September 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Now come, saviour of the heathen)
• Christen, ätzet diesen Tag (Christians, engrave this day)
• Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn (Prepare the ways, prepare the road)
• Erschallet, ihr Lieder (Resound, you songs)

Beethoven - Symphony No.2
Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 19 to 22
Faure

• Songs, Opuses 1 to 8
• Duets, Op.10
• Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre (Since I've pressed my lips)
• Tristesse d'Olympio (Sadness of Olympio)
• L'aurore (The Dawn)
• Cantique de Jean Racine
• Violin Sonata No.1

Heller - 25 Etudes for Developing a Sense for Musical Rhythm & Expression, Op.47
Holmboe

• Kairos
• Sinfonia 2
• Chamber Symphony No.1
• String Quartets 1 to 3, 7, 8, 12 to 14
• Violin Sonata No.2
• Primavera
• Gioco
• Sonata for solo flute
• Bagatelle No.1 'Arabesque'
• Molto allegro scherzando for solo violin

Janacek - Sinfonietta
Janacek - Glagolitic Mass
Liszt - Anees de Perelinage, 1st year: Switzerland
Magnard - String Quartet
Poulenc

• Suite pour piano
• Nocturnes
• Villageoises
• Presto in B flat
• Two intermezzi
• Intermezzo in A flat
• Humoresque

The answer to that question about Holmboe's Kairos was that yes, I do like the four Sinfonias when they're all combined.  In all honestly I feel it drags a little in the centre, the problem being that Sinfonia 2, the longest, is generally at a slow pulse (although with fast episodes) and so is Sinfonia 1 before it.  The much more vigorous Sinfonia 3 provides a welcome change afterwards.

There was plenty more brand new Holmboe this month, with the string quartets being prominent.  Trying quartets from different parts of his career certainly brings out the changes in his style.  For example, quartets 7 and 8 come from a period of 'tougher' works, whereas quartets 13 and 14 are marvellously light and delicate.  I'd say those two are among the favourites thus far, along with number 2, but of course it's going to take a long time to properly digest all the different works.

Elsewhere in Holmboe's chamber music I easily warmed to the light touch of both Primavera (for flute, violin, cello and piano) and Gioco (for string trio).  Although it's not entirely clear to me why a Danish composer should be so keen on using Italian titles.  I suppose he was tapping into the previous centuries where Italian essentially was the language of music.

Elsewhere I was frequently tapping into French.  Magnard was a brand new composer to me.  His string quartet is quite dense, full of notes and full of different ideas in the outer movements especially, and it did take me several listens to get into it.  I realised that my knowledge of string quartets basically jumps from Schubert to Shostakovich and completely bypasses the Romantic period, so this was really my introduction to what a string quartet from late Romanticism would sound like.  And after several listens, I was in fact quite taken with it.

And then there's all the new Faure songs.  I bought the Hyperion/Graham Johnson collection of complete songs (although I now think it's possible they may have missed a work - outrageous!) which, rather than being purely chronological, scatters the songs thematically while keeping acknowledged 'song cycles' intact and being fairly chronological within each theme.

I have mixed feelings about this.  In the case of the early songs I have no problem, because it's known that these first 10 opus numbers were assigned fairly randomly after the fact.  But even then, the CDs sometimes separate songs that logically belong together, and there are later examples where it's clear from the series' own timeline that songs were written and published together but they still appear on separate discs.

The beauty of iTunes is that it enables me to reassign songs to new 'albums' to correct this in cases where I feel there's a benefit to hearing a group of songs together.

As for the actual songs... my goodness, but Faure could write a melody!  These early songs include some of his most popular.  And it's worth bearing in mind that 'early' in Faure's career includes works written in his 30s.  There are some teenage songs here, of variable quality, but there are also works of a quite mature composer.

Après un rêve (After a dream) deserves its fame, but the Sérénade Toscane (Tuscan serenade) in a similar style is just as wonderful.  Other songs I found bouncing around in my head hours or days after heaing them included Chanson du pêcheur (Song of the fisherman - lamenting a dead wife), L'absent (The absent one), Tristesse (Sadness) and Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre which was never even published.

Having decided to unravel the chronology and grouping of the Faure songs, I then decided I was going to listen to all my Faure in opus number order - perhaps a somewhat mad decision given how much new music I have to listen to anyway.  But he's one of my favourite composers, and thanks to this new purchase I now have recordings of much of his work.  It will be interesting to hear the gradual changes of style, and indeed it might lead me to appreciate even more the complexities of his later, more 'difficult' style as the easy soaring tunes of the earlier work start to disappear.

Let's face it, I probably just wanted an excuse to listen to the marvellous 1st violin sonata again...

Now I've written a fairly long post without even mentioning that my Beethoven listening took me as far as the 'Waldstein' piano sonata, Op.53.  The entire point of this listening in opus number order is to hear stylistic developments, and the Waldstein is, quite simply, a revelation.  Within half a minute you realise you're hearing something that is not only radical for Beethoven, it's probably unlike anything written for piano by anyone up to that point.  It is truly astonishing, and truly a masterpiece.

