If so (but even if not) a truly impressive journey Seth!
Although I wasnt able to pay as much attention to it as much as earlier, you covered a remarkable amount of ground and I hope many people of BEA use this for recs now and in the future. Most of the greatest works of Classical are included here (that I know of). Maybe even all of them? (I didnt catch everything to know if some of my less famous favorites were included). Regardless, so many bases covered. A very valuable resource for anyone looking to get into Classical or to expand on their favorites. _________________ Best Classical Best Films Best Paintings
If so (but even if not) a truly impressive journey Seth!
Although I wasnt able to pay as much attention to it as much as earlier, you covered a remarkable amount of ground and I hope many people of BEA use this for recs now and in the future. Most of the greatest works of Classical are included here (that I know of). Maybe even all of them? (I didnt catch everything to know if some of my less famous favorites were included). Regardless, so many bases covered. A very valuable resource for anyone looking to get into Classical or to expand on their favorites.
Very kind AfterHours, very kind. Much appreciated.
Yeah, it's almost done! I just have 4 more works to cover and then I'll likely do a recap of my favorites to wrap it all up.
Also, thank you for some recs from your list, which also is a great resource, especially in the post-modern/contemporary era, which is a blind spot for me, even still. I feel that likely is the least represented on this thread as it's the most... how do I say it... vague/less defined period of music to define "serious" or "art" music.
For anyone interested and they haven't seen it yet, AfterHours' thread is also a fantastic reference (in his signature).
If so (but even if not) a truly impressive journey Seth!
Although I wasnt able to pay as much attention to it as much as earlier, you covered a remarkable amount of ground and I hope many people of BEA use this for recs now and in the future. Most of the greatest works of Classical are included here (that I know of). Maybe even all of them? (I didnt catch everything to know if some of my less famous favorites were included). Regardless, so many bases covered. A very valuable resource for anyone looking to get into Classical or to expand on their favorites.
Very kind AfterHours, very kind. Much appreciated.
Yeah, it's almost done! I just have 4 more works to cover and then I'll likely do a recap of my favorites to wrap it all up.
Also, thank you for some recs from your list, which also is a great resource, especially in the post-modern/contemporary era, which is a blind spot for me, even still. I feel that likely is the least represented on this thread as it's the most... how do I say it... vague/less defined period of music to define "serious" or "art" music.
For anyone interested and they haven't seen it yet, AfterHours' thread is also a fantastic reference (in his signature).
The first movement of this is breath taking. Concentric speakers is the only reference I have to the concept. But yes, this felt on top of itself, in a good way. A lively way. I also felt like the 2 other movements were unique - it wasn't stagnant, that's for sure. Overall a great piece/worth the couple listens.
Quote:
Composed in 2005, Thomas Adès’s violin concerto ‘Concentric Paths’ has rapidly become a favourite with both audiences and performers. Displaying a constant growth of melodic ideas and compelling sense of pace and energy, the score has received over a thousand performances to date (including its setting to ballet), earning it a firm place in the repertoire. One of the eminent violinists who have championed the work is Peter Herresthal, who has given its Austrian, Norwegian, Spanish and Australian premières, the latter conducted by Thomas Adès himself, at the 2010 Melbourne Festival. (Since their encounter, the collaboration between between Herresthal and Adès has continued, and has borne fruit in a new cadenza by Adès for György Ligeti’s violin concerto, which Herresthal will give the première of during the 2014 Bergen Festival.) On the present recording, made in April 2013, Herresthal is supported by his compatriots in the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, conducted by Andrew Manze, himself an acclaimed violinist as well as conductor. Their performance is being released as a digital album coupled with Three Studies from Couperin, played by the same orchestra and conductor. Premièred in 2006, the year after the concerto, the Couperin Studies is a reworking for chamber orchestra of three harpsichord pieces by Adès’s favourite baroque composer: ‘My ideal day’, he has said, ‘would be staying home and playing the harpsichord works of Couperin.’
The Norwegian violinist Peter Herresthal has previously released three discs for BIS, most recently violin concertos by Per Nørgård on a disc which in 2013 was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award.
-eclassical.com
The recording (spotify link above) captures the sound a little better especially of that VERY difficult violin part. Still pretty cool to see live - always better live, well except this time I'm suggesting otherwise... hehe.
Somehow this was quite fitting. I was born at the tail end of the cold war, and so these themes seem a little more foreign to me. Having said that it's been a weird timing of an amalgamation of events. First somehow I stumble upon an article about the film that "shocked America" in the 80s called The Day After so I decided to watch it. It was pretty horrifying to think about actual nuclear warfare and what life would be during/after/political escalations that would bring it forth. The fear, really. Anyway, I then get convinced to watch two Mission Impossible movies and I notice they have basically the exact "cold war-like" themes - stop a crazy man from detonating a nuclear weapon- all to save humanity in some weird compassion of destruction.
Then this opera.
