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| 19 new of 268 responses total. |
md
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response 250 of 268:
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Oct 4 17:59 UTC 1995 |
Somewhere in my collection of LPs is an ancient monaural
recording of Fritz Reiner conducting the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra in a performance of Alan Hovhaness's "Mysterious
Mountain," c/w a suite from Stravinsky's "Le Baiser de la
Fee." I was a big fan of "Mysterious Mountain" when I was a
teenager, having been smitten after hearing it performed
live. The recording has been remastered and released on CD,
with the bonus of the suite from "Lt. Kije." Mostly for
sentimental reasons, I bought it last month.
But I haven't heard much of it, because I lent it to my
eleven-year-old son when I brought it home and haven't seen
it since. My son generally likes stuff like Nine Inch Nails
and Offspring, but likes to play "quiet music" as an aid to
doing his homework and falling asleep. Brahms's Second
Symphony was his favorite for these purposes for a long
time, but now it's "Mysterious Mountain." In fact, most of
the time lately he goes around whistling the theme from the
beginning of the second movement. [Note for parents: If you
have children who won't listen to classical music if you pay
them, you might try this one on them. It has an oddly
familiar New Agey sound to most people, despite being 40+
years old.]
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md
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response 251 of 268:
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Oct 30 15:26 UTC 1995 |
Two new (to me) Brahms CDs. I like my Brahms *very* deliberate,
and so based my selection on the longest times given on the CD
covers. Crude but effective, although I suppose if it had turned
out to be Stanislaw Zbkryjewski and the People's Orchestra of
Krakow I might've passed. As it turned out, Carlo Maria Giulini
won by a matter of several minutes. He's so far beyond any of
the others, in fact, I wonder how close he is to Brahms's
metronome markings. I must check that out some day.
Anyway, Giulini conducting Brahms's Symphony #1 with the Vienna
Philharmonic, and Piano Concerto #2 with the Philharmonia
Orchestra and Claudio Arrau at the keyboard. Both are wonderful
swoony luxuriant interpretations, as expected. The fourth
movement of the 1st Symphony takes almost three minutes to get to
the horn and flute solos -- but when it finally does it's like a
huge October sunset spread out before you. Geez, what music.
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md
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response 252 of 268:
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Nov 28 19:21 UTC 1995 |
The John Fahey Christmas Album. I have an old LP featuring Fahey alone.
This is different -- Many Fahey solos, but also cello, keyboard and
special effects on various tracks. The last track starts and ends with
what the liner notes call "Barber's 'Largo'" which turns out to be an
excerpt from Samuel Barber's _School for Scandal Overture_, what I guess
is called the trio section. If you know the piece, it's the part with
the oboe solo. Anyway, it's curiously fitting as Christmas music, and
brings together two of my favorite underrated geniuses for the first time.
It's hard to imagine an unlikelier pairing -- Barber's sophisticated
little tune played on Fahey's mud-country guitar -- but it works for me.
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md
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response 253 of 268:
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Dec 15 17:25 UTC 1995 |
Lorin Maazel conducting the Pittsburgh Orchestra in the 2nd and 6th
symphonies of Sibelius. I was looking for a good DDD CD of the 2nd
by someone like Maazel, who is generally very precise in intonation
and attack, but who also loves rubato, pregnant pauses, etc. Both
symphonies come off well on this Sony "20-bit" disk, but the 6th is
espegs'|}cially good.
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md
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response 254 of 268:
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Dec 21 14:31 UTC 1995 |
At the Origins shop at Twelve Oaks I picked up a CD called "Jazz
to the World." It's a collection of Christmas songs performed by
various jazz musicians. It's a Eunice Shriver project, with the
proceeds going the the Special Olympics. Mostly instrumentals, a
few vocals. The music is really wonderful. It isn't often that
I like every single track on a CD, but that's how I feel about
this one.
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orinoco
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response 255 of 268:
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Dec 27 15:25 UTC 1995 |
"Four" by Blues Traveller--highly recommended. Although "Hook" and
"Runaround" have gotten all the radio play this is by no means a one- or
two-song album.
"Everybody else is doing etc. etc. etc..." by the Cranberries--decent.
"Dreams" is wonderful, but the rest of the tracks are pretty mediocre.
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katie
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response 256 of 268:
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Dec 27 21:36 UTC 1995 |
Get the debut album by Once Blue. It's a fantastic group. The singer is
a cross between Shawn Colvin and Ricki Lee Jones, with a stronger voice
than either of them. The band, acoustic, is wonderful.
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md
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response 257 of 268:
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Jan 24 18:24 UTC 1996 |
Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe and La Valse. Pierre Boulez conducting the
Berlin Philharmonic.
I've always hated the Daphnis et Chloe in my otherwise very nice
Charles Dutoit four-CD set of Ravel's orchestral music. The balance is
off (the chorus entrance in Part 3 is completely inaudible), and there
is an inexcusable absence of track breaks -- doubly inexcusable in an
hour-long ballet with at least a dozen natural section breaks in it.
