Rolling Classical 2018

NB: Spectropol Records of Bellingham, WA, is having a half-price sale that ends tomorrow: https://spectropolrecords.bandcamp.com . I just bought Bruce Hamilton's Lanes, the Frets of Yore comp, and the last Marco Oppedisano. Some interesting EA and new chamber music stuff.

Prediction: This will be the year Barbara Hannigan wins the Sonning Prize. I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm fairly confident.

To kickstart the year, here is, uh, Helmut Lachenmann's Marche fatale:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6QWUHbNHAw

(Yes, this is an actual piece by Helmut Lachenmann.)

haha wow thanks

Haha wtf

He penned a little note (in German) explaining (?) his thought-process:

https://operstuttgart.wordpress.com/2018/01/01/so-klingt-vielfalt-helmut-lachenmann/

My German is too limited to fully grasp what he's getting at but he's mostly interested in raising new questions, which is thoroughly in keeping with his persona. Not to mention Lachenmann literally means 'the laughing man'.

hello classical music friends -- if you have a little extra time/goodwill, please bookmark my thread:

help me with my class?

you wouldn't have to do anything more than contribute your existing knowledge :)

Done!

This morning: walking to train, the weather was right on the razor's edge between rain and snow and I watched it change from one to the other and back again while listening to Enescu's Cello Sonata which I just noticed yesterday is completely killer.

Other ecstasies from the past few days:

Norgard - Voyage Into the Golden Screen - could not believe my ears at several points during this.
Pehr Henrik Nordgren - symphony op. 20 - grabbed me by the collar, bold and arresting. Radio recording downloaded from the Symphonyshare google group.
Prokofiev Symphony 2 - A pet piece of mine for a couple of decades now, why are this and his 3rd so undervalued? Big feral modernist engines with unbelievable orchestration. #2 formally modeled upon beethoven's Op. 111 supposedly? Op. 111 has come down with rabies, it seems.
Liszt Symphonic Poems, early 1950s Westminster LP, Dean Dixon conducting the Royal PO - Dixon was the first well-known african-american conductor and he spent most of his career leading german radio orchestras. Very underrecorded. This is my first hearing of any of his work. Right here is one of the best Liszt orchestral albums ever put down. A shame it was a few years too early for stereo or its rep would surely be higher. Very good mono sound though, heard in a transfer which can be downloaded for free from the ReDiscovery Records website.
Beethoven sonatas 5-7 Op. 10 - Alfred Brendel (from his first Philips cycle) - please be careful never to overemphasize late beethoven. Early beethoven is no less unique and rich and slays just as much, albeit more swashbucklingly. Confirming for the milionth time that Brendel owns this trilogy (same for op. 32).

Oh, speaking of Nørgård, my choir is doing his Wie Ein Kind, it's pretty amazing. Spotify-link to an album with my choir singing it (though I wasn't in the choir then): https://open.spotify.com/album/6zljyLhSJwYXSlgZJ6dms5?si=r-zmnK3XT_SFwlYRf_CRlw
It's the last three tracks.

There can never be too much Nørgård. Every single one of his periods is incredible in its own right.

Btw Jon, which of Enescu's cello sonatas are you referring to? The first is Brahmsian and big-boned; the second is less immediate but utterly spellbinding once you've taken it in. Few things move me as much as Enescu's late music.

Op. 26.

I need to look for the second one ASAP

They're both op. 26, heh (an Enescu quirk: he tended to gather compositions of a given type under the same opus number).

Laura Buruiană and Martin Tchiba's Naxos disc pairing the two sonatas is pretty solid, with a major caveat: the recording is uncharacteristically imbalanced. Valentin Răduțiu and Per Rundberg on Hänssler are worth hearing as well.

Buruiana appears to have also recorded that piece (but not the other sonata) in a mixed recital on Avie, maybe that one is better engineered?

The one with Alexandra Silocea? I think it only contains a fragment from an unfinished cello sonata that he worked on prior to op. 26/1.

There's also this live performance of op. 26/2, which I haven't heard yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tavr3B9SbK8

On eMusic, I'm also seeing both of the Op. 26 by Alexandre Dmitriev and Alexandre Paley on the french label Saphir.

I don't recall those being any good but it's been a while.

Fiancée just texted that she just saw Braunstein play the Shostakovich Violin Concerto and it was amazing. Envious.

I assume it was the first (it's always the first). The second is painfully undersung, perhaps because very few violinists actually pull it off. I love Oistrakh's take on it (goes without saying) but every other recording I've heard falls short. Too bad, as I think I prefer the second to the first, all things considered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD0ORIm6bGw

the second violin concerto and second cello concerto both suffer from neglect and both RULE, imo

Speaking of live video recordings and underperformed 20th century works, I recently stumbled on this amazing version of Wilhelm Stenhammar's second symphony, with Herbert Blomstedt at the helm:

https://vimeo.com/83864301

Yeah, I meant Violin Concerto no. 1, which is a monster, sorry.

xp Ooh, I've seen Blomstedt conduct Stenhammar in that very hall! Second piano concerto though, last year.

Fascinating concert hall, btw -- rather than the seats rising in a steepish staircase toward the back, it felt like most of the audience were sitting below or level with the stage. Also, gf & me were impressed with the "resolution", or clarity of strands in the music. I don't know to what degree these two are connected.

