guest) conductors last year.
Van Immerseel had a liver transplant, but he's alive and kicking again now.
Nevertheless, he is looking for the survival of his fantastic orchestra into the next decades, this with fresh blood.
This album is the first recording with new talent leading Anima Eterna.
We attended a concert earlier this year (Beethoven's 9th), and we rest assured: there is a future for this orchestra!

This was recording of the month in "Stereoplay".

Chouchane Siranossian is a rising star of the baroque and classical violin, Jakob Lehmann a virtuoso violinist and orchestral director who frequently conducts Anima Eterna. Together, they embody what the Bruges orchestra and its founder, Jos van Immerseel, have decided to call the ‘Next Generation Anima Eterna’... Today they are presenting Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in its original version. “We wanted to take a look into Mendelssohn’s workshop. He struggled with his self-diagnosed ‘revision disease’ and always strove to work hard on himself and his creations” says Jakob Lehmann. Chouchane Siranossian keeps on : “It was a fascinating experience for me to discover historical research and its implementation on period instruments in collaboration with Anima Eterna Brugge. In my interpretation, I used exclusively the fingerings, bowings and other performance markings of Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim, both of whom rehearsed the work with the composer.”
This recording is rounded off with the Octet, also in its original version, which is longer and has many alterations in instrumentation, harmony and articulation... © Alpha Classics

Raymond Tuttle of 'Fanfare Magazine' did not find this an essential version.
He stated though: 'But again, is it a question of “I know what I like,” or simply that “I like what I know”?'

I do like this, but I'm biased.
I can easily see the musicians in front of my eyes as I've seen so many concerts with them...

[bart]

J.S. Bach - Suites (Overtures) BWV 1066 - 1069
La Petite Bande, Sigiswald Kuijken
via Qobuz




It is Kuijken streaming these weeks in the practice.
Whatever little support we can offer them in Covid times is welcome.
And his recordings are almost all reference versions.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

J.S. Bach - Sonatas For Violin & Harpsichord
Isabelle Faust - Kristian Bezuidenhout
via Qobuz 24/96




Utterly magnificent.
Great sound.

I've listened so many times to this set since it came out in the beginning of 2018.
It is really a top performance.
Faust seems to be one of the greatest violinists of today.

The six Sonatas for Violin and Obbligato Harpsichord BWV 1014-1019 (“obbligato” – compulsory – means the keyboard is fully scored, as opposed to basso continuo for which only the bass is scored, the rest being left to the discretion of the performer, who improvises) are some of these works that Bach kept revisiting and reworking. The oldest remaining source – from around 1725, through one of his nephews – already highlights the will to make these compositions evolve by refining them with successive adjustments. The work underwent another overhaul in Agricola’s manuscript, around 1741, while a copy made around 1750 by Altnickol reveals a third cycle status. An observation made by the musician’s second youngest son, Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach – “He wrote these trios just before his end” – seems to have been interpreted as proof that Bach was still working on these sonatas in the last years of his life. This new recording by Isabelle Faust, a great specialist of baroque interpretation, and Christian Bezuidenhout on the harpsichord, discretely reveals the extraordinary richness of these works’ three-voice writing, that resembles the format of a trio sonata. © SM/Qobuz

This deserved another listening session.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

A bit more adventurous again:

Schönberg - Webern - Berg - String Quartets - 'Vienna 1905 - 1910
Richter Ensemble
Mireille Lebel, mezzo-soprano
Qobuz 24/96




Wow!
This is good!
What a good label Passacaille is.
These pieces show what you can do with only 4 string instruments: full sound!
This is no easy listening, but oh so rewarding.
Excellent sound.

I'm looking forward to their next albums, as this seems to be a first in a series to come.

If the Richter Ensemble is a new name to you, then that's because in the grand scheme of things it's relatively new on the block, formed as recently as 2018 by British-Brazilian Baroque violinist and former Academy of Ancient Music concertmaster, Rodolfo Richter. Its other members are equally drawn from across the world of Historically Informed Performance, and while HIP credentials may not at first glance seem an obvious fit for a debut album of Second Viennese School repertoire, they actually point both to the group's mission statement and its unique selling point – to highlight hidden connections between repertoire ranging from the seventeenth to the twenty first centuries, with all of that repertoire played exclusively on gut strings.

Back to the recording in hand, and this is the first installment of a project to record the complete Second Viennese School string quartets on gut strings, and it is very fine indeed. Repertoire-wise, they take us through chronologically, beginning with Webern's ardent one-movement Langsamer Satz of 1905, couched in the language of late Romantic chromaticism; then Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2 of 1907-8, one of his first forays into atonality which features a mezzo soprano for its latter two movements setting poems by Stefan George; after which comes Berg's two-movement String Quartet Op. 3 of 1910, equally exploring atonality.

Sound-wise, beyond super-glued chamber playing and wonderfully rich-toned and emotive vocal performances from mezzo Mireille Lebel, what really makes these interpretations stand out is the way they place the works in their immediate Viennese context: the fact that it wasn't a hard-edged brand of modernism that was in everyone's heads during these early ventures beyond tonality, but instead the music of Brahms, Mahler and Wagner; and all this amid a wider expressionist and symbolist artistic context that equally blended Romanticism and modernism – think of Gustav Klimt's paintings. So, beyond the greater softness and wider coloristic palette offered by those aforementioned gut strings, we also get tonal sheen, subtle “portamentos”, and a singing freedom to their lines. We are also at a period pitch slightly lower than today's standard: A=432Hz compared to the current 440Hz. Yet all this Romantic gorgeousness is still sounding clean as a whistle – just thanks to the nineteenth century practice of using vibrato only sparingly.

Even if Second Viennese School isn't your usual bag, I urge you to give it a spin. This is likely to be a very covetable series indeed. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

Giving this a second listen.
It is powerful!