This new release is pretty special.
The Vivaldi is quite spare but has great character. The Irish version complements the original but is also memorable as an independent work.
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Congratulations! Glad that you enjoyed it. Petrenko is quite a character. Appreciating Bruckner took me a while. I remember walking away from the Kennedy Center totally frustrated and disappointed several times. In many ways you can perceive his music as disorganized and abruptly changing direction so many times, stopping and restarting. This, plus the full orchestration, sometimes creates an overwhelming wall of sound. It could be challenging but BPO did a fantastic job with the fifth.
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Not many are aware that Haydn did over 400 folksong arrangements. There are various collections available. The collection on Brilliant Classics features the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt with soprano Lorna Anderson and tenor Jamie MacDougall. I’ve been listening to Vol. 2, which is a good place to sample these lovely works.
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Very accurate description, which oddly makes the music seem very modern. Of course he’s also building towards a resolution in the finale, and, my goodness, the 5th achieves that!
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This is another wonderful BIS release featuring a great recording of a Mozart chamber favorite for violin, viola, and cello played by Zimmermann, Tamestit and Poltéra from a decade and 1/2 ago.
It’s also available on a boxset:
You can also listen to the Grumiaux trio play it,
or, on Naxos, Kraggerud, Tomter, Richter:
all on Qobuz USA.
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I too have been trying to develop an appreciation of Bruckner. Bruno Walter’s recording of his 9th is the closest I’ve come.
Manfred Honeck’s recent account of the 7th sounded good on Qobuz, so I ordered the SACD.
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Very much interested in your opinion if it is worth it. I really like Honeck´s conducting and timbre he gets out of the orchestra but found some of the Pittsburgh recordings on RR (particularly Beethoven symphonies and Bruckner 4&9) to be a bit on the broad and ´American´ side, if that makes sense.
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Sure, I’ll check back in, though I am really not the best person to ask about Bruckner!
One recording of Honeck’s I would particularly recommend is his Mahler 3rd. It may only be available on SACD, but it’s worth seeking out the disc. Please correct me if there are streaming or download options as well.
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Agree, it’s excellent.
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@Jesse These Pittsburgh / Honeck Mahler recordings (1.3.4.5) on Exton are incredible!
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I should note that unlike Honeck’s work for Reference Recordings, the Exton Mahler 3 is stereo only. But it sounds great alongside excellent multichannel recordings of this symphony (Fischer / Budapest and Bernstein / New York in Andreas Meyer’s remix for SACD are some of my other favorites).
Glad to hear it has also been enjoyed by others in this thread 
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The Exton record label used to be on multiple streaming services, but they pulled out from all of them a few years ago. Unfortunate because their catalog is excellent for both performance and sound quality.
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That’s pretty much where I started, though there are some very good more recent recordings, with the Giulini/VPO version often said to be the most profound.
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Here’s an interesting classic from 1993 I’ve recently been listening to again, featuring on percussion Edgar Guggeis and Peter Sadlo, and on piano Martha Argerich and Nelson-Freire.
You can stream it on
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Apple has the Mahler 1st:
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That’s very interesting! I had a number of Exton albums favorited on Qobuz, Tidal, and Spotify. They all suddenly disappeared around mid-2021, and others on the web were commenting on the same thing. It seemed as though Exton had pulled completely out of streaming services.
Looking around now, the albums I’d favorited are still missing, but Honeck’s Mahler 1 and Ein Heldenleben are now on Tidal, Apple, and Spotify (but not Qobuz). So Exton has come back to streaming in a limited way. It’s unusual for a record label to stream only a small number of titles and not most of their catalog.
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Far, far better man than me. Just can’t go there…, yet. A bit like committing to reading the collected works of William Makepeace Thackeray, which I have done in a singular show of stubbornness. Dense warp and weft and, in the end, a weaving that leaves one wondering if it was worth the effort. As always, this reflects badly on me, not the composer or performers.
Was recently enjoying the first C. J. Sansom Matthew Shardlake mystery (Dissolution) set in the same time period Hilary Mantel so splendidly limns with her Cromwell trilogy. Thought I’d listen to a period musical accompaniment and turned to John Taverner’s Missa Corona spinea by The Tallis Scholars. I encountered something new, a runaway sirenic soprano, due, I think to recording method. I found a more balanced version by the recently mentioned The Sixteen. Have a listen to the two and see whether you agree. Striking contrast with The Sixteen’s recording. A far more enjoyable listen, particularly whilst reading about Matthew Shardlake’s adventures in a soon to be dissolved monastery. Not being snarky about Tallis Scholars. They are superb, as are The Sixteen.
Lastly, for now, came across a recording, Vienna: Joyful Apocalypse, by a splendid French pianist, Aurélien Poitier. Superb articulation/dynamics/color and selections in a musical form I’m usually not partial to, the waltz. He somehow draws me in despite my previous experiences with his splendid pianism. He is also quite the mensch. He recently lost all his worldly goods, in which his entire apartment building burned down. When asked what his most treasured possession is, he replied, “Life and music in my head are my only possessions, and I treasure them.” Magnifique!
Mssr. Pontier’s 2019 Liszt: Transcriptions & paraphrases d’opéras is another of his recordings and it is simply stunning. I don’t know what piano he is using in this recording, but my, he makes it sing beautifully. Simply takes the breath away. Can’t recommend it too highly.
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There are so many top shelf recordings of Mozart’s symphony No. 31 but I always return to this one by the Prague Chamber Orchestra and the absolutely stellar Charles Mackerras.
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Antonin Kraft (1749 - 1820) was a virtuoso cellist who woked for Haydn in the Esterhazy orchestra. This release contains his only cello concerto. The accompanying CPE Bach concerto also contained here is well known.
The playing by both Qeyras on cello and the orchestra is excellent. I like the sound quality too.
The Kraft on here makes the album. Well worth a listen. A really dynamic and melodic work. Some Haydn influences obviously. It was released a few weeks ago.
The remaining two CPE Bach cello concertos are on a previous release from 2018, paired with a symphony.
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