Dunno, why don't I listen to my copy of this for the first time and tell you it's one of the couple things I bought last summer on my classical binge that I still haven't sat down to listen to, along with the Schoenberg and Gershwin I bought.
So, I'm in the Musical Heritage Society (like BMG or Columbia House for classical and jazz) They were having some pretty sweet deals this weekend and I made the following haul: Tchaikovsky: Symphonies 1, 2, 3, & 6, plus various overtures, incidental music, and serenades (4 cds) Mahler: Symphonies 5 & 7 (2 cds) and a three cd set, Orchestral Music from the New Vienna School: Schœnberg: Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5, Symphonic Poem; Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31; Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4; Berg: Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6; Lyric Suite, three pieces for string orchestra; Webern: Passacaglia, Op. 1; Five Movements, Op. 5; Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6; Symphony, Op. 21. all for under $52, pretty bitchin' I think, I'm moist with anticipation.
Holy fuck, that is an awesome haul! I've got the schoenberg pieces and mahler 5 and 7. I have heard the Webern Symphony, not a fan of him too much because I consider his 12-tone works to be very scholastic. Schoenberg and Berg could make amazing music from the system, but Webern just sounds like a technician to me. Maybe it's just that piece though.
All the Tchaikovsky is Neeme Jarvi and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Mahler is Maurice Abravanel and the Utah Symphony Orchestra (from what I've read, he's sort of the new standard for Mahler, I have the 2nd and 8th from his cycle and they're very good) and the New Vienna is Karajan and the Berlin Phil.
Ah! I have the Karajan/Berlin doing Pelleas and Verklarte Nacht as well. I'm overall not as big a fan as I should be of the Verklarte recording. Riccardo Chailly and Takuo Yuasa both have wonderful readings of the work. Also, unrelated to classical music, maybe. I just got my first decent pair of headphones (aka ones that didn't come with my ipod). Listening to music no longer hurts my ears and I don't need to turn it up as loud so it's better for me, long-term. This will make my long bus rides cross-province easier to deal with. I got through 5 Beethoven symphonies and my earlobes couldn't handle the strain that the buds put on my ears.
Been listenin to sum Schnittke lately... Peer Gynt and the 1st Symphony. Dude's pretty insane with his stylistic exploration, and as someone with musical ADD, I love it. What other pieces are essential for the man?
Good question. I'd like to know, too. I have a Concerto Grosso of his that was grouped with the Glass violin concerto and it was too far out for me. I ripped the string quartets from the library probably two years ago and still haven't listened to them.
So, I'm definitely going to see Mendelssohn Piano Concerto 1 and Mahler 7. But while I'm in Ontario, I may also have the chance to see Der Fliegende Hollander by Wagner OR Idomeneo by Mozart. I'm thinking the obvious choice is Wagner, but I've heard neither, anybody wanna try and convince me of either one?
SO my friends and I went to Princeton the other day to see Bartok and Feldman quartets, and grad students' responses to them (with pieces). We mostly saw that, then Dave Matthews came out with a bunny hood and an acoustic guitar and sang about rabbits and foxes giving a wolf shrooms.
Yesterday I played timpani in the piece God of Our Fathers by Claud T. Smith with the combined Wind Symphony and Chamber Choir. It was the most epic thing I have ever performed. If I get a recording, I will post.
Get the 2nd piano concerto. I've only ever heard it in concert so I can't recommend a recording but it is a great piece full of lots of wonderful piano-banging and cool swirly strings.
epic Carmina Burana gong is epic God of Our Fathers sounds intriguing.....definitely post if you can. Sounds like a Dream Theater track title.
I did the Bass Drum and most of the Woodblock parts in Carmina Burana 2 years ago in my university wind ensemble. That woodblock part is the most fun thing ever in Uf dem Anger.
