I used to think Rhapsody in Blue was pretty good until I heard this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4yJVsuzimo
A Woody Allen film every other night?
Who was the idiot that invented boxed sets?
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I used to think Rhapsody in Blue was pretty good until I heard this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4yJVsuzimo
A Woody Allen film every other night?
Who was the idiot that invented boxed sets?
Oh, yeah I like that one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
There's nothing wrong with box sets, it just depends what's in them. If it's Sex in the City vol 2, then yep I've got a problem, but Woody Allen, that's jazz man!
Anyone who gets beyond vol 1 of 'Sex in the City" is beyond redemption, because pandering to mass psychology is the primary aim of the charlatans who make and sell such rubbish.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
Woody Allen ( Allen Konigsberg) may be jazz man, but he is hardly a recommendation for those who understand what's going on.
Oh Brian, you're so harsh to one so relatively young... (besides, one must follow one's whims).
I totally agree on the other point - I can't be in the same room as any of that sort of stuff.
I agree. Next time I'll use a smilie. :D
Poking my head back into the forums to see what people have been reading and listening to lately. St. Luke's--That looks like a great Sibelius recording. I should check it out. I don't think I have a recording of his seventh symphony.
I've been enjoying some fantastic piano concerts the last couple of weekends here in Chicago with absolutely spellbinding piano concerts, first by Eugeny Kissin, who is an absolute master of the instrument and not to be missed if he comes to a concert hall near you, and then, just this last weekend, by the very young female pianist Yuga Wang. The latter played an interesting if eclectic selection of romantic works, including several pieces by Alexander Scriabin, who had more or less been off my radar until now. Apparently he was such a devotee of Chopin that he used to sleep with scores of Chopin's music under his pillow. I think I still prefer Chopin, but was surprised with how compelling Scriabin could be, especially as expertly performed by Wang. I was also interested to discover some recordings on youtube of the composer playing his own works from a set of piano rolls made somewhere around the early teens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3KbT...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTTHm...eature=related
A recording of the second piece and one other as performed by Yuja Wang, the same pianist I heard this Sunday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVUCX...CA2A96616D05A8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHVCk...958923391E5A2A
Edit: Having just come across the classical crushes thread for the first time, I realize that Brian no doubt looks upon my third row, keyboard side seat for the Yuja Wang performance with considerable envy. :D
If you really want to get the low down on YuJa Wang, you should visit the Classical Crushes thread, which has some amusing input from StLukes and others.
Despite its age, this is one of the most famous recordings of any piece of music ever made. Mengelberg was a giant among giants and, despite all the technical advances in recorded sound, no conductor today comes anywhere near him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L2RDSNu44w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EyAS7fo7DQ
Heres Beecham with his usual panache in another historic recording.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x-0nbCGDM4
I just heard this the other day by Vivaldi. I haven't really gotten into much pre-Romantic classical yet, but I really liked this--loved the unusual instruments like the mandolins and recorders.
Oh boy, do you have some treats in store!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
I love Romantic music as well, but some of the stuff from the Classical and Baroque periods is sheer rapture.
Lately, since I learned he has an upcoming speaking engagement, I've been listening to music by Tigran Mansurian. Particularly, the Ars Poetica and Monodia albums. Really amazing if you appreciate a minimalistic approach.
This is a great duo between viola and saxophone, off of Monodia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_yRkUsSF7M
I quite like this work. It has elements of medieval chant with the modal underpinnings and the bending of notes. There are also elements that suggest Eastern-European folk music, klezmer... and of course jazz.
Played this one late last night.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5017/...e1e1d154cb.jpg
There is surely something to be said for listening to an opera in which one can understand the language... pick up on how the music is used to heighten or lend a certain color to a given word or phrase. Initially I was going to go with the original Britten/Peter Pears recording, but any number of reviews suggested that this more recent Bostridge.Rodgers pairing was even stronger and I can honestly say that I was in no way disappointed. Initially I had my doubts about the CD-Rom libretto... but I gotta say after using it, I love it. The PDF format allows me to enlarge the text to read it comfortably... much more comfortably that the micro-print most CD booklets allow.
The opera in question is a chamber-opera setting of Henry James classic tale. Where the original book leads us to believe that the ghost of Quint and Miss Jessel are all in the young governess mind, Britten's allowing us to see Quint and Miss Jessel leads us to wonder otherwise. Britten also plays up the loss of innocence (a common theme throughout his work) employing Yeats line from the Second Coming, "The ceremony of innocence is drowned..." with even greater suggestions of something horribly wrong having happened involving Quint and Miss Jessel... something suggestive of abuse of the children. The discomfort is further heightened if one knows of Britten's troubled sexual life.
Britten employs a twelve-tone "Screw Theme" which he runs through a series of 15 variations before each scene. While the music is largely tonal... with dramatic employments of dissonance, the twelve-tone theme and variation was an obvious nod to Schoenberg. The score makes repeated use of child-like music... nursery rhymes and such which a scoring suited to such. This in repeatedly contrasted with darker brooding passages highlighting the dark under-pinnings and the premonition of something not right.
Altogether a powerful musical drama in a marvelous performance.
For whatever reason, I'm not a huge fan of Russian music. Or perhaps I should say I'm not as much of a fan of Russian music as I was when I was younger. Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, etc... were among my first real classical loves. Such bombast and orchestral colors... how could the young Romantic not be swayed? But now...? It often strikes me as overly melodramatic and lacking the solidity of form.
Having said that much... this recording absolutely blew my socks off:
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5146/...31228fa914.jpg
Valery Gergiev (who will forever garner my praise for having "discovered" Anna Netrebko) has famously been knocking the dust off many of the old Russian warhorses... as well as uncovering long-forgotten works (operas by Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Glinka, and of course Tchaikovsky). Here Gergiev offers up a white hot version of the entire Nutcracker played magnificently at lightning speed. This is the most eye and ear-opening recording of Russian music I have come across since Gergiev's own recording of Shostakovitch's opera The Nose. It shakes the dust off this piece to such a degree that I can no longer imagine myself limiting my listening to this marvelous music only at Christmas time.
Sergi Rachmaninov
Concerto No. 2
Finale
Conductor - Georgi Dimitrov
Soloist - Giorgi Cherkin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmm6p...eature=related
This is an absolutely stunning performance of my favouruite concerto by, for my money, the greatest composer for piano of them all.
http://youtu.be/JAoQoZBTqLs
Here is a piece by Chopin, my 2nd favourite composer for the piano.
http://youtu.be/iFNULhgw2gw
Wow, for her age she is very good...Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
Who's your number 1, just out of interest?