What Classical Music Are You Listening To?

[Peter Friedman]

Mozart String Quartets - K.387 and K.421

[soulpope]

[Balladeer]

Chisato Kusunoki plays Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Scriabin & Liapunov (Quartz)

Fabulous pianist, excellent set, just listen to her playing Rachmaninoff´s Six Moment Musiceaux No 4 E Minor Presto!

[Peter Friedman]

Beethoven - String Quartet Op.59/3

Gade - Symphony No.3, Op.15

[soulpope]

[Peter Friedman]

[mikeweil]

My wife and I saw him perform someof these concertos last night, but with a differnt, larger ensemble - with his own group it all isa bit more to the point. We are looking forward to hear him again in February, this time with the musicians from the CD.Due to the problems of hearing a harpsichord properly in modern, larger concert halls, you will enjoy him perfectly when listening to this CD at natural volume.

The program notes were full of annoying mistakes, wrong portraits of compsers depicted, and the false attribution of the f minor concerto to Wilhelm Friedemann Bach - it was written by a youthful Johann Christian in Berlin and worked over by his brother Carl Philipp Emanuel. 

If you love the harpsichord concertos of Bach and his sons, get this disc, it is excellent.

[Balladeer]

Carl Vollrath - Lingering Longings: Music for clarinet and piano, Vol 2 (Navona)

[alankin]

Silvius Leopold Weiss – The Complete London Manuscript - CD 10 — Michel Cardin, baroque lute – (Brilliant Classics)

 

[Peter Friedman]

[Balladeer]

Carolyn Enger: Ned Rorem Piano Album I - Six Friends (Naxos American Classics)

[jeffcrom]

Alec Wilder - Woodwind Quintet No. 2, Suite for Woodwind Quintet; New York Woodwind Quintet (Golden Crest LP)

[alankin]

Johann Sebastian Bach – Complete Lute Suites: BWV 995, 996, 997, 1006a — Sharon Isbin, guitar (Virgin Classics)

Edited November 19, 2017 by alankin

[Peter Friedman]

[soulpope]

2 hours ago, Peter Friedman said:

Outstanding ....

[soulpope]

[T.D.]

2 hours ago, soulpope said:

Interesting. Her later recording of the suites

was praised on this forum, but I never got round to hearing it. If you've heard both, which do you prefer?

[soulpope]

2 hours ago, T.D. said:

Interesting. Her later recording of the suites

was praised on this forum, but I never got round to hearing it. If you've heard both, which do you prefer?

I bought the earlier Ambrosie recordings as new release but didn`t bother too much about them ..... after the new recording for Aparte drew a lot of praise in 2011 I was curious and re-listened to the Ambrosie platters again and learned to appreciate Gaillard`s unagitated still affluent performances but felt no motivation to buy additionally the new set from her .... btw as the Ambrosie are nearly impossible to find nowadays (the label went defunct) the likely choice is to go via the newer recordings ....

Edited November 19, 2017 by soulpope

[Larry Kart]

2 hours ago, T.D. said:

Interesting. Her later recording of the suites

was praised on this forum, but I never got round to hearing it. If you've heard both, which do you prefer?

I was the one who praised her later recording but haven't heard the earlier one. A commentator on Amazon whose opinion I usually respect said that her earlier version was rougher but agreeably so, though he couldn't chose between them.  Recently I heard the much touted recording of the suites by Jean-Guihen Queyras. Technically, he's remarkable; musically IMO -- blah. BTW, that same Amazon commentator was delighted by the Queyras recording.

[HutchFan]

Rachmaninov: The Symphonies, etc. / Mariss Jansons, St. Petersburg PO (Warner Classics)
Disc 1 - Symphony No. 1 & Isle of the Dead

[Larry Kart]

4 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

I was the one who praised her later recording but haven't heard the earlier one. A commentator on Amazon whose opinion I usually respect said that her earlier version was rougher but agreeably so, though he couldn't chose between them.  Recently I heard the much touted recording of the suites by Jean-Guihen Queyras. Technically, he's remarkable; musically IMO -- blah. BTW, that same Amazon commentator was delighted by the Queyras recording.

In the prelude to Suite 4, I compared the later Gaillard, Queyras, Wispelwey (Channel Classics), and an old favorite, Lillian Fuchs on viola (Doremi). Gaillard in the booklet to her discs is asked by an interviewer, "What do you mean when you speak about a sense of rhetoric, when there is no text and the music is secular?" She answers: "Indeed, there is no text in these dance suites. Yet we cannot help being touched by their eloquence, as if the cello were speaking." That's it exactly, or that's it in her recording.

In the prelude to Suite 4, each five-note melodic phrase begins/jumps down into and then off from a lower-register chord, as though from a trampoline: jump ... chord ... bounce ... melody...  jump ... chord ... bounce ... melody... etc. for roughly 4:30, with shadings/variations in emphasis. In Gaillard's performance the lower-register chords tend to be gruff and are fairly clearly differentiated in timbre and by timing and volume from the notes that follow before the next launching lower-register chord arrives. The sense of speech, even of dialogue, that results is quite clear and to me feels just right. Further, listening to Wispelway, who also takes good account of the initial chord-versus-following melodic arc rhetorical structure and even nicely goes on to timbrally differentiate and shade in volume those chords from each other as the movement goes on, one gets the feeling (at least I do) of an interpretation, of a player making the instrument speak in a particular way, while with Gailard it's the instrument itself that seems to be speaking. I know -- booga-booga stuff, but that's the feeling I get.

With Queyras, the lower-register chords in each phrase are almost scamped/nearly inaudible, as though he doesn't quite want us to hear them; thus the movement's rhetorical structure is more or less missing. He does it this way, I would guess, because he wants to play those repeating wave-like melodies in as unbroken a fashion as possible, as a lyrical line, that is -- it's like 4 minutes of melted dark chocolate. But the prelude isn't lyrical per se or lyrical that way; it's about a chord (and an act of rhythm, i.e. the "jump") repeatedly generating (in dlalogue, dancing like a partner with) a melody.  Fuchs gets this too, but her recording, from the early 1950s, is rather close up; thus the initial chord of each phrase isn't as clearly differentiated in timbre and volume  from the notes that follow as with Gaillard and Wispelway. But her performance sure is worth a listen.

[soulpope]

[Peter Friedman]

[soulpope]

[soulpope]