I just bought the Guarneri Quartet complete Beethoven Quartets. Fucking awesome and only 30$ at HMV. That Op. 131 c# minor quartet is just amazing in every single way. Also picked up Rattle/CBSO doing the Rite, Petrushka, Firebird and Apollo, as well as a disc of chamber music piano solo and songs by Thomas Ades. On another note, I saw Mahler 7 on Friday night, and holy fuck. What a symphony. The Orchestra was spot on as well.
I've done that + I did Carmina Burana with a 300 piece marching band + God of Our Fathers + Mozart's Requiem = I win.
mozart requiem for marching band? I've gotten a couple of Kronos Quartet albums recently; George Crumb's Black Angels is kickass. Their addition to Ives' "They are There" makes it slightly more and less heroic, weirdly enough.
God fucking damn! I said "I've done that [Carmina Burana] + I did Carmina Burana with a 300 piece marching band + God of Our Fathers + Mozart's Requiem" Can you not read?
My favourites: Beethoven, Haydn, Mendelssohn and Rachmaninoff, Brahms and Dvorak Of course I like Bach and Mozart, though you can only listen to so much of a composer. I must really get into Schubert. Loved what little I've heard so far. Any others I must know about?
Jesus, how did I forget Mahler. He'd like Mahler. Also, recently saw the Canadian Opera Company doing Der Fliegende Hollander. Good times. One of the first times I enjoyed an opera without knowing any of the themes. Well staged too, I thought. However, the Dutchman himself was a bit weak.
I'm starting to think that I should investigate more Schubert as well--didn't really latch on to his music when I was playing it more, but as I get older I am appreciating it. Though I'm into the symphonic/chamber literature--I tried some lieder, and as hard as I have been trying to get into opera and song, I just don't care about that stuff, as brilliant as it may be.
I find the same, but I do take exception to Wagner. I've been trying to get into Opera more and more, but I tend to completely ignore the music when I do. I just kind of watch. I know that there is brilliant music going on underneath, but I'm not paying complete attention to it. I'm trying to listen to more lieder as well, and I can tell you what I've found works for myself, but it may be just as bland as the rest. I really like: Schumann - Im wundershonen monat mai Varese - Un grand sommeil noir (piano ver.) Schubert - der lindenbaum Schoenberg - Buch der hangenden garten (first song is my favourite) Schoenberg - Gurre-Lieder Can't think of too many more off the top of my head. But give a few of those a chance.
so fretless, you know those 16th-quintuplets in the violins in the rite of spring, p.14 that go chromatic like (F# G F# F F#) really fast are those hard or are the pros cool with that
Is that p. 14 of the score or the violin part itself? I don't have either at home, though so I'm not sure what part that is and now I'm curious. I played the second violin part a few years ago and there were definitely some challenges there.
movement 14 mean, it's towards the end. the high strings and the flute/pic are going frantic on these quintuplets and i'm not sure if the orchestra is intended to be entirely together on them or not but it sounds amazing and it lasts maybe six measures.
Agh my recording is divided into eleven sections. There's a part at the end of the big Part 1, "Dance of the Earth" where everyone is going apeshit, but it's straight 16ths for the violins and that was indeed a difficult spot, but for the second violin everything fell into pretty playable patterns, you just had to be on "I-know-this-shit-Autopilot" and be prepared for all of the changes. The first violins usually have to sweat a little more in higher positions.
