Classical Music

[Sukhov]

Cheers everyone!

 

[laffite]

I attended Nixon in China in San Diego and was disappointed. I like your clip though. John Adams had a thing for background cadence and it is well exemplified by the following, a piece I have always liked.

Incidentally, Gersh, this is not a criticism but you may be new enough not to know that we have an OPERA thread that has gotten some play in the past. If interested, I would start looking on page 20 or so. Your avatar is known for an opus in the genre, quite a famous one as you very well know.

 

[Sukhov]

32 minutes ago, laffite said:

I attended Nixon in China in San Diego and was disappointed. I like your clip though. John Adams had a thing for background cadence and it is well exemplified by the following, a piece I have always liked.

Incidentally, Gersh, this is not a criticism but you may be new enough not to know that we have an OPERA thread that has gotten some play in the past. If interested, I would start looking on page 20 or so. Your avatar is known for an opus in the genre, quite a famous one as you very well know.

 

Thanks! Chairman Dances is pretty good. Adams originally intended to incorporate into Nixon before deciding it should be it's own piece. Adams has a new opera out called "Girls of the Golden West." I haven't seen it but it does look very good. I linked "Cheers" as I thought the duet was very upbeat and a good choice for the holidays (especially with all the drinking that goes on. ). I will look for that Opera thread. I didn't know there was one up. In the meantime here's a link to my favorite piece by Mozart. The 3rd movement of his 23rd Piano Concerto. It's really happy and upbeat too.  

 

[laffite]

 

[Sukhov]

Overture to Wagner's Rienzi (I love the cymbal crashes at the end of this  ).

 

[Sepiatone]

This is from one of my favorites, Sibelius/ Symphony #3 (2nd movement).  I love the whole symphony, but this is my wife's favorite movement from it.  She says she "drifts off into a dreamlike nirvana." 

Sepiatone

[laffite]

45 minutes ago, Sepiatone said:

This is from one of my favorites, Sibelius/ Symphony #3 (2nd movement).  I love the whole symphony, but this is my wife's favorite movement from it.  She says she "drifts off into a dreamlike nirvana." 

Sepiatone

Gorgeous! I listened all the way through and I like the way it refused to dissociate from the general mood. I love pieces like this and may add it to my special list. I "collect" pieces that I feel promote the idea of peace that your wife seems to mean. Many are quite short that are soothing and can have a personal meaning, not defined, but through simply listening and letting go. Some on the list are famous, like Clair de Lune, and others quite obscure. I have about 50, a very exclusive list, not just anything gets admitted. A few are from Frederick Delius (1862-1934), any of the titles that have pastoral or nature titles to them. Very gentle music. They are bona fide classical compositions with no pretensions to the spiritual, per se, but they can be taken that way. I would wonder if your wife might enjoy them, if she doesn't know these already.

Here's an example:

 

[laffite]

Speaking of gentleness in music, the main theme of Reinzi is like that, almost like a hymn.

I listened to the 23rd and it rang familiar though i doubt I would have been able to name the concerto from which it springst. I'm a little retrograde on my Moz PC knowledge. My faves fall upon traditional lines, the oft played #20 and the majestic #24. This latter is the epitome of elegance. Such stately precision, fit for Royalty.

 

 

[Sepiatone]

Neither she nor I have heard that Delius piece before Laffite.  It is beautiful, and sounds like it'd be up her alley as well.

And really, they don't have to be necessarily "pastoral" to her, just what she thinks are pleasant sounding string arrangements or otherwise pleasing to the ear.

Like she fancies only these two from Greig's PEER GYNT:

There's also several versions of Solveig's Song done with just strings she likes too, but she(and I) do prefer it with a good coloratura. 

Sepiatone

[TomJH]

On 8/4/2016 at 2:03 PM, Dargo said:

Sepia, your memories of your initial brush with Classical Music reminded me of my own.

 

Around '63 or so and when I was 11 y/o, Pop brought home a brand new Sony 2-channel stereo reel-to-reel tape recorder and about a dozen prerecorded tapes. One of those was a Eugene Ormandy-conducted Philadelphia Orchestra recording of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture"(WITH cannon, of course), and I too remember being somewhat enthralled with the sounds of that music the first time Pop spliced that tape through the recorder's reading heads and pushed the play button.

 

(...side note: This memory also came back to me almost a couple decades ago when while watching an episode of the sitcom "Frasier" there was a scene in which the snobbish Crane brothers are reminiscing about a similar experience of theirs...Frasier turned to Niles and dismissively says to him, "Remember when dad played the '1812 Overture' for us that first time when we were little, and we thought that that was GOOD music?!"...and of course the even MORE snobbish Niles just giggled and relied "OH yes, how naive we were back then!")

That Crane snobbism about 1812 Overture (I grew up with the Eugene Ormandy conducted version of it, as well, and found it thoroughly rousing, especially with those cannons blasting) is a pretty accurate reflection of an elitism within many classical music circles regarding the composers. Beethoven and Mozart are often hailed as the masters while Tchaikovsky is looked down upon as appealing to the masses.