Right, there it is

https://vimeo.com/188813653

Lucky you! I'll check it out in a bit. I'm always happy to hear more Stenhammar.

I’ve never listened to Stenhammar! Probably due to some comment I read in some record guide during the first year I was getting into classical music

If you're curious, I'd say that video I posted today happens to make for a great introduction. His string quartets are also quite wonderful, especially nos. 4-6 as performed by the aptly named Stenhammar Quartet.

Wow, I never listened to Shostakovich's second violin concerto before tbh. That video is pretty striking. I'll be listening more.

don't neglect cello cto 2 as well!

And the violin sonata! And the viola sonata! And the string quartets nos. 12-15! And the 14th and 15th symphonies! And the Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok! And the Michelangelo Suite! And the Six Poems by Maria Tsvetaeva! Late Shostakovich is best Shostakovich, imho.

absolutely otm

the 14th symphony is my favorite thing he ever did

you missed Execution of Stepan Razin on that list btw!

Yep, that's a good one too.

And I completely agree with you regarding the 14th symphony – it's the purest expression of his vision. And there have been so many tremendous recordings of it in recent years: Currentzis, Petrenko, even Kremer.

Just listened to the vimeo of Stenhammar's second piano concerto that anatol_merklich posted upthread. Wonderful stuff, as expected. I really wish Blomstedt would give us studio recordings of Stenhammar's complete works for orchestra (concertos included), as he has a much better grasp of this idiom than most other conductors I've heard, Stig Westerberg excepted.

As a side note, it's odd how sensitive I am to the performance variable when it comes to pre-WWII composers (in the broadest possible sense). For instance, Soviet-era takes on Shostakovich are almost systematically more convincing than what came after: you can feel the nerve-wracked wiriness behind the first Borodin Quartet's partial set (1-13), whereas the Emerson Quartet just sounds phony. Likewise, certain performances of Sibelius's symphonies do absolutely nothing for me, even as Vänskä's cycle with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra is one of my favourites of all.

By contrast, audibly different though they may be, I love most versions of Le marteau sans maître I've listened to, and I can't think of a single recording of Ligeti's violin concerto that I dislike, even though some strike me as more persuasive than others. Of course, there are also composers such as Richard Barrett who include extended improvisations in their scores, which means that no two performances are ever quite the same, but even there, due to the music's endlessly proliferating, often disorienting strata, it can be hard to tell the improvised sections apart from the composed ones, which I assume is part of the point.

Maybe there is a correlation between the scarcity of performances and the availability of 'authoritative' recordings? Newer music doesn't remain long (if at all) in the limelight, so a given composition will often only be associated with a particular musician or ensemble forevermore. It goes without saying that there are far fewer recorded performances of Saariaho's Près than of Bach's cello suites, in part because we assume that Anssi Karttunen, the cellist who premiered Près (as well as the closely related concerto Amers) 'perfected' (the French verb parachever is closer to what I'm getting at here) the work, since Saariaho explicitly dedicated it to him. Perhaps if we could hear the original Schuppanzigh Quartet's interpretations of late Beethoven, there would be (slightly) fewer sets available today (only 'slightly', though, because the more time goes by, the less performers feel compelled to respect the composer's supposed wishes). That said, LPs of Shostakovich's string quartets actually make for a good counter-example here, though I assume a relative dearth of availability in the West up until the 1990s, as well as lo-fi engineering, are partly to blame.

A final hypothesis: a relative increase in compositional complexity may also have diminished performers' agency. Merely 'getting the notes right' is sometimes a feat in and of itself, whereas in a musical paradigm intent on expressivity, that worships virtuoso figures such as Liszt, Paganini, Alkan, etc., but whose repertoire is comparatively 'simpler' (mark the scare quotes), there's more leeway to compress or distend the phrasing whichever way one deems fit, rubato-style.

hmmmm. i was thinking something somewhat similar just this week regarding "authoritative" recordings.

i am not sure the presence of an "authoritative" recording is a factor of the number of recordings, myself. my thoughts were regarding the rite of spring. i'd argue that the "authoritative" recording there was bernstein's 1958 recording, which took place 45 years after its premiere. since then, pretty much all recordings have followed that one, reducing the latitude for interpretation. before bernstein's, one hears the rite performed in all sorts of ways, many of which would be thought of as "wrong" today

so i would argue, really, that the absence of an "authoritative" recording in a difficult work gives one _more_ latitude for interpretation, insofar as one person's "interpretation" is another person's "fuckup". i find that the most difficult works tend to sound far more different between versions, at least in part for precisely this reason. (how many different ways has "scarbo" been played?)

To be fair, I doubt Bernstein's Rite of Spring was ever viewed as authoritative in Russia. Authoritativeness varies quite a bit from place to place.

As for 'Scarbo', it's a fiendishly difficult piece within that paradigm, sure, but is it harder to play than, say, Carter's Night Fantasies or Michael Finnissy's solo piano pieces? It doesn't sound that way to me, a layman, so I'd be curious to hear a pianist's thoughts on this.

