Rolling Classical 2019

I've been fascinated with Fausto Romitelli's music since I first heard Professor Bad Trip, an unusually successful attempt at spectralist psychedelia. Romitelli studied under Gérard Grisey and Hugues Dufourt, but he was no less a pupil of Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. As a result, he is – to my knowledge – one of the few noted European composers of his generation (1963-2004) to have cast the electric guitar in a leading role. I've often listened to the solo Trash TV Trance, which has spawned a remarkable amount of performances on YouTube (of which I think I like this one the best) but wasn't familiar with his output for acoustic guitar, which was recently recorded for the Italian Stradivarius label alongside Trash TV Trance and two other works (one for flute and guitar, the second for solo flute). There's even a Highway to Hell from 1984 which, while more subdued than his later material for the electric guitar, gives a good sense of his overall intentions.

I have 12 nominations left for the ILM poll if anyone has used up their noms and wants more classical (or jazz or avant stuff) on the ballot.

If you've ever wondered what a YT-ready video of contemporary notated music might look like, this is pretty cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFEGSLRvV9U

Enjoyed the piece a lot.

Listening to ILX Listen: 2019

i'm iffy on spectralism as a whole (well, grisey mostly), but i did like professor bad trip!

Happy to hear it! If you're in the mood for more, his disc of orchestral works, Audiodrome (with Peter Rundel conducting), is also very much worth delving into.

Rebecca Saunders wins this year's Ernst von Siemens prize. Undoubtedly well-deserved!

https://www.rhinegold.co.uk/classical_music/ernst-von-siemens-prize-awarded-rebecca-saunders/

Ah yes, was gonna ask, afaik I have never heard a note of hers, is anyone up to suggesting a primer C60 or Rough Guide or something of Spotify-available Saunders?

Re: electric guitar in new music, Pierluigi Billone is another composer. Two recordings of electric guitar works on Kairos.

I'm not much of a playlist guy, unfortunately, but I do think Saunders's first monograph for Kairos – QUARTET, Into the Blue, Molly's Song 3 – shades of crimson, dichroic seventeen, all played by musikFabrik – makes for a fine introduction. It should be available on Spotify.

Readymade playlist is more than fine; thanks, pomenitul! :-)

Nice to see the latest cd from Danish String Quartet got nominated in the album poll. Prism I, the first of five albums which will each include a late Beethoven quartet, and something else related to it. On the first it's Shostakovich Quartet no 15, and it's pretty amazing. Great album, snuck into the lower part of my ballot.

I liked Wood Works a lot less than I thought I would but I love the Danish String Quartet. They used to call themselves the Young Danish String Quartet, right? Their Nielsen recordings are almost definitive as far as I'm concerned.

Speaking of Nielsen, it's such a shame that Thomas Dausgaard never officially recorded Nielsen's six symphonies with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra during his tenure. He started a cycle with the Seattle Symphony a couple of years ago but either he's run out of ideas or the orchestra has little feel for the music (admittedly a bit of an acquired taste) because I found his 3rd and 4th surprisingly listless.

I liked Wood Works a lot less than I thought I would but I love the Danish String Quartet. They used to call themselves the Young Danish String Quartet, right? Their Nielsen recordings are almost definitive as far as I'm concerned.

― pomenitul, 18. januar 2019 15:52 (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, they were called the Young Danish String Quartet when they were younger. When the old Danish String Quartet retired they took over the name.

Full concert - Terry Riley live at Koerner Hall in Toronto's Royal Conservatory, with Tracy Silverman and his son Gyan. Really good show, based on this: https://livestream.com/accounts/3811338/events/8517853/videos/186015720

(Posted to post-minimalist thread as well)

Barbara Hannigan awarded the Sonning Award for 2020! I'd really thought she'd miss it, as they gave it to Hans Abrahamsen in 2019 and made Hannigan and 'Let Me Tell You' the centerpiece of the galla concert, but nope. So incredibly deserving!

Excellent news! Every bit of praise lavished upon her is utterly deserved.

Guys are there two of these threads or is my hangover psychosis worse than I thought?

Also yes great win

I've been clamouring for the gods mods to delete the duplicate but they've yet to respond to my bootless pleas.

what's the other one? might as well use it while i got it.

found it, got it.

Barbara Hannigan awarded the Sonning Award for 2020!

― Frederik B

this is cool but unfortunately thanks to ilx i will always believe in the back of my mind that the Sonning Award is given for outstanding performance in a twitter beef

lol

On Saturday I heard Jonathan Biss and the Seattle Symphony play Caroline Shaw's new piano concerto Watermarks, which was sort of playfully and delightfully in stylistic tension between the romantic and the contemporary. Highlights include a theme for the soloist in the second movement that almost but not quite resolves into the sound of a pop melody and a recurring gag in the third movement. Part of Biss' project to commission new concerti in response to those of Beethoven.

