Popular Music - February 2018

Tori Amos - Boys for Pele
Tori Amos - Native Invader
Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel...
Nik Kershaw - Human Racing
Wendy Matthews - Ghosts
Mike and the Mechanics - Mike and the Mechanics
Radiohead - Amnesiac
Sting - Mercury Falling

Okay, let's call it. My popular music listening is in a rut.

I know I'm not listening to the same albums all the time. That is to say, there are albums on this list that I hadn't listened to for a couple of years. But they're still the same albums. I don't make a lot of new popular music purchases. I'm not exploring.

Well, actually that's not entirely true. One of the rules of this blog is that I only post recordings that I actually own, which means that it misses out on things that I explore on Deezer or Youtube but haven't purchased. Those explorations do in fact sometimes lead to purchases, but that's often a slow process.

One of the problems with popular music in particular is that when I do purchase something, it can be some time before I listen to it. This is partly caused by my old-fashioned beliefs. I like the first listen, at least, to be using the CD (though for popular music in particular it's highly likely most subsequent listens will be on my iPhone), and I like to engage with the words as well. That's an investment of time I'm not always in the right frame of mind for, and pop albums are longer than many of the classical works that I do this for.

So there's my litany of excuses, in an essence a response to a list of albums where I think, "do I have anything to say about these". I suppose I can say that after years and years I still think Boys for Pele is stunning, that Ghosts is truly excellent, that The Idler Wheel is pretty well perfect and that these are all just about the best things those 3 women have done. Which is I like listening to them.

Classical Music - January 2018

Barber - Cello Concerto
Beethoven -  Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt
Beethoven - Triumph-March for "Tarpeja"
Brahms

• String Sextet No.2
• Piano Quintet
• Variations on a Theme by Paganini 

Dvorak - String Sextet
Faure - Mirages
Haydn - Symphonies 56 and 57
Holten - Psalm 23
Mozart - Piano Sonata No.9
Nielsen - Symphony No.4
Schumann

•  4 Duets, op.34
• 12 Kerner Lieder
• 6 Gedichte aus dem Liederbuch eines Malers 
• Liederkreis (Eichendorff)

Sibelius -The Fool's Song of the Spider
Sibelius - The Three Blind Sisters from Pelleas and Melisande
Simpson - Symphony no.5

January wasn't all that active for classical music, either. The largest amount of activity came from my continuing exploration of the amazing number of songs that Schumann wrote in 1840. The most famous works do tend to be the most memorable, but the variety of styles of songs (including styles that don't suit modern tastes so well) is one of the most impressive things of all.

The best listening moment of the month came from combining the Brahms and Dvorak sextets on a Sunday morning while having an especially nice breakfast. It just so happened that my chronological listening projects for both composers had reached the correct point.  Sensory pleasure in abundance.