Classical Music - June 2016

Bach, J.S. - Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ (May you be praised, Jesus Christ)
Bach, J.S. - Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott (Take from us, O faithful God)
Beethoven - String Trio No.2
Berlioz - Les Nuits d'été
Chopin - Three Mazurkas, op.59
Debussy

• Cello Sonata
• Elegie for piano
• Les soirs illumines par l’ardeur du charbon 

Dvorak - Symphonies 4 to 9
Dvorak - The Heirs of White Mountain 
Faure

• Piano Quartet No.1
• Piano Quintet No.1
• L'horizon chimérique 

Haydn - Missa brevis (original version)
Holmboe

• Viola Concerto
• Symphony No.13
• Haiduc
• Quartetto sereno
• Sværm (string quartet version)
• 2 songs for choir, M.122
• Hemlängtan (Homesickness), op.34/1
• Ikke forlig (No Compromise) 

Mozart - Piano Concertos 14 and 24
Ravel - Sheherazade
Saint-Saens - Saltarelle
Shostakovich - Symphony No.13
Shostakovich - String Quartets 9 to 11
Vivaldi

• Concerto for Strings in D minor ('Madrigalesco'), RV 129
• Sonata a 4 in E flat ('Al Santo Sepolcro'), RV 130
• Sinfonia for Strings in B minor ('Al Santo Sepolcro'), RV 169
• Violin Concerto in C minor, RV 202 (Op.11/5)
• Violin Concerto in C minor ('Amato bene'), RV 761
• Concerto for 2 violins in G minor, RV 517
• Concerto for violin and cello in B flat, RV 547
• Kyrie
• Credo
• Magnificat
• Nisi Dominus in A, RV 803
• Lauda, Jerusalem

As I was writing this list out, it was looking a bit thin for a while. Only one Beethoven work? Only a couple of entries from my 'general' page for the composers I don't have large amounts of works from? But then I hit the composers who I spent a lot of time with.

Debussy is only represented by a few works, but this is the end of the chronological survey I started early in the year (a quick traversal by my standards). I've only listed the works I own a recording of (including the set of piano music that inspired this exploration), but did listen to other works along the way using online sources. So, now I have some ideas about what else I need to purchase, particularly chamber music and songs.

The similar Shostakovich traversal is not yet complete, but hit some very fine works this month. The 9th string quartet is one of my favourites now (particularly the finale which dominates the work), and I also think the 13th symphony is powerful (particularly the first movement).

The somewhat longer Holmboe traversal was also completed with the Viola Concerto being a late masterpiece. I then went and confused things by listening to some choral works from much earlier in his career from a newish CD.

But the thing that captured my attention the most this month only occupies one line in the list. I've owned recordings of Dvorak's 7th, 8th and 9th symphonies for a couple of years, and in the previous month I'd listened to the 4th symphony from a new set of the 4th, 5th and 6th. After first listens to those last two, I was sufficiently inspired to throw all six works into my listening, several times over in most cases.

And it was well worth it. Dvorak is one of the most immediately enjoyable composers with his great gift for melody. People who are not well-versed in Classical music (including one of my own relatives) find his music appealing.

I think personally I found the 9th and (somewhat surprisingly) 4th symphonies the ones I responded to the most, but really it's hard to find a Dvorak work that isn't a pleasure so long as one avoids the very early material when he knew about tunes but not about structure. The surprise regarding the 4th symphony is because it's earlier than any of the works I've previously enjoyed.

Popular Music - June 2016

Beyonce - Lemonade
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Incubus - A Crow Left of the Murder
Jars of Clay - If I Left the Zoo
Thom Yorke - The Eraser
Thom Yorke - Tomorrow's Modern Boxes

A surprisingly small collection. I think there were a few times where I started listening to something but didn't finish (damn work, getting in the way), so that's one explanation. There were also periods where particular classical obsessions dominated (such as streaming copious amounts of Vivaldi).

So there isn't really a lot to say here. There are still a couple of albums here that I'm getting to know, and others that I can depend on for enjoyment. I've still yet to sit down with the Elbow and Incubus albums in the way I normally would, and completely focus on them for at least one listen.

When I do I might have something to report!

