What are you currently listening to (Classical)?
- Thread starter Bachtoven
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If it hasn't been said, good to see you return with new speakers to break in @Bachtoven
Haydn, Symphony 84 and other various string ensembles... Had it going on all day, mostly background music, Light and tuneful music for a Sunday around the house.
Discs 17 - 18½
Sergei Prokofiev - Cinderella, Op. 87 (1945)
The Cleveland Orchestra / Vladimir Ashkenazy
Sergei Prokofiev - Cinderella, Op. 87 (1945)
The Cleveland Orchestra / Vladimir Ashkenazy
The first of two Hyperion FLAC download (24/96) purchases today--fantastic playing and good sound.
The second of two Hyperion FLAC download (24/88) purchases today--also has fantastic playing and very good sound. Osborne is one of my favorite non-Russian pianists in Russian repertoire. He made his own version of the Sonata No.2--took Horowitz's and "improved it." (Rachmaninoff thought it was too thickly written and difficult to play, so he thinned out the textures. Horowitz thought it suffered too much, so he revised it himself.)
Self released album made in the Ukrainian Radio Recording House, Big Concert Studio (9800 m³) with a stated reverb of 2.7 seconds. Conductor, Orchestra, and Chorus have an interesting story beginning in the darkest days after fall of the Iron Curtain.
Hymns and Spirituals
The Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Roger McMurrin
Hymns and Spirituals
The Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Roger McMurrin
Attachments
Same performers and recording location. Shift in repertoire starting with Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" and wrapping up with a selection from Mozart's "Don Giovanni."
Ahhh - interested in this. I haven't listened to Osborne. Shall hunt out and give it a twirl.
Many thanks.
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Unfortunately, Hyperion does not allow streaming of their recordings. Someone has uploaded a decidedly lo-fi excerpt of the Medtner work on Youtube.
This also includes the Sinfonia Concertante. The playing and sound are fantastic, though there is a noticeable drop in sound quality in the Sinfonia--not quite as spacious or transparent.
This is a very fortunate find that is sensational in my view. I had had the Haydn quartets op. 33 played by the Eybler Quartet for quite a while now, which I immensely enjoyed, and based on that had explored a number of their other recordings. This US American-Canadian ensemble specializes in music from the first century of string quartet writing, and plays on period instruments, with details of their makeup, including choice if strings, also based on their own research. Their recordings of Beethoven's early string quartets op. 18 are fantastic, and they have recorded lesser know composers as well. The string quartets of Vanhal and Asplmayr are very charming and really good, enjoyable music.
But the quartets by the composer Eybler, after whom the Quartet Ensemble named itself, are something else. About 45 seconds into the beginning of this CD (string quartet op 1/2) I said a big "Wow!", as I knew right then that this was the music of a genius, and I have been sold and ever deeper involved with this music ever since. Fantastic melodies and transitions between them, great melodic/thematic developments and wonderful harmonic and contrapuntal work.
Eybler was a close friend of Mozart, who entrusted him with training his singers for his opera Cosi van Tutte. After Mozart's death, his widow Constanze asked Eybler to finish his Requiem, but Eybler, perhaps out of respect, could not bring himself to do the job, so Suessmayer eventually did it. Beethoven's teacher Albrechtsberger said, before Beethoven broke onto the scene, that after Mozart the greatest genius you could find in all of Vienna was Eybler.
Music history is sometimes cruel in its choices of whom to elevate for posterity. Eybler fell through the cracks. But no wonder that the Eybler Quartet would choose just this name for itself.
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I discovered Idagio today (just signed up for a free trial membership to use on my desktop computer). Here is the first album I discovered. Couldn't help myself with all the accordion jokes.
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