Sounds interesting. I've been disappointed by a lot of Shaw other than Partita but I'd definitely be interested to hear it.

man, i wish i were free for this tonight and recommend it strongly to New Yorkers who are:
http://roulette.org/event/the-voices-of-erin-gee/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbVIUt-YtaM

Holy shit:

https://youtu.be/gzodB0Sp6ZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzodB0Sp6ZI

Aargh! I've seen that shared easily over 10 times in the past week. It annoys me tbh. The idea is cute and a lot of work probably went into it but the ol' atonal music was NOT about favouring intellect over emotion. (Maybe some postwar serialist music was but Schoenberg and Berg certainly weren't.) Cage's 4'33" isn't really what I think of as an atonal composition, either, although you could possibly make a case.

I completely agree with you (there's nothing even remotely unemotional about Schoenberg's 2nd quartet or Berg's Lyric Suite, to say the least), but my expectations when it comes to pop culture discourse about this stuff are so low as to be nonexistent.

That said, if his dad really was a composer of 12 tone music and it's not just a fictive spin on country tropes, he should definitely know better.

Yeah I enjoyed the song and video but my mind was screaming foul at all the inaccuracies and generalizations

Cage's 4'33" isn't really what I think of as an atonal composition, either, although you could possibly make a case.

I somehow doubt he is trying to be historically accurate.

I really liked that atonal solo in the middle of it. Its just nerdy internet stuff but I'd like to think passers by might be horrified/mystified and curious enough to check it out.

The solo really clinches it. Wouldn't be a worthwhile meme otherwise.

No point to this kind of thing if it's not well-informed imo. Otherwise, it comes closer to being a put-down (of something that probably doesn't need to be taken down).

(Solo is the best part.)

To be fair, this is how most people perceive it. I've taken friends/relatives to several such concerts, made them listen to recordings and 'cold, forbidding complexity' remains their takeaway to this day. I frankly gave up a long time ago.

Even early 20th century abstract painting elicits less incomprehension, no doubt because it's less time-consuming.

Yeah, that's sort of why I dislike this.

I don't imagine that modern literature fans would eagerly share a comedy song about pining for the emotionless, incomprehensible writing of modern authors like Joyce, Woolf, Beckett, and cummings (but maybe they would).

I probably would tbh. But I've abandoned all hope of ever turning more than a pinch of people on to 'modernist' art. And when it does happen, it's usually an accident.

It would have to be a comedy short story

Even early 20th century abstract painting elicits less incomprehension, no doubt because it's less time-consuming.

There's a whole book about this phenomenon - the subtitle is something like Why Do People Like Rothko But Not Schoenberg? I've always meant to read it.

Here it is; it's called Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen

That sounds interesting. I'd need to be convinced of the premise first, though.

I'll have to check it out, thanks. Too bad there's no matching phenomenon for poetry (haikus notwithstanding).

xp

The book is an OK read. Idk if it really arrives at a satisfying answer to that question and it turns into a kind of historical overview. Hard to deny that more people know Picasso and Dali than Schoenberg and Cage, at the least. I used to have my late 20th c avant-garde classes debate the question. Alex Ross and Philip Ball have also written about it (taking v different positions).xp

Just looking at the blurb, I'm not sure that this indicates much about popular enthusiasm for modern paintings; it's more about the extravagant amounts of money being moved around: "Works by 20th century abstract artists like Mark Rothko are selling for record breaking sums at auction, while the millions commanded by works by Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon make headline news."

Fun excerpt on how 'out' Bach was in his own time, from Gioia's new book:

“They never learned about Bach pulling a knife on a fellow musician during a street fight. They never heard about his drinking exploits.” https://t.co/4t8HuyaorK

— Jeff Beck (@jeffnbeck) October 16, 2019

Heh, I had no idea.

Cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir is giving a solo performance at Scandinavia House in NYC on Thursday night. I'm thinking about going; I interviewed her back in June, and her album Vernacular is great.

Album was alright, a little too conservative for my money.

Anybody interested in a series of decade-by-decade polls, starting in the 1800s? Just the works, curated by yours truly – we can discuss our preferred recordings as we go along. I was initially planning on doing albums, but it's too much of a hassle in the context of classical music.

Yes me interested

Well, as long as there's two of us… :)

I'll get started on it very soon.

I'll vote as well, if I know the things :)

It'll be chockfull of 19th and early 20th century warhorses. It's gonna get trickier post-1945, but that's just part of the fun.

Starting point? 1820s?

Here for it, mostly to learn

I say we start in the 1800s, lest we miss out on Beethoven’s middle period.

Ballot polls or poll threads?

We did this once, for anyone who missed it: POLLERO!: ILM's Top 100 Notated Pieces of Music Since 1890

Oh, cool, I had no idea. Thanks.

I was thinking poll threads (one per decade), which I assume we haven't done before.

Nice idea. I'm happy to be schooled.

Poll threads sound great. I was a little nervous about doing that many ballot polls. :)

Understandably so! I'm going to do it pfunkboy/Michael B-style, which means there are bound to be some grave omissions, for which I'll profusely apologize in each thread.

I have to say, I mostly know about choral works...

