2008 Rolling Modern (Classical/Not Classical) Music Thread

For the record, here are Ross' top recordings of the year from his blog:

— Lorraine Hunt Lieberson live at Wigmore Hall, 1998 (Wigmore Hall Live)
— Radiohead, In Rainbows (self-released)
— As Steals the Morn...: Handel Arias and Scenes; Mark Padmore, Andrew Manze, the English Concert (Har. Mundi)
— Strauss, Salome; Teresa Stratas, Karl Böhm conducting the Vienna Philharmonic (DG DVD)
— Beethoven, Symphonies Nos. 3 and 8; Paavo Järvi conducting the Kammerphilharmonie Bremen (BMG)
— Beethoven, Piano Sonatas vol. 3, Paul Lewis (Har. Mundi)
— Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians; Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble (Innova)
— Gershwin, Piano Concerto in F, Rhapsody in Blue, Cuban Overture; Jon Nakamatsu, piano, with Jeff Tyzik conducting the Rochester Philhamonic (Har. Mundi)
— Stockhausen, Stimmung, Theatre of Voices (Har. Mundi)
— Wilco, "On and On and On" from Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch)
— Björk, "Declare Independence" from Volta (One Little Indian)

Interesting list. Interesting blog. I hadn't read it before, so thanks.

I'm glad you started this thread. I want to know more about classical music in general, and I know very little about contemporary classical recordings.

yeah i got that ross book. i know next to shit about classical music but it's been a great read and very informative.

do you have a record player? cuz honestly it's been great, you can find mint copies of almost ANYTHING for like $1-$2 at used record stores...so i've bought a bunch of stuff from the book: strauss, mahler, charles ives, aron copland, debussy, dvorak etc....i don't think all total i spent more than $10...

i really like ives a lot. very playful and cool....mahler and strauss are real dramatic, maybe too much so for me...

debussy (this is some piano preludes) is sort of the strangest sounding to me, not as atonal but very diffuse and strange sounding....

I was thinking of picking up this disc, to try and get reacquainted with classical. It's my understanding that the Harmonia Mundi label is well-regarded, so maybe it's worth it on that basis alone. Anyway, if anyone's heard these interpretations before, or has any other thoughts on the disc (aside from the fact that "It's free, so why not!"), I'd appreciate it.

I just got the Ross book, too.

except for the rockish stuff there's no new music on ross' list - just new versions of old material. so that's a bit uninspiring in terms of what's actually happening now.

I learned fast not to get too excited about Ross' tastes in contemporary composition, but he's great for getting you excited about the recent past now that the 20th century has been capped, and his picks of new performers of the proven stuff have been helpful. And he's just a great writer, I can tell he's not 100% down with Scelsi for example but his feature on him was beautiful.

for instance that Hillier re-recording of Stimmung, just can't listen to it... it's too airbrushed out and prettified for me compared to the Singcircle version, which is stranger (close-miking the vocalists brings out the buzzing intervals and amps up the psychedelic effect). with the newer version, the room reverb makes for a prettier sound that's easier to treat as background music & the amped up theatrics are more self-consciously goofy so it's pretty obvious that the newer version will appeal to a larger audience & Ross is being a good advocate to readers of the New Yorker

anything I say about Ross' tastes is instantly going to make me sound like a snob, especially as the best thing about Ross' writing is how approachable & wonderful it makes music that is normally the sole domain of the snob

but a good example is his favoring the prettified new re-recording of Stockhausen's Stimmung over the Singcircle, which is weirder & has a more buzzingly psychedelic approach to the harmonies (the Singcircle is close-miked & disarmingly intimate, the new Hillier mixes in lots of lovely room reverb and the amped up theatrics downplay intimacy for 'entertainment'). but, are you going to send New Yorker readers to the weird version and have many of them scared off, or send them to a perfectly lovely and approachable new recording... if sometimes I'm sad he isn't more daring, mainly I'm just glad anyone's writing about this at all

here's an interesting column by DeLaurenti who's tastes are more up my alley... note the comments

http://lineout.thestranger.com/2006/05/the_rest_should_have

oops forgot to delete first paragraph, pardon the draft

re-reading that DeLaurenti now, the Varèse is such a perfect example. part of me is a little baffled that Ross could recommend his least innovative, most derivative piece for a representative introduction. but even that piece is still interesting enough that many curious listeners who would probably find 'Déserts' to be a bit too punishing might be able to rock out to bits of 'Arcana', and those few with more particular tastes, they're going to find their way to the extreme pieces anyway

