Classical Listening

[LitNetIsGreat]

I seriously have more recordings on Naxos than on any other label with the exceptions of Deutsche Grammophon and EMI (although Chandos... with their incredible high standards for performance and recording are rapidly becoming my new favorite).

I seem to be able to get some Chandos too, they must be connected to Naxos in some way. Listening to Hummel piano sonatas(?) which are on Chandos.

[Emil Miller]

I'm currently listening to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's absolutely thrilling performance of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto no. 4. One of those "desert island" discs... the only version of the Ravel you will ever need. Insanely, this recording is currently out of print in the EMI catalog... although it is still available as a download.



Damn! Ravel should have written more. More piano concertos... more music in general.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0epYg...eature=related

The Adagio from the Ravel is one of the most achingly beautiful. There is a live version of Michelangeli playing this on YouTube but the sound is rather poor and too much audience coughing! compared to the studio recording. I quite like this version from the BBC Proms.

This recording has long been regarded as the finest peformance on disc of Ravel's concerto in G and I am amazed that it is no longer in the catalogue. I think it is one of the greatest 20th century concertos and marks Ravel as a very great composer. The second movement sounds deceptively simple but Ravel said people had no idea how much effort went into its composition. Michelangeli's rendering is liquid gold and the whole concerto is an intellectual tour de force of the kind that few but the French could pull off.
I was fortunate enough to see Michelangeli perform in London some years ago but not, I'm sorry to say, the Ravel. He was an eccentric who lived in a castle in Italy and made relatively few recordings, despite the large sums offered by recording companies, and his public appearences were rare outside of his own country. It is a great pity that he never recorded Ravel's concerto for the left hand which is also a stunning composition.

[stlukesguild]

Currently listening to Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.



One of the greatest achievements in the whole of music... and called by some THE single greatest work of music. I'll not goo that far... but I'll also not dispute it. I had the chance to hear Yo-Yo Ma perform the entire 6 suites some years back which was a truly memorable experience. Nevertheless, my favorite rendering of this work is that of Pierre Fournier (which I am currently listening to). Fournier brings a gravitas to the work that rivals that of Milos Starker while retaining an elegant fluidity worthy of Pablo Casals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmQwk...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV8rO...eature=related

[mortalterror]

I don't really own a lot of cds, so I mostly listen to music in mp3 format or online. I do have a nice classical listening Pandora station I set up a while back and every now and then it plays something delightful and unexpected.

Rodeo, Selections From The Ballet: Hoe Down Aaron Copland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StJTl8Hcr68
Violin Concerto In D Minor : I. Allegro Con Fermezza Aram Khachaturian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZexcMRKVMkk
Suite For Jazz Orchestra No. 2: VI. Waltz 2 Dmitry Shostakovich
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYhZVqODYsI
A Midsummer Night's Dream Op. 61: A Dance of Clowns Felix Mendelssohn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InZXjYWaQAo
William Tell Overture Gioachino Rossini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkymTHSbWe0
The Planets, Op. 32, H. 125: Uranus, The Magician Gustav Holst
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeF2mMUiw9o
String Quintet In E, Op. 13 No. 5: Minuet Luigi Boccherini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKpP8XFYIHk
Pictures at an Exhibition for piano Modest Mussorgsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_98452AxFI
Lieutenant Kijé Sergey Prokofiev
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI36pKa4WR8
Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini Sergey Rachmaninov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Z-HCq5EeU
Enigma Variations, For Orchestra, Op. 36: Theme: Andante Sir Edward Elgar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wviJIQpZ_yY
Bolero Ravel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4J5j74VPw

The rest of the programming is fairly obvious stuff like Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky.

[stlukesguild]

I have a good deal on MP3 format as well but I am repeatedly frustrated with the small "glitches" or gaps that occur (even in "lossless" formatting) in pieces in which one CD track runs into the next ... which is quite common in classical music. I'm also less than thrilled that music downloads cannot include cover art, liner notes and other text.

[stlukesguild]

I'm giving a second listen to a marvelous disc of songs related to the moon drawn from across the ages performed by the inimitable Dawn Upshaw:



I am particularly struck by the magnificent Handel aria, Gentle Morpheus...