Classical Music - May 2016

Beethoven

• String Quartet No.3
• String Trio No.4
• Violin Sonata No.1
• Piano Sonata No.8, 'Pathetique'

Chopin - Piano Sonata No.3
Chopin - Berceuse 
Debussy

• Berceuse Heroique (piano and orchestral versions)
• La boîte à joujoux (piano version)
• Twelve Etudes for piano
• Page d'Album

Dvorak - Symphony No.4
Haydn - Piano Trio in G minor, Hob XV:25
Holmboe

• Symphony No.12
• Preludes 5 to 10 for chamber orchestra
• Intermezzo Concertante for tuba and orchestra
• Eco
• Sonatina for oboe and piano
• Trombone Sonata
• Reminiscences for solo violin 

Janacek - String Quartet No.2, 'Intimate Letters'
Mozart - Symphony No.30
Rachmaninov - Symphony No.1
Schumann - Nachtstücke
Schubert - String Quartet No.14
Shostakovich

• Symphonies 10 to 12
• String Quartets 5 to 8
• Cello Concerto No.1

Snider - Penelope
Szymanowski - Roxana's Song (violin and piano version)
Szymanowski - Kurpish Song (violin and piano version)
Vine - Symphony No.3

The Holmboe survey covered a fairly short period this month, from 1987 to 1991. One reason for slowing down is that I don't feel I know this late Holmboe as well as some of the earlier periods. I have a mental impression of the evolution of his work up until around the late 1970s, but then it gets a bit hazy. Certainly the works after that are a bit starker, but what else can I say about them?

And with the Preludes in particular, I was spending time getting to know them as distinct individual pieces, because on a first hearing it's easy to hear all 10 as similar works with nearly identical instrumentation. But in fact the character and mood of them varies considerably.

I think the most interesting exploration during the month, though, was of Shostakovich. The symphonies in particular were great listening experiences. The 10th symphony I already knew, although I wouldn't say I know my existing recording (Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra) all that well. My new set (Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra) certainly made me think it's a great work.

But then the 10th has a great reputation. More surprising was how much I enjoyed the 11th symphony, which sometimes gets criticised. Admittedly, I didn't think it was the best thing Shostakovich ever composed, but all of it was good and the final movement was superb. Even the 12th symphony, which has a distinctly bad reputation, seemed to me to be decent music on the whole.

I think reactions to Shostakovich are, more than for any other composer, wrapped up in political ideas and extra-musical associations. Some of these are legitimate things to take into account, whereas others strike me as fairly tenuous distractions. People are constantly telling listeners to look out for codes in Shostakovich's music instead of just letting the music to speak for itself. Yes, some of the music was undoubtedly written with political considerations in mind, but in the long term that's just a context. What's ultimately going to matter, when the Soviet Union period is a historical footnote, is whether the music itself makes people feel something. More often than not the answer is yes.

Popular Music - May 2016

Tori Amos - From the Choirgirl Hotel
Tori Amos - Night of Hunters
Beyonce - Lemonade
Toni Childs - House of Hope
Paul Dempsey - Everything is True
Francis Dunnery - Tall Blonde Helicopter
Radiohead

• The Bends
• Kid A
• Amnesiac
• Hail to The Thief

Sting - Live in Berlin (CD version)
Rachael Yamagata - Chesapeake
Thom Yorke - Tomorrow's Modern Boxes 

Goodness me, is that the time?

I set everything up so that I could be punctual with my posts about May, but then didn't follow through.

It was an exciting month in pop music for me. So many albums I was interested in appeared in such a short space of time, although the listening list doesn't quite convey that. Obviously I jumped on the Beyonce bandwagon. Because I'm still one of those people who likes to have a physical product I had to wait a little while, but I'm also not one of these people who gets in a state if they can't have something the moment it's announced.

Besides, it was definitely worth the wait. In some ways it's too soon to be certain how much I like Lemonade, but it certainly didn't take long to know that I was impressed with it. It's a bold album, taking all sorts of risks - musical risks with the diversity of styles, and big huge thematic risks. How much this is art imitating life is not something I'm going to speculate on, but the story laid out on the album is a vivid one (and it should be acknowledged that the work itself points to it being highly personal). It's very rare to have a pop album that has such a clear thematic arc, made even more explicit in the video version.

And the videos are worth talking about, because there's something different going on compared to Beyonce's previous album.  On Lemonade, the spoken word is just as important as the sung, and many of the songs are interrupted. Where Beyonce played as a sequence of (very good) music videos, Lemonade plays more like a single film with music.

News of a new Radiohead album led me into a bout of reminding myself how much I liked the old ones, which was just as satisfying as I'd hoped. I did get to hear the new one online thanks to a BBC streaming of it. However, the wait for a physical copy was longer. At the time of writing, I still haven't bought it due to some personal circumstances that meant it wasn't convenient to rush out on the CD release date in June.

And then, in a less surprising move, Paul Dempsey released his 2nd solo album. So I decided it really was time to get to grips properly with his 1st one, which I only bought last December. It's slightly more melodic and slightly less forceful than his band work, but cut from similar cloth. And given how much I like Something for Kate, that's a good thing.