1:56 in this video: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfaUCZrq79A"]YouTube- Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring, Part 4[/ame]
That spot appears at 5:20 in this video with a good shot of the violinist's hand. I don't remember how it went for me, but all the notes lie in a three finger pattern that just rotates notes, so theoretically it's not too hard, unless there's a weird skip in the interval, which I don't think really happens there. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXajAxWBQfA"]YouTube- Igor Stravinsky: Le sacre du printemps (4/4) — Semyon Bychkov[/ame]
I recently just picked up a nice haul while on vacation: Stravinsky - Ballets (Rite, Petrushka, Firebird, Apollo) w/ Rattle/CBSO Messiaen - Eclairs sur l'au dela w/ Rattle/BPO Ades - Life Story (comes with solo piano works, quartets etc.) various artists Ades - Tevot and Violin Concerto (has anthony marwood doing the concerto and Rattle/BPO doing the world premiere of Tevot) Beethoven - Complete String Quartets w/ Guarneri Quartet I'm sure that that was all. Man, the Messiaen work is just stunning in it's sheer brilliance. It is the biggest culmination of his style, considering it was his swansong. It's massive it has 11 movements, some are 10/11 minutes, some are 1/2 minutes, most are between 5 and 6. The first movement is just a painting of tone. I don't know how else to describe it. It's so rich and vivid to listen to. If you know Messiaen's work, you know what I mean, but here it is the strongest I've ever heard it. And Messiaen is unbelievably good at making really dissonant melodies just sound so tuneful. He has this gorgeous melody in the the fifth movement played by the strings, and it always feels so tonal and like it will resolve somewhere, and then at the end it just drops down a semi-tone and it's a mindfuck every single time. It's just so well-crafted. If you haven't heard this work before, do yourself a favour and check it out. EDIT: I also got another cd: Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic - Castle of the Mad King. It's got a shitload of original percussion compositions, mostly Marimba, but if you're not into solo percussion, you would love this guy. I ranted about a piece of his, Uneven Souls, here before, but now I'm going to say that his Marimba solo, Ilijas is worth checking out even if you're not into Marimba. As a marimbist I can say that a weakness of our music is that it's all so goddam "mysterious" sounding at some point. Zivkovic appears to just say "fuck that" and writes really romantic sounding music that is still very much grounded in being modern. Ilijas is a prime example of this, it's got emotional climaxes and, it actually sounds like Liszt writing for Marimba at the beginning. I'll get a youtube clip when I can find a good one.
mmmmm marimba music [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ9_6W6bVoQ"]YouTube- Carl Orff - Gassenhauer[/ame] Nice haul, btw. I want that Messiaen--hadn't heard of it before. And I still need to hear Ades. Edit: just read that Messiaen's wife, Yvonne Loriod, died last week. Good excuse to go get her version of Vingt Regards.
What?! She died last week? How have I not heard of this before? My other half of my piano/perc duo is a huge Messiaen/Loriod/Aimard nut. I can't believe he never mentioned, or doesn't know. Also, a good starter for Ades is the violin concerto. It's available on Amazon and iTunes as a single download for something like $3 and it demonstrates most of the facets of his orchestral style as of late. It was my first real investment towards his music, and now I own those two records, and his opera, as well I am searching diligently for copies of all of his other works. Here is that Marimba piece, Ilijas, by Zivkovic I mentioned earlier: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io3ebqvkxDo"]YouTube- Nebosja Zivkovic - Ilijas[/ame]
Nice piece. I always thought Zivkovic was kind of far out but it's pretty grounded. I love watching marimba players and their stick manipulations. I was tempted to post this in the Glass thread, but I felt it fit better here. Waiting for the Barbarians--Philip Glass Very interesting opera that will probably get better with repeated listens, but really just needs to be re-recorded in a studio with better singers and no audience. I am very intrigued now by the source material--I have never read anything by Coetzee before and now I am going to, so I am thankful to Philip Glass for introducing me to the story. The music itself is relentlessly gloomy, somber, and dark, with only occasional moments of light, mostly in the form of higher register playing and percussive attacks, not tonality. Yet I am impressed, as always, at the amount of variety and emotion Philip Glass can muster with his repeated oscillations of two note patterns and arpeggiated figures. He is successful in many places