By contrast, audibly different though they may be, I love most versions of Le marteau sans maître I've listened to,

Boulez was loosening up compared to his earlier work but surely this piece is still more strictly notated than virtually any pre-war music?

Yeah, that's definitely a major factor.

oh lord, i'm not a pianist but i wasn't ever intending to make a direct comparison between "gaspard de la nuit" and "english country-tunes"! i mean there's a lot of other stuff going on there that makes a direct comparison of those scores in terms of "technical difficulty", i would argue, counterproductive. these are works which were created, and exist, in entirely different sociocultural contexts!

is stravinsky in general thought of highly in russia? i have a wonderful russian recording of "les noces" but stravinsky doesn't really seem to have been celebrated in russia as a "russian".

My bad, Bernstein apparently played a major role in the Rite's Russian reception:

The Rite of Spring had a very different trajectory in Russia than it did in Western Europe. Though conceived in St. Petersburg by a trio of Russians - choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, with a libretto and set design by Nicholas Roerich, and music by Stravinsky - the famous original ballet was never performed in Russia itself. Serge Koussevitsky gave performances of the concert work in 1914 in St. Petersburg, and afterwards the ballet had a spotty Russian history. Stravinsky never found the favor in Soviet Russia that Prokofiev or Shostakovich did. When Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic in The Rite on a tour to Moscow in 1959, it was the first time the work had been performed in the city in thirty years.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-robin/a-russian-rite-revisiting_b_3315248.html

My view was informed by Gergiev's – a reassessment more than anything:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/9260665/Valery-Gergiev-why-Igor-Stravinsky-was-Russian-to-the-core-interview.html

clearly stravinsky was russian - outside of russia one can hardly help but think of him in this way - but he was never soviet, and whatever russia is under putin, he wasn't that either. at some point the russians may "rediscover" him as one of their own... but he currently has no apparent value as a cultural symbol to the russian oligarchs.

For curiosity's sake, I checked out the Bolshoi Theatre's upcoming shows. Par for the course:

https://www.bolshoi.ru/en/timetable/

I love how La Traviata, Manon Lescaut, Billy Budd and The Taming of the Shrew, among others, are billed as for 'adults only'.

The Mariinsky Theatre is considerably more adventurous and incidentally features The Rite of Spring (along with a lecture) and Petrushka:

https://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill/playbill

Just bought tickets to see Adès conduct the Ligeti violin concerto (as well as Beethoven 8, an Adès piece, and a Stravinsky piece) this weekend.

Good program, though I have little experience with Adès as a conductor beyond his own music, which strikes me as relatively hit-or-miss.

It was spectacular to see the violin concerto live, with those microtones ringing in Boston's Symphony Hall. Hadelich's playing was beautiful, really precise and clean compared to the Astrand recording I'm familiar with. The third and fourth movements were especially intense and the aria movement was poignant. I admit to drifting a little in the fifth, not sure if it was just because I'd already been through the rest or because Astrand's approach may have worked better for me with that one; still, one of the best live music experiences.

Also, that was my first time at the BSO and the first time I've actually experienced a classical audience that seems as posh as the stereotype. Different from what I'm used to and a bit weird. A surprising number of people were talking and sometimes even laughing at moments during the Ligeti.

Also, I've had something playing in my head that I kept trying to place for the last couple of days. I finally realized maybe five minutes ago that it's the opening of Bartok's 4th string quartet.

the fourth has some great earworms, maybe my favorite of his quartets

Wtg Grammy winner Hannigan! I should remember to purchase Crazy Girl Crazy. I haven't listened to the Higdon viola concerto yet, although I did enjoy "All Things Must Pass".

New Reich album coming out btw. The movement they're releasing early is not really a departure for him but still effective, with some complex rhythms going on and nice melodic motives: http://smarturl.it/PulseQuartet?iqid=gm.us.fb

Excellent news! Hannigan deserves as much exposure as she can get.

xp

Listening again, I really appreciate how the form of the Reich movement is crafted.

Ugh, I meant "All Things Majestic".

So Barbara Hannigan didn't win the Sonning Award after all. But Hans Abrahamsen did. So she'll be in Denmark performing Let Me Tell You and other works next year! Now I have to figure out how to get tickets...

I love Abrahamsen, though as a home listener I am a wee bit confused by these endlessly proliferating recordings of his first string quartet. What's wrong with its follow-ups?

They're playing his forth string quartet as well. Should I go see it?

I'd say yes, but I'm rather fond of his music, as well as a sucker for string quartets in general.

You can check out the Ardittis' recording on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/5RpogjWbEWPt8C8QUuyYxl

For a not-as-enthusiastic (and, to me, amusing) take on it: http://5against4.com/2013/02/03/hcmf-2012-arditti-quartet/

Breaking up the English contingent was Hans Abrahamsen, and there was a clear sense of expectation for the first UK performance of his String Quartet No. 4, completed in 2012 having been commissioned over twenty years ago. One can only imagine how that time was spent, as the result is 21 of the most wretched minutes i’ve ever spent in a concert hall. In many ways, it presents a more extreme version of Archbold’s Nine memos, only in Abrahamsen’s quartet just four behaviours are explored: high harmonic counterpoint, alternating between solo and tutti passages; the same interspersed with col legno passagework and episodes redolent of viol music; plodding pizzicato counterpoint, again with solo and tutti contrasts; and delicate twirling material that Abrahamsen likens to “the ‘babbling’ of a child”. All four movements cling to their mannerisms as though nailed to the floor, exhausting all interest in moments but continuing relentlessly for minutes on end. It’s bad enough that such dull, lazy music as this should be written in the first place, but then to claim—somewhat triumphantly—to have spent two decades working on it is, frankly, to piss all over your chips.