I did buy his new album very shortly after it came out. But, at the time of writing, I still haven't listened to it. It is sitting on the top of a pile, waiting for the moment when I can give it the genuine attention it deserves.

The moment is getting closer. But what's the rush?

Classical Music - April 2016

Alfven - Och Jungfrun hon gar i ringen (The Maiden walks in the ring)
Bach, J.S. - Orchestral Suite No.1
Beethoven

• Sextet for horns and strings
• String Quartet No.5
• Piano Trio No.2
• Cello Sonatas 1 and 2
• Horn Sonata
• Piano Sonata No.3

Britten - The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard
Chopin

• 2 Nocturnes, op.55
• 3 Mazurkas, op.56
• Moderato in E

Debussy

• Premiere Rhapsodie for clarinet (orchestral version)
  
• Jeux
• Khamma (piano version)
• Preludes, books I and II
• La plus que lente 

de la Halle - Madrigal
Dvorak

• Scherzo capriccioso
• In Nature's Realm
• Carnival
• Piano Quintet No.3
• String Quartets 13 and 14 

Faure - Mirages
Franck - Violin Sonata
Grieg - Sangerhilsen (Singers greeting)
Haydn - Piano trio in D, Hob XV: 24
Holmboe

• Symphony No.11
• Flute Concerto No.2
• Preludes 1 to 4 for chamber orchestra
• String Quartets 16 to 20
• Gioco
• Ballata
• Music with Horn
• Two Sarvig Psalms
• Hominis dies
• Laudate dominum
• Brúgvar (Bridges)

Janacek - Capriccio
Kodaly - Sonata for solo cello 
Milhaud - Psalm 121
Mozart

• Symphony No.41
• String Quartet No.15
• Piano Sonata No.11 

Nielsen - Aftenstemming (Evening Mood)
Palm - Under ronn och syren (Beneath mountain ash and lilac)
Poulenc

• Flute Sonata
• Quatre petites prières de Saint François d'Assise
• Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon
• 2 songs from La Courte Paille 

Ravel - Le Tombeau de Couperin
Schubert - String Quartet No.13
Shostakovich - String Quartet No.4
Shostakovich - 24 Preludes and Fugues 
Sibelius - Symphony No.5
Stravinsky - Agon 
Szymanowski - Mythes
Vivaldi - In exitu Israel
Vivaldi - Lauda, Jerusalem
Wikander - Kung Liljekonvalje (King lily-of-the-valley)

Holmboe era for the month was from 1980 to 1987. When I think about the dates, it still feels slightly odd to be listening to classical music that overlaps with my experience of popular music - not just popular music I know, but popular music that I actually remember hearing on the radio or seeing on TV when it was first released. Holmboe was writing his last string quartets around the same time that Whitney Houston and Prince were ruling the airwaves.

Of the Holmboe works listed here, I'd particularly recommend the 2nd flute concerto, and the two chamber works Gioco (for string trio) and Ballata (for piano quartet). But that's just today's recommendations off the top of my head. Catch me on another day and different works will have made the strongest impression - and that's a characteristic I admire in all of my favourite musicians, the difficulty of singling out favourite works.

Jumping back a couple of centuries, I completed my survey of Beethoven's works from around 1795-97, and then just starting dipping my toes into the next period, roughly 1798-1800, with the Horn Sonata and string quartet. The two cello sonatas were definitely a highlight of the earlier period, in which a lot of pieces are 'nice' without being strongly memorable. The greater power in the next set of works is already apparent, and I'm feeling that it's when Beethoven really started sounding distinctive.

The other works I'd particularly like to single out come from a newly purchased disc. Franck's Violin Sonata and Szymanowksi's Mythes (also for violin and piano) are performed by Kaja Danczowska and Krystian Zimerman. And while I don't have any other recordings to compare them to, I certainly got a heck of a lot of enjoyment out of these performances. Really excellent music that I want to get to know better.

Popular Music - April 2016

Tori Amos

• Under the Pink
• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin
• Unrepentant Geraldines

Sheryl Crow - The Globe Sessions
Lifehouse - No Name Face
Madonna - Ray of Light
Thrice - The Alchemy Index, Volume 1 (Fire)
Thrice - Major/Minor

Hmm. I honestly don't remember there being this little pop music in my month.

In truth there probably wasn't. I was doing things like exploring Prince's back catalogue after news of his passing, which doesn't count because I don't own any albums (as yet - turns out that Purple Rain really is rather good). So this (as always) is just the list of what I own and listened to in full.

When I started this blog, that rule seemed a lot less significant than it does now. Back then I simply wouldn't have done things like streaming albums. I'm a long way from abandoning the process of buying music, but there's no denying that technology has affected how I explore music that I'm less familiar with while figuring out what to add to my collection.

