What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[Antonmb]

Beethoven: Beethoven Suites
Julien Martineau, mandolin
Vanessa Benelli Mosell, piano
Naïve (2020), via Qobuz

Beethoven’s mandolin music - pleasant music, well played, although a couple of times I felt like I was listening to the soundtrack from “The Godfather.” The last piece though, “A Fifth of Beethoven,” struck me as completely out of character with the rest of the recording and just a bit silly.🤷🏼

[radio times]

Jordi Saval in a R3 concert. Lady composers from the classical age.

[Antonmb]

Carl Nielsen: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 (Live)
Seattle Symphony, Thomas Dausgaard
Seattle Symphony Media (2020), via Qobuz

Another nice Nielsen album from Dausgaard and Seattle.

[Formerly YB-2]

BACH: Cello Suites n.1, 2 & 5. Mstislav Rostropovitch on an early '60's USSR pressing (Angel?). Very well done by a master of the cello.

[bart]

Beautiful music has been played in my week of absence.


I'm starting the day with:

Scarlatti - 20 Sonatas
Margaretha Torretta
Qobuz 24/96




Wonderfully played, good sound.
And Scarlatti's Sonatas are always a joy to hear.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Beethoven - Piano Works, of the Young
Jos Van Immerseel




"Our" Jos Van Immerseel!
He's 75 years old and had a liver transplant a couple of years ago, but he seems better than ever.
These interpretations are wonderfully delicate.
I liked his story about how he came to this instrument, and why these early sonatas sound best on it iin his opinion.

A leading authority on the fortepiano, Jos Van Immerseel has devised a programme focusing on the music Beethoven composed for a Viennese piano with a range of five octaves. This includes the finest keyboard music from Beethoven’s early Viennese period, more specifically works written between 1795 and 1804. For this recording, the Flemish pianist has used the composer’s extant autograph manuscripts or the first editions published shortly after composition, as well as the latest critical edition by Jonathan Del Mar (Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 2017-18). The writings of Carl Czerny, one of Beethoven’s most important ‘pupils’, were also a significant source of information. With his customary attention to the instrumentarium, Jos Van Immerseel has opted for a five-octave Viennese grand fortepiano by Christopher Clarke, a masterly replica, built in 1988, of an instrument by Walter, whom Beethoven himself selected in 1802 from among the sixty or so Viennese piano makers of the time. © Alpha Classics

We listened to the whole 3 ½ hours again.
Wonderful!

[Antonmb]

Merel Vercammen & Maya Fridman - Silent City
Trptk (2020), via Qobuz

Another wonderful recording from Trptk. Music for our times, beautifully played and recorded.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

Bach -Concertos For Harpsichord & Strings
Bach Collegium Japan, Masato Suzuki
Qobuz 24/96




I liked this a lot.

The extant concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach for one harpsichord and strings were all composed before 1738, which makes them some of the first, if not the first keyboard concertos – a genre destined to become one of the most popular within classical music. In all likelihood Bach wrote them for his own use (or that of his talented sons) – probably to be performed with Leipzig’s Collegium Musicum of which he had taken over as director in 1729. The fresh and exuberant character one finds in the concertos seems to reflect how much Bach enjoyed the opportunity to engage with his fellow musicians. But much of the music itself was in fact not new – despite how idiomatic they may sound, many of Bach’s harpsichord concertos are almost certainly transcriptions of earlier works written for other instruments.
Some of these original works are no longer extant, but it is nevertheless possible to trace the ancestry of BWV 1052 and the outer movements of BWV 1056 to lost violin concertos, while BWV 1053 is a reworking of three cantata movements which in turn probably hailed from a lost organ concerto. A similar case is BWV 1059, which is known to us in a nine-bar fragment in Bach’s original score. But an earlier version of the piece – a concerto for organ – has survived in the form of three movements of Cantata No. 35, "Geist und Seele wird verwirret", and these have served as basis for Masato Suzuki's reconstruction of the work included on the present recording. It is also Masato Suzuki who performs the solo parts, while directing his colleagues in Bach Collegium Japan. © BIS Records

Good enough to be played over and over again...

[bart]

Originally Posted by Antonmb

Merel Vercammen & Maya Fridman - Silent City
Trptk (2020), via Qobuz

Another wonderful recording from Trptk. Music for our times, beautifully played and recorded.

What a wonderful album indeed...

[jimtranr]

Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Strings
Schnittke Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra
Lutoslawski Variations on a Theme of Paganini