Dan Rather said, "An intellectual snob is one who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of the Lone Ranger."

[Sukhov]

1 hour ago, Sepiatone said:

Neither she nor I have heard that Delius piece before Laffite.  It is beautiful, and sounds like it'd be up her alley as well.

And really, they don't have to be necessarily "pastoral" to her, just what she thinks are pleasant sounding string arrangements or otherwise pleasing to the ear.

Like she fancies only these two from Greig's PEER GYNT:

There's also several versions of Solveig's Song done with just strings she likes too, but she(and I) do prefer it with a good coloratura. 

Sepiatone

That's certainly a good aria. I have to say my favorite piece by Grieg is the Wedding Day at Troldhaugen though. Maybe not as "pastoral" sounding but still pleasant to the ear.

 

[laffite]

Sepia, not to push anything upon you but allow me to suggest of a few Delius opuses that are much like the Cuckoo example:

• Irmelin Prelude
• Song before Sunrise
• Late Swallows
• Summer Night On The River
• In a Summer Garden

These are fairly subdued pieces and may or may not appeal to you, but they may be worth a try.

 

[Sukhov]

The finale to Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny. It's an opera about escaped American convicts who build a dictatorship led by their gang in an unnamed state that somehow borders both Alaska and Pensecola. It mocks the brutality of the Nazi party of that time period.

 

[Sepiatone]

Those Delius pieces are nice.  I'll have to spend more time with them.

And I've always felt Greig's piano work, especially his concerto, never received their proper due over  time.  

I recall in the '70's seeing a PBS program about Arthur Rubinstein he recalled a time in the late '20's or early '30's when he was asked to record Greig's piano concerto that he laughed at the time because in that time it wasn't yet considered a "serious" piece of music.  But of course, now we know much better.

Incidentally, for what it's worth, Rubinstein hails from the area of Poland my Mother's side of the family hails from( and many still live).

 

Sepiatone

[laffite]

@Gershwin, liked the Weill clip, it reminded me of Russian Opera (in general). BTW, the item about The Chairman Dances originally earmarked for NIC is interesting. I had no idea.

[laffite]

@Sepia, hard to believe that the Grieg was ever not popular, isn't it? I'm surprised, didn't know that.

Slow movements of PC, Symphony, and other is sort of in line with the softer, gentler items we've been doing. Here is a thing of beauty. This tempi here is a little too rapid for my taste but it's not a disaster. The conducting style is a little annoying, he insists (as some conductors are wont to do) ; he insists on a downbeat that precedes by half a beat or so attack of the orchestra and he saws a little too much for such a gentle piece. I find this pretentious. Despite this, even he can't disturb the abiding greatness of Herr Brahms :

 

[Sepiatone]

Some conductors do as they please.  I don't know how much of it jibes with what the composer intended though.  One example;

Former Minneapolis and Detroit symphony conductor ANTAL DORATI directed GUSTAV MAHLER'S 1st symphony at what seemed half the tempo than other recorded versions I have or have heard.  While Boston "Pops" conductor ARTHUR FIEDLER seemed to be in a footrace with his approach.

  OK....TWO examples

Sepiatone

[Sukhov]

More Grieg.

 

[Princess of Tap]

It's hard to believe in the world of Romantic piano concertos by pianists-  composers like Beethoven,  Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, that Edvard Grieg, a man --who only wrote One --wrote the best one, in my opinion,Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor, Opus 16.

Considering the competition, I could give no higher compliment to any composer.

I like to call it: " The Award of 'In The Hall of the Mountain King' ".  LOL

[Sepiatone]

And while on the subject of piano concertos......

Can anyone tell me where they might have heard THIS one before?  At least this movement?

 

 

[Sukhov]

A piece by Steve Reich.

 

[Vautrin]

I know very little about classical music, but a bit about prog rock.

 

 

[Sepiatone]

THANKS Vautrin.  I KNEW you wouldn't let me down.  And now see if you can recall where THIS one was used?

 

 

[Vautrin]

I had to cheat on that one. I haven't listened to the first ELP album in

ages. Surfing through your video afterwards I did find a bit of aha

recognition. One of my favorites was their version of Jerusalem from

BSS. 

[Sepiatone]

I'll confess to not knowing the Janacek connection at first back in '71(U.S. release).  And everyone here has been told of my scrounging through thrift shops to discover old classical recordings to learn of works by familiar composers that I've yet to hear or find stuff by composers I've heard of but haven't heard works by in order to determine whether or not I liked them enough to search out and purchase newer and better sounding recordings.

JANACEK was a composer I've heard of, but wasn't familiar with any of his compositions.  So, finding an old platter of SINFONIETTA  in the bins, I paid the 50 cents and took it home for a try.  THEN I recognized the opening strains right off!  This was about 10 years ago or so.

Sepiatone