March 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Christ lag in Todesbaden (Christ lay in Death's bonds)
Bach, J.S. - Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich (For you, Lord, I long)
Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 5 to 8
Faure - Piano Quintets 1 & 2
Faure - Cello Sonata No. 1
Haydn - 6 String Quartets, Op.76 (the 'Erdődy' quartets)
Holmboe - Symphony No. 9
Vivaldi - Stabat Mater

The data recording kept going, even though the writing didn't.  (Meanwhile, what the heck has Blogger done to the look of the area I compose posts in?! Aargh!)

I didn't get my hands on the new purchase I hinted at in the February Classical post until the very last day of the month.  It was a 10-CD box of Bach cantatas - specifically, the first 10 of the chronological series still being created by Masaaki Susuki and the Bach Collegium Japan.  I had a lovely walk to the post office on a nice sunny day...

Oh, right, the music.  Well, this entry covers a mere two cantatas, but the early signs were good!  It's still strange to me that I'm suddenly listening to a lot more vocal Classical music.  Dealing with the different languages is still something of a challenge, and often it's better if I just switch off and hear it purely as music.  I also re-started on some Vivaldi, wrestled my box set into some vague resemblance of chronological and thematic groups and began with the Stabat Mater (probably the earliest of his vocal works to have survived).

The main 'event' of the month was probably listening to the Haydn Op.76 for the first time in several years.  I cannot recall for certain whether my cassette copies of these were the first classical music I ever bought for myself (around the age of 16 or 17), but if not the first they were very close to it.  And there's still so much to enjoy in there.  They're the last complete set of quartets from the first master of quartet writing.

I also tackled Holmboe's Symphony No. 9 with a vengeance.  It's one of his tougher works, but once I pulled it apart and put it back together, yet again I found it very rewarding and a clear example of the way this composer writes across movements.  The second movement on its own sounds like... well, nothing much. A lot of soft whimperings and scratchings.  But once you've grasped that there's a little melodic fragment in it that's carried over from the first movement, suddenly it's like the music is holding its breath for 4 minutes before unleashing in the third movement.

I know that's all rather brief and not terribly insightful, but I do have some catching up to do...

March 2011 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Prelude in E flat minor from BWV 853, arranged for cello and piano
Barber - Medea's Dance of Vengeance
Beethoven - String Quartet No.5
Beethoven - Piano Concerto No.3 (2nd movement)
Brahms - Piano Quintet
Chopin - Funeral March in C minor
Debussy - Cello Sonata
Debussy - 12 Etudes for piano
Faure - Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra
Faure - Piano Quintet No.2
Faure - Barcarolle No.13
Faure - Cello Sonata No.2
Faure - Nocturne No.13
Handel - Keyboard Suites 6, 7 and 8
Haydn - Piano trios 29 and 30
Hindemith - Kammermusik Nos. 5 and 6
Holmboe - Symphonies 7, 12 and 13
Honegger - Cello Concerto
Mozart - Piano Sonata No.14 in C minor (2nd movement)
Schubert - Piano Sonata in A minor, D.784
Schubert - Octet in F
Schumann - Die Arme Peter op.53/3, Tragoedie op.64/3, Lehn deine Wang' op.142/2, Mein Wagen rollet langsam op.142/4
Shostakovich - String Quartet No.11
Simpson - Symphonies 9 and 11
Stravinsky - Petrushka
Tallis - Loquebantur variis linguis
Tortelier - Burlesque: Le Pitre (The Clown), 3 Duos 'Chameau-Loutres', Toccata
Vivaldi - Bassoon Concerto in A minor, RV 498

I finally finished working my way through a 20-CD collection of performances by Paul Tortelier, a Frenchman who has now massively expanded the cello section of my library.  Thanks to my catalogue I can tell you that it took exactly 368 days to listen to absolutely everything in the box.

Meanwhile, some of the other listening is from my last classical buying spree on New Year's Eve.  This was from a local music store that closed about a month later, after many years of being the premier classical music specialist in the area. Evidently the modern world with easy overseas ordering has not been kind to them.

Their sales are probably responsible for the majority of my classical collection. I bought most things on the strength of reputation and reading, rather than listening.  I'm not sure what I'll do from now on.

The collection of Schumann songs I bought, performed by Wolfgang Holzmair and Imogen Cooper, has been a particular delight. As you can see I'm now down to the 'bits and pieces' section of the discs, but it has 4 complete song-cycles and the performances are consistently wonderful.

Faure is definitely one of my favourite composers. This month, I spent an evening listening to a series of late works (the Fantasie being one of the New Year's Eve purchases).  Every one of them rich and strange and beautiful in their complexity.

The couple of one-movement excerpts are from recordings where that's all I have. I don't totally ignore the sampler discs in my library.

Late in the month I went back to my 20th century symphony friends, Holmboe and Simpson.  Holmboe in particular is someone that I occasionally have a little obsession over.  I'm looking at adding some of his other works to my collection, and in the last couple of weeks I've been doing a fair bit of research on just what else is out there.  The list-maker in me strikes again!