Album of the Evening

[One and a half]

Swing out Sister - Almost Persuaded (Jun 2018)

 

1987 saw "Breakout" set a different course for melody, and over 30 years later, ideas and layers are as vivid as ever. Corrinne Drewey's vocals sound as crisp as they did back then, the complex layering of instruments, just paints a picture that conjures resting nowhere near a desk or office environment, more under a palm tree with warm sand between your toes.

Worth a listen! Soul Tracks Review

 

 

 

 

[Melvin]

1 hour ago, One and a half said:

Swing out Sister - Almost Persuaded (Jun 2018)

 

1987 saw "Breakout" set a different course for melody, and over 30 years later, ideas and layers are as vivid as ever. Corrinne Drewey's vocals sound as crisp as they did back then, the complex layering of instruments, just paints a picture that conjures resting nowhere near a desk or office environment, more under a palm tree with warm sand between your toes.

Worth a listen! Soul Tracks Review

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for posting this. I can't remember when I listened to them last but I'll be listening tonight.

[sphinxsix]

On 12/9/2018 at 8:28 PM, Musicophile said:

Schiff and Bach, what could go wrong!

Well said indeed but you forgot abot Eicher

 

22 hours ago, rando said:

Don't know this one. How did you like it?

 

[rando]

@sphinxsix After some thought I've arrived at suggesting wariness should spending an hour motionless straining to detect structure in a performance rarely rising above whispers while enduring cool sparsely lit conditions fails to elicit a strongly positive response. Perfect music for clawing out another hour of semi-upright consciousness when the diffuse light signaling daytime has waned into the mid single digit range. 

 

Having survived countless hours of this type of performance live, appreciation of the performance quality doesn't easily acquaint with drawing others in.  I did and I can tell you the above won't.  

[christopher3393]

THE LIBERATION OF THE GOTHIC:
Florid polyphony by Thomas Ashwell and John Browne

Graindelavoix/ Björn Schmelzer

 

 

Booklet: https://www.highresaudio.com/en/album/view/7m5gbt/graindelavoix-bjrn-schmelzer-the-liberation-of-the-gothic

 

reviews:

 

http://musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Oct/Liberation_Gothic_GCDP32115.htm

 

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Dec/Liberation_Gothic_GCDP32115.htm

 

http://www.sonusantiqva.org/for/gr/2018/Graindelavoix-LiberationGothic.html

 

http://www.graindelavoix.org/paginas/liberation.html

 

 

[rando]

Beginnings of filling some holes in my library and excavating others. Another album to celebrate the daily twenty hours of full darkness with.   

 

 

[rando]

@Hugo9000 will have opinions on this album, I'm quite sure. The element of a jazz musician soloist was nearly an insurmountable obstacle in the way of listening. While doing just that I read about the large scale production surrounding the PBS special that made this pairing a reality. 

 

 

 

[firedog]

On 11/24/2018 at 4:39 AM, Melvin said:

Superb in every way.

The music is much better in context of the movie. Movie is good 50's "noire" style. 

[Hugo9000]

14 hours ago, rando said:

@Hugo9000 will have opinions on this album, I'm quite sure. The element of a jazz musician soloist was nearly an insurmountable obstacle in the way of listening. While doing just that I read about the large scale production surrounding the PBS special that made this pairing a reality. 

 

 

 

I'm going to interpret your remark as welcoming me to comment, and will do so! 

 

(My comments in particular are about Handel's Let the bright seraphim from his oratorio Samson)  In some ways, it's hard to be critical of this, as it's an extraordinarily difficult piece to perform, and rarely ventured by anyone haha!  That said, Kathleen Battle's voice, while lovely, and at its best in baroque (especially Handel--listen to her Semele!), is too small and flute-like in tone for this aria.  The deficit of size is especially apparent when her voice is directly opposed to a trumpet.  (Her baroque arias with flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal, by contrast, is superb and a better match.)  Her coloratura is wonderful, of course, and hers is actually one of the best recorded versions of this.  The size and richer color of Karina Gauvin's voice is better suited, but there are aspects of her performance that are lacking compared to Battle's.  Arleen Auger's recording is marvelous, if a touch too slow.

 

Regarding the trumpet, I don't have much negative to say about Marsalis' performance here, except to point out that Handel wrote for natural trumpet, which had neither valves nor holes that you find on the falsely-named "baroque trumpet" that was created in the last century to give a better idea of the sound possibility of natural trumpets from the baroque era, but with holes to make it easier to play.  I don't know if there is a musician alive that can play something like this using embouchure on a natural trumpet.  Virtuoso trumpet music of the time was written for specific performers of exceptional ability, just as vocal music was written specifically for the abilities of particular opera stars such as Farinelli and others.

 

All that said, while I would prefer "authentic" at least in theory, in practice, I'll take a gorgeous performance that is "inauthentic" over an ugly or limp or out-of-tune "authentic" one any day!

 

Thanks for sharing the video!  Never saw that before, and it was entertaining.  I do have the album as part of Sony's boxed set of Kathleen Battle albums for that label.

[rando]

That was more than I counted on (in a good way).  Apparently this album/video sold very well. I have to admit unawareness of any of this when picking it out. You have posted numerous Battle albums in recent memory so it was reasonably safe to think you at least knew of this duet.