I also often get surprised by how long it is since I've listened to something. The last spin of Ray of Light was in 2014? Okay, well the spreadsheet says so. That Sheryl Crow album has been in storage since 2012? Lifehouse since... well okay, I kind of knew I don't listen to that one all that often.

But listening to Unrepentant Geraldines has, as I observed last month, become a surprisingly regular event.

Classical Music - March 2016

Bach, J.S.

• Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen! (Praise God in all lands!)
• Aria 'Spielet, ihr beseeleten Lieder' from BWV 210
• Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn ihn (Everything with God and nothing without him)

Beethoven

• Piano Concerto No.2
• Piano Trio No.1
• Piano Sonata No.2
• Serenade for string trio 

Biebl - Ave Maria
Chopin

• Ballade No.4
• Scherzo No.4
• Polonaise in A flat, op.53 

Debussy

• La Mer
• Images for orchestra
• 2 Dances for harp and orchestra
• Chansons de Bilitis
• Images, Book II
• Children's Corner
• Le petit negre
• Hommage a Haydn
• Morceau de Concours

Dvorak - String Quartet No.12
Gade - Morning song from Elverskud
Grieg - Ave, Maris Stella
Holmboe

• Symphonies 9 and 10
• Chamber Symphonies 2 and 3
• Cello Concerto
• Recorder Concerto
• Tuba Concerto
• Flute Concerto No.1
• Violin Concerto No.2
• Concerto giocondo e severo
• Tempo variabile
• Suite from 'The Ill-Tempered Turk'
• String Quartets 8 to 15
• Sextet
• Brass Quintet No.2
• Violin Sonata No.3
• Quartetto (for flute quartet)
• Nuigen for piano trio
• Triade for organ and trumpet
• Sonata for solo cello
• Contrasti for organ
• Beatus parvo
• Beatus vir
• Cantata profana, 'Frieze'
• Two Border Ballads
• Hyld (Elder tree)

Mozart - Symphony No.29
Mozart - Piano Sonatas 3 and 9 
Nystedt - Salve Regina
Poulenc

• Sextet
• Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano
• Napoli
• Nocturnes
• Songs from Banalités and Chansons villageoises

Rachmaninov - 6 Songs, op.4
Schubert - Die schöne Müllerin
Schubert - Octet
Schumann - Arabeske in C
Shostakovich

• Symphonies 8 and 9
• String Quartets 2 and 3
• Piano Trio No.2 

Sibelius - The Oceanides
Vine - Symphony No.2

The Holmboe listening sped by, covering music composed between 1965 and 1978. It probably didn't hurt that some of Holmboe's (personally) most interesting and rewarding music is from this period, from the tail end of his 'avant-garde' phase through to the translucent pieces he wrote during the 1970s, and the sudden burst of concertos. There are definitely distinct periods in Holmboe's career where he was particularly focused on 1 or 2 forms of music.

If you want to sample some Holmboe, you could do a lot worse than hunting down the Concerto giocondo e severo, which at 10 minutes long is not too taxing and neatly encapsulates the way that he handles an orchestra.

I also continued to listen to a fair amount of Debussy. I've put La Mer at the top of the list because it's one of his big, famous orchestral pieces, but... the truth is I'm not sure I like it all that much. I've no reason to think the recording I have (Haitink and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra) is poor - indeed there are plenty of other things on the same set that I like a great deal - it's just that for some reason the particular piece doesn't make a strong impression.

Chansons de Bilitis, on the other hand, which was a brand new piece for me in March, made a very favourable impression and I'm keen to get to know Debussy's vocal work better. For a long time I had no idea he wrote so many songs.  While many of them were in the early stages of his career before his style fully formed, there are still a decent number of mature works and judging from this they are worth hearing.

I slowed down a little on Shostakovich (well, at least if you count the works I own recordings of, rather than ones I stream), but Symphony No.9 made a particularly positive impression as something quite different from the grand epics that preceded it. I'm beginning to realise that Shostakovich could write rather fun music when he chose to.

And having started with the exact same 3 composers as last month... I'm going to mention Dvorak. The 12th string quartet, known as the 'American', is one of his most popular works, and frankly in the past I've not appreciated it much. Standing alongside his other chamber works it seemed simplistic, and unjustly elevated over other pieces that didn't come with some kind of nickname or gimmick attached.

While I'm certainly not alone in perceiving that it is different in style to Dvorak's other quartets, with more of a straightforward melody-plus-accompaniment texture, the sheer quality of the melodies and what Dvorak does with them is actually quite impressive.