in the voicing and choice of more soloistic instruments to help color the drama. For me, the strength of this opera completely lies in the orchestral portion. Second comes the choir--Glass has done some nice changing of vocal sounds for the choir portions, with the exception of some more silly aspects like the repeated chantings of "Ba Ba Ba Ba baybaybay Ba Ba BaBarbarians. Barbarians Barbarians Baaaarbarians. Barbaiiirians Loolooloolooloolooolooolooo Enemyyyyy" in the track "What is Going On". Otherwise the syllables are nice and moody and seem to roll off the tongues like silk and give a great effect. Third place goes to the solo singers. Partially the problem is that I do not understand how to hear the main vocal lines. The words are a reduction of spoken dialogue from the novel, and here it just sounds basically like the singers are saying regular sentences in English with random rhythms and pitch thrown in. There is almost never any feeling of momentum or direction in these lines other than you know they have to end with a period. There are next to no detectable melodies in any of the sung solo lines, which must have then been murder for the singers to learn and remember. It's very close to the effect that Glass used with La Belle et la Bete with the exception there that he had to fit his vocal rhythms and patterns into the timing of the actor's lips in the Cocteau film. The visual element is hugely important in this opera--the photos in the case are quite striking--in order for the sung lines to be something more than a plot delivery system. However, I am able to listen to his three early operas, that are much more minimalistic and longer, without feeling the need to see what is happening on the stage. The orchestra delivers the best performance of all three of those factors, and there are a few moments where Glass steps out of his usual patterns and gives some really nice soli introductory lines to trombones, cellos, bassoons in a couple of places in what sounds like something that might be shaped into a chaconne. The choir sounds decent most of the time, but in many tracks have difficulty staying together with the orchestra rhythmically--a bit of a surprise for a professional production and one that got committed to disc, though I suppose it is nice to know that professionals have difficulties in live performance on occasion. The biggest issue I had was with the principal singers. With the exception of Marisca Mulder as Star, and to some extent Elvira Soukop as the Barbarian Girl, everyone else doesn't seem to have any idea what to do with their parts. Star has only a few sung lines, and the Barbarian Girl is a bigger role, and they have the most success finding a center to their pitch and giving direction to their lines. Richard Salter as The Magistrate, the main character, has a ton of singing to do, and most of it does not land in any particular pitch center (mostly he's sharp), and he has a particularly grating edge to his vowel sounds, which in themselves seem to have a grand time sitting in his nasal cavity. Looking him up, it's sad to note that he passed away not long after this recording at age 65, but I noted with a bit of humor his statement that he gravitated to contemporary music "where one wouldn't need to sing in tune ..." which he indeed lives up to here. The other singers were not free of error and uncertainty here and there, either, though a pretty casual listening probably wouldn't detect anything. The opening of Act II is apparently a short overture for orchestra and coughing audience. For two and a half minutes it becomes more interesting to listen for the phlegmy hacks of the concertgoers accompanying the oscillating minor thirds, until The Magistrate comes in with his grating sharp singing and warbly flattened-out vowel landings. The action of the story is pretty interesting, though, and I would love to see a DVD of the production at some point. And as a bonus, check out this douchebag. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLaEYU5hHeI"]YouTube- Waiting For The Barbarians Prelude[/ame] To be less mean, I think it's great he's into Glass and looks like he could possibly grasp conducting some day when he figures out proper movement and posture, and he's certainly got more passion than the average young kid (I'm assuming he's in high school).
I don't know if Eric still checks this thread. But I just saw Wilhelm Furtwangler doing Beethoven 9 at my record store. I'm not sure which recording it is, but it's only six dollars. Is this a must purchase, do you guys think?
I think it would be worth six dollars. The Furtwangler recording of Beethoven 3rd was the first CD I ever purchased. But I bought that because it was the only one available. Regardless of that, I still listen to it and it has some unique qualities. It's probably pretty good plus historic. For the price of a Happy Meal I'd take it.
