What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? IV

[pastoralguy]

Beethoven. Piano Sonata Op.101. No.28.

Maurizio Pollini, piano. DG. The first music I’ve heard this year apart from the Vienna New Year’s Day concert.

The Beethoven was at the top of the pile having been my last 2024 charity shop purchase. £1.00

[pastoralguy]

More Beethoven!

Beethoven. Symphony No.6. ‘The Pastoral’.

A Christmas present cd from my beloved.

Pierre Monteux conducting the BBC Northern Orchestra on the 18th of October 1963 at Manchester Town Hall.

Hardly the greatest sound quality but a lovely performance. SOMM Recording
s.

[smittims]

I wonder why they did it in Town Hall, which has a notoriously bad acoustic, when the Free Trade Hall is almost within spitting distance.

By concidence I was also listening to the Pastoral this morning , a famous recording made in a pleasanter acoustic. The BBC Symphony Orchstra,Arturo Toscanini, recorded by HMV in Queen's Hall in 1937, Toscanini's first studio recording in Britain. Curiously the finale in this EMI/Warner CD, is a semitone sharp. It's not oftenI notice this . I must put my anorak on and compare it with Mark Obert-Thorn on Naxos , etc.

I followed it with Furtwangler's epic (for once the word is inescapable) Eroica , Vienna 1944. The Allies at the gates of Germany, the Russians at the Austrain border. It must have been a fraught time, to say the least.

[Pulcinella]

A toss-up between posting here or elsewhere, as much pleasure was obtained from actually watching the orchestra in this semi-staged production.

Ravel: L'heure espagnole
Les Siècles

https://youtu.be/zvmo-yG2K-Y

[Master Jacques]

I wonder why they did it in Town Hall, which has a notoriously bad acoustic, when the Free Trade Hall is almost within spitting distance.

Because the Town Hall, not the Free Trade Hall, was the BBC Northern's home - they were very rarely heard at the FTH (which had a problematic acoustic all its own, in any case). Monteux was not the only world-famous conductor to find himself in the Town Hall for a lunchtime concert: I vividly remember appearances there from Horenstein, a few years later. The Town Hall was the customary recording venue for the orchestra.

[Stanfordian]

Verdi – ‘Un ballo in Maschera’
Opera in three acts (1859)
Riccardo - Carlo Bergonzi; Renato - Robert Merrill; Amelia - Leontyne Price; Ulrica - Shirley Verrett; Oscar - Reri Grist; Silvano - Mario Basiola Jnr; Samuele - Ezio Flagello; Tom - Ferruccio Mazzoli; Un Giudice - Piero De Palma; Un servo - Fernandino Jacopucci
Orchestra e Coro della RCA Italiana / Erich Leinsdorf
Recorded RCA Italiana Studios, Rome, June 1966.
Orig. RCA Victor Red Seal. Now digitally remastered as The RCA Victor Opera Series, 2 CD set.

[richardfinegold]

I followed it with Furtwangler's epic (for once the word is inescapable) Eroica , Vienna 1944. The Allies at the gates of Germany, the Russians at the Austrain border. It must have been a fraught time, to say the least.

That was my first exposure to the Eroica. My older sister had bought a budget lpwhen I was about 15. No other recording has ever seemed to capture the life and death essence of the piece for me. After a few years I had read somewhere that antiaircraft fire can be heard on the recording. I believed it, for between the poor original quality of the vinyl, my very cheap stereo, and the old recording it seemed that might be in there somewhere. Now I have a Pristine Audio cleanup and am reasonalby certain that is a myth

[smittims]

Yes, I didn't hear any flak! Stories like this tend to be transferred from one incident to another.One record where there certainly are anti-aircaft guns firing is of Wanda Landowska in Paris in 1940, shortly before she had to leave (Scarlatti sonata in D Kirkpatrick 490) .

Back to Furtwangler, some of his broadcast tapes were duringthe Berlin Airlift and one can clearly hear Douglas C54 transport aircraft droning overhead.

And thanks, Master Jaques. Yes , you're right about the Free Trade Hall ( though its predecessor,destroyed in the 1941 Blitz,was saiid to be good).

As a schoolboy on pocket money in the 1960s I could afford only a side cricle seat at six shillings, which meant one heard the clashing of cups and saucers from the refreshment room after the interval. It tended to mar, say ,the opening of La Mer. .

[Suffolkcoastal]

Rautavaara: Rasputin, very taken with it. Matti Saliminen powerfully expressive & compulsive in the title role. Certainly one of the most striking operas composed in the 21st Century.

