Category Archives: C - LISTENING - Page 14

First-time listening for July 2016

Posted by on July 31, 2016 No comments

23706. (Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart) La clemen­za di Tito [com­plete opera; d. Davis; 
. . . . . w. Con­sta­ble, Bur­rows, Bak­er, Popp]
23707. (Court­ney Bar­nett) Some­times I Sit And Think, And Some­times I Just Sit
23708. (The 1975) The 1975 [2 cd version]
Read more »

First-time listening for June 2016

Posted by on June 30, 2016 No comments

23686. (Junko Ueda) The Epic of Heike [L’épopée des Heike]
23687. (Mr. Oizo & Sebastien Tel­li­er) Steak
23688. (Maroon 5) Hands All Over
23689. (Incred­i­ble Fred Banana Com­bo) FBS
23690. (Alan Hov­haness) Sat­urn for Sopra­no, Clar­inet & Piano, Op.243
Read more »

First-time listening for May 2016

Posted by on May 31, 2016 No comments

23670. (Pierre de Manchicourt) Mis­sa Veni Sancte Spiritus
23671. (Pierre de Manchicourt) Motet: Reges terrae
23672. (Pierre de Manchicourt) Motet: O vir­go virginum
23673. (Pierre de Manchicourt) Chan­son: Long temps mon coeur languissoit
 Read more »

Handel’s Fireworks

Posted by on May 30, 2016 No comments

16-05-31 MUS Fireworks

Well, I have no short­age of record­ings of this, one of the most pop­u­lar works of baroque music. I have per­for­mances con­duct­ed by Fen­nell, Gar­diner, Hog­wood, Mar­riner, Maier, Pin­nock, Savall, Stokows­ki, and War­chal, and I’ve prob­a­bly heard a dozen oth­ers. Most lis­ten­ers divide them into two cat­e­gories: 1) record­ings using orig­i­nal peri­od instru­ments, or an approx­i­ma­tion there­of; 2) record­ings using twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry instru­ments in a stan­dard con­cert for­mat. I’m not going to sneer at the lat­ter group. Han­del was as prag­mat­ic a show­man as music ever pro­duced, and he would have been per­fect­ly hap­py hear­ing Stokowski’s won­der­ful and total­ly inau­then­tic ver­sion, though he might have told Mar­riner to give his per­for­mance a lit­tle more zetz. But on the whole, I pre­fer the peri­od instru­ment ver­sions, and of those, I’d pick Jor­di Saval­l’s for my desert island music col­lec­tion. This ver­sion has zetz-aplen­ty. Read more »

First-time listening for April 2016

Posted by on April 30, 2016 No comments

23642. (Louis-Albert Bour­gault-Ducoudray) Rhap­sodie cambodgienne
23643. (Arca) Mutant
23644. (Kishori Amonkar) Raga Gaud Malhar
23645. (Rae Srem­murd) SremmLife
23646. (Flo­rence Price) Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er Suite
 Read more »

Image of the month: a sublime moment

Posted by on April 1, 2016 No comments

2016 APRDidi­er Durassier, mas­ter of the Bre­ton bag­pipe, plays for me on the seashore at, if mem­o­ry serves the penin­su­la of Quiberon.

First-time listening for March 2016

Posted by on March 31, 2016 No comments

23588. (George Clin­ton) [Par­lia­ment] Up for the Down Stroke
23589. (Ari­ana Grande) Yours Truly
23590. (Gin­ger Bak­er) Stratavarious
23591. (Paul Hin­demith) Ludus Tonalis, Kon­tra­punk­tis­che, tonal, und Klaviertechnische
. . . . . Übungen
Read more »

Of Monsters and Men, and Of Men and Monsters

Posted by on March 13, 2016 No comments

Ice­land, con­sid­er­ing its small pop­u­la­tion (329,100 at last count), has pro­duced a phe­nom­e­nal amount of rock music that has reached a glob­al audi­ence. It’s as if Oshawa, Ontario or Eugene, Ore­gon each had a half-dozen world-lev­el bands. Absurd­ly improb­a­ble, when you think of it. Reyk­javík is a live­ly lit­tle city, but its frisky music scene, what Ice­landers call jam­mið, is con­fined to a hand­ful of clubs in the “101” dis­trict: Café Rosen­berg, Kaf­fibarinn, Bar 11, Dil­lon, Den Danske Kro, The Celtic Cross, The Eng­lish Pub. After mak­ing the rounds, peo­ple stag­ger out­side to find a hot dog or a crushed sheep’s head as a post-gig snack. The hard-drink­ing Ice­landers take their jam­mið seri­ous­ly. Bands and audi­ences mix freely in this pro­found­ly infor­mal and egal­i­tar­i­an coun­try. This small, but intense scene has pro­duced phe­nom­e­na like the Sug­ar­cubes and Björk, Mínus, Sig­ur Rós, Quarashi, Sálin, Botnleð­ja, Maus, Agent Fres­co, Samaris, Mam­mút, and Jakobínarína.

Ingólfr Arnarson founds the first settlement at Reykjavík in 874 A.D., laying the groundwork for jammið and the Icelandic music scene. An 1850 painting of dubious historical accuracy by Johan Peter Raadsig.

Ingól­fr Arnar­son founds the first set­tle­ment at Reyk­javík in 874 A.D., lay­ing the ground­work for jam­mið and the Ice­landic music scene. He appears to be stand­ing pre­cise­ly at the spot where Kaf­fibarinn stands today. An 1850 paint­ing of dubi­ous his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy by Johan Peter Raadsig.

Read more »

Some Concert Chestnuts

Posted by on March 6, 2016 No comments

Ivan Bil­bin’s illus­tra­tion to Pushk­in’s Tale of the Gold­en Coquerel

Some­times one’s own uncon­scious snob­bery can deprive one of delight­ful expe­ri­ences. When I first start­ed to lis­ten to clas­si­cal music, as a teenag­er, I scrimped and saved to pur­chase record­ings from the “bar­gain bins” in record stores. These were most­ly cheap re-issue labels that had per­for­mances from a gen­er­a­tion before — often bril­liant ones, but with audio qual­i­ty that was no longer accept­able to audio­philes. The pieces were the stan­dard con­cert reper­toire, includ­ing many pieces that were extreme­ly pop­u­lar with con­cert-goers, but not con­sid­ered par­tic­u­lar­ly “deep.” When you lis­ten to a lot of music, you even­tu­al­ly tire of these con­cert work-hors­es, heard so many time, and stop play­ing them. As oth­er, more arcane musi­cal inter­ests engage you, you for­get about them. You “know” them, of course, but they sit in your record col­lec­tion unplayed for years. Read more »

First-time listening for February 2016

Posted by on February 29, 2016 No comments

23548. (Haver­gal Bri­an) Sym­pho­ny #2 in E Minor
23549. (Agal­loch) Pale Folklore
23550. (Shye Ben Tzur, Jon­ny Green­wood & The Rajasthan Express) Junun
23551. (Knee­body) Knee­body [aka Break Me]
23552. (Jón Leifs) Landfall
 Read more »