Enjoyable article by Jeffrey Arlo Brown in today’s New York Times re: Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia with informative excerpts demonstrating some of the antecedents artfully incorporated into this piece (and with an interesting picture of Paul McCartney attending a Berio lecture).
and my favorite version conducted by Pierre Boulez with the New Swingle Singers and the Orchestre National de France, which, unfortunately is not made available on Qobuz, USA.
and here is a Sinfonia recording by Riccardo Chailly/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestre/Electric Phoenix/Jard van Nes again unavailable on Qobuz US, but many of you are not thus constrained. This performance has the voices appropriately more in the background, giving the meaningful babble Berio was possibly striving for and which seems a bit like social media today with some signal, but mostly noise (not calling Berio’s composition noise by any stretch).
Reviews of some other Berio repertoire also appeared this week on Classics Today, including Kim Kashkashian on an ECM recording, Voci, nicely reviewed.
My initial exposure to Scriabin was via the 3 CD set by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Riccardo Muti (EMI) and I still find this to be my favorite recording of the symphonies. Muti, in my mind, does a better job of connecting the phrases within each movement. Luisi not as convincing so far but I plan to listen again.
Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s playing on Prometheus is fantastic and this is the first time I’ve heard Julius Asal on a recording so I this new collection is definitely compelling and sounds quite good.
It’s super cool how much recording Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Luisi are doing - the Nielsen collection not long ago was a treat.
I wish Luisi and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra would release more recordings but I’m not holding my breath.
A pretty heterogeneous collection of compositions by Austrian composers, which all have been banned or almost forgotten, not only because their composers eventually got banned by right-winged political movements in Germany and Austria. The main work here is Korngold´s sinfonietta, which could be called a childhood symphony, but it does not sound like one.
A bit of a controversy among the historical performance scene and sacred music lovers alike when it was released, but this performance of Händel´s ´Messiah´ has stood the test of time over the course of 20 years since it was recorded:
René Jacobs delivers a vivid, fast, light and energetic, at times overly expressively declamating performance, while audibly urging his singers to sing the most natural and transparent way. That is a good match, as it takes away this ´operatic show-off coloratura´ from Händel´s most famous sacred work, and blends in a surprising way with the choir. The latter deserves attention, as they do not try to sound anyhow different from a juvenile amateur choir (which they are, actually a university choir), but deliver a level of coherent intelligibility and precision one would expect from trained radio choir singers.
I enjoyed this version of The Four Seasons. My ears are very particular on what they like to hear when it comes to this work by Vivaldi.
From what I understand Vivaldi wrote this with basso continuo and never specified an instrument for it. It can be a cello, violin, bassoon, an organ or harpsichord.
Nearly every rendition of The Four Seasons I come across uses the harpsichord. I loathe the harpsichord very much. The sound it creates irritates my ears and as far as I am concerned it’s the worst sounding instrument ever created. I just find it so intrusive and cluttering when it’s competing with the brilliance of the violin’s.
So I am always looking for The Four Seasons where the continuo, if it has to be a harpsichord, is more discrete or with minimal prominence, and the violin’s have a strong attack and articulation.
Always looking for recommendations along those lines.
This is a remarkable performance, especially considering that Chloe Chua is only 18, and she was even younger (15 & 16) when these recordings were made.
I’m listening to it right now and I hear both the organ and the harpsichord as continuo. I confirmed it from the programme brochure which is where the recording from came - best I can tell.
So far I am very impressed with this performance and the continuo is less prominent than in other renditions I come across.