It makes me realize - wow, we've successfully gone almost 80 years since. I also was at one time absolutely fascinated by this YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY
Anyway, I digress on the topic at hand instead of the opera. I think it's a great topic/intriguing thing for an Opera. Musically I liked Nixon in China more, but this is a strong contender. I do feel like half the libretto could be cut and it would then skyrocket into something VERY powerful. The science - the fear of doing something you know will be incredibly powerful, but perhaps so powerful the perhaps the chain reaction never stops. The moral indications - the inevitable destruction and death you know you would be assisting with. I mean Tokyo was already firebombed with 100k deaths on one day according to McNamara in the Fog of War. We already were basically mass murders. Anyway, I digress... the music is intriguing, the libretto is intriguing and again had it been slightly shortened or if I read the libretto to understand it more... nevertheless possibly top 10 opera for me.
Oh right - so I was curious because sometimes I like the suites better, and so I was curious about the Symphony that followed and I'd probably give that a lower rating.
Quote:
AllMusic Review by James Manheim
Audiences have their own favorites among the operas of John Adams, but Doctor Atomic (2005) has the advantage of being inarguably suited in its subject matter to the dimensions of grand opera: it takes for its topic the detonation of the first atomic bomb, with its first act occurring a month before the event and the second just before the successful test in New Mexico. The libretto by Peter Sellars, largely based on declassified documents, has been criticized as too choppy, but to these ears its shifts are what makes the work: it called forth an extraordinarily varied score from Adams. The music includes settings of poetry by Baudelaire, Donne, and Muriel Rukeyser, as well as the Hindu Bhagavad Gita and a traditional Tewa Native American song. Adams responded with a score that encompasses all these and never interrupts the sense of gathering doom the listener feels. Female characters -- scientist Robert Oppenheimer's wife, Kitty, and Pasqualita, a Tewa maid -- are introduced, and they only increase the variety. The work has been recorded, but this version conducted by Adams may be regarded as definitive. It is drawn mostly on a live concert performance in London that clearly made a strong connection with the audience. Gerald Finley is a gripping Oppenheimer, and all the singers put the text across immediately. You might think that British singers would be an impediment in text that often talks about American national aspirations, but it's not so: what has been called the transatlantic theatrical accent is close to the one singers of both nationalities tend to use, and after a brief suspension of disbelief you won't even think about it. Adams gets from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers an intense, overwrought, kaleidoscopic performance that is just what the music ordered, and Nonesuch patches together the several performances here expertly. Bravo.
Wow, this Azul cello concerto is fantastic, but so is the whole album. I'm glad I took a look. I learned that Sufjan Steven's has some work arranged by Atkinson, along with a Stockhausen piece I liked/hadn't seen before. But wow, this Azul's cello work is not only fantastic, but the soundscape is expansive - it's kinda shocking to hear what sounds like button accordion mixing so well with the Cello. Some silliness and seriousness - a nod I appreciate from Shostakovitch. Fantastic listen for the whole album. Of course Yo Yo Ma - of course.
Quote:
Beautifully executed at every level, with exquisite arranging, playing, and clear, consistent production values. Golijov's Azul is a tour de force in contemporary composition for the cello, captivating, longing, tuneful and, on occasion, grand. Ma confers upon the concerto the subtle attention it deserves.
The album's opening, Ascending Bird, is a familiar piece for Knights and Silk Road personnel (see, e.g., Brooklyn Rider's Silent City album), because of violinist Colin Jacobsen's co-authorship of it. It's rendition here, more folksy and percussive than it is sometimes arranged, is appealing. Jacobsen's playing is, in a word, stunning.
As usual with the Knights under direction of the other brother Eric Jacobsen, the programming is pitch perfect. Inclusion of Dvorak's Song to the Moon, a delicate piece that also reminds us of why Ma remains a demigod in the cello world, was inspired. Placing that on the same album as an arrangement of Stockhausen's Tierkreis which brings out another of that composition's protean possibilities (arr. Caroline Shaw) may seem to border on shtick, but it works.
My only complaint--like my praise, highly subjective--is that by the time the album reaches the final piece, the resplendent Run Rabbit Run (comp. Sufjan Stevens), this listener's attention had flagged, perhaps from the excitement of the earlier pieces, maybe especially the Stockhausen. I put the music away and listened again a few days later and had the same impression. Perhaps if the Dvorak had been put at the end and Rabbit Run third after Azul (although two suites in a row might not work), the effect might have been avoided. Fortunately, modern listening technology permits us to perform any experiment we like along those lines. This album is worth hearing again and again, on good speakers and not as an MP3. Bravo.
KA - KD A
I first stumbled upon this album when it was in the top 100 of 2017 when I did a little foray into that year (something I typically don't follow the current doing/had never done before as the year unfolded or something). Anyway, my first listen I thought well this is good but not great. Today I'm like this is good but not great, but then that final track. I don't know, there's something that says there's more here with Richter than I'm letting on, but then a part of me feels like he's the pop artist of contemporary classical music. The verdict is still out. Interesting mix he has going with electronic music and your typical "classical" instruments like violin and piano. The record is indeed immense in it's soundscape, and while simple/minimalist - which sometimes makes it feel sappy, but simultaneously feels human - like more human than all the complexity of a Wagner or Schoenberg. But then maybe flat... still, again the verdict is out - BUT, I can say it's not bad. Moments seem superficial and yet real. Kinda trippy. But I like it. Love it - no.