 

As matter of fact this Baroque Duo album is playing as this is being typed. Not just that it met a high standard of performance and recording. I was surprised how enjoyable it was when coming in with an expectation of lengthy jazz improvisations that never came about. I too wondered what if the HIP movement had caught on when this was recorded. 

 

Tonight's selection wanders off the popular stage towards a composer less appreciated in modern times.

 

[sphinxsix]

Marc Ribot ‎– Asmodeus (Book Of Angels Volume 7) - a very good hard hitting fusion/free improvisation album. Should be listened to LOUD!

 

 

[Hugo9000]

I have the complete solo piano music of Muzio Clementi, played beautifully by Howard Shelley.  It's fashionable in some circles to mock him.  The Germanic critics and musicologists panned him for ages while attempting to elevate all German composers to godlike status, which to them apparently necessitated ridiculing Italian masters from Vivaldi to Verdi (while frequently ignoring or minimizing Handel, whose sin was becoming a British subject and citizen and composing his most revered work to an English text--The Messiah, of course!).  Anywho! lol

 

Clementi was incredibly important to the evolution of the piano to what we know today.  He found the instruments of his time inferior for his own abilities and what he wanted from a keyboard instrument, so he became a piano manufacturer.  His music had obvious influences on Beethoven (who admired Clementi and granted him publishing rights in England), and some of his work prefigures Chopin.  The simpler works that many now mock were composed as pedagogic tools for his students.

 

I tend not to listen to Clementi that often, preferring Rachmaninov, Liszt, and Chopin, but Clementi's genius is undeniable, I should think, to anyone who has looked beneath the surface of the pieces played by young students.

 

Just pulled this one off the shelf for tonight's listening:

[accwai]

 

10 hours ago, Hugo9000 said:

I have the complete solo piano music of Muzio Clementi, played beautifully by Howard Shelley.

 

Same here. And Costantino Mastroprimiano's cycle as well.

 

Quote

[...] looked beneath the surface of the pieces played by young students.

[...]

 

How? Harmonic analysis? Or form analysis?

[Hugo9000]

I simply meant the surface which is the simple pieces that elementary piano students are familiar with today.  All too often, they never look beyond those teaching exercises to his great work.  They read the few snippets of negativity from Mozart's self-serving letters and accept the denigration of Clementi without even the most cursory investigation for themselves.

 

I will point out that if the most basic or trivial of student pieces by Clementi had the name Mozart attached to it instead, "scholars" and public alike would be bending over backward to ascribe the greatest profundity to it.  Which is hilarious yet sad.  Just as with the early days of the Bach renaissance, while Vivaldi's music was still largely lost/forgotten, they gushed about the manuscripts with Bach's name that later proved to merely be his transcriptions of Vivaldi masterpieces (Bach, of course, omitted any reference to Vivaldi, but put his own name on them!  What a pig.).  Once they were known to be from the mind of Vivaldi, suddenly they weren't so great, and somehow arranging a concerto written for four violin soloists had been "improved to genius" by substituting four harpsichords!

 

Anyway, to go back on topic with current listening, with one of the most important works in the history of Western music, from which Bach stole without attribution:

 

Antonio Vivaldi

Opus 3, L'estro armonico

Trevor Pinnock/The English Concert

Simon Standage, principal violin soloist

[rando]

Fairly well spoiled for choice on recordings I could post in here. Quite a few of which (all of which) are not recognized pinnacles for the given work(s).  Actually, a few major label offerings such as my choice today may actually qualify as that since alternate options are so thin on the ground. 

 

[Melvin]

[rando]

Excellent performance and synopsis of difficulties encountered in booklet. 

 

[accwai]

On 12/13/2018 at 1:19 PM, Hugo9000 said:

[...] Anyway, to go back on topic with current listening, with one of the most important works in the history of Western music, from which Bach stole without attribution:

 

Antonio Vivaldi

Opus 3, L'estro armonico [...]

 

Any chance of sharing the list of most important works in history of Western music for the benefit of us audiophiles not so well-versed in the subject of music?

[elcorso]

From Linn Records download...  Extraordinary !!!

 

 

CKD-501-booklet.pdf

 

Roch

[Hugo9000]

Neapolitan Concertos for Various Instruments

Josetxu Obregón/La Ritirata

 

[rando]

Unfortunately lacked Schöpfung portion the devotee requested be removed, which some versions have included. 

 

[Mayfair]

[Musicophile]

15 hours ago, accwai said:

 

Any chance of sharing the list of most important works in history of Western music for the benefit of us audiophiles not so well-versed in the subject of music?

That would be an interesting separate thread. I may pick it up on my blog. Not easy to choose....

[rando]

Lieder, Alphorn, and longstanding excellence from Jodlerchörli Kirchlindach. 

 

[Musicophile]

2 hours ago, rando said:

Lieder, Alphorn, and longstanding excellence from Jodlerchörli Kirchlindach. 

 

I guess you win the price for the most “out there“ album in recent weeks!

 

Playing a true audiophile and musical gem tonight

 

2HD remaster in 24/192 from Highresaudio of these fantastic Brahms trios. A real delight for my Sennheiser HD800.