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What Classical Music Are You Listening To?


StarThrower

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3 hours ago, jeffcrom said:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Y4HJA9YTL._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg

Caruso's first recording session - ten sides from April 11, 1902. Crude, with audible mistakes, but still amazing. You could say that this is the date that the record business grew up.

Or, alternatively, the date when recorded classical music mythologies started to be constructed (one of those smiley things spelling out the (partially) tongue-in-cheek nature of this comment) .

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Tippett: Symphony No. 4 / Fantasia Concertante On A Theme of Corelli / Fantasia On A Theme of Handel

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Disc 1 - pieces for voice and piano and then choir. A second hand copy of this arrived in the post yesterday - I was primarily after a recording of The Knot Garden. I paid £15 for it. Just noticed the only available copy on Amazon now is going for £245 - bonkers!

Scenes and Arias, II. Responcio: II. Je vous pry sans debat

"Scenes and Arias" was only the second 'contemporary' 'classical' piece that I heard live (an inscrutable concert by Roger Smalley being the first). Went to a Prom in '76 with some friends from uni and we were all mystified by the Maw. It's actually not that difficult (though I prefer his later 'Odyssey'). Had to look up what else we saw that night - Vaughan Williams 6 which I remember (I was in the first flowering of RVW-mania) and Brahms 4 which I can't recall for the life of me.

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Now playing:
Frédéric Chopin 
– Ballade for Piano No.1 in G minor B.66 Op.23
– Ballade for Piano No.2 in F major/a minor B.102 Op.38
– Ballade for Piano No.3 in A flat major B.136 Op.47
– Ballade for Piano No.4 in F minor B.146 Op.52
– Impromptu for Piano No.1 in A flat major B.110 Op.29
– Impromptu for Piano No.2 in F sharp major B.129 Op.36
– Impromptu for Piano No.3 in G flat major b.149 Op.51
– Impromptu for Piano No.4 in C sharp minor B.87 Op.66 "Fantaisie-Impromptu"
– Fantasie for Piano in F minor/A flat major B.137 Op.49
– Tarantella for Piano in A flat major B.139 Op.43
– Polonaise for Piano in A flat major B.147 Op.53 "Heroic"
— Alfred Cortot (piano) (EMI Classics)

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John Casken: Apollinaire's Bird (Live)

"In 1914 the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire signed up as a soldier in the French army, and was seriously wounded in 1916. He recovered, only to die in the Spanish influenza outbreak just days before the armistice of 1918.

Apollinaire’s Bird takes 'Un oiseau chante' ('A bird sings'), one of the poems he wrote while fighting in the trenches, as its basis. This remarkable poem contrasts the realities of war with hearing a single bird singing ‘somewhere among these two-a-penny troops. … Sing on and on your sweet song to the sound of deadly guns.’

Apollinaire’s Bird was written for the Hallé and its Principal Oboist Stéphane Rancourt."

From: http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/recording/apollinaires-bird

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Bridge, F.: Orchestral Works, Vol. 3

Three of his most glorious pieces - the shimmering 'Summer', utterly mysterious 'There is a Willow Grows aslant a Brook' and more contemporary (in a broader European sense for its time) 'Phantasm'. Also a jolly take on the an old folk dance tune ('Sir Roger') plus some enjoyable earlier pieces. 

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Darius Milhaud's "Protee," Maurice  Abravanel, Utah Chamber Orchestra

An almost-forgotten radical modern masterpiece -- not like most Milhaud, kind of a cross between "Le Sacre" Stravinsky (influence might have gone both ways there) and Varese, whose music Milhaud would not have known at the time. 
 

Would like to get my hands on this o.o.p. Monteux recording, though "modern" sound is probably essential. It's movement 2 that's the killer (it caused a riot at the premiere), though the whole work is remarkable. The premiere of "Protee" took place in 1920, but it was written in 1913, contemporaneous with "Le Sacre."

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Disc 3 this morning - Songs for Achilles, Songs for Ariel, Songs for Dov, Byzantium.

Late afternoon - The Knot Garden. Utterly bonkers libretto (though no more bonkers than The Magic Flute....well, a bit more bonkers) but contains some extremely colourful and engaging orchestration. Helps to have heard 'Song for Dov' a few times prior to have some islands of familiarity.

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Midday - Disc 1: Sleigh Ride; Marche Caprice; Over the hills and far away; Dance Rhapsody No. 2; Dance Rhapsody No. 1; On the mountains
 

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