I would much rather investigate Milton Parker's modern classical recommendations (seriously).

I dunno this year has been all about Monteverdi & recordings of early music in historical temperaments for me

The League of Automatic Music Composers 1978- 1983

http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/2007/06/giacinto-scelsi-quattro-pezzi-per.html

what are the most significnt classical works of the last 15-20 years?

http://stigmarestroom.blogspot.com/2007/04/kazdin-shepard-everything-you-always.html (the only other classical moog record anywhere near as detailed & crazy as the Carlos records)

http://orpheusrecords.blogspot.com/2007/05/orpheus-records-03-roland-kayn.html (disc 3's the best)

& if you like Edward Artemyev's scores for the Tarkovsky films:

http://orpheusrecords.blogspot.com/2007/12/switched-on-special-various-artists.html

http://orpheusrecords.blogspot.com/2007/10/various-artists-electroacoustic-music.html (also contains Alfred Schnittke's only electronic piece, it sounds like Branca or Thomas Dimuzio 30 years early)

See this is why I started this thread.

This is one of my faves of the year - not that my listening is anywhere concentrated on getting stuff released in the same year but, were I to recommend.

http://ssl.adhost.com/jazzloft/baskets/pos.cfm?CD=13565

I like the Renewable Music blog. Daniel is the one guy that really knows enough to have a really peculiar take on it all, and writes in an informative way so that anyone could read it (sometimes you need to know bits of theory, but not always.) Anything from concert reports to commentary on the classical world, history of new music, ethnomusicology and composers' favourite recipes.

http://renewablemusic.blogspot.com/

I'm scared of classical music, because so much of it is only available on CDs. Well, that's sort of an overstatement--Matt was exceedingly OTM upthread when he talks about how available a lot of things are on vinyl, but when it comes to the more esoteric and collectible pieces, you either have to get really lucky, prowl eBay, or just buy the CD on Amazon. For me, Scelsi is a perfect example of this; the one time I saw a record with a composition of his (a string quartet if i remember correctly) I ended up selling it to someone else who had been looking for it, figuring I'd find another relatively soon. Not so. So it's either I get the CD and risk not listening to it (only listen to LPs at home, really) or just having that interminable search...

Another heartbreaking moment in record collecting history was finding a copy of Charlemagne Palestine's "Four Manifestations On Six Elements" on double LP with the hand-made sleeve. Had to sell it on eBay, though. Now I ought to just buckle down and buy the CD. While on the subject, my other fave Palestine is definitely "Jamaican Heinekens in Brooklyn."

Something I am decidedly NOT interested in, for the time being, is modern vs. historical vs. traditional virtuoso interpretation of a piece. My ears just aren't trained enough yet to recognize the nuances of technique that make classical music so compelling for many people, and there's so much to explore without letting myself get bogged down in that. For the past few years, I've been devouring records of 20th century composition. One of my quirks is that I love records that involve spoken word over music. This has led me from Harry Partch to Robert Ashley to Frederic Rzewski to recordings of horror/sf fiction over theremins and tape delay. I love it all. Words and music are like peanut butter and chocolate.

Something else to mention is the Asmus Tietchens box set on Vinyl on Demand from this year. There's some discussion of it on his own thrad.

and hell, classical/NOT classical.. that's opening the floodgates to a whole world of contemporary small-press drone/noise/concrete releases.

