What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[BBMmk2]

I have the Hyperion dyad set of the symphonies:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Magnard-Four-Symphonies/dp/B001L8K16S/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1507290156&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=Magnatd+symphonies

Not sure if jlw recommended them or not, but I'm sure she had something to say about him and his music somewhere (I haven't searched).

Thanks pulci and Stan. JLW, you]re opinion pleaser

[jayne lee wilson]

Thanks pulci and Stan. JLW, you]re opinion pleaser

The Magnard thread is here.....

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?9828-Magnard-Albérich-(1865-1914)&highlight=Magnard

But with apologies for the length (!) here are my main posts gathered together.....


2013...
Having only been in Orbit around Planet Magnard a few weeks - and Life will keep getting in the way - I can only report first impressions which are...
surprise! There's no easy answer to this...

Listening to the 2 recent rivals, Ossonce and Sanderling, in the finale of the deeply lyrical, lovable 2nd, it would be easy to prefer Sanderling: the soundstage is better defined, his rhythms and phrasing sharper and paragraphing clearer. The slightly slower tempi are better related too, and nothing feels underplayed. Ossonce seems to rush the quicker passages slightly, feeling a little matter-of-fact here, but - his slower, lyrical episodes are so very beautiful, and the climaxes open out so splendidly, it's easy to forgive him. The orchestra is in softer focus on Hyperion too, enhancing the Romantic effect. But you are more aware of hearing an empty hall, (Caird Hall Dundee) which again slightly lessens the emotional temperature, with winds having a tendency to shrink back into the space, a little anonymously. On BIS, the Malmo hall is warmer, and the sound, as usual, uncompromisingly well-defined, spacious and powerful.
This comparison does seem to hold good for the other symphonies too but having listened to both I would find it hard to give up on Ossonce. His slow movements (and episodes) have a marvellous fluidity of line and texture. I'm drawn back to both.

Then you try Plasson in that same finale "Vif et Gai", it says - and you think, THIS is how it should go. Warmer, brighter, more intimate strings, colour, character and charm from the woodwind, more "local" and pastoral in its infectious gaiety as it joyfully kicks along! No it isn't as well recorded, and the brass are less climactically brilliant, but you hear the French Romantic tradition from which Magnard grew - in the sound of the Toulouse Capitole in the Halle-aux-Grains, the seeming familiarity and intimacy of the orchestra with the music. Plasson doesn't always do as well as this - there are times in the 4th Symphony when the orchestra only just holds things together, not nearly as polished or as disciplined as Sanderling's Malmo SO, less cohesive than Ossonce's Scottish band. But again, he finds a vein of exotic colouristic fantasy in the first movement of the 4th that the other conductors don't appear even to attempt, and an intensity in that amazing final climax which feels headier, more intoxicating than the cleaner-cut, more purely abstract Symphonic Statements of Ossonce or Sanderling.

These opinions may change, at least in their relation to one another: I might come to object more to Plasson's lack of orchestral discipline, or find Ossonce offering little that Sanderling doesn't do better - but even as an absolute beginner with Magnard, I don't think I'll shift my preferences radically.

In other words, you need all three!
Don't want to buy the shop? OK - Plasson and one other... I would suggest Sanderling then, if only because his expansive, grandly symphonic approach offers the greater contrast to Plasson's natively French warmth and expressive charm.

…***
Listening at greater length last night, it soon became clear that Plasson's account of No.2 is easily the best of the three. Comparing the 1st movement with Sanderling, his orchestra is tighter and livelier, the phrasing more expressively shaped with a confidence borne of emotional understanding. He sees how the movement develops from the contrast between the initial Gavotte rhythm and the soaring, yearning Romantic melody which follows, far more passionate in his performance. Sanderling is very charmless in this movement, too abstract, and his slower tempi works against him in a piece that should be sunny and fresh.
With Ossonce the sheer beauty of the playing in the Chant Varie draws you back - he goes deep into the pastoral heart of this lovely inspiration, the oboe's song so redolent of the shimmering heat over a summer field. "Tres Nuance" it says, and doesn't he just... It's as though he rushes through the quicker passages in the outer movements because he's so keen to find another lyrical episode on which to so lovingly dwell!

