What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Diego Ortiz - Recercadas del tratado de glosas
Jordi Savall



Very nice and intimate renaissance music.
We heard Jordi Savall this evening.
Will try to post about the wonderful concert this weekend.

This was recorded in '89, so the surround sound is not perfect.
Still a very good listen though.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Beethoven - String Quartets op. 74 & 95
Tokyo String Quartet



This was the last SACD of them that was lacking in my collection.
Fantastic performance and sound.
This quartet is making its last world tour now.
Quite an experience to have seen them live.

In this Beethoven year, some of the finest chamber music ever written.
The Tokyo String Quartet is one of the ensembles I keep returning to when I want to hear these pieces.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Gabrieli - Berliner Dom - Music for Brass & Organ
Berlin Brass, Lucas Vis
Andreas Sieling, organ




This is the example of a recording where multi-channel adds (a lot) to the experience.
The instruments come from all sides, as it must have sounded in the late 1500s in the cathedral.
No discrete surround channels here!

Listening again, in 5.0 of course...

[Formerly YB-2]

Originally Posted by bart

Mozart - The Complete Piano Sonatas
Ronals Brautigam, fortepiano
via Qobuz



Over 6 hours of well played masterpieces...

Yes. Some of the finest music ever written.

[audioguy3107]

Qobuz 24/96

[Haydn]

Sibelius: Symphony No. 1; Pohjola's Daughter; Tapiola
Robert Kajanus
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
Recorded 1930 & 1932
Naxos, 2012
An historic recording, but it is not one of my favorites so far.

[bart]

Listening again to:

Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe et ses filles
Philippe Pierlot
Lucille Boulanger
Myriam Rignol
Rolf Lislevand
Qobuz 24/96




This is like a "greatest hits of" album, and it is extremely well played and recorded.
I've been a huge fan of French viola da gamba music since watching the movie 'Tous Les Matins Du Monde', and I can play Marais Marais and Sainte-Colombe over and over and over again.
The quality of performance here is equal to Jordi Savall's, and it has better sound.

Having become a film star (played by actor Jean-Pierre Marielle, who was passionate about music), Monsieur de Saint Colombe comes to us here from the comfort of his own home where he gave concerts which proved very popular with amateur musicians as well as his two daughters. His repertoire mainly consisted of dances, namely stylised dances intended for “the personal and tranquil enjoyment” of enlightened listeners. These dances were composed in suites from the middle of the 17th century onwards and follow on from one another in an order that was gradually established over time, from the most dignified or the noblest (and slowest) to the liveliest.

Not only was Jean de Sainte-Colombe admired for the grace and stability of his left-hand technique, but also for his use of silver-spun strings which were very much in vogue in France at the time and added a prestigious aesthetic to his music. He was widely praised for his beautiful playing and his way of reaching chords with beautiful dissonances that lifted the spirits of his learned and cultured audience.

Philippe Pierlot (primary artist, bass viol), Lucile Boulanger (bass viol) and Myriam Rignol (bass viol) invite us into this mysterious and sophisticated world on this album, with a collaboration from Rolf Lislevand on theorbo for two of the pieces. Playing excerpts from his Pieces in D, in G and in C, it becomes clear why the composer was hailed by many during the era of Louis XIV as the “Orpheus of his age”; a legendary musician in ancient Greek mythology. © François Hudry/Qobuz

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Marin Marais - Badinages
Mélisande Corriveau, viole de gambe (viola da gamba)
Eric Milnes, clavecin (harpsichord)
via Qobuz




These are also pieces I've heard dozens of times.
Very good, but not as essential as the previous album.
Good sound.

I'm playing the same sequence as a couple of weeks ago.
My conclusions still stand.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Marin Marais - Le Secret de Monsieur Marais
Il Suonar Parlante Orchestra, Vittorio Ghielmi
Luca Pianca, archlute & theorbo
Qobuz 24/96




If you're not familiar with Marin Marais, then this could be the ideal introduction to his music.
If you have listened to other Marais albums, you will recognise most pieces. And you will find them well played. But you will also hear some world premiere recordings.


Between 1680 and 1728, Marin Marais brought the 'pièce de viole' to the peak of perfection. An ‘unremitting’ teacher, he was also the publisher of his own music and invented special signs to notate certain ornaments for the viol. In the course of his research at the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Italian gambist Vittorio Ghielmi studied these manuscript codes, in the hand of Marais himself or his direct students. ‘This led me to a new vision of French Baroque music, which applies not only to the viola da gamba, but also to vocal and orchestral music. These signs reveal the technique of playing in action. Contrary to the static descriptions of the treatises of the time, one has the impression of seeing didactic “videos”’.
This album, entirely devoted to the music of Marais, alternates récits for solo viola with orchestral pieces, all of them reinterpreted in the light of the new discovery of Monsieur Marais’s ‘codes’. In addition to Parisian viols of the time, Vittorio Ghielmi owns an instrument by the famous luthier Michel Colichon (a friend of Marais’s teacher Sainte-Colombe), made in Paris in 1688. Only two of the five surviving viols by Colichon are still in playable condition. © Alpha Classics

Continuing with the healing sound of the viola da gamba.
Some days, these pieces can make me as happy as Bach's music can.

[bart]

C.P.E. Bach - W.A. Mozart - Keyboard Variations
Ewald Demeyere, harpsichord
Qobuz 24/44.1




For die hard harpsichord fans (I belong to them).
Demeyere is one of the best on the instrument.

Fantastic recording, as usual, from Bert van der Wolf.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) are not composers whose works are regularly included in the same concert or recording program. One reason for this is probably of a stylistic nature: Bach wrote in the empfindsame Stil and in the Sturm und Drang style, while Mozart used a language that today is described as classical. For Ewald Demeyere, it is precisely this stylistic difference between the two composers, whose four works on this album were written between 1777 and 1782, that makes such a musical encounter so fascinating. Another reason why compositions by Bach and Mozart are not often programmed together seems to have to do with the choice of instrument. Today, in the context of historically informed performances, Bach’s solo keyboard repertoire is mainly played on the clavichord and that of Mozart on the fortepiano. Both men, however, also played the harpsichord frequently, a fact which it is so interesting as to choose precisely that keyboard instrument for this recording. © Challenge Classics