March 2013 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - French Suite No.2
Barber - Violin Concerto
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.26
Beethoven - Sextet for Horns and String Quartet
Bridge

• The Sea
• Dance Poem
• Summer
• The Pageant of London
• Where she lies asleep
• Love went a-riding

Chopin

• Impromptu No.1
• Berceuse
• Waltzes, opuses 69 and 70 (published posthumously)

Dvorak - String Quartets 3 and 13
Faure

• La bonne chanson
• Cinq mélodies 'de Venise'
• Valse-caprice No.3
• Shylock suite (piano version)
• En prière

Holmboe

• String Quartets 15, 17, 18, 19 and 20
• Quartetto Sereno (completed by Nørgård)
• Haiduc (Marauders)
• Reminiscences for solo violin

Janacek - Mládi (Youth)
Liszt - Les Preludes
Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time
Poulenc

• Villageoises
• Presto in B flat
• Two intermezzi
• Intermezzo in A flat

 I think the investment in the music of Frank Bridge is beginning to pay off.

Not that I haven't 'quite liked' the earlier works.  But as I've moved through the orchestral music chronologically, I've now hit a piece that truly satisfied me.  That piece was the Dance Poem.  Hopefully there will be more works that I appreciate to the same extent as I continue, ever so slowly, to explore this repertoire.

Conversely, I'm beginning to give up on Liszt a little bit. There's a lot of incident in these symphonic poems, but it's not often that I feel like all those incidents add up to some genuine, structural drama. I've no doubt that I will go back and try all of these works again at some point, but out of all the purchases I made in the 2nd half of last year, the Liszt symphonic poems are probably the ones least likely to make me feel like I want to have a second listen soon after the first.

Well, except for the early Dvorak quartets.  The later ones are very good. The first few are a bit like the Liszt - lots of nice tunes, but not a lot else.

The work I probably spent the most time listening to this month was Faure's La bonne chanson, and here I'm still puzzled.  Here is one of my very favourite composers, here is what is considered one of his great masterpieces... and I didn't really respond to it all that well.  Is it me? The performance? The fact that the song cycle is insanely complex and I just haven't grasped it all yet?

I did try. I tried a lot. I listened to the songs separately and as a complete cycle. I did it reading the words (knowing little French) and putting the booklet aside to focus on the music.  And while I admired a great deal, I never really fell in love with it.

Which is damned odd. This is Faure we're talking about. I obsess over his music at times.  And I enjoyed the Five Venetian Melodies quite a lot - same composer, same poet, written only a year or two earlier.  I also know that within the few years after La bonne chanson, Faure wrote the 3 piano pieces that convinced me of his genius in the first place.

The difference in my attitude is instructive. With Dvorak (and to a lesser extent Bridge), I put my weak response down to Dvorak's relative immaturity.  With Liszt, I put another work on the pile of Liszt mediocrities.  But with Faure, I'm determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of why he hasn't made me ecstatic.