Just listening to Alexander Melnikov's Four Pianos, Four Pieces, namely Schubert's Wanderer-Fantasie, Chopin's Etudes, Liszt's Réminiscences de 'Don Juan', and Stravinsky's Three Pieces from 'Petrushka'. A nifty concept, played as well as you'd expect by a Sviatoslav Richter pupil. I can't wait for him to start recording Beethoven's sonatas and concertos.

I don’t have him in any solo recordings but in several chamber music recordings with Isabelle Faust et al where he is excellent

On an unrelated note, fans of Saariaho's pre-2000 output should check out this performance of Helena Tulve's Extinction des choses vues:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keNVBPOyFx4

melnikov's shostakovich preludes/fugues recording is great!

Will look into all of this. Tulve sounds really good so far. The best thing I've been listening to recently is probably Kate Soper's Nadja for soprano and string quartet from a year ago. It gets pretty intense and satisfying. Some great noisy string bits: https://soundcloud.com/ateoper/sets/nadja

John Gordon Armstrong's Space Within for Julian Bertino on 10-string guitar (both guys I know tbf): http://www.johngordonarmstrong.com/the-space-within/

Nicholas Omiccioli's Field Well for chamber winds is a fairly open composition, I gather, with a lot of extended techniques. Works in a loose sound mass sort of way: https://soundcloud.com/nicholas-omiccioli/the-field-well-2017-for-chamber-winds

Thanks, Sund4r, I'll check them out in a bit.

Of the three, my preference goes to Omiccioli. I like that he filed the piece under 'ambient' on Soundcloud - it's a type of crossover I'm invariably happy to hear. I enjoyed Armstrong's piece as well, and would love to hear a higher quality recording of it (was this sub-128 kbps?). Soper elicited mixed feelings: I'm mostly on board with her string writing (she should write a purely instrumental string quartet) but the vocal lines sounded kind of awkward to my ears, a little too hesitant for comfort (nor did that appear to be the desired effect). The Breton setting struck me as marginally more successful on that front, though for admittedly personal reasons the irruption of speaking voices reciting parts of the English translation of Nadja in a casual North American accent didn't move me or even strike me as particularly thought-provoking, for that matter. Interesting stuff nonetheless.

would love to hear a higher quality recording of it

Yeah, it's definitely not a top-notch recording, just a document of that performance. I think it's very possible that there may be better-quality recordings to come.

Yep, the Tulve piece is pretty much what I've been looking for. It must be magnificent in the concert hall! What's that one dude blowing into? Some sort of rubber tubing??

Btw, Armstrong's Music for Solo Guitar, from last year, is very good. I've been listening to it all the time.

RIP Klaus K. Hübler: https://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/rip-klaus-k-hubler/

Listening to Donnacha Dennehy for St. Patrick's Day: https://bedroomcommunity.bandcamp.com/album/tessellatum

Thanks for the link. I’m familiar with the name but have yet to hear his music.

FINALLY tracked down the Rostropovich/Ozawa/Boston recording of the 2nd Shostakovich cello concerto. Was not disappointed in the slightest. Fuckin' A. Is there anything better in all of music than the last minute of the finale?

Other pieces obsessing over last coupla weeks:

Schumann Dichterliebe (i've been a fiend for his solo piano corpus for over twenty years and only now do i finally realize how great the song sets that come right after the solo piano phase really are!)

Berlioz Faust (now I know why I never clicked with this piece: the Colin Davis/Philips version is fucking boring, that's why. Hello Paul Paray live bootleg and JE Gardiner proms 2017 broadcast)

Ohana - just keeps getting better the more I hear of him. Definitely one of my top 10 20th c composers by now.

Shostakovich Symphony 10 - Svetlanov mid 1960s on Melodiya. Monstrously overwhelming version. Fantastic sound for russia at that time.

Ohana hasn't quite clicked for me yet, but I'm sure it'll happen someday. I need to give those Erato recordings another shot.

I didn’t know about those until quite recently. I had been working my way through the series on the Timpani label (which I think originally came out on a different label). I’d say my favorite piece atm is Office des Oracles.

If memory serves, the Timpani series also features some of his very last works, so it's probably a better way to get acquainted with his different periods than the Erato recordings. Both leave out his etudes for piano, which are characteristically unusual in that the final two include a part for percussion. I have a version with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (one of my favourite Debussyans) lying somewhere and should dig it up. There's also his string quartets, which I haven't explored at all. The Quatuor Psophos, whose Debussy/Ravel/Dutilleux disk impressed me last year, recorded the Ohana set back in 2004 and I'm sure they make for fine guides throughout.

Too bad I'm still furiously struggling to catch up with the (mostly non-classical) stuff I missed out on last year… I'll get there eventually.

I have the Etudes by Symeonidas (sp) - would like to hear bavouzet. I had better buy it from iTunes before you can’t buy things from iTunes anymore.