This CD divides the work into thirteen tracks, which means any time I
like I can skip to track #11 and listen to Boulez's staggering
performance of Ravel's pagan sunrise.
La Valse is a great bonus. Even as a teenager who knew next to nothing
about world history, I surmised from this music that something pretty
horrible must have happened to Vienna between the Strauss era and 1919,
when Ravel composed La Valse. It begins with Ravel little by little
clearing away the mists of 60 years to reveal a brilliant grand
ballroom scene, very gay and glittery. The ballroom floor is like a
huge wheel rotating to the elegant music. But soon the spinning axle
slips off its base and the wheel starts wobbling grotesquely, and in
the end the pillars crumble, the walls cave in, and everyone dies.
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orinoco
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response 258 of 268:
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Jan 26 15:00 UTC 1996 |
<orinoco thinks he might need to listen to La Valse again>
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tyche
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response 259 of 268:
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Jan 30 17:27 UTC 1996 |
I recommend Victor. It's a solo project by Alex Lifeson from Rush. This is
not just an album for Rush fans. Very dark & twisted, but very impressive.
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md
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response 260 of 268:
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Feb 22 13:30 UTC 1996 |
"Capricorn: The Samuel Barber Album." Various musicians.
How could I *not* buy a CD with a name like that? It's a
collection of excerpts and short pieces from previous Koch CDs.
Capricorn Concerto, Summer Music, Adagio for Strings, Fadograph
of a Yestern Scene, Music to be Sung on the Water, an arrangement
for clarinet and piano of the "Hermit Songs" cycle, a movement
from the cantata "The Lovers," and "Medea's Dance of Vengeance"
from the original "Cave of the Heart" ballet score for chamber
orchestra. (It became "Medea" when Barber rescored it for full
orchestra.) I love every note of this CD, need I say.
When Barber announced that he would be using love poems by Pablo
Neruda for the text of a cantata commissioned by the Philadelphia
Orchestra, some people from management tried to dissuade him.
A couple of the poems were slightly raunchy, and Neruda was a
communist. "So, you're saying communists don't have sex?" Barber
asked. Management responded that, no, the problem was going to
be with the Philadelphia bankers who were financing the project.
"So, you're saying Philadelphia bankers don't have sex?" After
some embarrassed throat-clearing, management approved Barber's
choice of texts and he went on to compose "The Lovers."
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orinoco
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response 261 of 268:
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Feb 25 03:49 UTC 1996 |
<he he he>
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sweetbrd
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response 262 of 268:
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Feb 26 18:13 UTC 1996 |
I highly suggest the newest Cecilia Bartoli CD...it has all of her hits, so
to speak, and is highly enjoyable. Also I would like to say that I absolutely
adore Barber...I am working on several of the Hermit SOngs; St.Ita's Vision,
The Crucifixion, The MOnk and his Cat, and The Desire for Hermitage. I am
having lots of fun trying to memorize them...heh...they're quite difficult,
and I commend anyone who has memorized them. OK, I"m done!
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md
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response 263 of 268:
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Mar 25 14:55 UTC 1996 |
For $22 on sale at Harmony House I picked up an EMI "Tchaikovsky
Box." Originally released as a special on the centenary of
Tchaikovsky's death in 1993, it contains six CDs with: the 4th,
5th and 6th symphonies; suites of excerpts from Swan Lake,
Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker; Capriccio Italien; Romeo and
Juliet; 1812 Overture; Andante Cantabile; Suite for String
Orchestra; Violin Concerto; 1st Piano Concerto; Marche Slave;
"None but the Lonely Heart," sung in Russian by a soulful basso;
the waltz from Eugene Onegin; and a few others I'm forgetting.
Barbirolli, Ashkenazy, Muti, etc., etc., all either ADD or DDD.
Quite a bargain, at least to me. At the end of the LP era, the
4th and 5th symphonies alone would've cost $22. Everything else
on the above list, from the 6th symphony on, is like a freebie.
What surprised me as I started listening to these CDs is how
familiar it all sounds. I must've gone through a Tchaikovsky
phase when I was a kid or something. I do remember thinking that
Tchaikovsky was sort of a "bonus" composer -- a serious composer
of symphonies and concertos, highly respected by adults, and yet
instantly accessible to a kid.
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md
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response 264 of 268:
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Apr 10 21:12 UTC 1996 |
RCA is re-releasing their recordings of Fritz Reiner conducting
the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, on nice new CDs. Many of these
are 40 years old now, but the sound is excellent and the performances
are superb.
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md
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response 265 of 268:
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Apr 16 13:06 UTC 1996 |
The current issue of Fanfare has a longish review of the Bartok
recording I think I mentioned above, comparing the Boulez/Chicago
recording with recordings by various others and concluding that the
Boulez is now the standard by which all others are to be measured.
The reviewer makes the interesting observation that a few of the cuts
on the Boulez CD have the astonishing sound of music from another
planet, "which Boulez often achieves simply by playing it straight,
without affect." Thus a small victory for Boulezian literalism, and a
very big victory for Bela Bartok. What higher praise can you give a
composer than to say that his music sounds best when played precisely
as he wrote it?
