Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #45)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by George P, Feb 17, 2013.

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  1. Tangledupinblue

    Tangledupinblue Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    Now playing one of my favourite 20th century classical CDs, with possibly my favourite Ives work (the Holidays Symphony) with the haunting tone poems The Unanswered Question and Central Park in the Dark providing marvellous bonuses:

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    http://www.amazon.com/Ives-Holidays-Symphony-Charles/dp/B0000026G7

    Although my very first encounter with Ives may have been when I was still at school, where the future internationally acclaimed composer Thomas Ades gave an evening solo piano concert which IIRC included the Three Page Sonata, I first got into his music in earnest during my early 20s, either 1998 or 1999. BBC Radio 3 have this excellent series called "Composer of the Week" where for an hour each weekday they explore the lives and music of their featured composer, which for one week was Ives. I'd known about his music from reading about him the previous year or so in the chapter on American music in Harold C Schonberg's Lives of the Great Composers, but the only work I remembered hearing was the Putnam's Camp movement from Ives' Three Places in New England. At the time knowing very little American classical music, apart from a bit of Gershwin and Copland, West Side Story and curiously enough, quite a few solo piano pieces by Edward MacDowell (I had some sheet music of it at home which I'd played on the piano), hearing about this unique and highly intriguing musical maverick who was literally decades ahead of his time, exploring all of those major 20th century innovations well before the likes of Stravinsky, Schoenberg et al supposedly did for the first time, yet with a vital and instantly identifiable American accent, made me really want to properly immerse myself in his music. This series, all of which I recorded onto cassettes (which I still have) included movements of the Holidays Symphony from the above recording, but I was out during the day that the Fourth of July was played, and not having internet access back then or a player that could be set in advance to record off the radio, a few years later I eventually decided to buy the complete recording, having also had for some time the complete four symphonies and the two orchestral sets, and needless to say, I was totally captivated. It's clear, all the more so if you explore his earlier music and are aware of his upbringing and classical training, that this was a composer that, far more than being a mere instrinsic curiosity as a great anticipator, absolutely knew what he was doing, but like all great composers, quickly grew impatient with old conventions and standard academic traditions, had other sounds and ideas in his head he wanted to explore, and had the genius and compositional craft to fully realize his far-reaching visions.

    A large part of what made him succeed at this was his musical training - his extraordinarily open-minded father George, who when Charles was ten years old in conservative Connecticut in 1884, made him sing "Swanee River" in the key of E flat while George accompanied him in C major, was the prime catalyst, who simultaneously instilled in his son an underlying deep respect for tradition, while encouraging him to stretch his and other people's ears and realize that "only fools and taxes are absolute" and rules and conventions could be broken once studied and learnt. So while (and for quite some time before) he was still writing cantatas and symphonies in the romantic tradition for Horatio Parker at Yale in order to get his graduation certificate, he was already experimenting with bitonality, polytonality, and all kinds of completely unheard of dissonances and instrumental combinations. It was also George, who encouraged him NOT to make a living out of music and thus inspired his son to become a successful and rich insurance businessman, who had a formative influence on the strong combination of radically adventurous spirit and consummate professionalism that infuses every note of Ives' best music and makes it stand up so strongly on its own terms today. And the Holidays Symphony, despite (or maybe even because) of its somewhat piecemeal composition and protracted creation (the work originates as two organ pieces from 1897 but wasn't completed until 1913) is an outstanding example of all this and what makes Ives' music so great.

    I think the problem with Ives is that for many people his reputation, similar to Schoenberg and Ornette Coleman, precedes him; for all its uncompromising complexity with its dense and often bewildering collage effects with several half-quoted American tunes against an atonal and often fiercely dissonant backdrop, use of quarter tones, a harmonic sense that still sounds highly advanced today, rhythmic irregularities that surpass even Bartok and Stravinsky, there's just as much if not more that is highly accessible, melodic, vividly coloured, beautiful, moving and even simple, with a strongly resonant, sincere and authentically nationalistic flavour, like Copland as American sounding as Dvorak is Czech, or early Stravinsky is Russian, that with all its surface modernity, has detectable links with the 19th century and early 20th century romantics and impressionists, and beyond that to the indigenous folk songs, hymns and spirituals of America itself. The way I've always thought of his music is of being an amalgamation of all the radical stuff that took place in the first half of the 20th century (difference between of course he was doing most of this stuff decades before everyone else) with an American accent. So if you like most of the more difficult pre-1950s stuff (middle period Bartok, Hindemith, post-Rite of Spring Stravinsky, Second Viennese School, early Copland) then Ives' music shouldn't pose too much of a problem, as there's little in in it harmonically and rhythmically that wasn't done later. The collage aspect is the most innovative part of it, but most of it is just mixing various half-quoted American tunes in different keys.