With all the harp talk going on now, I thought I'd note that I've really been enjoying this new quasi-minimalist harp quartet by John Gordon Armstrong. It's on the accessible, energetic end but I don't think it's fluffy at all, really:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51pfUV28nBg

Some highlights from the MusCan contemporary music concert on Thursday night:
Edgar Sulski - Polaris-Nocturne:
<iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FMusCanSoc%2Fvideos%2F1839983359393468%2F&show_text=0&width=560"; width="560" height="315" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" allowFullScreen="true"></iframe>

That was a test. Sulski's Polaris-Nocturne:

https://m.facebook.com/video_redirect/?src=https%3A%2F%2Fscontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net%2Fv%2Ft42.1790-29%2F10000000_919055688268021_5428053430453141504_n.mp4%3F_nc_cat%3D0%26efg%3DeyJ2ZW5jb2RlX3RhZyI6InNkIn0%253D%26oh%3D846606cd3450e97530c5b76a4949a166%26oe%3D5B09B18B&source=misc&id=1839983359393468&refid=52&__tn__=FH-R

Illkim Tongur - Old Shaman:

https://www.facebook.com/MusCanSoc/videos/1840024262722711/

Gabriel Dharmoo - the fog in our poise:

https://www.facebook.com/MusCanSoc/videos/1840043936054077/

Fantastic new Nick Omiccioli piece called "The Haunted Sea" for amplified soprano and string quartet. Nice evocation of wind and water sounds with extended vocal and string timbres: https://soundcloud.com/nicholas-omiccioli/haunted-seas-2018-for-amplified-soprano-string-quartet

"Haunted Seas", sorry

Thanks for these, Sund4r. I've too little time to properly listen to them at the moment but they haven't gone unnoticed!

Luis Aracama's take on Mompou's Música callada is sounding quite perfect at the moment. I'm liking it even more than Herbert Henck's, partly because it hasn't been filtered through Manfred Eicher's proverbial reverb (which I usually love btw).

I’ve never heard any performance but henck’s, and it’s been many years

I should revisit

Finally got around to those pieces Sund4r posted upthread. As expected, I really liked Omiccioli's Haunted Seas – based on this and Field Well, I'd love to hear a monograph of his work. Armstrong's Burst! was pleasant, but I doubt I'll return to it any time soon. I didn't much care for any of the MusCan pieces, unfortunately, except perhaps, and only in parts, for the Suski and Dharmoo.

RIP Gennady Rozhdestvensky: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/17/gennady-rozhdestvensky-obituary

His recording of Gubaidulina's sole Symphony is still one of my favourite things ever.

Insanely wide repertoire.

There’s a download release via iTunes emusic etc from melodiya, in their newer remasters program, of rozhdy leading all the Prokofiev ballets. Wonderful performances of course, and though Romeo and Cinderella are earlier recordings in rough sound quality, all the obscurer ballets now sound just gorgeous compared to older melodiya versions - this digital box set is cheap and invaluable.

Heh: http://5against4.com/2018/07/19/proms-2018-caroline-shaw-second-essay-echo-third-essay-ruby-world-premieres/

Saw that on the news group yesterday definitely gonna download it

I have some classical thoughts from my last couple weeks listening but I’m too frayed to type them rn

I wanted to love the pieces because the reviewer came off as a dick but they feel pretty underwritten and forgettable tbh. "Valencia" from last year's Jasper String Quartet album was better. I sometimes wonder if she's actually fairly limited as a composer and just managed to hit the jackpot when she wrote Partita for Eight Voices.

This year's Chamberfest looks a little less exciting than usual but I'm very excited about two concerts: Angela Hewitt playing all of WTC, Bk 1, and a performance of Le marteau sans maitre, neither of which I have seen performed live in their entirety before.

LMsM seems like it would be super fun to see live
Speaking of festivals, Barbara Hannigan is curating next year’s Ojai festival. She’s going to sing Grisey’s Four Songs for Crossing the Threshold (which I just heard for the first time last week and are INCREDIBLE) and Schoenberg’s Op. 10 quartet plus other stuff
I gotta go I think

Sund4r siren!!!

During the 2019 Festival, Barbara Hannigan will conduct works by Aaron Copland, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and Claude Vivier.

Sounds v cool but this is in California?

yup

Speaking of Vivier, there's a p decent recording of his "Pour guitare" by Steve Cowan, one of the dudes I'm writing for rn, on this album he made of contemporary Canadian guitar music: http://www.fredsrecords.com/site/shop/steve-cowan-pour-guitare/ . Some of the other pieces are p nice too, esp Jason Nobles's "Shadow Prism", which is mostly in harmonics in an alternate tuning. All the pieces are available on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSOLEA26J9mTG40WVXb38vw/videos .

Hewitt's performance of WTC1 was really magical. Followed the whole thing with the scores. The hometown audience sang "Happy Birthday" to her beforehand! Some good stuff at the New Music Now concerts too. Only four movements from Le marteau were performed but they were excellent. The musicians really connected and brought out the delicate timbres and angular rhythms. First time it's been played in Canada since 1991 apparently! The new Scott Good piece also v good.

