What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[Phaedrus]

Dean, Flemish is my mother tongue.
It relates to Dutch as American English to UK English, and Southern American castellano to Spanish.

Parafrasing Walt Whitman: "2 Countries separated by a common language."

Best regards from NL,

[tsv_1]

Originally Posted by bart

Dean, Flemish is my mother tongue.
It relates to Dutch as American English to UK English, and Southern American castellano to Spanish.
I wrote Dutch because that is the generally known word.
But I see that your knowledge of this little country is more than decent!

Flemmish red ale being rather a favorite of mine, if I may add

[McPlanar]

[bart]

Originally Posted by RaceTripper

As a medieval/renaissance scholar I know only too well how Flanders produced great artists and musicians. The Italian Renaissance in music started with the Flemish composers, and would have been very, very different without them. Guillaume Dufay, Josquin Deprez, and so on...

Well Dean, while reading your post I'm just playing this SACD:



Gooseflesh!!
Wow.
I do love the Huelgas Ensemble. Have their 15 CD-box.
So I wanted to discover them in surround sound.
This disc brings 9 wonderful pieces together. 1 piece even from a contemporary composer.
But it is the hypnotizing track 3, Qui Habitat, from Josquin Desprez, that leaves me breathless and in tears. Waves of heavenly voices from all sides are enchanting me. This is pure delight, and I'm listening to this SACD for the second time now...

[Josquin des Prez]

Originally Posted by bart

Well Dean, while reading your post I'm just playing this SACD:

Gooseflesh!!
Wow.
I do love the Huelgas Ensemble. Have their 15 CD-box.
So I wanted to discover them in surround sound.
This disc brings 9 wonderful pieces together. 1 piece even from a contemporary composer.
But it is the hypnotizing track 3, Qui Habitat, from Josquin Desprez, that leaves me breathless and in tears. Waves of heavenly voices from all sides are enchanting me. This is pure delight, and I'm listening to this SACD for the second time now...

Josquin's music is always brilliant. One of my favorites is this hard to find Argo (ZRG 793) recording with Musica Reservata, but there are plenty of recorded examples of his compositions.

[Josquin des Prez]

Listening to....

Francois Couperin, "Les Nations"
Hesperion XX
Asrée AS 991

[audiot servant]

Just finished listening to Ronald Brautigam Beethoven Piano Concerto 5 (BIS) and Choral Fantasia.

Of all of Beethoven's piano concertos 'Emperor' was the only one that I never really got... that was till I got this...



Not sure if it's the edge of the fortepiano or Brautigam that makes it so intense and involving (and just a little less grand) but the Emperor looks really good this way... and sparkling recording with all the usual BIS clarity.

Graham

[Kal Rubinson]

Originally Posted by tima

Ok, just for Kal I'll play Percy Faith's Brazilian Sleigh Bells twice

Seems a rather drastic response.

[tsv_1]

Ahhhh, yes, Couperin... lovely music.


Here's one for folks to consider. I bought this years ago when it was first released (95/96 timeframe) and find myself frequently "coming home" to it. Not that I'm Cuban mind you, but Salas wrote some beautiful polyphony. This recording, captured in a small cuban chapel, really lays out the atmos for the listener... with just the right amount of light accompaniment.

I'll often cue up track #8 "Toquen presto fuego" as it contains a few melodic pauses that almost tangibly pull the listener into a nearly endless acoustical decay, slowly and wonderously dissipating before the melody again resumes. Really breathtaking on a highly resolving system.



And this from the liner notes... all quite interesting from an historian's perspective.

<><><>
…We know nothing of his masters, nor how he acquired all the refinements of his art. It is possible that a certain Cayetano Pagueras of Barcelona, a seafarer but also a good musician and singer, had passed on to Salas the astonishing technique apparent throughout his compositions. In 1750 he had sailed from Spain to Cuba…He may have furnished Salas with scores…accessible to musicians in Spain at that period: those by Porpora, Paisiello, Alessandro Scarlatti and other 18th century Neapolitan masters (for Naples then belonged to Spain), notably those by Francesco Durante, the harmonies and styles of which are present in those of Salas…
<><><>

[tsv_1]

Originally Posted by audiot servant

Not sure if it's the edge of the fortepiano or Brautigam that makes it so intense and involving (and just a little less grand) but the Emperor looks really good this way... and sparkling recording with all the usual BIS clarity.

Graham

Thank you for posting this. I instantly fell for this performance just listening to the online samples. Just ordered the CD. Cheers.