I make no secret about what a fanatical Boulezophile I am. It doesn't
come easy: Pierre Boulez (pronounced boo-LEZ) doesn't fit any of the
images we expect and love in conductors. He isn't a grand maestro, or
a loveable grouch, or a Bernsteinian glamor boy. He will never, ever,
conduct or record music by Samuel Barber or Jean Sibelius or Ralph
Vaughan Williams or many other of my favorite 20th century composers,
all of whom he dismisses as reactionary and not worth his attention.
All I can say is, if you aren't familiar with Boulez and want to hear
for yourself, have a listen to DG #445 825-2, Bartok's Divertimento,
Dance Suite, Hungarian Sketches, and Two Pictures, with the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez. A++
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md
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response 266 of 268:
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Jun 3 14:37 UTC 1996 |
The Sony 3-CD box of Leonard Bernstein conducting his three symphonies
and other symphonic pieces. Symphony No. 2, "The Age of Anxiety," is
the star of the show. I learned it from a 1950 LP of the original
version, on which Bernstein conducted the Philharmonic-Symphony
Orchestra of New York, as it was then called, and Lukas Foss played
the piano part. The CD features a 1966 recording with the same
orchestra, now called the New York Philharmonic, and Philippe
Entrement at the piano.
I've always liked the updated sound and the performance polish of the
later recording, but I do not love Bernstein's revision of the score,
which consists of expanding the piano part in the last movement. The
piece is practically a piano concerto, with the piano very active
until the last movement, where, in the original version, it's
completely silent except for a single affirming chord at the very end.
A nice effect, I thought. Bernstein evidently disagreed. The "new"
version (as I still think of it) features lots of piano in the last
movement, including a candenza. I suppose it works. [Grumble,
grumble.]
The CD's liner notes claim that Bernstein meant the Hollywoodish
conclusion as a sarcastic reflection of the epilogue of the Auden poem
on which the symphony is based. For all I know, Bernstein himself
encouraged this view in his later years. In any case, it isn't true.
The finale is classic Bernstein: the triumph of misty-eyed innocence
over the existential angst of the previous movements. (Really, it's
the triumph of the longing for misty-eyed innocence over the
affectation of existential angst, so there's your irony if you want
it.) He used the same effect at the end of "Mass," and it reduced him
to a fit of Mahlerian weeping at the premiere. The liner notes of the
1950 LP include a description of the piece by Bernstein that makes it
inescapably clear that he originally meant the finale of "The Age of
Anxiety" to be taken seriously, no matter how much it might've
embarrassed him later on.
Considered as pure music, though, it's actually quite good, Hollywood
and all. The scherzo, a manic boogie-woogie for piano and percussion,
remains my favorite music in this symphony. It's as good as anything
Bernstein ever wrote, and all by itself elevates "The Age of Anxiety"
above Bernstein's other two symphonies.
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doll
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response 267 of 268:
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Jun 16 13:40 UTC 1996 |
i just got the new seal cd....and despite the over played kiss from a rose,
it is awesome...
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md
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response 268 of 268:
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Sep 17 18:42 UTC 1996 |
Carl Nielsen: Symphonies 4 & 5. San Francisco Symphony conducted by
Herbert Blomstedt. These are great performances of two great
symphonies. The 5th symphony in particular is given a really
beautiful performance, the best I've ever heard. The first movement
is one of those drop-what-you're-doing-and-pay-attention
performances that come along once in a great while. I think Nielsen
was trying to convey an image of the gentle disorder of nature being
interrupted by the brutal order of Man -- Military Man, from the
sound of it. Scary music. The 4th symphony has some stunning
moments in it, none more so than the climax a short way into the
finale, where two kettledrummers fire deafening volleys at each
other from opposite sides of the stage before the orchestra breaks
in on them and soars to magnificent and very Nielsenoid heights.
Nielsen hit his stride with the stunning waltz music in the first
movement of the 3rd symphony, and he kept trying to repeat it. The
scherzo music at the beginning of the second movement of the 5th
symphony is an example, as is this music in the finale of the 4th
symphony. It shouts "NIELSEN!" at you the instant you hear it.
Gustav Holst: Orchestral works, including Hammersmith and Egdon
Heath. London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Hickox.
Egdon Heath is a rather melodramatic piece, but if it catches you in
the right mood it can give you goosebumps. It's also one of those
pieces that make you (makes me, anyway) keep wondering what it
reminds me of. It's as if Sibelius's Tapiola had been written by
Bartok, with a chord or two thrown in by William Schuman.
Hammersmith has been a favorite of mine ever since I first heard it
on the second "British Band Classics" LP on the Mercury label. This
CD features Holst's arrangement of it for full orchestra.
Hammersmith is another eternal-Nature-interrupted-by-transient-Man
piece, like the Nielsen 5th, only here Nature is represented by the
Thames, and Man by the district of London called Hammersmith.
(Notice I said that without using the word "eponymous." Neat, huh?)
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