(Sung here by the marvelous Emma Kirkby... Upshaw's version has a richer and more intimate sound):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C4kMgEZ4bM

This aria, from the opera, Alceste, should most certainly be more known.

[Silas Thorne]

A friend gave me this wonderful CD recently, 'Klazz Brothers and Cuba Percussion- Classic Meets Cuba' (Sony), which has a number of short classical pieces done with Cuban rhythms, including three short interpretations of Beethoven's Sonata No. 8 'Pathetique' and some Brahms and Bach thrown in. Not traditional, sure, but wonderful stuff.

[stlukesguild]

AcccKK!! After listening to but a few selections of this on Amazon.com I can't say I'm thrilled. Nauseated may be a better word. It reminds me too much of those slick "Hooked on Classics" discs from the late 80s/early 90s in which Beethoven and Mozart were subjected to a disco beat. On the other hand... there are a few such reinterpretations I do find of merit. The Jacques Loussier Trio's jazz interpretations of Baroque classics... especially Bach... are quite inspired...



The same can be said of the great jazz saxman, Lee Konitz' interpretations of French Impressionist music. Of course Konitz... with Warne Marsh and Lennie Tristano brought were early masters of exporting ideas from classical music into the world of jazz...



Then... of course... there is the great Miles Davis disc, Sketches of Spain...



Seriously... classical music has long fed off of jazz (to say nothing of folk music). One need only listen to Shostakovitch, Stravinsky, Poulenc, Kurt Weil, Gerschwin, Bernstein, etc... One of my favorite near contemporary works of music is William Bolcom's vast Songs of Innocence and of Experience , a setting of the poems by William Blake that employs a true eclectic range of styles from operatic to jazz to atonal modernism to lush Romanticism to reggae and bluegrass.



Of course the music of the contemporary composer, Osvaldo Golijov, is just as "polystylistic" in nature... merging elements of Latin-American, Spanish, Middle-Eastern, traditional Hebrew and modern Israeli music with Klezmer, elements of Western classical music, opera, gospel, Broadway, etc...



As always, art will continue to evolve from a merger of traditions... a blurring of high and low... East and West...

[stlukesguild]

Currently listening to J.S. Bach... who is ever my favorite composer... and commonly held to be one of the immortal trinity of classical music (Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart) and quite possibly the greatest composer of all time. What is quite fascinating is the manner in which Bach and Beethoven (especially) differ. Beethoven's reputation owes much to his having been one of the greatest innovators in the history of music. Bach, on the other hand, is more of a summarizer. He takes forms and musical ideas and genre that already exist and virtually exhausts them... to the point that one can almost say nothing after Bach.

Above I spoke of listening to Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. This work is certainly one such example of Bach virtually exhausting a given genre. The suites are essentially structured upon dance movements common to suites and ballets. He then explores the possibilities of how these forms might be filtered through the range and limitations of the solo cello. The resulting work is such a towering achievement (a good many music aficionados have called it the single greatest work of music ever composed) that almost no major composer dared to ever again attempt a major work for solo cello. To this day there are but a few limited major works within the repertoire for solo cello.

Bach achieved the same with the Brandenburg Concertos which virtually exhaust the form of the concerti grossi. The passions, cantatas, the Mass in B-Minor make Bach the unrivaled master of choral music. He takes the fugue to heights unrivaled... to the point that almost any use of the form by later composers, such as Mozart's use in the Symphony no. 41, Beethoven's use in Symphony no. 3 and in the string quartet (the so-called "grosse fugue") are direct allusions and homages to their great predecessor.

Organ music is another genre in which Bach's reputation absolutely towers over every other composer. Certainly, Bach had his predecessors. Dietrich Buxtehude was Bach's idol and the young Johann Sebastian had even sought to become an apprentice to the master, but abandoned this goal as a result of Buxtehude's requirement that he marry his daughter. There have also been marvelous composers for the organ who followed in Bach's wake. Among these we might count Johann Brahms, Josef Rheinberger, Felix Mendelssohn, Max Reger, César Franck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Maurice Duruflé, Olivier Messiaen... and the Modernist organ works of Messiaen are certainly quite fascinating... but to this day organ music and J.S. Bach are almost synonymous.