Finally got round to Rzewski's 'The People United Will never be Defeated'

"Not so. So it's either I get the CD and risk not listening to it (only listen to LPs at home, really) or just having that interminable search..."

Its amazing to think about some of those LPs, the effort in presentation ws quite something, whereas nowadays even CD releases are getting cut-backs, at least with major labels, and especially re: contemporary.

One thing as regards to getting deeper and deeper into classical is how important performances became above recordings. Yes records are great and its always good to see some amazing piece you may never hear in the flesh getting a recording, otoh there are many that get a single performance that may never get on CD/LP. One of my favourite moments of the year ws hearing a piece by Chris Newman (a 'sonata' apparently).

First good recital of the year? I think so..

IAN PACE - Piano
Great Hall, King’s College, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS
Friday 1st February 2008, 7:30 pm
Admission Free

James Clarke - Untitled No. 5 (UK Premiere)
Beethoven-Liszt - Symphony No. 6 in F, “Pastoral”
Michael Finnissy - English Country-Tunes

friday night, dleone & I saw Myung-Whun Chung conduct SF Symphony for Messiaen's 'L'Ascension' & Mahler's First. 'L'Ascension' is one of my favorite Messiaen pieces and it was pretty glorious. opening movement had some cracked brass notes which threw me. during the intermission dleone & I started guardedly discussing Mahler, quietly if a little critically, and we got some nasty stares from the 30 year old korean housewife acolyte sitting in front of us, turning around as if to say 'you dare?' it was hard to take Mahler's First seriously. third movement is literally 'frere jacques' in a minor key, it was like a bad joke

saturday was a Helmut Lachenmann recital at Lisser Hall capping off his two week visit to Mills College and it was a whole different level of profound. quiet rainfall on the roof was louder than some of the sound events of 'Gran Torso' and I can't imagine anyone sitting back further than the seventh row could have heard many of the details. Violinist Graeme Jennings (ex-Arditti now teaching at Mills) on 'Gran Torso' & clarinetist Matt Ingalls on 'Allegro Sostenuto' stuck out, they play the ghost notes. Lachenmann played several of his own solo piano pieces. I've seen a few performers use that 'trick' where a loud chord is sounded with the pedal depressed, then the notes of a different chord are silently depressed without sounding -- then the first chord & the pedal are released so the initial chord dies away resonating in the open strings of the second 'soundless' chord. that technique in Lachenmann's hands was jawdropping, time just stretched out, the hall was full, no one was making a sound, and afterwards on my way out people were finding it hard to speak coherently to each other, we'd been lifted

Thanks for the DeLaurenti link, Milton. I was beginning to think I was the only person who was worried about Ross's alarming blindspots for music since 1945.

there was a string quartet festival this weekend at Cite de la Musique. i saw some haydn, dvorak, milhaud, and lots of elliot carter. the hagen, the prague, the debussy, and the arditti quartets performed. the revelation for me was a Witkowski quartet. is he obscure?

Never heard of him. What was it like?

sf sound = most consistently outstanding & alive performances of 20th century music I've ever seen

http://www.sfcv.org/2008/06/10/sound-garden/

Last night I went to see my first concert in ages...John tilbury playing Feldman's Triadic Memories, and a new piece by Howard Skempton. The latter simply didn't have enough going for it, not enough of a scheme...but it was enough for me to get some kind of settling in time for Morton. Obv quite familiar with recordings, but it still is one hell of an experience.

I came away thinking of how little silence frames the music. I mean, it does, but maybe nowhere as near as I thought it did! Maybe its bcz I sat from a point right behind John and saw and felt and heard the weight of the notes in a way I hadn't before. Crazy waltzing and a multitude of threads!!

I hope nobody minds if I roll this in 2009.

Is anyone familiar with Steve Peters? I've liked what I've heard by him on the radio, which hasn't been much, but it's covered a fair amount of ground, including gamelan music. He has roots in (or at least lived in) New Mexico, but now lives in Seattle.

http://steve-peters.blogspot.com/