Let me know how this is; it looks like an interesting new release. Incidentally, I thought that cover art looked familiar, and I just figured out why... You prompted me to listen to the Brahms clarinet sonatas played by my favorite clarinettist: Brahms: Clarinet Sonatas 1 & 2; Trio op.114 Karl Leister, clarinet; Ferenc Bognar, piano; Wolfgang Boettcher, cello Nimbus I read some reviews that called these performances boring; It's clear to me that those reviewers don't understand late Brahms at all.
CD 2. Debussy: Nocturnes Première Rapsodie for Clarinet and Orchestra (Frank Cohen/Clarinet) Jeux La Mer (Trois esquisses symphoniques) Pierre Boulez/The Cleveland Orchestra
I like the Craft/Naxos discs a lot. BTW the image you chose doesn't have Symphony in C on it. This is the right one:
Starting my weekend with another disc from my "starter" Mozart PC collection... MOZART Piano Concerto No. 12, K414 Piano Concerto No. 13, K415 Philharmonia Orchestra Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano Kingsway Hall, London, 1980/1981 These concertos, two of his first Viennese piano concertos, are perfectly lovely. It seems to me they were meant to beguile the critical connoisseurs of the day. Whatever the case, they charm this listener today.
Listening to "Bach - Well-Tempered Clavier Book I Nos. 13-24" performed by Angela Hewitt on Hyperion.
Spinning in the CD player: Beethoven, Artemis Quartet – String Quartet In G, Op. 18/2 • String Quartet In C Sharp Minor, Op. 131 BBC Music Magazine – BBC MM246
Spinning in the CD player a bit earlier: Ax, Stoltzman, Ma - Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart – Trios For Piano, Clarinet & Cello Sony Classical – SK 57 499
Now playing the following CD, another new addition to my early music collection for a first listen ...
NP: MAHLER Symphony No. 1 London Symphony Orchestra Sir Georg Solti Kingsway Hall, London, 1964 Now I remember why I keep this one on the shelf. Quite exciting, really. One could say the third movement's klezmerlike music is under-schmaltzed but who am I to knock Solti, given his heritage?
Conversation here, rather than 'classical': I've cancelled my Qobuz subscription, effective next week. This is no knock on Qobuz; the issues I have are almost certainly common to all of the major streaming services. I signed up for Qobuz, on as monthly basis, when they became available in the United States about 18 months ago, and then converted to an annual subscription about 6 months later (saving about 15% over the per month rate). Initially, things were great, to the point of being overwhelming - it was like having a home next door to a Tower Records that was open 24/7, and anything new could be listened to right away. And, many things were available that were otherwise out of print. What's not to like? But, but, and but... about once a week, on average, I'll be listening to a track and it will just 'drop', and move to the next track in the queue. Musicus interruptus, and almost as aggravating as its better-known sexual counterpart. I don't blame Qobuz for this; I think this is just a drawback of streaming high-res audio files over an internet that isn't quite ready for it yet. Most internet-based applications are pretty forgiving of things like network latency, but I don't think high-res audio is one of them - yet. Next is the universally-vexed issue of metadata, particularly in classical music. Probably, no two people will have identical standards for how this should be done, but still, what did Qobuz do? Throw 800 monkeys in a room with typewriters? (ok, terminals). Clearly, many of the folks entering metadata on new titles not only have no grasp of how things work in classical music, but no grasp of how things should work in music generally. Utterly and laughably incorrect genres, long-dead composers as 'performers' with no mention of the actual artist, and so on. Under these conditions, searching for titles quickly becomes a frustrating exercise. And it makes for a badly sorted mess when integrated with an existing library. The last thing going into this decision is Apple's purchase of Primephonic. I never used Primephonic, but by all accounts they were focused on the classical market, and were taking steps to address the metadata issues. Apple, seeing real value in this idea, bought Primephonic last September, almost immediately took the service offline, and is working to develop a replacement classical music focused service (and app), separate from the existing Apple Music service. When this comes up later this year, I'll eagerly try it out. If they successfully execute on this plan, I'll be all in! I have lots of physical media (though I'm not a fetishist about it), and fair bit of legal, purchased downloads as well (all thoroughly backed up, of course). But I do hope the streaming industry can clean this stuff up. The advantages they can -potentially- offer are simply vast. Thoughts and feedback welcome!
J.S. Bach's Partita No. 2 in C minor, from the following recording: (part of the Martha Argerich: The Warner Classics Recordings box set)
