Classical Court From Perotin to Prokofiev (and beyond), performed by Caruso to Khatia, it's all here.

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Just another day or two left for the 30%-off Chandos sale at the Chandos site

Posted by Chris from Lafayette (A) on January 27, 2021 at 14:42:00

As mentioned previously, I've been dribbling the downloads/titles out (no more than one per day), and in general, I'm really happy with what I've gotten on sale so far this month:

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  Respighi - Pines, Fountains, Festivals - Wilson, Sinfonia of London.

  I'd heard only five of the twelve tracks the last time I posted here about this album. Every British critic I've seen rates this album outstanding, while Dave over at Classics Today is being a sourpuss about it. Yes, some (not all!) of the tempi are fast, but textures remain lucid, partly due to the outstanding playing of the orchestra. And frankly, the tempos aren't THAT fast IMHO. I'm not going to say that this is THE BEST® recording of these works ever made, but it's got to be among the best - and I know I'll be listening to it (along with the Neschling recording on BIS and the Analogue Productions 3Ch SACD incarnation of the Reiner recording of Pines and Fountains) if I want to hear these works in the future.

• 

  Delibes - Ballet Suites from Sylvia, Coppelia, and Naila (or "La Source") - Jarvi, RSNO.

  Remember that when Tchaikovsky was writing "Swan Lake", he said he was trying to write music AS GOOD AS Delibes' ballet music (not even a thought of surpassing him!). I've loved these works ever since I was a kid, and I of course have the complete Coppelia and Sylvia ballets on the old Mercury recordings with Dorati and Fistoulari respectively. I also have the Reference Recording of the suites with SF Ballet Orchestra. All these recordings are 2Ch only, so it's nice to hear this music in MCh. As is sometimes his wont, Jarvi here is a bit too fast in places for the orchestra to articulate their parts as clearly as I'd like, but I still enjoyed this recording a lot.

  Initially, I had a bit of a problem playing the tracks on this download, with momentary dropouts occurring every minute or so. Very annoying. At first, I thought there had been a problem with the download itself, but no. I finally discovered that I'd left my Yandex browser open, and Putin was obviously sending his bots to get inside my computer to discover whatever "Kompromat" material he could get on me! Once I closed the browser, the download played fine. ;-)

  (And, BTW, I've always liked the alternate title of Sylvia: "The Nymph of Diana" -since I've always had a natural attraction to the idea of Nymphs!)

• 

  Copland Volume 3 (Outdoor Overture, Symphony No. 1, Statements, Dance Symphony) - Wilson BBC PO.

  Lively, hard hitting performances of some of the basic Copland orchestral repertoire. Having participated in a performance (with an ad hoc orchestra) of the Outdoor Overture myself, I was particularly gratified listening to the verve generated by Wilson and the BBC players on this track - pretty rollicking!

• 

  Copland Volume 4 (Connotations, Symphony No. 3, "Letter from Home", "Down a Country Lane") - Wilson BBC PO.

  I don't think that "Connotations" is ever destined to be counted among Copland's greatest hits - the dissonance level is too unrelieved for that! Still, it's not a bad work. (And I say this as this recording was my first experience listening to it.) I remember reading about it when it was first performed (I was 13) during the opening festivities at the newly built Lincoln Center. The critics seemed to be so focused on reporting about the acoustics of the new hall, that they didn't seem to write too much about Copland's new work at that time!

  The rest of this disc falls somewhat easier on the ear. In the Third Symphony, Wilson plays the original version of the work (i.e., without the cut which Bernstein suggested to Copland and to which Copland acceded). The miniature "Down a Country Lane" is an orchestration ("for school orchestra") of a 1962 piano piece. What a little gem!

• 

  Schoenberg - Pelleas und Melisande, Erwartung - Gardner, Bergen PO

  Although Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht is one of my favorite works ever, I've never quite gotten on the wavlength of his Pelleas und Melisande. Of course it's tonal, but the extensions of tonality in this work tend to give me a kind of symphonic mal de mer. ;-)

  In my LP days, I used to have Hans Swarowski's 1973 recording of the work with the CzPO. This new recording with Gardner and his Bergen players certainly makes the work sound more cogent, so perhaps there's still some hope for me with this work!

  As for Erwartung, this is the first time I'd heard the work since my college overview of 20th-century music. I can't say that the piece has improved very much in the meantime! (And BTW, I actually participated in a performance of Schoenberg's "Book of the Hanging Gardens", which is very similar in its employment of pre-serialist atonality, so it's not as if I haven't given this style of music a shot. To me, it remains a dead end of music.) Even so, this recording does make an excellent case for it and one can at least marvel at the beautiful colors which the Bergen players often produce!

• 

  Avet Rubeni Terterian - Symphonies 3 and 4, plus traditional works played on a pair of duduks - Karabits, Bournemouth SO

  So. . . if you start playing the opening track of this album, you might be forgiven for thinking that you've made a mistake and have put on a missing volume of the Sheffield Drum Record! Nothing but percussion for the first three or four minutes! What a test for your system - neat! I hardly know where to begin in describing the music! First of all, Terterian tends to use huge (and I do mean huge!) dynamic contrasts. Right after the percussion onslaught at the beginning (which BTW is the first movement of the Third Symphony), there's a section where single instruments play barely audible fragments. (And if you're one of those folks who complain that the dynamic range of some modern recordings is TOO wide, then I'll warn you that this album is NOT for you!) In addition, Terterian makes use of native folk instruments too (such as the afore-mentioned duduk) - double reeds with their own unique sound. It seems that Hollywood composers have gotten clued in to these instruments, since they've also been used for their unique effects in the music to "Gladiator" and "Game of Thrones". In the Third Symphony, one of the players of these instruments is required to do circular breathing in order to sustain his drone, while the other player weaves melodic fragments further up in the texture. (I'll never understand how people do circular breathing though!)

  At other times, we hear melodic fragments over tone clusters (a bit like Ligeti in his tone cluster period). So what does this all add up to? As unlikely as it may seem, the music produces a deeply spiritual impression - both Ms. CfL and I felt this way. It's as if religious states or ceremonies from the distant past were being evoked and presented through a haze. As soon as I'd finished listening to this album, I immediately went back and listened to the Third Symphony again - this is far from my usual behavior. It was a pretty soul shaking experience for us - of course I'm not guaranteeing it will be that way for you if you should happen to acquire this album or listen to it on Qobuz or something.
  

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