It's almost certainly the 1951 Bayreuth recording, which is definitely worth $6. Furtwangler is just the right conductor for a few of the Beethoven symphonies, and the 9th is first among those to me. His 5th, 7th, and 9th were amazing. I like Toscanini's 3rd and 8th. Some of the WWII recordings of Furtwangler are a bit tough to listen to because of sound quality issues, but you get used to it quickly and the performances are worth it. The 1951 Bayreuth recording is pretty solid for mono, though. I've got lots of recordings from that hall: Furtwangler/B9 1951, Krauss/Ring 1953, Knappertsbusch/Parsifal 1961, Bohm/Tristan 1966, and Bohm/Dutchman 1971. Once stereo takes over in 1961, it's something else. But the mono stuff isn't bad. With the Beethoven recording there you don't get the unique acoustic of the hall because the instruments are on stage rather than sunk below it in the deep pit, but it still sounds a little different to me than the other recordings of the 9th I've got from that period. EDIT - A few more things. Furtwangler's Beethoven might be tough to get used to if you know other recordings first. I got to know Beethoven on Toscanini's ~1950 cycle with NBC, and then started picking up the Furtwangler recordings. You can't get too much further apart in approach than those two, especially in the 3, 5, and 9. Furtwangler is slow. His 9th is glacial. Toscanini's 9th is an hour and Furtwangler's is 75+ minutes. Some of that, I think, is because Toscanini doesn't take a repeat in the 3rd movement that Furtwangler takes. But not all of it. To me Furtwangler, especially in the WWII recordings, does a good job of expressing terror of the day. The wartime 9ths are gut-wrenching. The Bayreuth 1951 recording is a bit different. It's still hyper-dramatic, some would say to a fault, but instead of fiery rage it feels happier. The occasion was the reopening of the Bayreuth festival since the Allies had shut it down late in the war. It reestablished one of the most German cultural events and attempted to divorce all of this music, the 9th and Wagner's dramas, from the Nazi association. That's a powerful thing to do, to keep the best parts of the culture while attempting to divest it of all the negative things that came to be associated with it. The Meistersinger prelude must have been played at every concert during the war, for example, and Hitler loved the 9th, having it played on his birthday, conducted by Furtwangler. He and Knappertsbusch conducted Nazi concerts all the time. And then they went in 1951 and played this music and ripped the Nazi bullshit right out of it. It's awesome. My love for Knappertsbusch's Parsifal is pretty well-established here, and likewise my love for Furtwangler's ultra-romantic Beethoven interpretations. While some complain of the tempi of those performances, I find them perfectly paced. Frankly, I don't give a damn how quickly Beethoven thought his pieces should be played. The only reason I listen to music is for personal enjoyment, and adhering to the numbers on the score just doesn't matter much to me. There is a whole lot of stuff going around about being "authentic" these days: playing on period instruments, researching the scores methodically, etc. I don't care about that at all. I have no interest in making sure that my favorite recordings match as best as possible the first performance of the piece.
In other news, I've decided to add Brahms' 4th to my short list of favorite orchestral pieces. I like all of his symphonies, but that one stands above the rest to me. I've also decided that at this point, Mahler just does nothing for me. If I'm going to listen to a huge, arguably overwrought symphonist, I'd rather listen to Bruckner.
Which Mahler have you tried? It's all about the right starting point. For me, personally, 1 was the best introduction to his style. Then I moved onto 5, 7 then 6. I also briefly listened to 10 around 7. I adore all of these symphonies, but they take a little bit of dedication before you truly "get it". But once you do, they become some of your favourite works. They all have this beautiful song-like quality as well. You're doing yourself a disservice by giving up on him completely. Now, this is only if you haven't tried anything. If you're an individual movement guy, try the first movement of 1. Or the Finale of 5, First movement of 6, and last movement and scherzo of 7. If you don't like any of these, that's when I'd give up, because they are some of my favourite movements.
I've listened to 4, 5, and 8. I actually like the last movement of 4 pretty well. I've got a recording with a boy soprano singing it, which I think I prefer to other versions I've heard with a female soprano. It's not that I've given up on Mahler, it's that at this point I've just decided he's not among my favorites at all. I'll keep acquiring his symphonies and listening because tastes change and maybe something will hit me.
