Classical Listening

**LitNetIsGreat** · 08-22-2010, 12:19 PM

Truls Mørk is generally considered one of the finest cellists around; however, last year he was tragically infected with Lyme disease and can now no longer play the cello.

Really? That's a sad story. It must be awful for a musician not to be physically able to play. Poor chap.

**Sebas. Melmoth** · 08-22-2010, 12:30 PM

Terrible indeed.

Well, you snapped up a lucky break with Mørk's Bach's solo cello.

Now: Karajan's Rimsky's Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.
http://www.deccaclassics.com/cat/sin...UCT_NR=4757718

**Musicology** · 08-22-2010, 02:11 PM

J.S. Bach
Cantata 211
Coffee Cantata

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx36s...eature=related

**Emil Miller** · 08-22-2010, 04:34 PM

This is from the film Rhapsody in Blue which was the usual Hollywood biopic. However, Oscar Levant's playing of this work is incomparable and easily the best of the many posted on Youtube.

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

**stlukesguild** · 08-22-2010, 10:34 PM

I have mixed feelings about Gershwin. He was really a pop song composer who attempted to pass himself off as "serious" classical composer... and yet his famous Rhapsody in Blue was actually orchestrated by the composer Ferde Groffe. The best version of Porgy and Bess, in my opinion, is that of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald who recognized that the work is a piece of popular music, and succeeded in bringing out the strength of the jazz elements and the great melodies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIDOEsQL7lA

Unfortunately YouTube doesn't have a version of the brilliant version of "It Ain't Necessarily So."

Currently listening to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's famous Stabat Mater... written literally upon the composer's deathbed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLKw6...next=1&index=1

His use of expressive dissonance was quite innovative... and considering that he died at at 26, one can only imagine what he might have achieved.

**Emil Miller** · 08-23-2010, 03:52 AM

Originally Posted by stlukesguild

I have mixed feelings about Gershwin. He was really a pop song composer who attempted to pass himself off as "serious" classical composer... and yet his famous Rhapsody in Blue was actually orchestrated by the composer Ferde Groffe. The best version of Porgy and Bess, in my opinion, is that of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald who recognized that the work is a piece of popular music, and succeeded in bringing out the strength of the jazz elements and the great melodies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIDOEsQL7lA

Unfortunately YouTube doesn't have a version of the brilliant version of "It Ain't Necessarily So."

I agree with you assessment of Gershwin but I think it is fair to say that the US has not produced as many well-known concertos as it might have done. Of course the Gershwin work is heavily influenced by his popular music but as a piece of authentic Americana I haven't heard anything that approaches it; notwithstanding Groffe, Copland, MacDowell , Bernstein, Adams, Glass et al.

**Petrarch's Love** · 08-25-2010, 11:43 PM

Originally Posted by stlukesguild

I'm still exploring the Baroque in some greater depth. Once again I'm listening to Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber and Jan Dismas Zelenka:

I went into a little background of both of these composers earlier this summer:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...=47822&page=27

At that time I was exploring mostly their choral works. Now I am listening to their instrumental pieces.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT7T2qa2ZuE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9wKF...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw9Fz...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLc0m...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A29rhG-Nqk0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsoqJga4-DY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g9PK...eature=related

Composers such as Zelenka and Biber offer a context for the great J.S. Bach... who as great as he was... did not exist of compose within a vacuum. Rather there were any number of greatly talented... even brilliant... composers who were essentially his peers... writing music worthy of exploration... and not involved in some great conspiracy involving the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, the Jesuits, the Freemasons, or any other secret society.

Thanks for this, St. Luke's. I had never heard the Biber you posted and I don't think I've ever heard anything by Zelenka. The Biber I'm especially tempted to add to my own music collection.

Though, for all I know it already have some in my collection. It's a little like Christmas around here music-wise. I volunteered to help my mom clean out the garage the other day and unearthed: 1) My Grandfather's clarinet, which I've now experimented with enough to play the theme from Beethoven's 9th on and 2) My grandmother's extensive collection of classical music CDs which I had assumed my mom had given away when my grandmother died a few years ago. So, here I am, listening to this lovely Pergolesi St. Luke's posted above and busy sorting through piles of CDs/uploading them so that I can transport them all via computer/ipod to Chicago with me.