    And I feel a work like the Holidays Symphony, as well as Three Places in New England and the shorter pieces on this disc is the best introduction to the richly textured and varied world of Ives, rather than plunging into the shark-infested waters of tougher works like the 4th Symphony and Concord Sonata, great though those are. I think there's a lot to like in this work even for an Ives newbie: the masterful orchestral colour, pungently dissonant but equally gorgeous harmonies, powerfully evocative imagery with each movement clearly illustrating an event, place and time of year, with the way the American tunes are incorporated and often overlap to paint these pictures, be it the barn dance episode with its fiddlers, twanging Jew's harp and sentimental song in Washington's Birthday, the march back to town in Decoration Day, the thrilling variants of Columbia, Gem of the Ocean, along with along popular patriotic songs, in Fourth of July, the haunting hymn-like interlude followed by the earthy harvest dance in Thanksgiving Forefather's Day. My favourite parts of the work are Fourth of July, which astonishingly predates the Rite of Spring, and possibly even Pierrot Lunaire - even today, this work presents a major challenge both technically and musically, and heaven knows what kind of reaction it would have provoked had it been first performed back in 1912, with a level of dissonance, rhythmic and orchestral complexity far above what anyone was writing at the time, and its incredibly vivid and powerful depiction of exploding fireworks and festive excitement - and the epic Thanksgiving Forefather's Day, again incredibly written as early as 1904, with its crunching, yet dignified and majestic combinations of major and minor chords which build inexorably via the aforementioned episodes to a marvellous choral climax as spine-tingling as cathartic as that that ends the final part of the 2nd Orchestral Set and as transcendent as the more peaceful closes of the 4th symphony and Concord Sonata.

    Well, I think I've gone on long enough - here's The Unanswered Question and Central Park in the Dark (my favourite of the two, as it's just as beautiful but more varied - love the jazzy woodwinds, piano ragtime figures and exciting characteristically Ivesian build up in the middle section) for your pleasure, with the former from the same recording and the latter performed by Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic (I believe you can play the entire CSO/Tilson Thomas CD on Spotify):



    Central Park in the Dark
     
  2. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member

    That is a great disc. My fave Unanswered Question on disc.
     
  3. WHitese

    WHitese Senior Member

    Location:
    North Bergen, NJ
    This has to be one of the most satisfying and relaxing Baroque albums I have...Amazing how tranquil I feel when I play this box, especially the Lully side.

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  4. George P

    George P Notable Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
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    Now enjoying Beethoven's 4th and 5th Cello sonatas from the above set. Schnabel is at the piano.
     
  5. Tangledupinblue

    Tangledupinblue Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    I didn't know Beethoven wrote any cello sonatas, never mind so many! Are the last two typically late Beethoven? I see they were written just a year before the 28th piano sonata, which I would consider as stylistically belonging to his late period.
     
  6. George P

    George P Notable Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    They are somewhat typically late Beethoven. I recommend them. The Fournier/Gulda is probably my favorite set of the 5.
     
  7. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    George has already answered, but these feel like the earliest of the "Late". The fugal textures are far more "Blown Out" dynamically and harmonically in the further reaches of the "Late Period". The language of the "Late Period" appears in a simpler form in the Op.102 sonatas. The Op. 101 piano sonata is more daring, experimental than the op. 102 cello sonatas. But the last two cello sonatas of Beethoven ain't exactly chopped liver, either. And the Schnabel/Fournier recordings are among the best. Have not heard Fournier/Gulda, have no doubt they would be great. I'll still give the nod to Richter/Rostropovich on Philips "Duo" two-fer—What's not to like?
     
  8. jukes

    jukes Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southern Finland
    I would have said, that I was tought this: Beethoven's "late period" consists of Choral Symphony, Missa Solemnis, and "Late Quartets" beginning with Es-Dur Quartet Op. 127. However, the German Wikipedia notices that the "late period" beginsg with Op. 102 Cello Sonatas... It's possible to learn even after the school ;)

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    So far (probably) the best Mendelssohn Quartets set I've found...
     
  9. john greenwood

    john greenwood Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    Been having a little trouble getting to sleep, so I picked up two albums of harp music by Lavinia Meijer - 1685 (Handel, Bach and Scarlatti transcriptions) and Metamorphoses - (Philip Glass transcriptions). I'll see if they help.
     
  10. john greenwood

    john greenwood Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    One vote for Perenyi/Schiff. Also worth checking out - the two Brahms cello sonatas.
     