Turn to the 3rd, and you realise that the grander and more ambitious the music, the more Thomas Sanderling's approach pays off. In the finale his Malmo players sweep all before them, powering along in a style that the Toulouse reading's quicker and lighter orchestral character can't match.

But you really do need to hear Plasson in 1 & 2 to truly understand Magnard. As for Ossonce, he has something uniquely beautiful to offer in those many passages where Magnard evokes stillness, serenity, darker withdrawal. And once heard, his slow movements are impossible to live without.




2016….

Looking back to my posts 2 years ago (#2#8#18#37 etc), I haven't changed my views much (last major system upgrade was 5/2013, apart from USB replay) apart from feeling fonder still of Ossonce, and finding Sanderling (despite his apparent & worthy attempt to place Magnard more in the symphonic mainstream) just too austere and unyielding, lacking schwung and not just in the dance-themes. He's best in those big moments like the 4th's finale, yes - but still there's a lack of lyricism and warmth, that French Romantic idiom which Ossonce grasps so very well, not to mention the marvellous Hyperion-engineered climaxes - gloriously full and open. As a Dyad-CD or files, the Hyperion is pretty good value too.

Remember too that ensemble in Plasson's 4th (the first they set down) really is quite scrappy in places and it is more roughly recorded than the others, to judge from the original CDs. There's a lack of sonic splendour in this concerto-for-orchestra-like piece. (If there are any lossless downloads available they may sound better, it's potluck and case-by-case with that...). So you do need another 4th and there I do have a clearer preference for Ossonce now. The central climax to his 4th's finale is overwhelming, marvellous!

[HighlandDougie]

Rachmaninov: Symphony No 3 in A minor, op 44

Concertgebouw Orchestra/Vladimir Ashkenazy

A work I unashamedly adore (which I would never have said ten years ago - how one's tastes can change) in a favourite performance, with its already excellent recording scrubbed up and made excellenter by the clever remastering gurus at Universal Japan. A treat awaiting me at home after a dire train journey from Manchester to Edinburgh (standing for three and a half hours is not much fun).

[pastoralguy]

Rachmaninov: Symphony No 3 in A minor, op 44

Concertgebouw Orchestra/Vladimir Ashkenazy

A work I unashamedly adore (which I would never have said ten years ago - how one's tastes can change) in a favourite performance, with its already excellent recording scrubbed up and made excellenter by the clever remastering gurus at Universal Japan. A treat awaiting me at home after a dire train journey from Manchester to Edinburgh (standing for three and a half hours is not much fun).

Ouch!

[bluestateprommer]

Literally right now, as I type: Leif Ove Andsnes and Marc-Andre Hamelin recorded live @ Carnegie Hall a few months ago. This program was available for a while, but I put off listening to it in full, and it disappeared for a while. But happily it's back, at least for now:

http://www.wqxr.org/story/leif-ove-andsnes-and-marc-andre-hamelin-play-mozart-and-stravinsky

[Bryn]

Literally right now, as I type: Leif Ove Andsnes and Marc-Andre Hamelin recorded live @ Carnegie Hall a few months ago. This program was available for a while, but I put off listening to it in full, and it disappeared for a while. But happily it's back, at least for now:

http://www.wqxr.org/story/leif-ove-a...and-stravinsky

Many thanks. Looks a great concert programme.

[Lat-Literal]

Re Magnard, I am familiar with the Sanderling and Plasson series of symphonies but not the Ossonce. I agree with JLW on Plasson and think it has more colour. I had two attempts with this composer, neither wholly successful. The first involved buying a cheap second hand copy of the Sanderling box set for just a few pounds when to buy it new would have cost well over £30 which I couldn't and wouldn't afford. I was very disappointed by it, not least in the packaging - a colourless cover and the inner not especially well designed to hold the discs the box contained. It was also around that time that I wondered whether I had let my enthusiasm run away with me on the musical content just as I did with Scriabin among others. It's good but perhaps not great as I had originally believed. Consequently, when it came to finding a replacement that suited this reassessment, I opted for two cheap second hand discs on EMI. That is the Plasson and it meant ditching Symphony No 4 (of 4). I couldn't find a Plasson box set of all four (although it may well exist) and noted that while one disc incorporated Symphonies No 1 and 3, the other which features Symphony No 2 also includes "Hymne a la Justice" which I believe is one of his outstanding pieces.

