What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[pastoralguy]

E.G. Moeran. Violin Concerto.

John Georgiadis, violin. The London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley. Lyrita.

The late, great Mr. Georgiadis was one of my first musical heroes and I bought the full price Lp when it was released in 1979. Probably the first record I ever bought of non standard repertoire. Very fine playing from both soloist and orchestra and excellent conducting.

[oliver sudden]

Trinity College did Our Man in Havana - very creditably - about a decade ago. It's a wonderful piece. I do have a rather piecemeal recording of the BBC broadcast from the original run, which needs serious audio work which I haven't got around to doing: it's on my constant "to do" list, I'm afraid!

For what it’s worth I would be very interested indeed in hearing this!

[teamsaint]

I could never understand why Malcolm Williamson's music wasn't more successful. Every now and then someone makes an effort to revive it, but it never seems to last.

Another neglected composer who's a favourite of mine, and whose music has been much more available on disc than Williamsons' , is Alan Rawsthorne. I' ve just been listening to one of his later works, Theme, Variations and Finale, conducted by Barry Wordsworth.

I never really got to grips with Rawsthorne, but listened to his first SQ today, and I’ll revisit.

[smittims]

Rawsthorne's music isn't easy because he makes little effort to win the listener's attention, except in overtly public works like the second piano concerto or 'Practical cats'. Also, there are few if any extra-musical connotations in his music. He rarely sets words or refers to anything except the composition itself. I think this was innate in him, but another influence was his marriage to the abstract painter Isabel Delmer, a fascinating and deep-thinking person (I met her once) who was previously married to Constant Lambert.

But I found that if I concentrated and gave the music my full attention,it becomes most rewarding to listen to. Repeated listening is the key, and fortunatelyt most of his output is, or has been, available in recordings.

My listening today was very different. Brahms' Requiem , in the 1964 DG recording with Herbert von Karajan. It was the second of I think four recordings he made, so it was clearly a special work for him. I don't listen to it often ; I have to be in the mood for it. I've known people who can't stand it and find it gloomy.

[AuntDaisy]

Fux's "Costanza e fortezza" (1723) extracts from a 2023 Styiarte concert (trailer here).
Broadcast on Austrian radio's Ö1 - who have far more Early & Baroque music than certain broadcasters. Available for ~7 days at the first link.

Very lively and enjoyable - is it available on CD?? (I think that's Fux in the photo below)

[Stanfordian]

Angela Gheorghiu - Favourite Opera Arias - ‘Homage to Maria Callas’
Arias from Gounod, Puccini, Bellini, Saint-Saëns, Leoncavallo, Catalani,
Bizet, Giordano, Cherubini, Massenet, Cilea, Verdi
Angela Gheorghiu (soprano)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Marco Armiliato
with James Valenti (tenor)
Recorded 2010/11 Abbey Road, London; 2010 Henry Wood Hall, London & 2011 MSR Studios, New York
EMI, CD

Beethoven
From 'The Complete Violin Sonatas'
Sonata No. 5 in F Major, Op. 24, ‘Spring’
Sonata No. 8 in G Major, Op. 30/3
Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 ‘Kreutzer’
Renaud Capuçon (violin) & Frank Braley (piano)
Recorded 2009 L’heure bleue, Salle de musique, La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland
Virgin Classics CD 2 of 3.

[smittims]

I'm grateful to the Chausson discussion on the Brahms thread for reminding me that I hadn't listened to this wonderful work for years (Poeme de l'amour et de la mer). My choice was an off-air performance form 2012 with Ruby Hughes and the BBC S.O. conducted by Pascal Rophe. Curiously the cello solo interlude is omitted (as it was in the famous Maggie Teyte recording ; but the transition from hope to despair in the second movement is most poignantly realised.

To follow, Webern's Variations, op. 30. The Vienna Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado. This piece , for so long sounding strange and angular, suddenly has the fluency and ease of Schubert. I recommend this performance to anyone who still hasn't found the sheer beauty of Webern's music.

[Master Jacques]

For what it’s worth I would be very interested indeed in hearing this!

There are considerable portions of the broadcast missing, added to which the surviving chunks are in the wrong order. The sound is bad, but worst of all I suspect it had been transferred from dodgy reel-to-reel to a CD, which had then "gone bad", resulting in digital distortion to the voices in many places. It really isn't serviceable for listening, as it stands. We can only hope that the BBC holds an archived copy in reasonable condition - or wait for an Australian production to give us the pleasure of hearing Our Man in Havana once again.

My school once mounted a Williamson Festival concert, at the old Free Trade Hall, featuring the composer himself playing his 2nd Piano Concerto with our school orchestra. The choral version of the Our Man in Havana suite was also on the programme, with Ian Wallace taking Dr Hasselbacher's solos therein, and a soprano whose name I can't recall contributing that catchy waltz "Blessed Saint Seraphina". The pleasure of singing the Cuban syncopations of "A la luz de la luna" remains with me yet!

