The mul­ti-tal­ent­ed Pani­agua fam­ily of Madrid (one of them is also an archi­tect) have been cre­at­ing, recon­struct­ing and per­form­ing medieval Span­ish music since they were teenagers. They are the acknowl­edged mas­ters. All of Spain’s ear­ly musi­cal tra­di­tions fall under their gaze, and among them is the genre known as “arabo-andalouse”, which flour­ished under Mus­lim rule in Spain, among Mus­lim, Chris­t­ian, and Jew­ish musi­cians alike. Atri­um Musi­cae de Madrid, one of the family’s ensem­bles, has pro­duced a fine intro­duc­tion to the instru­men­tal side of the this tra­di­tion in their album Musique Arabo-Andalouse. Read more »

18672. (Mod­est Mous­sorgs­ki) Boris Godunov [orch. by Rim­sky-Kor­sakov] [opera highlights;
. . . . . d. Kara­jan; w. Vish­nevskaya, Spiess, Maslen­nikov, Talvela]
18673. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Art of the Fugue, Vol­ume 1, Groups 1–3, bwv.1080
. . . . . [orches­tral ver­sion arr. by Mar­cel Bitsch & Claude Pascal]
(Geraint Jones, organ) Por­tu­gali­ae Musi­ca, vol. 4 — Musique Por­tu­gaise pour orgue:
. . . . 18674. (Anto­nio Car­reira) Fantasie
. . . . 18675. (Manuel Rodrigues Coel­ho) Five Ver­sets on Ave Maris Stella
. . . . 18676. (Car­los Seixas) Fugue in A Minor
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Through­out my life, Sibelius has remained unchal­lenged as my favourite com­poser. As much as I might love Mozart, or Dvo­rak, or Vaugh­an Williams, and take delight in even their minor com­po­si­tions, none has the place in my heart, and sub­con­scious, that Sibelius has. The first work of the gran­ite Finn that I ever heard was En Saga, Op.9. It has usu­ally been con­sid­ered no more than a rous­ing show­piece, but I think it offers some depths to explore. Read more »

Mozart com­posed his first sym­phony at the age of eight, and what’s remark­able is not only that it is a per­fectly com­pe­tent work, which could be played to good effect at any con­cert, but that it already shows many dis­tinctly Mozart­ian fea­tures. It already has the sense of play­ful inven­tion, of twisty-turny, peek­a­boo sur­prise that Mozart pre­served in even his most seri­ous works until the end of his life. It was com­posed on a vis­it to Lon­don, and it shows the dis­tinct influ­ence of Johann Chris­t­ian Bach, who was also in Lon­don at the time. Influ­ence, not mere copy­ing, all the more remark­able because it was only his six­teenth work. It is not, as some assumed, the work of Mozart’s con­trol­ling and ambi­tious father, Leopold, passed off as the boy’s. While this sev­en minute sym­phony is no mas­ter­piece, it’s impos­si­ble to lis­ten to it with­out won­der­ing how the hell this stuff could be in the mind of an eight-year-old.

18565. (Johann Wil­helm Her­tel) Con­cer­to in D for Trum­pet, 2 Oboes and 2 Bassoons
18566. (Franz Biber) Con­cer­to in C for Trum­pet, Strings and Bas­so Continuo
18567. (Got­tfried Hein­rich Stoelzel) Con­cer­to in D for Six Trum­pets and String Orchestra
18568. (Félix Mendelssohn) Die Erste Walpur­gis­nacht for Cho­rus and Orches­tra, Op.60
Jit­ter­bug Jive ― Hot Texas Swing 1940–1941:
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This cross-sec­tion of pop­u­lar music in Poly­ne­sia includes songs by Charley Mauu, Loma, Poline, Groupe Mae­va, Coco’s Tamae­va, Eddie Lund, Marie Marit­er­agi and oth­ers. What will strike the lis­tener is how much it resem­bles the poly­ne­sian music you hear in old movies from the 1940s and 1950s. The occa­sional more recent influ­ence pops up, but it appears that the genre is more or less fixed. Not real­ly my taste, but I can see it would work for me if I had a few mai-tais, and a few hula dancers to look at. The songs are sung in the var­i­ous lan­guages of French Poly­ne­sia, but there’s is a song in Eng­lish (“Bora-Bora, I Love You”), and one Hawa­ian band is represented.

Spain and Cat­alo­nia have always stood apart from the main­stream of Euro­pean cul­ture, doing things after their own fash­ion. Among these dis­tinc­tions was their fond­ness, over sev­eral cen­turies, for zarzuela, an alter­na­tive to Opera, with its own styles and con­ven­tions. While zarzue­las were staged as ear­ly as the mid-sev­en­­teenth cen­tury, they reached their apogee of pop­u­lar­ity and artis­tic glo­ry in the ear­ly 20th cen­tury, and were still going strong decades after opera had ceased to be broad­ly pop­u­lar. There are dis­tinc­tive styles of zarzuela sung in Cata­lan (sar­suela) and in Basque (zartzue­lak). The roman­zas of this kind of music-dra­ma are the equiv­a­lent of opera’s arias.

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18441. (Jim Car­roll) Pray­ing Mantis
18442. (Perth Coun­ty Con­spir­a­cy) Does Not Exist
18443. (Paul Joseph Lorieau & Edmon­ton Fans) “Oh Canada”
18444. (Paul Segari­ni) Edi­son Twins Theme
18445. (Michael Mitchell) “Cana­da Is…”
18446. (Blood, Sweat & Tears) “Spin­ning Wheel”
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