Everyone loves Chopin and he wrote so much instantly likable music it is hard to pick a favorite. But for me it is probably one of his less well know works, the Cello Sonata.



On CD.

Janos Starker and the Mercury crew do a great job, of course.

Great description! Tomorrow I will have time for a listen, but tonight you get an "A" for descriptive writing ✍️ Loved the Koufax line.

One more bit of Americana for the 4th.



On CD.

Those of us who were around for early digital will no doubt remember the hoopla about the "Telarc Bass Drum" and Fanfare for the Common Man one of the recordings that made it a thing. Honestly, I'm not that impressed, and if necessary could prove mathematically that even 15" woofers just aren't going to hit you as hard as the 3 foot drum head beaten with mallet. But I digress. Mostly I'm interested Appalachian Spring and Rodeo, which are concert arrangements of ballets, and just about the most fun you can have in a concert hall.

New page, next Beethoven Symphony. The Ninth. The Big Kahuna.



DSD rip from Tower Japan SACD

There are many, many great recordings of The Ninth, but for me Ferenc Fricsay runs up the score on all them with his early stereo recording, with the Berlin Philharmonic made in the early sixties. The only possible downside is the DG stereo sound is not close to what RCA or Mercury were doing at time. Even Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (of whom I am no fan) is (mostly) on his best behavior. But really Fricsay is the star of the show. The way he highlights the woodwind parts in the ethereal first movement (which a lot times just sounds like a warm up exercise) to the absolute precision of rhythm and articulation in the 2nd to the way he coaxes the last measure of unutterable beauty from the slow movement, to the heroic finale which becomes a runaway freight train in the very best possible way.

There are a lot of really cool things about Beethoven, starting with the very first chord of his first symphony is a dissonance. And the last 20 seconds of his last symphony, after the magnificent setting of Schiller's Hymn to a joyous  vision of humanity, is a bit of a shambles. Like Beethoven is saying there are no easy answers and even in the best case things are going to be a little messy. YMMV.

Brahms wrote two cello sonatas that are repertoire staples, and feature plenty of Brahms's trademark seriousness and craftsmanship. But one wishes he might have been just a little less serious and given us more beautiful cello music.



On CD from the Mischa Maisky/ DG box.

Fortunately there is Mischa Maisky's disc of arrangements of Brahms songs for cello and piano. Which feature plenty of Brahms's trademark melancholy that suites both the instrument and the instrumentalist very well.
 

On the short list of great string quartets not written by Beethoven is Mendelssohn's F# minor, written on the death of his sister. And the Emerson Quartet is on the short list of all time great string quartets so no surprise they play it unforgettably.



On CD.

Bruno Walter was conducting professionally while Brahms was still alive. That isn't the reason he is a great Brahms conductor (and my personal favorite), but it is an interesting bit of context. I'm hard pressed to intellectualize what it is about his conducting that makes Brahms 2nd Symphony come so alive, beyond just saying everything: the pacing, the voicing, the phrasing and most especially just Walter's trademark blend of intensity and lyricism.



On CD, from the Walter Edition Box.

Baseball's All-Star Game is coming up, and I was reflecting on Musical All-Stars. There is a long tradition of bringing famous (All-Star) soloists together to play chamber music. With mixed results. Chamber music is, in theory, an interesting conversation between instruments but a lot of All-Star soloists are more interested in talking than listening, to strain the analogy. But this is one occasion when it worked really well.



On CD.

Starker, Suk and Katchen play together like Tinker, Evers and Chance. And the opening theme of Brahms's Trio No. 1 is unforgettable.

I left off yesterday with Bernstein…so I’m staying with him today with the classic Swan Lake.  Streamed in Qobuz in Hi Rez at 24/192.  It’s been a while since I’ve listened to Swan Lake…so  this a great way to start the morning at work.

For someone who is as big a fan of both Tchaikovsky and Bernstein as I am, I have very few recordings. But I do have this one.



On CD.

And the music is as good as H.R.H's watercolour on the cover is dorky. YMMV.

Some people I know object to organ music, esp. baroque organ music, because it sounds too "churchy." But Handel's Organ Concertos sure don't, at least IMO.



On CD.

Sergiu Celibidache is somewhere on the spectrum between "eccentric" and "completely nutz." He tends to play everything extremely slowly and most of the time it...isn't very good. But it works for Bruckner, and usually works really really well.



On CD from the Warner/EMI Celibidache Series.

His recording of the Bruckner 4th with the Munich Philharmonic is very slow, but it glows with a soft, warm light. It isn't Bruckner for every day, you can think of it as special occasion Bruckner.

Been staying with Bernstein and decided to play the 1812 Overture from Tchaikovsky.  Streamed in Qobuz in CD quality.  This Overture is just a great piece and a classic.  

Another alternative to the 1812, and also by Tchaikovsky, is the Marche Slave. It doesn't have cannon, but it does have plenty of catchy tunes and more interesting wind writing, at least IMO.



On CD from the Mehta/LA Box.