My favorite find of those I've listened to out of the pile so far has been a disc of Vivaldi and Arcangelo Corelli performed by a group of Venetian musicians, Interpreti Veneziani, whom my grandmother and I heard play in a Venetian church where they play regularly some years ago. One of the tracks off the album that has been posted to youtube (I would ignore the somewhat distracting snippets of Paris offered in the visual portion of the video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwvnNb0OVIs

Back to sifting through my musical treasure trove now (the complete symphonies of Mahler just sitting in the garage all this time!!!)

Edit: By strange coincidence, just as I'm thinking how much I'm enjoying the Pergolesi, a disc of the Stabat Mater jumps out at me. Maybe if St. Luke's keeps posting beautiful pieces I'll keep finding them in my grandmother's magical pile of CDs.

Originally Posted by Sebas. Melmoth

Truls Mørk is generally considered one of the finest cellists around; however, last year he was tragically infected with Lyme disease and can now no longer play the cello.

I hadn't heard that. How tragic. I remember vividly hearing him in a concert a few years ago when he played at my university. I had not heard of him before at the time I went and was completely unprepared for what a remarkably moving and expressive cellist I was going to hear. A very powerfully understated performer and one of, if not the best I've heard perform live (including Yo Yo Ma). I hope that something can ultimately be done for him. He isn't a very old man if I'm remembering right.

**Sebas. Melmoth** · 08-26-2010, 07:49 AM

Life is a very fragile thing: heard the American violinist Pamela Frank was disabled from an acupuncture procedure gone wrong; something happened with the brilliant dramatic soprano Cheryl Studer which derailed her career.

Edit: oh, and last month Mikhail Pletnev was busted in Thailand for attempted sexual assault on a boy.

**Lokasenna** · 08-26-2010, 09:56 AM

Originally Posted by Sebas. Melmoth

Life is a very fragile thing: heard the American violinist Pamela Frank was disabled from an acupuncture procedure gone wrong; something happened with the brilliant dramatic soprano Cheryl Studer which derailed her career.

Edit: oh, and last month Mikhail Pletnev was busted in Thailand for attempted sexual assault on a boy.

Jacqueline du Pré leaps to mind as well - one of the greatest cellists in history, who was rendered incapable of playing at the age of 28 by MS, and then finally killed by it at the age of 42.

**Emil Miller** · 08-26-2010, 06:31 PM

Here is that giant among cellists, Rostropovich in the greatest concerto of them all. It always gets to me when I hear the intermingling of birdsong with distant bugle calls as the sun sets on the Czech countryside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7e7LFhfN_s

**Sebas. Melmoth** · 08-27-2010, 02:24 PM

Now auditing the pick of the litter: Karajan's 1983 Carmen.

Mon Dieu!

**Petrarch's Love** · 08-27-2010, 02:41 PM

Beautiful, Brian. Makes me want to run out and get the Rostropovich Dvorak. I don't know if I've ever seen a video of him playing before. He holds his cello very differently from most players I've seen. It's almost horizontal for much of the piece. I wonder if that was a necessity because he was shorter than average or if it was some sort of technique he developed. I imagine it would make thumb position much easier, and it might be easier to drop the bowing arm into the strings with more weight and force with the instrument at that angle.

Meanwhile, I've just found the loveliest recording of Mozart's double piano sonata with Radu Lupu and Murray Perrahia and am listening to the slow movement right now. I found a snippet of their recording on youtube which I'm posting despite the grainy sound and abbreviated length because the accompanying footage is gorgeous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2CLk_W8FoA

This is a better quality and complete recording of the whole movement for those who may not know it:

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

**stlukesguild** · 08-27-2010, 11:26 PM

Franz Schubert's early death at age 31 may have been the greatest loss in classical music... even greater than the premature death of Mozart. Schubert was a phenomenally prolific and prodigal composer. While still in his teens, Schubert was already composing mature lieder (German art songs) such as Gretchen am Spinnrade which sets lyrics from Goethe's Faust. Schubert was afforded little formal musical or compositional education, and his family lacked even the resources to provide him with a piano. As such, Schubert often struggled with counterpoint and other formal elements of composition as well as with the structural concepts demanded by larger compositional forms such as the symphony, the sonata, and the opera.