Wish I could have been in town for Hewitt.
Is there anything coming up in Ottawa that you're looking at attending? I was just looking at the September Beethoven concerts at the NAC, trying to decide what I want to see.

I wound up getting tickets to the last four nights, symphonies 4 to 9. Very excited. I've never been to a symphony.

Who’s conducting?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shelley

Know him?

Hey jmm, I haven't looked at the NAC listings yet. I'd def be interested in some of the Beethoven symphonies but I'm mot sure what September will be like yet. Hopefully, I'll be working a lot of evenings.

Never heard of Alexander Shelley but I'm excited for you, jmm! Going to see/hear a symphony always feel like an event, and Beethoven never gets old in my book.

Otm

A review of Tim Rutherford-Johnson's Music After the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture Since 1989, by Alex Ross:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/27/the-sounds-of-music-in-the-twenty-first-century

Ross to Rutherford-Johnson: 'but AMERICAAA' (already a leitmotiv in The Rest Is Noise). Your pop culture took over the world long ago, give it a rest now.

Where do I begin…

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/22/arts/music/atonal-music-deutsche-bahn-drugs-trains.html

The plan was dropped, at least in part because of this atonal protest concert that drew 500: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/aug/31/art-shouldnt-be-weaponised-the-atonal-concert-championing-berlins-homeless

My FB comment when the plan was first announced, anticipating a prospective outcome: "The experiment was not entirely successful, with local drug users describing Kontakte as 'extra trippy' and Le Marteau as 'intense on mescaline'."

Listening to Hahn's disc of Mendelssohn's and Shostakovich's violin concerti over and over in the van these days.

I wasn't overly keen on Linda Catlin Smith's previous releases, but Wanderer is definitely doing it for me. Bits of it remind me of Mark Hollis's S/T shorn of the man's voice. I should give Dirt Road and Drifter another go, I probably wasn't paying enough attention.

My crush Víkingur Ólafsson has a Bach piano solo album out. Turns out Bach is great!

I saw a wonderful performance of Beethoven's Ninth this weekend. The festival was great, though I'm sad to have missed all of the string quartets.

Missed it all.:( I'll probably start going to more concerts again when I get more work hours.

Kukuruz Quartet: Julius Eastman - Piano Interpretations

^^^

this is blowing me away rn, awesome.

I've often wondered why some performers approach fin de siècle French chamber music in a deliberately cloying, saccharine way, minimising its modernity as much as possible (actually, I think I know why). Debussy and Ravel generally survive such opulence, but I can't say the same about Fauré, especially his later, more harmonically prickly pieces. Few things are as refreshing, then, as hearing Pierre Fouchenneret, Raphaël Merlin and Simon Zaoui's takes on Fauré's works for strings and piano (quartets and quintets notwithstanding). They remind us that, despite appearances to the contrary, this isn't Parisian salon music, except, perhaps, as painted by the Nabis (Pierre Vuillard, Edouard Bonnard, Maurice Denis). I haven't listened to many new classical releases this year, but I'm absolutely loving this one (titled Horizons), which also features a pitch-perfect performance, by David Lefort, of the brief song cycle L'Horizon chimérique.

I've also been listening to Mihai Ritivoiu's first recorded recital, showcasing works for piano by Enescu (who was Fauré's pupil), Franck and Liszt. The album's title is Transcendence, and I daresay he gets there without resorting to tired tricks such as slowing the tempo down to a crawl. Enescu's first sonata is the highlight as far as I'm concerned, and I hope Ritivoiu will record the rest of his output for solo piano, as well.

Speaking of Romanian composers, NEOS just put out an Hommage à Horațiu Rădulescu, gathering all of his works for piano (including the concerto) in performances by Ortwin Stürmer, to whom Rădulescu dedicated several scores, including the 'Lao Tzu' sonatas, which contain metaphysically bumbling titles such as 'settle your dust, this is the primal identity' or 'like a well… older than God'. Most of this material was already available elsewhere, but it's nice to have the sixth sonata on disc, as well as a few odds and ends, all of which are quite fascinating due to the collision between the piano's limited microtonal range (at least when played conventionally) and Rădulescu's spectralist aspirations, which tend to imply the use of string instruments. Somewhat surprisingly, the concerto reins in the strings somewhat so as to remain in 'tune' with the piano. It's definitely one of his most conventional efforts – a tribute to Brahms, as it were. As a side note, I really hope Mode will be able to continue its piano sonatas and string quartets cycle with Stephen Clarke and the JACK Quartet. That first disc was incredible.

I haven't listened to much living contemporary music, however, aside from the aforementioned Wanderer by Linda Catlin Smith and Bent Sørensen's meltingly beautiful Pantomime; Rosenbad, the second and third parts of his Schumann-esque Papillons trilogy (the first instalment, Mignon, came out in 2016). There is still time to catch up, I suppose, and I'll no doubt switch back to an almost exclusively classical diet once I get bored with the rest anyway (I go through cycles).

Wanderer is amazing, need to get some more L C Smith in my life.

She actually did a concert in the cultural dead-zone that is my neck of the woods last year, but tbf our contemporary music has got q

keyboard fail!
...got quite a big rep in recent years.

the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival that is.