Currently I am listening to this:



Helmut Walcha is an absolutely fascinating figure in and of himself. The German musician was blinded by a smallpox vaccine at the age of 19. In spite of this disability, he was accepted to the Leipzig Conservatory and became an assistant at the Thomaskirche to Günther Ramin, who was professor of organ at the conservatory and cantor at St. Thomas'. In 1929, Walcha accepted a position in Frankfurt am Main at the Friedenskirche and remained in Frankfurt for the rest of his life. From 1933 to 1938 he taught at the Hoch Conservatory. In 1938 he was appointed professor of organ at the Musikhochschule in Frankfurt and organist of the Dreikönigskirche in 1946. Walcha specialized in the organ works of the Dutch and German Baroque composers... especially Bach. He needed to memorize the entire score of the works he performed as a result of his blindness. He incredibly did this with the entire organ works of Bach, which he recorded twice: once from 1947-52 and the second time from 1956-71.

This is the earlier of the two recordings, performed on the magnificent Arp Schnitger organ at Cappel before it was ruined by the introduction of steam heat in the 1950's. Walcha was an obsessive controller who used music to shape his world. He treats each piece as a treasure to be cherished and burnished. His performances avoid any of the excessive mannerisms of later organists. Each and every "voice" rings clearly. We are told that Bach would travel miles to hear great organists perform, and Helmut Walcha is just such an organist as those. Walcha said of Bach, "Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all."
Indeed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ckUdiM7iMI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCvWkHv4tcw

[LitNetIsGreat]

Currently listening to J.S. Bach... who is ever my favorite composer

Me too on both counts.

Over the past week I have been abusing the Naxos site listening to many Bach recordings in particular - that's the thing with Bach his catalogue is just so big and varied that there is always something there to suit your particular mood or fancy. If you are in the mood for something epic the passions, masses and the choral stuff are just so overwhelming, whereas some of his chamber music, the solo violin performances are delightfully intimate, with a hell of a lot in between!

Of course this is true of many other composers but none that can live up to the quality of Bach, there is something about his music that just works...the words are in the music.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I would greatly recommend this:

BACH, J.S.: Violin Concertos, BWV 1041, 1042, 1052, 1056 (Zehetmair, Amsterdam Bach Soloists)



One of my favourite Bach pieces is the violin (or piano) concerto no in A minor no. 1041. I love Gould's version and have played that hundreds of times. I have listened to dozens of different versions and the one above also strikes me as a particularly good version. I would argue that the first movement is often too rushed, but this one seems to deliver more depth and sophistication, it's just slower and has more impact. I do love the Gould too much though, and have all but banned myself from listening to it!

Of course I am still a baby in terms of classical music, but I thought I would share my thoughts regardless...

[stlukesguild]

For the violin concertos I have one classic archival recording with the brilliant and very young Yehudi Menuhin and conductor George Enescu.



Recorded in 1934 the sound quality is certainly lacking the depth of more recent recordings and I wouldn't recommend it as a first choice for these works. Still, Menuhin is brilliant and it is a must-have for the classical collector (especially for the Bach aficionado). I also have a recording with the marvelous Andrew Manze and a very young (and also brilliant) Rachel Podger.



This recording I would recommend as a first choice without any reservations. Manze is a brilliant performer/conductor/director of HIP (Historically Informed Performances) productions of Baroque music, and both he and Podger are virtually unrivaled as violinists of this repertoire.

AS for the keyboard concertos... originally I found that I preferred these works to be performed on the historically accurate keyboard: the harpsichord. With time I have found that the harpsichord loses its attraction as an exotic instruments and inability to control more subtle nuances of volume and touch and the use of the sustaining pedal mas led me to far prefer Bach on the piano. Gould is a necessity for any lover of classical music and Bach... but he may not be my first choice. Angela Hewitt and Murray Perahia are surely the current masters of Bach on keyboard. With (or Sviatoslav Richter) I find that I am struck by the genius of Gould... or Richter. With Hewitt or Perahia I am struck by the genius of Bach. In other words... Hewitt and Perahia are more "transparent" and far less prone to mannerisms or unexpected interpretations. In a similar manner I would recommend Gidon Kremer's recordings of Bach's sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin... but not as the first choice. My absoulte favorite recordings for the Bach keyboard concertos are Perahia's which were a revelation...





