What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? IV

[Roger Webb]

Just listening to the Villa-Lobos Harmonica Concerto (via YLE), is there another instrument that has a sound that is so synonymous with one image? That of Kenneth More in a big pair of gauntlets driving a vintage car. And it doesn't matter who writes the music, the image is the same!

[Barbirollians]

Tchaikovsky. The Symphonies, 1-6 and ‘Manfred’.

The mighty Mstislav Rostropovich conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra in recordings made in 1976/77. That was the time I was getting interested in classical music and I can remember my local record shop, Rae Macintosh in Edinburgh, having a large display of posters promoting the new lps. IIRC, they were released as a set which put them way out of my pocket money budget! The 1977 Gramophone review gives them a largely positive welcome with just a few nits being picked.

My cd set cost a single pound from a charity shop today. How times have changed!

i bought the set a few years ago when it came out very cheaply .

Rather more cheaply in real terms than the EMI Eminence issue of the Pathetique in the mid 1980s bought in WH Smith for £2.99 It was the first time I had heard it and when the allegro vivo came in I jumped out of my seat .

[smittims]

I'm dipping a toe into Akio Yashiro's Symphony for large orchestra from yesterday evening's Radio3 in Concert. I had no idea what to expect: imitation John Adams? Boulez? or somethig quite original? I always hope a truly original new composer will come along and give us some genuinely new music, as used to happen a hundred years ago or so. I'm beginning to think it won't happen now.

[richardfinegold]

Carlos Chavez, Sinfonia di Antigone (symphony no.1). Not surprisingly, an eclectic wiork , but one which , unlike so many 'first symphonies' does not outstay its welcome. Beginnig as if he wants to join Varese , Ruggles and other 20th-century outsiders, later he relaxes into an almost Vaughan-Williamsish string passage of some beauty. I'm looking forward to his other symphonies from this well-known set of recordings by the LSO under Eduardo Mata.

I just discovered Chavez, having bought the Mata set of the symphonies, and your description of #1 is very good.

[Pulcinella]

Having read this review in this morning's Times:

https://www.thetimes.com/article/b9f0e80f-ab6a-4b85-8b3f-dbb05298e146?shareToken=8b9ad24a2edc67e1c0bfe72445fc230b

Yashiro
Piano concerto
Symphony

Hiromi Okada (piano)
Ulster Orchestra, Takuo Yuasa

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7926762--yashiro-piano-concerto-etc

A little surprised that, as the Ulster Orchestra has recorded the symphony, Morrison calls the performance its British premiere.
Maybe it was only a studio performance so doesn't count?

[vinteuil]

A little surprised that, as the Ulster Orchestra has recorded the symphony, Morrison calls the performance its British premiere.
Maybe it was only a studio performance so doesn't count?

... I suppose if they had only performed it in Northern Ireland and not on the mainland then, technically, it had not had a performance in Great Britain, and so this would indeed be its 'British premiere'...

[Stanfordian]

Rossini – ‘Semiramide’
Opera in 2 acts (1823)
Semiramide - Albina Shagimuratova (soprano); Arsace - Daniela Barcellona (mezzo-soprano); Assur - Mirco Palazzi (bass);
Idreno - Barry Banks (tenor); Oroe - Gianluca Buratto (bass); Azema - Susana Gaspar (soprano); Mitrane - David Butt Philip (tenor); Nino’s ghost - James Platt (bass)
Opera Rara Chorus,
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment / Sir Mark Elder
Recorded 2016 Henry Wood Hall, London
Opera Rara, 4 CD set

[gurnemanz]

I jumped in quick to catch Fatma Said's new Lieder recital via Spotify, out today on Warner. A very appealing combination of favourite songs (an animated rendition of Schubert's spooky Der Zwerg) and some less familiar ones, or less usual arrangements, eg four very well-known Brahms songs performed for a change with harp accompaniment and his five very short Ophelia songs in a setting with string quartet by the late lamented Aribert Reimann. Also duets with Huw Montague Rendall, a couple each by Mendelssohn and Schumann.

(Wigmore Lunchtime coming up)

[gradus]

Just listened to Fatima Said singing Widmung as sweetly as you will hear.

[pastoralguy]

Gibbons and Byrd.

Keyboard music played by Glen Gould.

[vinteuil]

Gibbons and Byrd.

Keyboard music played by Glen Gould.

... he's magical in that repertoire, I think

[Pulcinella]

... he's magical in that repertoire, I think

The CD I have (Glenn Gould Collection) features some (mono) Sweelinck too.

[smittims]

Thanks, Pulcinella, for that info about the Yashiro symphony. I agree with the reviewer's remark that the work displays many influences including Messiaen, but I'm afraid I didn't hear any 'white-hot emotion', only a neatly-written , rather conventional four-movement symphony. Having listened to it twice, just to be fair I think that's enough. I wish he'd gone further from his European models and written something more 'japanese'.

[Pulcinella]

Thanks, Pulcinella, for that info about the Yashiro symphony. I agree with the reviewer's remark that the work displays many influences including Messiaen, but I'm afraid I didn't hear any 'white-hot emotion', only a neatly-written , rather conventional four-movement symphony. Having listened to it twice, just to be fair I think that's enough. I wish he'd gone further from his European models and written something more 'japanese'.

I had higher hopes for it than turned out to be how I felt after listening (to the Naxos release, not the concert), too.

[DoctorT]

John Field
Nocturnes
Alice Sara OTT

Ideal late night listening