What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[audiofound]

I really like '50s/'60s small guitar/organ combo jazz (Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Bill Doggett, Dr. Lonnie Smith, etc.). I actually listen to bluegrass music 95% of the time. Yes, I'm a p/t professional bluegrass musician. I'm primarily a guitar flat picker but I also play mandolin and Scruggs style banjo.

[bart]

Franz Liszt - Via Crucis
Arvo Pärt - Sacred Choral Works
Qobuz 24/96




Very intimate album, ideal for my mood and the quiet 2nd Christmas.

With their album dedicated to Psalms of Repentance by Alfred Schnittke, and two works by Arvo Pärt (BIS), this same line-up won some fine prizes (Diapason d'Or, Gramophone). Kaspars Putniņš leads the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir as they continue on their way through the works of Arvo Pärt with four very seductive scores (including the choral version of Summa): they are starting here, and this forms an ideal introduction to the programme's most major work, which is surely Via Crucis, S. 53 by Franz Liszt, an ample score for piano and choir finished in 1879 in Budapest, recordings of which are all too rare. The voices of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir are sublime here, possessed of an enrapturing depth and purity. This Via Crucis is a perfect summary of the later, most modern Liszt: the writing for piano "comes" directly from the final part of the Years of Pilgrimage. There are such striking similarities with pieces like Angelus! Prière aux anges gardiens or the Sursum corda that one might well wonder whether certain pages from Via Crucis (number 12, Jesus stirbt am Kreuze, for example) aren't in fact elaborations from these. In this work, Franz Liszt is developing astoundingly modern harmonies, which draw out a naked form of Wagner's chromatisms, rarefying them: all the more so given that pianist Kalle Randalu tends to put the accent on their dryness. This is the essence of the end of Romanticism, in an absolutely hypnotic record. © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz

[Still-One]

John Williams & Annie-Sophie Mutter - Across the Stars

Excellent MQA recording.

I am sure some will not consider this "Classical" but it sure sounds like it to me.

[Antonmb]

Originally Posted by Still-One

John Williams & Annie-Sophie Mutter - Across the Stars

Excellent MQA recording.

I am sure some will not consider this "Classical" but it sure sounds like it to me.

Classical is in the ear of the beholder[emoji106]

[Antonmb]

Tales from Russia
Simon Trpceski (piano)
Onyx (2019)

A collection of Russian “classics,” all of which you’re likely to have in some other version, but a nice collection very well performed and recorded.

Mussorgsky: A Night on the Bare Mountain
Prokofiev: Tales of an Old Grandmother, Op. 31
Rimsky Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op. 35

[Antonmb]

Anamorfosi (Allegri & Monteverdi)
Le Poème Harmonique, Vincent Dumestre
Alpha (2019), via Qobuz

Gorgeous singing.

[bart]

David Achenberg - Bleu Ébène - Complete String Quartets
Quatuor Tana
Qobuz 24/88.2




This is, as you can see above, new music.
It is well recorded, adventurous but still listenable, even very much so.
I like this discovery!

[bart]

György Kurtág - Scenes
Viktoriia Vitrenko, soprano
David Grimal, violin
Luigi Gaggero, cimbalom
Niek De Groot, double bass
Qobuz 24/96




Fascinating music, as well as performance.
It's not easy, but rewarding...

In the history of music, György Kurtág is a figure apart. Born in Hungary in 1926, he stood aside from the great ideological movements of his time and created his own personal language in solitude, thinking of music as he put it, "as an ongoing search". But while doggedly independent, he was also a man of culture whose language developed in the shadow of two great teachers: Bartók and Beethoven, the former following on largely from the latter. A champion of the small form, Kurtág also drew inspiration (when he wasn't revisiting them explicitly) from Bach, Schubert and Schumann.

This thrilling album offers a journey through the composer's private world, with pieces that take in song (a leitmotif of his oeuvre), violin, cimbalom and double bass – instruments of Hungarian folk tradition.

From the poetic highlights of Stsenï iz romana ("Scenes from a novel on poems by Rimma Dalos") sung in Russian, to the Homage to his friend, the painter Berényi Ferenc, this perfectly-performed recording follows the trail of a particularly secret and captivating composer. The Eight Duets for Violin and Cimbalom, Op.4 are taken in hand by a Hungarian virtuoso playing one of his favourite instruments, the cimbalom, which is at once typical of Magyar culture and a link to the medieval psalter. The Seven Songs, Op.22 evoke Japanese haikus through their brevity and content, and conjure up the stunning final image of a snail ascending Mount Fuji. Egy Téli alkony emlékére ("In memory of a Winter evening") is a very expressive and moving rendering of long evenings spent at the fireside.

The Russian poet Rimma Dalos summed up Kurtág's personality: "Kurtág always chose the minimalist and the romantic. The poetry of the small form, the aphorism, a weightlessness which is at the same time very weighty. To speak without saying it all, to graze but not break, to penetrate without betraying." We couldn't put it better. © François Hudry/Qobuz

[bart]

I'm staying with modern this evening:

Originally Posted by bart

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung
Theatre of Voices, Paul Hiller



A journey with and into the human voice I would say.
Composed in '68.
New vocal techniques then, now more often used in improvisational music.
I recognize elements of Indian classical, Tuvan throat singing, various European folk styles, Yiddish, even Hallelujah's!
And I'm sure there is much more that I don't know.
The surround mix is such that the listener finds himself in the middle of the ensemble, and it's a good place to be.

The more I hear this album, the better I like it and enjoy it.
Listening in 5.0; I think it is the way to go for this album.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Philip Glass - Piano Works
Víkingur Ólafsson, piano
Qobuz 24/96




As we all seem heavily but happily influenced by Ed the last weeks, I decided to play this fantastic set again.
Glass seems to compose very simple music, but in fact, it is only through repetitive (no pun intended) listening sessions that you can discover the deeper levels.
Recommended!

Listening to this again.
A real gem!