There is a sort of crystal clarity to the "voices" in Perahia's recordings... so that each and every note rings clear like shimmering pearls among the whole necklace. These recordings also broke away from interpretations in which Bach came across as something of an archaic and tenuous first steps toward the modern piano concerto. Perahia's recordings bring alive the magic and originality of these concertos and make it clear that Bach should be counted among the true fathers of the piano/keyboard concerto... along with C.P.E. Bach and Mozart.

Thanks for the reminder of these works. I haven't listened to them for quite some time. They are truly marvelous.

[stlukesguild]

Neely... and any other interested parties... I should suggest that as you become more serious about exploring the music of Bach you must come to the point where you will begin to discover his vocal/choral music. Bach is unquestionably the greatest composer of choral music and music written for the church. During Bach's period of employment at Leipzig (1723–50) his duties included instruction of the students of the Thomasschule in singing, composition of weekly music for use in services in the two main churches in Leipzig, St. Thomas's and St Nicholas's. His post also obliged him to teach Latin, but he was allowed to employ a deputy to do this instead. In an astonishing burst of creativity, he wrote up to five annual cantata cycles during his first six years in Leipzig (two of which have apparently been lost). Bach's entire output of cantatas is estimated to have been slightly over 300, some 200 of which have come down to us. These cantatas were often structured upon well-known Lutheran hymns Wachet auf! Ruft uns die Stimme and Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland.

Bachs cantatas amount to one of the greatest artistic achievements of Western civilization... and this does not even take into account the larger, grander, and more profound choral compositions such as the Saint John Passion, Saint Matthew Passion, the Christmas Oratorio, and the Mass in B-minor. Bach's cantatas contain some of his most beautiful music... some of the most beautiful music ever penned. The scale, orchestration, choice of vocalists, etc... changes from one work to the next so that the cantatas... in spite of the speed of their composition... present the greatest variety of mood, "color", "texture", etc... There are works that employ a full Baroque orchestra, choir, multiple vocal and instrumental soloists... and there are works that are among the most intimate in compositions, structure, and scale.

Currently, I am listening to Philippe Herreweghe's recording of Bach's cantatas for bass.



These are certainly among Bach's most gorgeous works. Cantata BWV 56 Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen presents the most lovely orchestration. In one passage the vocalist and cello are woven together in the most splendid manner. In the aria which follows the vocalist sings against a bass pattern of the bassoon and the most lovely theme played by the oboe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbkQLLWN5bg

Cantata BWV 82 is one of the most magical of all Bach's creations. The first two arias (Ich habe genug and Schlummert ein) are absolutely exquisite... and deeply... profoundly moving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTdWM6uoOxE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRnA8...eature=related

AS I'm on something of a Bach kick right now... although he is never far from by stereo for long... I'll make something of an attempt to explore more of these cantatas over the coming days... weeks... as they are certainly ideal for this time of year.

[Petrarch's Love]

Ah ha! So this is where the music crowd has migrated. Bach! Hoorah!

Currently, I am listening to Philippe Herreweghe's recording of Bach's cantatas for bass.
These are certainly among Bach's most gorgeous works. Cantata BWV 56 Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen presents the most lovely orchestration. In one passage the vocalist and cello are woven together in the most splendid manner. In the aria which follows the vocalist sings against a bass pattern of the bassoon and the most lovely theme played by the oboe...

Hmm. I had missed the bass cantatas until now (though I've listened around in the cantatas generally speaking). I'll have to listen to the links you provide tomorrow morning. Of course, that may be putting yet more temptation to visit the i-tunes store in my way (they make it entirely too easy to purchase music online!) Always good to discover new Bach.

[Gladys]

Bach's cantatas amount to one of the greatest artistic achievements of Western civilization

No argument from me, having sat this morning in a Lutheran Church listening to Ach wie fluchtig, ach wie nichtig (Cantata BWV 26), the F Major Organ Prelude, and appropriate selections from the B Minor Mass.

I stumbled upon the Cantatas early in the 1980's and haven't looked back.