[pastoralguy]

Beethoven. Piano Concertos No.1 & No.2.

Maurizio Pollini, piano. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Eugen Jochum.

Beautiful music making from all involved.

RIP, Maestro.

[oliver sudden]

There are considerable portions of the broadcast missing, added to which the surviving chunks are in the wrong order. The sound is bad, but worst of all I suspect it had been transferred from dodgy reel-to-reel to a CD, which had then "gone bad", resulting in digital distortion to the voices in many places. It really isn't serviceable for listening, as it stands. We can only hope that the BBC holds an archived copy in reasonable condition - or wait for an Australian production to give us the pleasure of hearing Our Man in Havana once again.

I’m still interested in hearing it! Owen Brannigan as Hasselbacher, do you mind…

I have just read that there indeed was an Australian production recently: in Melbourne in 2016. Not sure lightning is going to strike there again soon. Maybe 2031 for Williamson’s centenary?

[smittims]

Bach. S. Matthew Passion. Otto Klemperer's 1959 Columbia recording.

This is one to divide listeners. Some have praised it to the skies, yet when it was reissued on 8 sides on HMV, the Gramophone said 'I would not want to put these discs in the hands of a young listener who hadn't previously heard it and tell him the S..Matthew Passion was one of the world's greatest works. '

It's well-known that it was a troublesome job. Intended as a typical Walter Legge all-star effort (Schwarzkopf, Fischer-Dieskau, Ludwig, Pears , Gedda, etc. etc) it was begun in a damp Hampstead Parish church and finished in Kingsway Hall via Studio One. Legge had the secco recits re-recorded without the conductor (and without his knowledge,some say) , and after editing the complete master tape told his wife he had no desire ever to hear Bach's music again.

Today, for the first time, I found some of it too slow, though the timings differ very little from Karl Richter's 1980 Archiv recording with Janet Baker et al.

Do you have a favourite recording? I've come to regard the complete Furtwangler (as issued by Orfeo) as strikingthe happy medium. I wish Neville Marriner had recorded it. I think that would have been good.

[rauschwerk]

Gordon Crosse is another British composer of whose works I have hardly heard a note. He scored a success with Changes at the Three Choirs Festival in 1966. An Argo recording followed, with Kingsway Hall acoustics perfectly captured by Stanley Goodall. I listened to this the other night and it gave me great pleasure. Why is it so neglected?

[oliver sudden]

I’m still interested in hearing it! Owen Brannigan as Hasselbacher, do you mind…

I have just read that there indeed was an Australian production recently: in Melbourne in 2016. Not sure lightning is going to strike there again soon. Maybe 2031 for Williamson’s centenary?

So!

There’s a fairly basic-looking video on YouTube. Act 1 is here: https://youtu.be/8wafm-EP8to?feature=shared

I haven’t had time to listen but in the opening turn-off-your-phones announcement the chap mentions that ABC Classic FM are recording the performance. So if the sound in the video isn’t much chop, there should at least be a proper version in another radio station’s vaults.

[rauschwerk]

Last night: Brahms's second symphony (Pittsburgh SO/Steinberg). This was the Command Classics recording from the complete cycle recently reissued by DG. This is the best performance of the four, IMHO. Indeed, I would describe the conducting as masterly. Steinberg avoids what a friend of mine calls 'varnished' Brahms, partly by getting the timps to play much quieter than usual.

Moved on to Parry's Elegy for Brahms (LPO/Matthias Bamert). An excellent piece and much neglected like most of Parry's orchestral music.

Thinking about Parry's relationship with Stanford took me to the latter's Mag & Nunc in A (Durham Cathedral Choir/James Lancelot). I never sang music like this when I was a lad, more's the pity.

Thence to Warlock's The Curlew another piece I hardly know. What a haunting setting! Ian Partridge, it seems to me, had just the right voice for this music.

And so to bed.

[Master Jacques]

I’m still interested in hearing it! Owen Brannigan as Hasselbacher, do you mind…

I have just read that there indeed was an Australian production recently: in Melbourne in 2016. Not sure lightning is going to strike there again soon. Maybe 2031 for Williamson’s centenary?

Strange you should pick him out: Brannigan's presence in that first production was my whole excuse for getting hold of the fragmentary material which came my way. I was writing an article about him, and wanted to hear his Hasselbacher (he also created the role of Count Agénor in The Violins of Saint-Jacques, Williamson's masterpiece, and the composer wrote Five North Country Songs and Five Hymns for him, both of which he recorded).

If don't know those two song-set recordings, please message me: I'll quietly upload my remasterings of them, so you can enjoy a Brannigan fix!

I should have thought there might be an archive recording of that 2016 Melbourne production, which was well received.