What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[Mario]

Thank you Sir Velo. I'm afraid I'm not a student of French military history.

But it's all rather apt, isn't it?

Another revolution squashed by the little man.

Mario

[visualnickmos]

'I really DON'T need yet another Vaughan Williams 6th', he said, desperately trying to convince himself .....

Yup! That's about it..... (I have more 4ths than 6ths, though....) Bernstein wears the laurels - by a whisker

[cloughie]

Yup! That's about it..... (I have more 4ths than 6ths, though....) Bernstein wears the laurels - by a whisker

Manze’s 4th I found excellent, but a tenor in No3 takes some getting used to!

[Pulcinella]

Martin Suckling

Piano concerto
Release
This departing landscape (which is the CD title) (*)
The White Road

Katherine Bryan (flute)
Tamara Stefanovich (piano)
BBCPO(*)/BBCSSO/Ilan Volkov

Concerto choice in BBC MM (May 2021) and a good review in Gramophone (May 2021) too: This NMC Portrait might have been a time coming but the wait was worthwhile.

[LMcD]

Manze’s 4th I found excellent, but a tenor in No3 takes some getting used to!

Manze for me - but I have an off-air recording of his Proms performance with the BBCSSO.

[gradus]

Manze’s 4th I found excellent, but a tenor in No3 takes some getting used to!

OO-err! Bit of a fashion now with Joyce de Donato recording Winterreise

[BBMmk2]

Carrying on with my theme of recordings featuring the music of concert bands and brass bands.

The 62nd Annual Midwest Clinic 2008
The US Army Field Band
Colonel Thomas H Palmeter, conductor.

Lincolnshire Posy music for band by Percy Grainger
Dallas Wind Symphony
Jerry Junkin.

3 Steps Forward
University of Nevada at Las Vegas
Thomas G Leslie, conductor

Also playing from this set, which arrived yesterday.

Jean Sibelius
Kullervo, Op.7
Randl Stone (mezzo-soprano)
Peter Mattei (baritone)
National Male Choir of Estonia
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic
Paavo Järvi

Night Ride & Sunrise, Op.55
Luonnatur, Op.70 *
Lemminkäinen, Op.22
*Solveig Kringelborn (soprano)
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
Paavo Järvi.

[Joseph K]

Birtwistle's Niedecker settings - via youtube, suggested by Mandryka on another thread ...

[Joseph K]

Beethoven - piano concerto no. 1 - Emil Gilels, Orchestre de la Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire/Vandernoot

No. 2 now.

[jayne lee wilson]

Nielsen Symphonies 1-6. BBCPO/Storgards. Chandos CDs.

Revisiting this 2015 release over the last few weeks (slow listening - the only kind I like now...) has been very rewarding. The Media City sound is exceptional: wide and deep with very precise instrumental placement, dynamics powerful but never domestically impracticable; tonally smooth, immediate but never too close.
The readings are striking in their thoughtfulness, giving even the most forceful movements time to breathe and reflect, avoiding that potential Nielsen-cliché trap of relentlessness.

This does reduce the momentum of the Espansiva to some extent; perhaps the one partial disappointment here, despite many beauties (including, thankfully, well-recessed voices in the andante; and a first movement that gives the listener time to breathe and reflect too).
But so many highlights...
One of the best 6ths anywhere (much more to it than despair versus irony or sarcasm - when it concludes, all you want to do is play it again...) and a 2nd that is tone-poetically colourful, nonchalant or profoundly tragic wherever it should be, with a central episode in the very quick, light finale that anticipates the 5th's tranquillo; fully-sounded, never exaggerated; nothing taken for granted.

A terrific set! See the Nielsen Composers' Thread if you want more.

[gradus]

Andreas Schiff playing Schumann Nachtstucke and Kreisleriana. Also the 4 handed Polonaises which were new to me as well as excerpts from the Klavierstucke fur grosse und kleine Kinder, as charming and full of Schumann's personality as the Album for the Young, together with the Bilder aus Osten Impromptus played by Nicolas Callot and Lucas Blondeel on what sound like period pianos.

[Joseph K]

Stravinsky - Renard - London Sinfonietta/Chailly, The Soldier's Tale (in English) - Boston Symphony Chamber Players

[richardfinegold]

Have you tried the Gielen?

Yes. Let’s just be charitable and say the Orchestra doesn’t quite fill the shoes of the CSO

[Richard Barrett]

Yes. Let’s just be charitable and say the Orchestra doesn’t quite fill the shoes of the CSO

That depends on what you're looking for I guess. The SWR orchestra, given that it plays more "difficult" modern repertoire than almost any other orchestra in the world, is the perfect instrument for Gielen's combination of detailed chamber-music interplay and longer-range structural and expressive coherence. For me that brings out more of the possibilities of Mahler's music than any crack team of virtuosos. Of course it's wonderful that we have the good fortune to be able to hear so many differing approaches to this music, but I really don't think it's a question of one orchestra "playing better" than another when you're on this level of interpretation.

[Stanfordian]

André Previn – The Warner Edition – Complete HMV & Teldec Recordings
André Previn (conductor / piano)
Recorded 1971-87
Warner Classics [96 CDs] newly released box

I've been dipping into this box for a week or so now.

This has made me think about reading a André Previn biography. Previn was working at the Warner Bros studios at Hollywood having adapted the music for the film My Fair Lady for which he would win his fourth Oscar. Rex Harrison was to rehearse and record his big number 'Why Can't the English' with the Warner studio orchestra and had requested his usual conductor Franz Allers, who had conducted Harrison night after night in the long-run of the musical version both on Broadway and the West End. Allers' birthplace was Karlsbad, then majority German speaking, now part of the Czech Republic. Previn, as the studio conducter, took over for Harrison's number with the studio orchestra. When everything was in the can Harrison was asked by Jack Warner what he thought of Previn's conducting? Harrison replied 'Very good. Better than that German bastard!'

Owing to the forename André, movie mogul Jack Warner actually thought Previn was French and would constantly refer to him as 'monsewer.'

This was true to form for Jack Warner. Evidently when the wife of Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek visited Warner's Hollywood studios he greeted her by saying 'That reminds me - I have to collect my laundry!