What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[ehoove]

Mephisto Magic
Liszt - Bartok - Weiner - Kodaly
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Sir Georg Solti Conducting
Excellent on all counts
London/Decca 443 4444-2
Regards,
Jim

[bart]

Recorded in full lockdown, without public, including a review with the conductor Philippe Herreweghe.
I listened to it while cooking, so can't say much about the sound.
Performances are good, Mields also sings in Herreweghe's Collegium Vocale Gent (which I prefer to the Dresdeners).




The musicians of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden were committed to their tradition of staging an annual commemorative concert even under these difficult circumstances and decided to organize a "Memento mori" to mark this date that is inscribed in the annals of city history.

The program comprised a small ensemble conducted by an expert for Baroque music and two ideally suited voices for the format. The concert was recorded for the Deutschlandfunk Kultur station and broadcast as a message of peace in the world. There were fewer than ten people in the auditorium of the Semperoper, all socially distanced and listening raptly to this unique event. Ultimately this was the first sign of life, the first musical greeting from the orchestra in a concert not open to the public after months of inactivity due to the pandemic.

When, barely a year ago, Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder (featuring more than 300 performers on stage to a full house! directed by Thielemann) were performed and produced for album shortly afterwards, no one would have predicted that this sonorous performance would be followed by a long phase of silence. May the present recording serve as testimony in the form of a contemporary sign of a cultural reawakening. © Profil

[bart]

Giuseppe Sammartini Sonatas for recorder and basso continuo vol. 2
Andreas Böhlen
Michael Hell
Daniel Rosin
Pietro Prosser
Qobuz 24/96




Very good sound, and I guess, well played.
But I found this quite boring I must admit.

[Antonmb]

C.P.E. Bach: Sonatas & Rondos
Marc-André Hamelin, piano
Hyperion (2021), 24/96 files

A nice collection, well played.
IMG_1505.JPG

[bart]

Beethoven / Ries / Punto / Danzi - Horn & Piano - A Cor Basse Recital
Teunis van der Zwart
Alexander Melnikov
Qobuz 24/96




I found these pieces very fresh and agreeable!

Eighteenth century horn virtuoso Giovanni Punto may be an unfamiliar name to most modern music lovers, but in his day he was quite literally being chased around Europe for his talents. Born Jan Václav Stich in 1746, aged twenty he fled the rural Bohemian estate of his employer, Count Thun, in search of a more interesting life – an escape which so infuriated the aristocrat, having spent a fortune sending Stich to perfect his technique in Prague, Munich and Dresden, that he sent soldiers after the young musician with orders to knock out his teeth so he would never play horn again. However Stich evaded Thun’s heavies, made it to Italy, changed his name to Giovanni Punto, and went on to forge a career as a virtuoso player and composer celebrated around Europe for his development of the hand-stopping technique which allows natural horn players to create more notes. Mozart and Beethoven both wrote works for him, and in London he was brought in to instruct the horn players of King George III’s private orchestra.

On to natural horn specialist Teunis van der Zwart, and this recital partnered on the fortepiano by Alexander Melnikov is the performance fruits of his PhD research into Punto’s sound and technique, applying ornamentation and multiphonics, considering contemporary descriptions of Punto’s sound, and most importantly using a “cor basse” – or low horn – mouthpiece, because in Punto’s time the instrument’s wide range necessitated a clear distinction between its low and alto registers, with different mouthpieces employed for each. The “basse” mouthpiece was the larger of the two, producing a more velvety and less penetrating tone, and allowing leaps and jumps to be articulated with greater ease. For the modern player, though, the greater width of its inner rim constitutes what van der Zwart colourfully describes as a “massive shock”, when its 19 mm diameter is 2 mm wider than the ones he’s been used to for decades. “The difference might look negligible”, he says, “but… for several months it felt like playing a trombone mouthpiece”.

As for the repertoire chosen to paint Punto’s world, the recital opens with Beethoven’s famous Sonata in F major, Op. 17 – probably the first ever horn sonata, which premiered in 1800 with Beethoven himself at the piano. Also on the menu is Melnikov’s piano arrangement of the first of Punto’s own sixteen Horn Concertos, published in 1777 and written to showcase his talents. Completing the picture are two sonatas from composers influenced by both Punto and Beethoven – Ferdinand Ries’s

[bart]

Händel - Enchantresses
Sandrine Piau
Les Paladins, Jérôme Correas
Qobuz 24/96




Old warhorses, brought in a magnificent way by Piau, and the ensemble.
We've been listening a lot to her lately, and she's usually brilliant. Technically almost perfect, with a lot of emotion, but never over the top.
Heartily recommended.

Handel is one of Sandrine Piau’s cult composers, and everyone has vivid memories of her magnificent Alcina live: "Where once I portrayed light-hearted, pirouetting heroines, this new album offers a portrait of powerful, often wounded women".

"Queens, sorceresses, sirens... we were attracted by the musical and emotional intensity of the hopes, disappointments and sufferings of these women, not forgetting the malice or cruelty that they also know how to deploy", continues Jérôme Correas, the soprano’s longstanding musical partner and conductor of Les Paladins. With Almirena, Cleopatra and Alcina, Handel explores all the facets of these defeated heroines, whose boldly delineated characters live once more in Sandrine Piau’s passionate interpretation. © Alpha Classics

[bart]

Debussy
Hahn
Christiane Karg
Gerold Huber
Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Howard Arman
Qobuz 24/48




Another good female voice.
Not all works are equally appealing, but it's all well done.

[jimtranr]

Vanessa Perez plays piano arrangements of selections from Manuel de Falla's El Amor Brujo, El Sombrero de Tres Picos, La Vida Breve, and more on a Steinway D in a 24/192 download of Steinway 30036, recorded in 2016. Yummy.

[Kal Rubinson]

Originally Posted by jimtranr

Vanessa Perez plays piano arrangements of selections from Manuel de Falla's El Amor Brujo, El Sombrero de Tres Picos, La Vida Breve, and more on a Steinway D in a 24/192 download of Steinway 30036, recorded in 2021. Yummy.

Perhaps it was re-released in 2021 but it has been in my library since 2017 and the liner notes say that it was recorded in 2016.

Otherwise, d'accord!

[Kal Rubinson]

Originally Posted by bart

Beethoven / Ries / Punto / Danzi - Horn & Piano - A Cor Basse Recital
Teunis van der Zwart
Alexander Melnikov
Qobuz 24/96

I found these pieces very fresh and agreeable!
..................
Completing the picture are two sonatas from composers influenced by both Punto and Beethoven – Ferdinand Ries’s

I got this because I have become a fan of Ries' music lately after I was introduced to his Horn Sonata in an earlier recording "Early Romantic Horn Sonatas" - Steinar Granmo Nilsen (natural horn), Kristin Fossheim (fortepiano), 2L-113-SABD. And while I like this new one, I prefer the earlier one for performance and, especially, sound (in multichannel).