[Petrushka]

That was my first exposure to the Eroica. My older sister had bought a budget lpwhen I was about 15. No other recording has ever seemed to capture the life and death essence of the piece for me. After a few years I had read somewhere that antiaircraft fire can be heard on the recording. I believed it, for between the poor original quality of the vinyl, my very cheap stereo, and the old recording it seemed that might be in there somewhere. Now I have a Pristine Audio cleanup and am reasonalby certain that is a myth

It wasn't the 1944 Furtwangler Eroica that is supposed to have anti-aircraft fire in the background but another Beethoven recording, the 'Emperor' Concerto with Walter Gieseking and the Reichsender Berlin Orchestra conducted by Arthur Rother. This recording, from the autumn of 1944, is also famous for being in genuine stereo and I have it on a Music & Arts CD, CD637.

The alleged anti-aircraft fire occurs in the first movement cadenza and I once read the exact timing where it occurs but have forgotten it. You have to turn the volume very high to hear it and, to be honest, the alleged anti-aircraft fire could just as likely be a musician moving his chair. I'm not discounting it completely but fail to be convinced that what we hear is little more than faint 'noises off'. Some enthusiasts claim to be able to tell exactly what kind of anti-aircraft gun it was but, as I say, I think it's all complete nonsense.

[Barbirollians]

VW - the Wasps Overture - Sargent - rather over bustling for my liking so far.

[Ian Thumwood]

About 30 years ago i had brief fascination qith Bax and was impressed with his orchestral pieces. I aubsequently heard a rwcital of his 2nd piano sonata which was a massive disappointment. It totally put me off Bax who my piano teacher had met but whose own opinion was not as favourable as mine. The piano sonata was really tough to listem too. It seemed like a lot of effort for no good purpose and killed my interest in his music. It was a preswnt fkr my Mum and she was as bored by it as i was.

[smittims]

Thanks, :Petrushka; that's all grist to the mill.

Your scepticism, which I expect I would share if I heard it, reminds me of the time I heard the famous 'Brahms cylinder' a phonograph recording purported to be of Brahms playing one of his Hungarian Dances. I don't think that, without being told first, anyone would think it was a piano at all, let alone which music. Through a torrent of surface noise one can , if one knows what to listen for , detect a very faint clinking noise which could be a number of things unconnected with music . So, sadly, it's no guide to how Brahms interpreted his works!

Sorry to hear you were 'bored' with Bax' second sonata, Ian. I was thrilled with it the first time I heard it, in 1968 in Iris Loveridge's Lyrita recording, and I've loved it ever since. Malcolm Binns has made two fine recordings of it since then . Its' surely a fine, strong work not a moment too long.

My earliest listening today was a Naxos remastering of a Toscanini Brahms concert from 1940:

Serenade in D, (forst movement).
Piano Concerto in B flat (Horowitz).

Symphony no 1 in C minor .

It comes complete with the announcements, and at one point Gene Hamilton has to ad lib for a few seconds as Toscanini is late coming on. But it's far pleasanter than what one hears mostly on Radio 3 these days, sadly.

[Hitch]

Massenet

Ballet Suites (Le Cid, Thaïs, Cendrillon)
Academy of St Martin in the Fields/Marriner
Capriccio

Esclarmonde Suite
Suite No.1, Op.13
Hong Kong PO/Kenneth Jean
Naxos

My listening was prompted by the composer scraping into the top 110(!) of the excellent Suffolkcoastal survey. It's such well-made music. Massenet, of whom I am largely ignorant, merits investigation. He was the subject of CotW ten years ago, so I shall give that a listen, too.

[richardfinegold]

Massenet

Ballet Suites (Le Cid, Thaïs, Cendrillon)
Academy of St Martin in the Fields/Marriner
Capriccio

Esclarmonde Suite
Suite No.1, Op.13
Hong Kong PO/Kenneth Jean
Naxos

My listening was prompted by the composer scraping into the top 110(!) of the excellent Suffolkcoastal survey. It's such well-made music. Massenet, of whom I am largely ignorant, merits investigation. He was the subject of CotW ten years ago, so I shall give that a listen, too.

I believe I encountered that recording on the radio while driving home from work a few years ago. I remember really enjoying it .

Petrushka comments about the stereo wartime Emperor Concerto reminded me that purchased it as a download many years ago because I wanted to hear what might be the first ever stereo recording. It is a fairly decent recording and performance. I don’t remember anti aircraft fire but I think there is a brief phase reversal in the opening bars.
Bax is one of those composers that I have tried to get along with a couple of times. Glazunov is another. In both cases I purchased complete versions of their symphonies and after several tries ultimately purged them from my shelf to save space. Bax harmonies and his mystical Celticisms were unappealing to me