It is a frequent filler in Tchaikovsky Symphony cycles, and also appeared frequently on the program at the Hollywood Bowl so I went with my home team, the LA Phil.

Now I've got to listen to quiet music as I wait for FedEx to knock on the door with my tubes...

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Nice choice. You may recall the Opus 6 Concerti Grossi was one of my first recommendations when you were looking for study music (was that really over a year ago!?!?!).



On CD, from the DG/Orpheus box.

When you find yourself looking for inspiration I'd encourage you (or anyone) to browse the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra recordings. The music they play is sophisticated, but leans heavily towards the "fluid and light" (what I would call lyrical) rather than the oppressively serious.
 

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Totally agree. I've felt like I wanted to say something about "church music" for a while because I listen to a lot of it but am no church goer or (conventionally) religious. However, I don't think there is that much to say. It is just that The Devine has always been an inspiration for beauty in a world, esp. in previous centuries, where there was very little of it in regular life. This is true not only for music but painting, sculpture, architecture etc. and it goes far beyond whatever ecclesiastical mission the work performed. Or, put another way Haydn frequently said "when I think of Him my heart leaps with joy" and that comes through in every note he wrote.



On CD from the Bernstein/Haydn box

Nowhere is that joy more clearly expressed than in the great masses Haydn wrote for the choral-crazy English at the end of his life¹, and no one does them better than Leonard Bernstein.


¹He also wrote them for a lot of money.

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While I may not be a church goer either…I do make it a point to pass the church every day while at work.  I would say I’m more spiritual if anything.  There is something special about Church music that inherently draws you in and is captivating at the same time.  In staying with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra…I am streaming in Qobuz Grieg: Holberg Suite/ Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings.

The music Prokofiev wrote for the ballet Romeo and Juliet is many things, among them (all YMMV): the greatest ballet score ever written and probably the best (classical) music written since Mahler died. There are many ways to play it, and I have many recordings, but my favorite is Karel Ancerl and the Czech Philharmonic.



On CD.

The performance is uniquely intense, deeply moving and still obviously dance music. Even the 1950's Czech recording is very good.

I've said before that Dvorak is one of, perhaps the most underrated musical genius of all time, in spite (or perhaps because) of composing some of the most popular classical music ever written. And high on that list is his Dumky Trio.



On CD.

Popular (or courtly) dance music has been the basis of art music going back at least to the Courantes and Allemandes of the Baroque and later Polonaises and Mazurkas of Chopin and the Romantics. Dvorak used the Slavic lament known as the Dumka (Dumky is the plural) as the basis for his 4th trio.

The "kids" I worked with taught me TIL, the text/chat abbreviation for Today I Learned, which I have repurposed to Today I Listened. So TIL Stravinsky's Apollon musagete for the first time. And I would not have guessed it was written by Stravinsky. I would have said Tchaikovsky or maybe Respighi. It is a ballet scored for string orchestra, written in the same neo-classical vein as Pulcinella and Oedipus Rex and it is sublime almost to the point of being ambient. It is hard for me to imagine dancing to it. But listening to it is very easy.



On CD from the Chailly/Stravinsky box.

Ibert's Escales are well known. Virtually nothing else he wrote is. But it spans the range from dreamy and impressionistic to jazzy to more modern (but never dissonant). And a nice selection of it is well played and recorded by the Montreal Symphony and Decca.



On CD from the Dutoit/Decca box.

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Nice. FWIW the Siegfried-Idyll was written for Wagner's mistress, who was married to his first first significant financial backer, and neighbor, at the time. Regardless, it is a lovely piece.

For me, I'm listening to Rachmaninoff. He is on record as saying The Vespers and The Bells were his two favorite compositions. Add the Cello Sonata and I feel the same way.



16/44 FLAC download

The Bells, for chorus and orchestra was originally going to be his 3rd symphony and the 4 movements are 4 different events, featuring bells: wedding bells, sleigh bells, alarm bells and funeral bells. The words are a lose translation of Poe's poem The Bells.

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I’m going onto give The Bells a listen tomorrow morning on my way down to the beach.  I shut down my PC earlier on, and just playing vinyl for the rest of the evening.  😁

Edward Elgar was Catholic and presumably deeply moved by Cardinal Newman's poem The Dream of Gerontius because he wrote very possibly the best work by an English composer since Handel when he set it for orchestra and chorus. The story of a soul's journey thru death and judgement doesn't do much for me, but the music is absolutely magnificent.



On CD.

Sir John Barbirolli's performance is every bit as magnificent as the music, esp. Janet Bakers singing of the Guardian Angel, which is probably as close to the real thing as we're likely to get in this life.

Beethoven piano sonatas are like the House episodes I'm bingeing, you stop after one.



On CD.

Beethoven's Hammerklavier (which is just German for "Piano") is one of the pinnacles of the literature, and pretty much every pianist measures her or himself against it at some point. Gilels' performance is a unique blend of poetry and power, and is uniquely effective.