Classical Music - August 2016

Bach, J.S. - Ich freue mich in dir (I rejoice in you)
Beethoven

• Romance for violin and orchestra No.2
• String Quartets 1 and 4
• String Trio No.3
• Piano Sonata No.11 

Chopin

• 3 Mazurkas, op.63
• 3 Waltzes, op.64
• Cello Sonata
• 2 Bourees

Dvorak - Saint Ludmila
Haydn

• Symphonies 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 91-94, 96, 98-104
• Missa Sancti Nicolai ('Nikolaimesse')
• Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo ('Kleine Orgelsolomesse')
• Missa Cellensis ('Mariazellermesse')

Mozart - Piano Concertos 5, 17 and 18
Nørgård

• Spell (piano trio version)
• Four songs for male choir
• En livslang ven (A lifelong friend)

Rachmaninov - Preludes, op.23
Rachmaninov - 15 songs, op.26
Ravel

• Daphnis and Chloe
• La Valse
• Sheherazade
• String Quartet
• Piano Trio
• Violin Sonata No.1 (posth.)
• Berceuse on the name of Gabriel Fauré
• Tzigane
• Pavane pour une infante defunte (piano and orchestral versions)
• Menuet Antique
• Jeux d'eau
• Sonatine
• Miroirs
• Gaspard de la nuit
• Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn
• Ma mere l'Oye
• Valses nobles et sentimentales
• A la maniere de...
• Prelude
• Le Tombeau de Couperin

Schubert - Piano Sonata in D, D.850
Shostakovich - Symphonies 5, 8, 10 and 15
Shostakovich - String Quartets 13 to 15 
Sibelius - The Wood-Nymph
Vine - Symphony 4.2
Vine - Celebrare Celeberrime

The month started with a continued wave of Haydn listening, and ended with a wave of Ravel listening. And some other composers managed to get a hearing in between.

As I mentioned in the entry for July, I ended up deciding to listen to all 23 of the Haydn symphonies I own to work out which were my favourites. This was prompted by a poll on a forum about favourite Haydn symphonies. Not being entirely confident I would be fair to them all going by memory, I held a run-off.

Over several rounds, symphonies 93 and 102 were the winners. They were closely followed by symphonies 98, 99 and 103. Though of course this is all relative; it's not as if I didn't enjoy all the other symphonies that didn't make the cut.

I don't remember what, if anything, triggered the avalanche of Ravel. It may have been as simple as realising that it had been quite some time since I'd listened to most of this music. It turns out that it doesn't take a great deal of time to listen to Ravel's complete works (including use of online resources for works I don't own a recording of) as he was not a prolific composer and many pieces are quite short.

Still, the quality of what he wrote is very high. Personally I think he wrote some of the very greatest piano music, and what I know of his other work is equally impressive. Perhaps the small quantity of work is because he was so painstaking in getting it right.

Elsewhere, I reached the end of my chronological exploration of Shostakovich's works (with the last 3 string quartets, the final symphony and other material I listened to online)... and promptly turned around and started exploring the symphonies further. Many months had passed since I listened to the earlier symphonies after buying a box set in January, and I felt I wanted to get to know them better.

Symphony No.10, which I did already have another recording of, strikes me as a superb work. Symphony No.5 is not too far behind. Symphony No.8 I struggled with on this occasion. It felt in some ways like a re-run of the 5th symphony, only longer and bleaker, and I found myself disengaged.

The largest work I listened to during the month was Dvorak's oratorio Saint Ludmila. Frankly, it was a bit of a struggle compared to some of the other sacred and choral works I've been listening to. And that wasn't primarily due to the length, but the text. 19th century sensibilities were obviously a bit different to mine, as I couldn't warm to a story that seems to consist of a country converting to Christianity not because of any theological conviction, but because the leader fancied a woman and was told he had to convert in order to get her. That, and a little bit of good old-fashioned threatening about God's retribution. I wasn't inspired.

July 2013 - Classical Music

Dvorak - String Quartets 7 to 14

After a couple of false starts, I finally realised my intention of listening to all of Dvorak's 'mature' quartets.

Except deciding just where the maturity begins isn't really any easy task. I've seen all sorts of opinions about which works are the ones worth listening to.  The last 3 are universally listed, but those were all written in the 1890s.  It's less obvious to decide where to place a boundary between quartets 5 (1873), 6 (also 1873), 7 (1874), 8 (1876), 9 (1877), 10 (1878/9) and 11 (1881).

I decided to start with number 7 for a couple of reasons. One was that number 6 is a work that Dvorak felt the need to revise but never finished revising. So it was something he himself was somewhat dissatisfied with. Another reason is that number 7 was the first to be published, and also (a few years later) the first to be performed at a public concert.  So this is where people were sufficiently impressed to become interested in Dvorak as a composer.

I have a vague plan for sometime in the future to work through these quartets backwards rather than forwards, and see at which point I start feeling that the level of engagement has dropped.  Because it's fairly clear to me that Dvorak's earliest quartets, while having a lot of nice tunes, really show him struggling to know what to do with those tunes.  The music tends to ramble on without clear contours or contrast.

But all the works I listened to in July had a fair amount of reward. I'm not entirely sure I could identify one as a personal favourite yet... possibly number 10? Recollection is already a little tricky.

I'm more sure that number 12, the 'American' quartet, is not my favourite. I don't dislike it, but I don't think it's typical Dvorak and I think it's one of those pieces where the popularity derives at least partly from a memorable gimmick (not unlike Shostakovich's 'autobiographical' 8th string quartet, which is one of my least favourite in that composers' quartet series). I wouldn't say it's not worth listening to by any means, but I think it's a shame that it has become so popular as to overshadow the other works.

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.