  11. sgb

    sgb Senior Member

    Location:
    Baton Rouge
    Just wanted to say thanks again for this recommendation, Collector Man. The Pittsburgh Respighi showed up in yesterday's mail, so I spent last evening listening to both this and the earlier Cleveland CD — and then the LP since I have that format too.

    That Sony CD is quite a treat, but despite the recognition that its sonics have received it takes just a few seconds at the beginning to the Festivals to recognize that the Decca recording team were on the top of their game in the Cleveland recordings; hearing it again on vinyl, then, truly amazes. The brass is so far more attention-getting. Pines on the Sony CD sounds a bit thin at the very beginning, but soon develops some really fine sound.
     
  12. Tangledupinblue

    Tangledupinblue Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    Don't really know the other one, but the early(ish) first cello sonata is actually one of my favourite Brahms chamber works - it's quite typical of a lot of mature non-late Brahms, brooding, dignified, but very melodic, moving and as always, superbly crafted. The first movement in particular is my favourite part - it reminds me somewhat of its much later clarinet trio counterpart, predominantly dark but with occasional shafts of light breaking wonderfully through the gloom. It's a great piece to play late at night at a relatively low volume, probably because that's when I originally heard it when I recorded it off the radio.
     
  13. George P

    George P Notable Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
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    Now enjoying Ivan Moravec's Janacek via an LP rip. Sadly, this was never released on CD.
    Sonata 1. X. 1905 Z ulice (»Von der Strasse«), On an overgrown path and In the mists
    Nonesuch 79041, 1983, LP
    Producer: Max Wilcox
    Engineer: Max Wilcox
    Recorded at RCA Studio A, New York in 3.1982
    Piano: Hamburg Steinway
     
  14. George P

    George P Notable Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
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    Now enjoying some late Brahms, Op. 119, by the great Richter, live in Moscow 1959. Bought this one a few years back and it seems to already be OOP.
     
  15. George P

    George P Notable Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
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    Nothing like Mozart in the morning!
     
  16. john greenwood

    john greenwood Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    Those are great. I had a three-disc set of Casadesus/Szell on LP, and the CDs are tempting. I'm about to give up on Bilson/Gardiner - after dozens of attempts over more than a decade to adjust to the sound (or absence thereof) of the fortepiano, so I may be ready for another set.
     
  17. George P

    George P Notable Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    Have you heard any of Anda's set on DG?
     
  18. john greenwood

    john greenwood Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    Yes - I have sets by Anda and Perahia plus some individual recordings.
     
  19. RiRiIII

    RiRiIII Forum Resident

    Location:
    Athens, Greece
    I think I ve found the best recs, after Cortot/Thibaud/Casals, of Beethoven's Archduke Trio op.97 and Schubert's Trio No.1 op.99:

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  20. RiRiIII

    RiRiIII Forum Resident

    Location:
    Athens, Greece
    My first ever complete set that I used to adore (I have to re-check after so many years not listened to).
     
  21. Tangledupinblue

    Tangledupinblue Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    Now playing one of my older and more treasured CDs in my collection, this part of a group of five Bach Naxos organ CDs with Wolfgang Rubsam:

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    I got those for Christmas in 1995 after requesting some Bach organ music after hearing an extract from the fugue of Bach's BWV 547 as part of a musical aural test, and being stunned by the magnificence and ingenuity of that music, especially that marvellous climactic moment when the pedals finally come in announcing the first subject in augmentation (ie where the notes remain the same but the rhythmic values are doubled in length). I played them a lot during my first year at university - they were the start of my everlasting love affair with Bach.
     
  22. John S

    John S Forum Resident

    Location:
    Columbus, OH
    Mozart
    Piano Concerto No. 9, K271 "Jeunehomme" [Jenamy]*
    Piano Concerto No. 8, K246
    (Kingsway Hall, London, 1978)

    MozartAshy8&9.jpg

    I don't have the whole set, but I do enjoy Ashy on a number of the original releases.
    The string sound is wonderful, most likely due to Kenneth Wilkinson and Kingsway.

    *http://members.aon.at/michaelorenz/jenamy/
     
  23. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member

    Currently spinning. Anyone else have this recording. Sonics are outstanding and the performance is not to shabby either.

    sibelius-symphonies_nos_2_&_5-vanska.jpg
     
  24. George P

    George P Notable Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
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    Now enjoying this recent purchase. I now own volumes 1-11, plus a number of the later ones. But I like early Rubinstein the best. (the earlier volumes are the earlier recordings)
     
  25. Tangledupinblue

    Tangledupinblue Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    That looks a great set! Where can you find track listings for the other 10 volumes?
     
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