Popular Music - September 2018

Kate Bush - Before the Dawn
Incubus - If Not Now, When?
Jars of Clay - Who We Are Instead
Jo Lawry - Taking Pictures
Alex Lloyd - Watching Angels Mend
Joni Mitchell - Turbulent Indigo
Radiohead - OK Computer
Radiohead - In Rainbows

Much of September was, for reasons I won't go into, not especially conducive to listening to popular music. I mean, look, there isn't even a Tori Amos album in the list. But there was a period that was conducive to finally tackling all of Before the Dawn, which captures Kate Bush's set of live shows in London and in total lasts about 2.5 hours.And which I was gifted (on request) not long after it came out. And which, sad to say, doesn't excite me very much at all.

Live albums are awfully difficult things to pull off. In this case it's very clear there is an important visual component that is missing from a quite theatrical show, but that's not always true of live performances and doesn't really explain why I find so many of them lacking. The bigger issues here are twofold. First, it's difficult to capture the energy of a live show and make it sound big and bold while still having the kind of clarity we expect for home listening.

The second issue, and the one that really hampers Before the Dawn in my view, is that so many of the songs sound a great deal like the studio versions. Just with less studio polish.

It's made particularly bad by the fact that most of the concert is taken up by renditions of Bush's two studio-conceived suites: the "Ninth Wave" suite that formed the second half of the album The Hounds of Love, and "A Sky of Honey" which did the same for Aerial. Playing these whole sequences of songs means there's no opportunity, for over half the running time, to have new and interesting juxtapositions of material from different eras.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the music, in fact the "Ninth Wave" is particularly fine. But while it might have been exciting to see it come to life on stage, there's very little to cause me to listen to this rendition when I can play The Hounds of Love instead. A bit of extra linking narration is well done, but that's about the only nugget to be found. The performance of the music didn't seem to offer anything new.

If that album was a disappointment, Jo Lawry's Taking Pictures was a very pleasant surprise. The music is not radical, but it's very finely crafted adult contemporary pop. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that I have this album at all. It's been sitting waiting to be listened to for some time (quite possibly a couple of years), and... I honestly have no idea how I came to have it. After I enjoyed it so much I had 2 guesses as to who gave the album to me, and both of those people denied any knowledge of it. I had thought it might be something that I borrowed, but if so I have no means of returning it.

Whether it was a loan or a gift, I am happy to make it part of my collection. Just as soon as I get it back from my parents...

Classical Music - August 2018

Bach - Mein Seufzer, meine Tränen (My sighs, my tears)
Bach - Herr Gott, dich loben wir (Lord God, you we praise)
Barber - Nocturne (Homage to John Field)
Barber - A Hand of Bridge 
Beethoven

• Symphony No.9
• String Quartet No.15
• Große Fugue for string quartet
• Bagatelles, op.126

Brahms - Piano Quartet No.3
Brahms - 3 Vocal Quartets, op.64 
Bridge - Two Intermezzi from "Threads" (orchestral version)
Bridge - Sir Roger de Coverley (A Christmas Dance) - quartet, strings and full orchestra versions
Dvorak

• The Spectre's Bride
• The Heirs of the White Mountain
• Scherzo Capriccioso
• Piano Trio No.3
• Impromptu in D minor for piano
• Question for piano 

Faure

• Nocturnes 4, 5 and 7
• Barcarolle No.5
• Valse-Caprice No.3
• Impromptu No.6 (piano version)

Haydn - Symphonies 70 and 71
Holmboe - Symphony No.9
Mahler - Symphony No.1
Mozart

• Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in D 
• Horn Quintet
• Piano Sonata No.11

Nielsen - An Imaginary Journey to the Faroe Islands
Schumann - Piano Trios 1 and 2
Schumann - Romanzen und Balladen, Volume 4 op.64
Scriabin

• Piano Sonata No.10
• Preludes, opp.37 and 67
• 2 Impromptus a la Mazur, op.7
• 3 Pieces, op.49
• Album Leaf, op.58

Sibelius - Six Runeberg Songs, op.90

A fair bit of activity back in August, from grand works to rather tiny ones.

My exploration of Beethoven's works (at least, the ones I own recordings of) certainly hit a grand mark with the 9th symphony. I think this was perhaps the most I'd ever enjoyed the work, enough that I listened to it a couple of days in a row. I also pulled out some other formidable symphonies. Any Mahler is inherently a bit grand, and while Holmboe wrote considerably more concise symphonies his own 9th is perhaps the toughest and most difficult work he composed in the genre.

At the smaller end of the scale were many of the piano pieces, including Bagatelles from Beethoven and a tiny Question from Dvorak. But this was also the month that I finished going through Maria Lettberg's recordings of Scriabin's piano works, an exercise which took just over a year. And it was a pretty rewarding exercise. I have a distinctive bad memory of the op.3 mazurkas, but that is the only misfire I can recall.

And a few months later, I'm turning around and going through Scriabin again. More on that when the relevant time comes.