The composer, instead, focused upon smaller musical forms... especially the string quartets, which are among his greatest works and owe to the composer's fluency upon the violin and his experiences making music in small intimate settings. Even more important was his innovations within the genre of the lieder. Where lieder were minor aspects of the oeuvres of Mozart and Beethoven, they become the center of Schubert's compositional output. He is generally acknowledged as the greatest songwriter ever.

Schubert came to the lieder at a fortuitous moment. German poetry was undergoing a great flowering during the Romantic era and Schubert was inspired by many of these poems. Where the usual lieder simply set the lyrics of the poem to a lovely melody, Schubert took the composition of songs much further. The voice and the piano accompaniment were seen as equal partners. The composer developed a great array of tonal and coloristic effects upon the piano... much as Beethoven had done with his piano sonatas... to such an extent that the accompaniment is almost "orchestral" in its range. He also approached the poems which he set in a dramatic... narrative manner... so that the music essentially paints an image of what is expressed in the texts... or what Schubert perceived in the texts... for in most instances, the composer brought a far greater depth to the songs than actually exists in the poems alone.

Schubert composed over 600 lieder... including 3 major song cycles: Die schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Maid of the Mill), Schwanengesang (Swan Songs), and Winterreise (Winter's Journey). Where Schubert had never been able to successfully realize an opera, with these song cycles the composer was able to create a dramatic epic constructed of a collection of miniatures... rather as poets have long composed epic collections from a collection of sonnets and other short lyrical verse (Petrarch's Canzoni, Spenser's Amoretti, Herrick's Hesperides, Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, etc...)

The greatest of the song cycles, in the opinion of many... myself included... is the Winterreise. Winterreise sets a cycle of 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller. The songs present the voice of the poet/lover, forming a distinct narrative or dramatic sequence. The narrative, greatly simplified, begins with the poet, whose beloved now fancies someone else, leaving her house secretly in the middle of the night, abandoning the town and following the icy, frozen river to another village. He longs for death, and is reconciled to his loneliness. The ice and the cold... the darkness, and the stark and barren winter landscape mirror his emotional state. Along the way, he encounters various people who shun him as the outsider. At the very end, he comes upon an ancient barefoot hurdy-gurdy man, cranking out his music alone... yet no one listens... cares... or has given him so much as a penny. His only audience is the dogs who growl at him. But he just continues playing... and the singer/poet follows him. This allegorical journey of the soul clearly mirrored Schubert's own journey as a largely unknown composer... knowingly approaching death.

The music of the Winterreise travels through a diverse emotional and stylistic array. The are songs that mirror simple German hymns, ballads, Viennese waltzes, even elements suggestive of Modernist skittering of notes across the piano, or droning modal sounds... like Medieval chants.

**Musicology** · 08-28-2010, 05:13 AM

What a wonderful piece this is. And the remarkable Rostropovich.

This particular piece has a simplicity and directness all of its own.

Originally Posted by Brian Bean

Here is that giant among cellists, Rostropovich in the greatest concerto of them all. It always gets to me when I hear the intermingling of birdsong with distant bugle calls as the sun sets on the Czech countryside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7e7LFhfN_s

A rare live recording of the Dvorak Concerto with Rostropovich as soloist from 1965.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-h_Fa3SJ_o

**Emil Miller** · 08-28-2010, 05:53 AM

Originally Posted by Musicology

A rare live recording of the Dvorak Concerto with Rostropovich as soloist from 1965.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-h_Fa3SJ_o

Thanks so much for this performance, it's simply magical.

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