A word here on the music itself. If you look at comments from the general public, you will find many references to similarities with Ravel and composers in that vein along with one or two to Delius. On the former, no, I really don't think it is quite that French while, yes, the Delius analogy makes a little sense but the sound is much fuller and arguably less lyrical. The key here may just be that as well as being born in the same year as Sibelius, Nielsen and Glazunov, Magnard is also commonly referred to as the "French Bruckner" which immediately sends out a rather different - and more accurate - frame of reference. That is, while you will undoubtedly find beautiful or striking moments here, and dramatic colourful sweeps, the overall tone is serious, patient effort may well be needed to really stick with it, and structurally at the very least, it is probably most naturally located somewhere east of France.

[Barbirollians]

Rachmaninov: Symphony No 3 in A minor, op 44

Concertgebouw Orchestra/Vladimir Ashkenazy

A work I unashamedly adore (which I would never have said ten years ago - how one's tastes can change) in a favourite performance, with its already excellent recording scrubbed up and made excellenter by the clever remastering gurus at Universal Japan. A treat awaiting me at home after a dire train journey from Manchester to Edinburgh (standing for three and a half hours is not much fun).

One of those ghastly Transpennine Express trains ? I caught one from Manchester to Carlisle last year quite dreadful . I came home to South Yorkshire even though it took an hour longer on the Settle to Carlisle line changing at Leeds - a much more pleasant experience .

[HighlandDougie]

One of those ghastly Transpennine Express trains ?

Bang on! Never again.

[jayne lee wilson]

Re Magnard, I am familiar with the Sanderling and Plasson series of symphonies but not the Ossonce. I agree with JLW on Plasson and think it has more colour. I had two attempts with this composer, neither wholly successful. The first involved buying a cheap second hand copy of the Sanderling box set for just a few pounds when to buy it new would have cost well over £30 which I couldn't and wouldn't afford. I was very disappointed by it, not least in the packaging - a colourless cover and the inner not especially well designed to hold the discs the box contained. It was also around that time that I wondered whether I had let my enthusiasm run away with me on the musical content just as I did with Scriabin among others. It's good but perhaps not great as I had originally believed. Consequently, when it came to finding a replacement that suited this reassessment, I opted for two cheap second hand discs on EMI. That is the Plasson and it meant ditching Symphony No 4 (of 4). I couldn't find a Plasson box set of all four (although it may well exist) and noted that while one disc incorporated Symphonies No 1 and 3, the other which features Symphony No 2 also includes "Hymne a la Justice" which I believe is one of his outstanding pieces.

A word here on the music itself. If you look at comments from the general public, you will find many references to similarities with Ravel and composers in that vein along with one or two to Delius. On the former, no, I really don't think it is quite that French while, yes, the Delius analogy makes a little sense but the sound is much fuller and arguably less lyrical. The key here may just be that as well as being born in the same year as Sibelius, Nielsen and Glazunov, Magnard is also commonly referred to as the "French Bruckner" which immediately sends out a rather different - and more accurate - frame of reference. That is, while you will undoubtedly find beautiful or striking moments here, and dramatic colourful sweeps, the overall tone is serious, patient effort may well be needed to really stick with it, and structurally at the very least, it is probably most naturally located somewhere east of France.

RE. your 2nd paragraph I remembered this remarkably insightful comment from Roehre on the Magnard thread....

"I have got the gut feeling here, that this generation of composers falls apart into two main groups, possibly defined by the area in which they grew up.
At the one hand Schmitt, Koechlin, at the other Debussy, Pierné and Roussel. Magnard in between, though born in Paris and losing his live in Baron, more leaning to the first group.
The former are Alsatian/Lorrainic -and therefore in French eyes "less French" composers than the latter ones.

Is it me being biassed, but IMO the former are more (quasi-)"Wagnerian" at least in the beginning of their composing careers than the latter. And, on top of that, IMO the symphonic output of Magnard has some striking emotional resemblances/similarities with e.g. Franz Schmidt's (though he's from a generation later)

(Note: It's not by chance that by approaching Strassbourg from the French side, the city looks very German, and coming from the east its French characteristics immediately spring to the eye. I experience the same while listening to the former group's compositions in general: starting with Debussy and then Magnard, the latter is Germanic, start e.g. with some orchestral Wagner, and Magnard is unquestionably French)"

[teamsaint]

Bang on! Never again.