Starting with 1800-1810 is fine by me! Op. 32 is one of my favorite things Beethoven ever did. I was just thinking that once you get to the 1820s you get some Beethoven vs Schubert suspense whereas for the 00s and 10s you've got Beethoven and... everyone else (well Rossini tbf)

You're right, of course. Beethoven will undoubtedly dwarf everyone else in the 00s but papa Haydn was still around (The Seasons, the final two Masses) and some minor masterpieces were penned around that time, such as Boieldieu's Harp Concerto. I'll try my best to make it a little less obvious…

I greatly anticipate this educational experience; I look forward to campaigning heavily for Quartet for the end of time 15 polls in

I suspect there's be a good excuse to listen to the late quartets again. And then I'll definitely vote for Symphonie Fantastique :)

Best 'first symphony' in classical music history tbh

In case you missed it:

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1800s (the decade, that is. Also, this is Totally-Not-a-Middle-Period-Beethoven-Poll)

OK wow I just paid attention to Poulenc for the first time today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V87wGyfUQiQ

the 1810s thread has me digging into augustin hadelich. he's far too "shreddy" for my tastes. the recording of ligeti's violin concerto from this year is not bad- ligeti being a fairly astringent composer anyway - but this new cadenza by thomas ades, what the fuck, it is so bad and not in keeping with the rest of the piece. well i guess one can just stop listening after the fourth movement...

special mention of note has to go out to the really hideous cover art as well

Shreddy, really? I don't get that sense from Hadelich's Paganini at all. If anything, he gives the Caprices their due as proper music, which may or may not be a good thing.

Agree about the Adès cadenza, however. I could do without Adès's music altogether tbh, it's thoroughly mediocre.

love this Henriëtte Bosmans string quartet

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

Oh, thanks. I hadn't heard of her before but that is a nice discovery.

getting unreasonably obsessed with kurt atterberg's piano concerto

I listened to a set of his symphonies a few years ago and found them unmemorably conservative compared to, say, Stenhammar's 2nd, but I'd be curious to hear his Piano Concerto.

it doesn't really do anything novel, just a nice bit of post-romanticism

CBC's favourite Canadian classical albums of 2019: https://www.cbc.ca/music/our-20-favourite-canadian-classical-albums-of-2019-1.5335275?fbclid=IwAR01WQkjnQNtjLetJWsIk4KdMdpEMzChySg1jo8FFg9MWoOiJa0zovIJqjU

I wasn't going to post about Cicchillitti-Cowan since they are friends/colleagues but, yes, the album is really good. The Stafylakis piece actually integrates some metal influences into classical guitar music. Emily Shaw's Vespers and Cowan's Arctic Sonata also v good classical guitar albums from Ottawa/Montreal from this year.

Thanks, I'll check 'em out.

That Lisiecki and Abdrazakov are Canadian is news to me.

Lisiecki is from Calgary. Abdrakazakov seems to be Russian - they're probably counting that one bc of Orchestre Métropolitain?

Oh right, I misread (see ILX discussion about reading comprehension in Quebec).

Haha

RIP Mariss Jansons.

I don’t have a ton of his work in my collection but his LSO Live Mahler 6th is among the very best of that symphony.

His Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff box sets contain some of his very finest recordings – they've helped me gain a newfound appreciation for these two composers, whose music I otherwise find problematic (not in the modern, woke sense, mind you). He was also an excellent accompanist (see the Grieg/Schumann Piano Concertos with Leif Ove Andsnes) and some of his less well-known projects, such as Johan Svendsen's Symphonies 1 & 2 with the Oslo Philharmonic, are as persuasive as it gets. I was never wholly won over by his much-touted way with Shostakovich, however.

Alex Ross's preliminary EOY list:

https://www.therestisnoise.com/2019/11/preliminary-end-of-year-list.html

We don't really see eye to eye (hear ear to ear?) but the Danish Quartet's Prism II and the Riot Ensemble's Speak, Be Silent both deserve to place. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm burnt out on Feldman, found Zosha di Castro's monograph to be full of hotshot smugness and have yet to hear George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence (I'm generally a big fan, even though I'm less interested in his operas).

I’ll definitely plan to hear that Honeck/Pittsburgh Bruckner 9th - I cant think of a better US conductor-orchestra combo on record this decade

NAC in Ottawa commissioning a Philip Glass work in honour of Peter Jennings: https://abcnews.go.com/US/philip-glass-write-orchestral-work-honor-news-anchor/story?id=67679791

shuddering with pleasure at the idea of Philip Glass composing 30 second stingers for news broadcasts

went to the guggenheim last night for Tigue and Roomful of Teeth and Caroline Shaw presented a new piece that was as lovely as anything I've heard all year.

This is how workers at Opéra de Paris go on strike (sound on, please). pic.twitter.com/SN682BM6ze

— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) December 18, 2019

PROMO: The latest cd from my choir is out now: https://open.spotify.com/album/4k1FnvR7AIzP2IQCfrFEoz?si=gqG6dtAaTi-2UpcRWuY6Bw Danish choir music, amateur choir, but the Vagn Holmboe is pretty great, at least.

'Grats! I always have time for more Holmboe.

New thread for a new year: Rolling Classical 2020