The HCMF sounds amazing indeed. I should like to check it out now that I live, well, less than 300km away, but I doubt I could afford to spend ten days there, which is the amount of time I'd need to see both musikFabrik and the Arditti Quartet. I'm also an idiot for not having a driver's licence.

(On an unrelated note, it occurs to me that 'driver's licence' is a Canadian shibboleth: neither 'driving licence' nor a 'driver's license'.)

I've been a Canadian composer or composition student for 20 years and I never knew until now that Linda Smith's middle name is not "Caitlin".

György Kurtág's opera adaptation of Samuel Beckett's Endgame is currently playing at La Scala, in Milan. I didn't think he'd ever finish it, to be honest, especially since he was apparently too ill (he's 92) to attend the premiere. Anyhow, it has effectively become his largest work – perhaps an unexpected way to cap a career almost entirely dedicated to wisps and fragments.

Someone posted a radio recording to YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFOUf9WAY8Y

holy crap a kurtag opera?

My fiancée has given it a thumbs-up half an hour in.

I think it's the lyricism.

That Beckett should have exerted such a pervasive influence on contemporary notated music is testimony to his understanding of literature's inherent musicality. Kurtág's works often spring from linguistic elements even as he gives voice to the difficulty of turning speech into song, so it's a natural pairing that rests on a similar conception of lyricism as a necessary and salutary object of desire that punishes the speaker/singer by placing him/her under duress. Kurtág has had considerable time to practice before Fin de partie, incidentally: pas à pas… nulle part and Samuel Beckett: What Is the Word, from the 1990s, are both incredible settings in their own right.

Reposting from EOY lists thread:

Listening to the Frederic Hand album from the Textura list and this is definitely up my alley. I have to say, though, that I'm a little intrigued by Textura's love of Hand. They listed him in 2016 too. I never see other classical guitar albums on their EOY lists. I think e.g. John Gordon Armstrong's album from last year and Steve Cowan's from 2016 were really good and more envelope-pushing. William Beauvais had a decent album in 2016 in an accessible style not that far removed from Hand's.

which is to say, I think, are there any good eoy classical lists? I'd be happy to wait until the year is actually over but everyone seems to be publishing them now. I'm especially interested in recs of more 'difficult' compositional music (atonal, complex, spectral, ...), just because it's harder to find as much on it. I saw a lot of good concerts this year and ofc that's the primary medium for the tradition but it's always a good thing to have recordings to listen to on a day-to-day basis.

I've mostly put classical music on the back burner this year, so I can't help you as much as I would like. I haven't looked for classical EOY lists either, partly because I'm already burnt-out on non-classical ones… That said, here's some of the stuff I enjoyed among this year's releases (late 20th/early 21st century only):

Alexander Knaifel - Lukomoriye
Anna S. Þorvaldsdóttir - Aequa
Bent Sørensen - Rosenbad; Pantomime
Brian Ferneyhough - La terre est un homme
Gérard Pesson - Blanc mérité
Heinz Holliger - Choral Utopia
Horațiu Rădulescu - Complete Piano Works
Jörg Widmann - Viola Concerto
Julian Anderson - The Comedy of Change; Heaven Is Shy of Earth
Linda Catlin Smith - Wanderer
Octavian Nemescu - Apokatastasis
Ondřej Adámek - Sinuous Voices
Stefano Gervasoni - Pas perdu
Toivo Tulev - Magnificat

It's not much, but it's a start. I definitely plan on checking out 5against4's list when it comes out.

OK, wow, I haven't listened to any of those, except the online excerpts from LCS. Thanks! New album from Ferneyhough!

i'm not a real serious classical head but here are the 2018 releases in my library tagged classical:

alexander melnikov - four pianos, four pieces
charlie looker - simple answers
ensemble orchestral intercontemporain - adamek: sinuous voices
gyorgy kurtag - fin de partie
ipek gorgun - ecce homo
john bence - kill
linda catlin smith - wanderer
tanya ekanayaka - 12 piano prisms

also, sorry for not appropriately crediting, but i copied and pasted this list of works from another thread earlier this week and they're on my "to listen" list:

Anna S. Þorvaldsdóttir - Aequa
Cassandra Miller - Just So: String Quartets
Eva-Maria Houben - Breath for Organ
Laura Schwendinger - Quartets
Linda Catlin Smith - Wanderer
Sarah Nemtsov - Amplified Imagination
Séverine Ballon - Inconnaissance
Suzanne Farrin - La dolce morte

I didn't know Fin de Partie had been recorded!

I've been working through the Ferneyhough album one piece at a time via Naxos Music Library since Friday. On "Liber Scintillarum" now (first piece on the album but the last one I'm listening to). I'm really loving this stuff. Tbh, I never dug too deeply into the guy's work before, although he was a hero to some in my grad programme and I've seen some performances over the years. I did like "Cassandra's Dream Song" a lot. I've never actually listened to any of these pieces before. Even though I don't fully understand them, even with the liner notes, there's just so much going on and such visceral richness and detail of sound that they grab me and make me want to investigate further. I expect I'll be able to keep getting more out of these pieces with more and more listens.

William Beauvais had a decent album in 2016 in an accessible style not that far removed from Hand's.