We got involved in a situation where the sleeper got stopped at Preston , and we had to go across to York in one of those luxury two coach jobs, on a day which just happened to have a big race meeting at York.
Luckily we had seats as far as York, but were out of luck the rest of the way to Edinburgh, so it was sitting on suitcases in a corridor.
You have my sympathy, HD.

The countryside on the Lancashire side is nice though.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Specifically to avoid such nightmares, I always book seats when I travel to Edinburgh. There are two routes from here - each taking about four hours from door-to-door: one going via Berwick-upon-Tweed with sea views; the other via Carlisle, with views of the Ribblehead viaduct. (Well, there would be - travelling at this time of year and crossing the viaduct at 7:40 in the evening, I might as well have been in the channel tunnel!)

And High Doug - eternal consolation: at the end of the trip was Edinburgh!

[Lat-Literal]

RE. your 2nd paragraph I remembered this remarkably insightful comment from Roehre on the Magnard thread....

"I have got the gut feeling here, that this generation of composers falls apart into two main groups, possibly defined by the area in which they grew up.
At the one hand Schmitt, Koechlin, at the other Debussy, Pierné and Roussel. Magnard in between, though born in Paris and losing his live in Baron, more leaning to the first group.
The former are Alsatian/Lorrainic -and therefore in French eyes "less French" composers than the latter ones.

Is it me being biassed, but IMO the former are more (quasi-)"Wagnerian" at least in the beginning of their composing careers than the latter. And, on top of that, IMO the symphonic output of Magnard has some striking emotional resemblances/similarities with e.g. Franz Schmidt's (though he's from a generation later)

(Note: It's not by chance that by approaching Strassbourg from the French side, the city looks very German, and coming from the east its French characteristics immediately spring to the eye. I experience the same while listening to the former group's compositions in general: starting with Debussy and then Magnard, the latter is Germanic, start e.g. with some orchestral Wagner, and Magnard is unquestionably French)"

Well yes, Jayne, I hadn't read that post and tend to agree. The last word of my paragraph was originally going to be "Alsace" rather than "France" but I felt a little bit uncertain there and opted for the obvious. My earlier use of the phrase "not that French"......it indicated that there is something of the French in his music which along with the latter comment is a reiteration of the perspective outlined above. What I will probably be doing this weekend now is looking at where a range of composers from France were born and based to acquire further evidence! My only slight point of difference is perhaps the choice of Koechlin as an example of one of the two groups, notwithstanding what is suggested by his name. I like Koechlin and think of him as very individual. He doesn't immediately strike me as a composer who I would seek to define geographically but maybe that too underpins the border point.

[Petrushka]

Haydn: Symphony No 88

[interval]

Bruckner: Symphony No 7

Berliner Philharmoniker
Eugen Jochum

[Lat-Literal]

A belated:

Ukraine 2 of 2:

Virko Baley - Symphony No 1 Mvt. III - "Agnus Dei" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPn0VHxAbwE
Mykhailo Haivoronsky - Serenade : Violin and Piano - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ7P0MBnOQI
Borys Lyatoshynsky - Suite : Ukrainian Folk Themes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIuiaJ3nERQ
Maksim Berezovsky - Do Not Cast Me Off in Old Age - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usKImff-q38

Mykola Leontovych - Shchedryk : Carol of the Bells - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI5lxtSivWc
Yakiv Stepoviy - Prelude Op 9 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5eLS2KrNyY
Sergei Bortkiewicz - Nocturne - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMuUynNL0U
Dmytro Bortniansky - Song of the Cherubins - No 7 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJlpazplonw

Konstantyn Dankevych - Taras Shevchenko - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg1w3r94uuA
Dmitri Klebanov - Japanese Silhouettes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2RHGZFKZXA
Mykola Lysenko - Taras Bulba Overture - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JJunawXEb0
Viktor Kosenko - Piano Concerto, in C Minor - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMIbzkNYa-E

Ukraine 1 of 2 was posted on 13 August 2017 and is at Post 1061.

The two posts do not include the obvious - Prokofiev, Gliere, Roslavets - but Lysenko will be familiar and so too the Carol of the Bells, arranged by Leontovych.