Quote:
AllMusic Review by James Manheim
German-British composer Max Richter has been known mostly for his film scores. One of the best of them, that for Arrival, was heard by millions of people and was ideally timed to attract listeners to some of Richter's non-cinematic music. Three Worlds -- Music from Woolf Works was abridged from a ballet entitled Woolf Works, which consisted mostly of short chunks that work reasonably well in abstract form. Each of the work's three sections begins with a spoken quotation from Virginia Woolf herself, the first of them consisting of an actual recording of Woolf's voice from 1937; the other two are read by actresses. The rest of the movements are instrumental and are connected to a greater or lesser degree to the three novels named in the titles of the three sections, Mrs Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves. Only the Woolf quotation for Orlando comes from the novel named in its section title. The music in that section consists of a set of variations on the Baroque-era-ground La Folia, and the medium is constantly shifting: from full orchestra to chamber instruments, solo groups, and electronic variations (the music is performed by Richter himself on piano and synthesizer, plus the Deutches Filmorchester Babelsberg and assorted other musicians). You wouldn't guess Virginia Woolf if you heard it cold, but the music is not quite like anything else you will have heard. The final section, by contrast, has a powerfully direct emotional impact. The opening reading, spoken by Gillian Anderson, is taken from Woolf's suicide note, and although Richter indicates that the rest of the music evokes the poetic mood of The Waves, its intense climax (unlike the rest of the music, this is a lengthy movement of more than 20 minutes) seems to keep the suicide note in the listener's mind. Although the work as a whole is not a film score, it has the flavor of one, and it opens up intriguing possibilities for the expansion of that language to other settings. Certainly recommended for anyone who has noticed and liked the music for Arrival.
Era: Contemporary
Year: 2020 (well recorded in 2019, probably written some time before)
It's interesting to hear stuff like a bass drum and electric bass in the work - what's also a fantastically lively piano concerto. First listen today, so I'm not too sure what to say about it other it feels like the right work to finish my journey with. It nearly has some Gershwin feel at times - borrowing sometimes it feels from musical type orchestration and almost a Muse-like feel (minus the piano work of course - my lord). So yeah the piano work alone elevates this to what people call "serious" music.
Quote:
There's nothing terribly new in John Adams' Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?, whose title the composer says he got from an old New Yorker article about Dorothy Day (it goes back to the world of Methodist hymnody in the 18th century), but the work is an excellent specimen of this composer's ability to appeal to a specific audience at a specific time, and it hits all the qualities that have made Adams such a favorite for so long. The work, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel, and premiered by the pianist here, the exuberant Yuja Wang, features motor rhythms, bits of popular influence, and a lyrical slow movement in which Adams says he was specifically influenced by Wang's sparkling style. The rhythms are goosed by an electric bass and a detuned "honky-tonk" piano, which aren't outwardly very apparent but make their presence felt; they are new and logical additions to Adams' arsenal. The result is a work that is a hell of a lot of fun, performed by probably its ideal interpreters, and what could be better than that? Other pianists are going to want a crack at this work. The online version of the album, released in the spring of 2020, ends with Adams' early China Gates, a lovely short work in the Steve Reich vein; a physical CD was delayed by the coronavirus epidemic but was promised for the future and is planned to contain additional pieces.
So thus ends my foray into this project for now at least. That's the first time (last time?) I have attempted to listen to key musical works in the "art" or "serious" or what most call Classical music world from basically the beginning of time until now. I'd like to thank multiple sources I borrowed from, especially for early music from medieval.org, talkclassical, but mostly from Wikipedia. Also again, thank you AfterHours for your post Shostakovich listings, with which were mostly foreign to me. Adams is probably the only composer post Shostakovitch I seriously heard a lot of/discussed before. Also I'm sorry most of my posts were 2 sentences/babbling instead of something cohesive. It's mostly just a thought that came to my mind while listening as opposed to anything helpful. I'll likely now want to/need to recap my top favorites, which will be hard because I petered out on my ability to rate anything better than good or ok or not good/didn't take as good as notes as I wished, but alas it's worth a shot.
Last but not least - a thanks to my parents for having the balls to take a 6 year old to the symphony... multiple times, throughout the years. Thank you to all the music teachers and institutions who have helped me appreciate/understand this artwork, and probably most of all a big thanks to my brother who kept me up until midnight on a school night listening to Mahler "while sleeping".
May this resource help people find things to listen to they haven't before/get into "Classical" music. The first post is really all the favorites (not complete) and then the second post is all the resources/playlists I used to make this journey.
There were times when I thought the western/eastern exchange worked well and then there were times when I didn't. It didn't detract too much from the quality, even if I didn't like it. What I didn't know though is I guess the last work here is something Mr. Glass was asked to write for the first visit from the Dalai Lama to the United States in 1979. I guess it was re-recorded and this album end is the result... OST from 2016 film. So kinda a mixed bag, but makes sense too considering. Homage accepted and was a great listen this afternoon. Tenzin Choegyal is someone I haven't had the pleasure of listening to before, and his parts were possibly better than Glass from what I am guessing.
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