Classical Music Thread

Everyone must hear this performance of Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No.2 (John Ogdon/ Royal Phil/ Lawrence Foster)
Bell-like tone, crystalline clarity, no slurring or messing up even in the quickest passages, zero romantic gestures. It is no surprise that Ogdon was one of the greatest pianist ever. Lawrence Foster brings his usual spirited, grandiose self to the work. I took out another recording I have (Cristina Ortiz/ Bournemouth SO /Paavo Berglund) and, even though she is not bad at all and indeed I cherish Ortiz highly in Rachmaninoff, in this repertoire she is simply outclassed: the tone is more conventional, the fortes sound like what one would expect in Rachmaninoff or indeed Chopin, and the soft passages sound muddled.

I don't have too many recordings of Shostakovich's Piano Concertos (I have too many of his Preludes and Fugues on the contrary); I don't have Hamelin or Donohoe, both of whom I'm very eager to hear.
 
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Positron said:
I don't have too many recordings of Shostakovich's Piano Concertos (I have too many of his Preludes and Fugues on the contrary); I don't have Hamelin or Donohoe, both of whom I'm very eager to hear.
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Shostakovich is not just awesome as a composer but for surviving Communism at its very worst.
 
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I'm a (amateur, shitty) composer and I've gone back to studying baroque harpsichord music lately. Bach is my favourite composer of all time, but I've lately been preferring Rameau and Royer for harpsichord music (I prefer to hear them played on Harpsichord, but Natacha Kudristkaya has my favourite piano interpretations of Rameau). I like to copy their scores (sounds a bit autistic but I think it does help with learning the ins and outs of the music) a lot. This one's not the most musically complex piece in the world but I really like the energy of it, how all of the disparate elements are put together and that it has that baroque chromaticism and frequent key changes which I always like.

Royer- Vertigo
 
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In this thread I have posted one of the songs in Valentin Silvestov's cycle Silent Songs before. Unfortunately you cannot play that video because ECM records copyright-strike any video that use their music. Recently, pianist Hélène Grimaud and baritone Konstantin Krimmel recorded an excerpt from the cycle for DG, and they including my favorite, most heart-breaking number "Winter Journey".


Compared to the ECM recording (Baritone: Sergey Yakovenko; Piano: Ilya Scheps), both performers on the DG are too demonstrative; the Baritone Krimmel has a beautiful voice, but is too operatic for this delicate, intimate music. Their brighter, more conventional approach will win the songs many fans, and this is for the good, but to hear what these two performers miss, that elusive mystery of the half-veiled voice between the lips and the throat, let's turn to another recording (Alexei Martynov voice; Alexei Lubimov piano) that despite suboptimal sound is closer in spirit to the ECM:

 
Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho died on 2 June at the age of 70. She was diagnosed with brain tumor two years ago.

Sarriaho's works combine sense and sensibility. Influenced by the French Spectralists, she was concerned with the dissection and recombination of sounds. Electronics feature prominently in her works, especially early works. Yet she gave her compositions poetic, evocative French titles. Another guiding feature of her works are natural imageries, most notably in the Secret Jardin series of chamber-electronic works. Her most famous work is the opera L'Amour de Loin in which the sea -- and acoustic and electronic evocation of it -- becomes the metaphor between the Real and the Ideal.

 
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Brazil doesn't look like a country that would have much to offer in terms of classical music, but we pull a sneaky on people and actually do. Brazil has a lot of good music actually from loads of genres.

Villa Lobos is the most well known by name, but the most famous compositions in Brazilian Classical music are arguably the works by this one composer almost no one can name much less remember the name of the compositions, but whose melodies will cause ANY Brazilian to immediately go "Ah that is old timey Brazil soundtrack! Imperial and Old Republic Rio De Janeiro type beat!"

It's the work a woman in fact. Chiquinha Gonzaga, whose name is actually known if you ask people but they won't really know who she is or what she did but people can tell it is a important brazilian they just know it, almost a osmosis type of memetic knowledge.




The song everyone does remember the name, and the chorus and first stanza of the lyrics if even if the rest is forgotten, is the well known Ô Abre Alas! (Make Way is a good loose translation) which is considered the very first Carnival March in Brazilian history. I wouldn't consider it classical but I am posting here because it would be a disservice to mention Gonzaga and not mention it. You can really see the nature of it as a sort of stepping stone between the classical stuff and the Brazilian popular music that would come later.

 
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