After listening to both of them the other day, I feel p comfortable ranking the Beauvais higher tbh.

sorry for not appropriately crediting

That was me, in response to the relative dearth of women above 35 in the EOY lists. All of those albums are very much worth hearing, so I'm glad you're looking into them!

As for Fin de partie, I think rush was referring to the radio recording that's been making the rounds (the YT link I put up a month ago is no longer available, though).

And I'm happy to hear you're enjoying the Ferneyhough, Sund4r. I found his music forbidding the first few times I tried listening to it 15 years ago (I think it was that Montaigne disc with his string quartets nos. 1-3 performed by the Ardittis). For whatever reason, I opened up to it once I realized that several of my favourite living composers (including Kaija Saariaho, Chaya Czernowin and Richard Barrett) studied under him. It also requires a bit of a leap of faith at times, more so than with other 'difficult' composers, since the overwhelming complexity on display is a deliberate challenge to our narrative/structural expectations. I'm also fascinated with the notion of hypernotation as conducive to performative freedom (you can't possibly follow every single instruction to the letter, so you have to 'transcend' them, in an almost Lisztian sense, by actively looking for a workaround).

Oh and since I don't want to leave out the dead, I also very much enjoyed these 2018 releases:

Andreas Haefliger - Perspectives 7
Barbara Hannigan - Vienna: Fin de siècle
Claude Debussy - Les trois sonates (Faust, Melnikov, Queyras, et al.)
Dénes Várjon - De la nuit
Ditta Rohmann - Solo Cello Portrait
Edvard Grieg - Violin Sonatas (Vineta Sareika & Amandine Savary)
Gabriel Fauré - Horizons
Heino Eller - Violin Concerto; Fantasy; Symphonic Legend; Symphony No. 2
Mihai Ritivoiu - Transcendence
Olivier Messiaen - Catalogue d'oiseaux (Pierre-Laurent Aimard)
Robert Schumann - String Quartet (Engegård Quartet)
Till Fellner - Beethoven, Liszt
Wilhelm Stenhammar - Symphony No. 2; Serenade (Herbert Blomstedt)

I am very much hoping from the title of that Hannigan album that it includes schoenberg op.10. I have a glitchy broadcast capture of her doing that and have been really hoping for an official recording.

Googling, I see it’s not. Darn. Soon, I hope.

As for Fin de partie, I think rush was referring to the radio recording that's been making the rounds (the YT link I put up a month ago is no longer available, though).

― pomenitul

yeah that was the one

for my NYC types: http://prototypefestival.org/
perhaps of particular interest is carolyn shaw's Partita for 8 Voices, performed live and free in Times Square at 4pm and 7pm. only a half hour long!
http://prototypefestival.org/shows/out-of-bounds/

Have the roomful of teeth recording of Partita, absolutely not missing Partita.

let's plan on doing it together jon! times square in january, what's not to love?

#classicalfrenz :)

for sure and def, consider it written in stone

(LL u should listen to partita if you haven't it will floor u!)

i will, it's holiday break mental reset time :) :) :)

same here starting in two hours

but only til wednesday

to the side. to the side. to the side and around. through the middle and. to the side. to the side. to the side and around. through the middle and. to the side. to the side. to thesidetothesidetothesideandaroundtothesideandaroundandaround. to the side, two three four. and fiveacrosssix seven eight, through the midpoint, uppertwolinethreedrawnfourfromtheleftfourleftfivesidesixleftalabandesideleftahahahahahahahahahahahahaahaahahahaa AAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAA

it's only 25 minutes Lechera, totally worth it.

Shaw's chamber pc Valencia was performed a couple of weeks ago at Scholes St Studio which is quite close to my house and has a chamber music series, I lamed out and I feel dumb about that. Also on the bill was the 2nd Brahms Quintet which I adore. I don't get myself sometimes.

amendment, i almost NEVER get myself

Valencia = the string quartet that Jasper SQ recorded on Unbound? In the end, I just never felt like that piece hung together, formally, nor that the parts were remarkable enough in themselves to overcome that isssue, unless I just didn't understand it. Maybe it would work better live?

Following up on this post in 2016 Rolling Classical Listening Thread about taonga pūoro, traditional Māori instruments

Two new albums feature taonga pūoro:

A compilation of pieces by Richard Nunns, Mahi (Works)

- https://rattle-records.bandcamp.com/album/mahi

The book gathers together an enormous amount of the current knowledge about taonga puoro, and will undoubtedly be the most important written resource in existence on the subject. It also charts the many other paths that Richard has taken with the music, including the huge variety of recordings he has done, his sound-track work, and his playing in other genres, such as free jazz and classical. - (Rattle.co.nz)

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4282364086_7.jpg https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0727883899_7.jpg

And a new work by Al Fraser, Toitū Te Pūoro (~The music remains), featuring Ariana Tikao on "Hikoi"

- https://rattle-records.bandcamp.com/album/toitu-te-pu-oro

Subtle and strident, of this world and yet not of this world, this album is as close as we are likely to get to a recorded impression of the sounds of our land and water, of our ancient Aotearoa. Only someone who has committed to the kind of apprenticeship Al Fraser has gone on with taonga puoro could have created this album. Our cultural landscape is richer for his work and dedication. - (Jacquie Walters, Music.net.nz)