What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[Antonmb]

Mozart: Piano Concertos K.466 No.20 & K.491 No.24
Alfred Brendel, piano
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner
Phillips (1974), vinyl, Netherlands pressing

The new cartridge and table have me pulling a lot more classical vinyl from the archives lately. This is a good one, I’ve always been a fan of both Brendel, and Marriner and the Academy.

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[bart]

Klami
Sibelius
Madetoja
Pylkkänen - Scenes from the Kalevala
Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk
Qobuz 24/96




A collection of beautiful works.

The Kalevala is a compilation of mostly original folk poetry, arranged into fifty extensive runos ("poems") by the Finnish physician and folklorist Elias Lönnrot. Beginning with the creation of the world, it develops into a series of separate episodes which nevertheless form a rich whole, introducing epic characters such as Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen and Kullervo. The collection first appeared in 1835, with a final, extended version being published in 1849, and was soon hailed as Finland’s "national epos" – a sensitive matter given that the country had been subjected to Russian rule since 1809. It came to play a major part in Finland’s national awakening and had a massive influence on Finnish art in the late 19th century, but its role in the national consciousness remains important even today.

The present album, from the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Dima Slobodeniouk, brings together Kalevala-related works spanning the period between 1897 and 1943. No such collection could overlook Sibelius, who composed several works inspired by the epos. Included here is a rarity – the first recording of the 1897 version of Lemminkäinen in Tuonela, from the Lemminkäinen Suite. Finnish composers from later generations all had to find a way out from under Sibelius’s shadow – especially so when composing works based on the Kalevala. The portraits of Kullervo which bookend the recording, by Leevi Madetoja and Tauno Pylkkänen, are both compact works in contrast to Sibelius’s large-scale "choral symphony" on the same theme, and when Uuno Klami used bold and primitive colours in his five-movement Kalevala Suite, he was looking towards Stravinsky rather than his countryman. © BIS Records

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

The Imaginary Book Of J.S. Bach
Café Zimmermann
Qobuz 24/96




I follow this ensemble since quite a while.
Here they bring works from J.S. Bach, his son C.P.E., Mozart, and some transcriptions.

Johann Sebastian Bach has made the reputation of Café Zimmermann ever since the ensemble was formed in 1999. This new recording presents the music of the Kantor from a different angle, that of the notebooks in which musicians wrote down pieces and movements they particularly liked. This recording brings together works composed by Bach in the late 1740s which may be described as intimate in character, including the famous Trio Sonata from his Musical Offering. The Baroque idiom of this "experimental" sonata is contextualised by the innovative style developed by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel in one of his own trio sonatas. A number of arias by J. S. Bach are also presented here with exclusively instrumental forces.

Under the direction of violinist Pablo Valetti and harpsichordist Céline Frisch, the ensemble even ventures into Mozartian territory with the Aria and Fugue, K. 404a, taken from two pieces by Bach that Mozart himself had annotated and arranged in his own musical notebook. Finally, a chorale that Bach was particularly fond of, a three-part fugue played here by harpsichord and flute. Carl Philipp Emanuel had it printed at the end of his father’s musical testament, The Art of Fugue: "Before thy throne I now appear". © Alpha Classics

This is very agreeable.

[jimtranr]

Rip of a BBC/Lyrita CD of 1973 and 1980 live premiere peformances of British composer Robert Simpson's Fifth and Sixth 1970's-era symphonies, conducted respectively by Andrew Davis and Charles Groves, and issued in 2021 from the Lyrita archives to commemorate the centerary of Simpson's birth. Both recorded in London's Royal Festival Hall.

The Fifth is a "hard-edged" composition, the Sixth is less so, but both exemplify their twentieth-century roots. Simpson was not satisfied with the performance of the Sixth despite commending the orchestra's skill and the conductor's effort to hold everything together. The problem, the composer acknowledged, was the fact that the orchestra had all of one day to rehearse before the premiere, which he considered inadequate to grasp the "soul" of the piece. Nonetheless, the performance appears spotless to this ear.

Logistics note: I ordered the CD from Amazon around Thanksgiving. It arrived today because it came all the way from...Greece. So if you're tempted, just be aware of that detail.

[bart]

Weckman - Tunder - Froberger - Ritter - Stylus Luxurians - Selected harpsichord works
Yoann Moulin
Qobuz 24/96




I knew only Froberger, the rest was new to me.
Quite good compositions!
Well recorded.

For this second part of his anthology of seventeenth-century German harpsichord music, Yoann Moulin takes as his starting point the famous competition organised when Weckmann and Froberger met at the court of Dresden. It was in the 1650s that the influences of the French style were grafted onto models drawn from Italian music. The compositions of this period appear to us in their infinite variety, as illustrated here by the notion of "stylus luxurians". © Ricercar

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir - Vernacular
Qobuz 24/192




I do enjoy the journey!
Works from Páll Ragnar Pálsson, Þuríður Jónsdóttir (how do you pronounce this?!), Halldór Smárason and Hafliði Hallgrímsson.

Not all new music is interesting enough to play it more than once.
For me, this album is.

[bart]

Originally Posted by jimtranr

Rip of a BBC/Lyrita CD of 1973 and 1980 live premiere peformances of British composer Robert Simpson's Fifth and Sixth 1970's-era symphonies, conducted respectively by Andrew Davis and Charles Groves, and issued in 2021 from the Lyrita archives to commemorate the centerary of Simpson's birth. Both recorded in London's Royal Festival Hall.

The Fifth is a "hard-edged" composition, the Sixth is less so, but both exemplify their twentieth-century roots. Simpson was not satisfied with the performance of the Sixth despite commending the orchestra's skill and the conductor's effort to hold everything together. The problem, the composer acknowledged, was the fact that the orchestra had all of one day to rehearse before the premiere, which he considered inadequate to grasp the "soul" of the piece. Nonetheless, the performance appears spotless to this ear.

Logistics note: I ordered the CD from Amazon around Thanksgiving. It arrived today because it came all the way from...Greece. So if you're tempted, just be aware of that detail.

Jim, I found it on Qobuz!
Have already played the first movement, to get a taste of it.
The rest is for a moment earlier in the day.

[Antonmb]

Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 2
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Robin Ticciati conducting
Linn (2021), via Qobuz

Ticciati has not particularly impressed me in the past, but I think this performance is quite good. It’s nice to have Linn’s catalog finally available from Qobuz, their recording quality is almost always excellent.
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[jimtranr]

24/176 download. Oue delivers an impactful performance of the Symphonic Dances with the Minnesota Orchestra.

[jimtranr]

HDTT DSD256 remaster of a 1957 15 ips RCA reel-to-reel tape pairing Byron Janis with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Janis gives what to my ear is a "relaxed" performance which, combined with Munch's complementary conducting, yields a luscious reading captured in excellent Lewis Layton-engineered sonics. Played back here in DSD256.