What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[bart]

Originally Posted by EfeTe

Hi Julian, thanks tons for your post and the warm welcome.

The music I listen to... well, very difficult to define I guess as music is my life and I like a lot in different genres in a highly eclectic manner.

I reside mostly in Argentina, but am fortunate to travel a whole lot throughout the year so one thing that fascinates is investigating, finding out about domestic music in each region, bring a few CD's back with me and "discover" all that if you know what I mean. I'm 40 and an Argie national so for me Luis Alberto Spinetta (youtube him if you're able) is the absolute greatest musician / lyricist / composer to ever grace this South American soil.

Granddad was an orchestra conductor so as you can imagine been exposed to all kinds of stuff, I like classical and have several instruments around so in classical terms big fan of chamber and solo piano, Chopin nutter really.

But what I like stretches well beyond classical, in fact I've got guitars, bass guitars, keyboards etc and listen to everything / anything really. For the last decade or so rock / blues rock seems to have become a fave for me so a lot of Hendrix, SR Vaughan, Robben Ford, Clapton, Jeff Beck, Robert Cray, Buddy Guy playing constantly in this house.

Lots of jazz and fusion too (i.e. Frisell, Scofield, Henderson, Stern, Metheny etc) and no prejudism at all I have to say. Classic rock, Bowie, Costello, Lou Reed, Dylan, Knopfler, Tom Petty more recent stuff like U2 -first decade or so- even prog rock, tango (of course!), Brazilian music, hard rock you name it I've explored it.

Very happy with how my setup has turned out but now working on an HTPC and also figuring out what to upgrade next. I need to rent a bigger house asap and start preparing a nice man cave for myself and the boy (7 years old) who as I'm writing this is playing Midnight Oil on the computer and investigating a bit about their lyrics, their message, their political stance. Tomorrow I'll be exposing him to Joe Satriani / Steve Vai so there you go, very eclectic indeed!

Cheers from Buenos Aires

EfeTe, bienvenido!
I'm looking forward to your classical choices (and in other threads your other favourites!).

[Toccata]

A lovely recording. The engineer provides a front row seat so no details go unnoticed. I like the variety of continuo in varying combos of organ, theorbo, and harpsichord. Sepec handles the very difficult violin parts with aplomb.

[bart]

Originally Posted by Toccata

A lovely recording. The engineer provides a front row seat so no details go unnoticed. I like the variety of continuo in varying combos of organ, theorbo, and harpsichord. Sepec handles the very difficult violin parts with aplomb.

I have this one too John.
I love it!
With the Biber mania we had some time ago here, I really started to appreciate this composer.

[Toccata]

I eagerly await this new Biber SACD on the Challenge label: (Sorry it's so big--I had two choices: Too small or too big!)

[EfeTe]

Originally Posted by bart

EfeTe, bienvenido!
I'm looking forward to your classical choices (and in other threads your other favourites!).

Thanks Bart appreciate it!

Been able to wind out for a good hour tonight and Francesco Geminiani's "Concerti Grossi" op. 5 are on. Conductor is Andrew Manzi.

Cheers

[AudioNut]

Listening to . . . Kodaly - Hary Janos Suite, Bartok - Hungarian Sketches & Rumanian Folk Dances, Kodaly - Dances of Galanta.

Antal Dorati conducting the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Hungarica

A Mercury Living Presence CD, remastered in 1990 by Wilma Cozart Fine, who had originally recorded these pieces in the mid 1950's.

Lush, beautiful performances of what I usually consider to be "easy listening" light classical music. Captured in Mercury's inimitable style. Very fine recording, excellent sound quality.

[Antonmb]

Claude Debussy - Images Inédites: Estampes pour le piano, Alain Planes on a Harmonia Mundi CD. Brilliant performance, Debussy with just the right amount of expressiveness. Recording is nice but sounds like the piano was miked a bit distant, lots of reverb.


image-1049627361.jpg

[Kal Rubinson]

Originally Posted by AudioNut

Listening to . . . Kodaly - Hary Janos Suite, Bartok - Hungarian Sketches & Rumanian Folk Dances, Kodaly - Dances of Galanta.

Antal Dorati conducting the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Hungarica

A Mercury Living Presence CD, remastered in 1990 by Wilma Cozart Fine, who had originally recorded these pieces in the late 1960's.

Lush, beautiful performances of what I usually consider to be "easy listening" light classical music. Captured in Mercury's inimitable style. Very fine recording, excellent sound quality.

Agreed and one of the first stereo LPs I ever bought. Let me add that there was a relatively little known but more modern series of Bartok/Kodaly LPs from Sefel Records (a Canadian company) with Arpad Joo conducting various Hungarian orchestras. Lovely sound and excellent performances and definitely worth looking for. Some were transferred to CD but with somewhat variable success. This is one of the better ones:

Best bet is to seek out the LPs.

[AudioNut]

Originally Posted by Kal Rubinson

Agreed and one of the first stereo LPs I ever bought. Let me add that there was a relatively little known but more modern series of Bartok/Kodaly LPs from Sefel Records (a Canadian company) with Arpad Joo conducting various Hungarian orchestras. Lovely sound and excellent performances and definitely worth looking for. Some were transferred to CD but with somewhat variable success. This is one of the better ones:

Best bet is to seek out the LPs.

Thanks Kal, I do like the music and will look . . .

Your post did make me realize my mistake in saying W. Cozart recorded the Mercury's in the late 1960's - obviously I meant late 1950's.

[AudioNut]

Listening to . . . Barber & Walton - Violin Concertos; Bloch - Baal Shem

Joshua Bell - Violin
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra - David Zinman, Conductor


I don't know how the music of Samuel Barber, William Walton or Ernest Bloch will stand up to the masterpieces of their more famous predecessors, but I can say with absolute certainty that their music is (usually) beautiful and easy to listen to and digest.

I often judge music by the possibility of my being able to whistle or hum it after hearing it, . . . and most of their stuff, I can - and this is relatively unusual for most of the 20th century composers.

I also don't know how the violin playing of Joshua Bell will stack up against his peers and those who came before him - but he surely is good!

This Decca/London CD, recorded in 1997 is gorgeous. Beautiful music well played with very good sound quality.