I’ve never been to any part of the British Isles yet the composers to whom I listen the most are from there.
It’s time I make plans.
One album from the wonderful series by Wales/Hickox.
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Thanks for the reference. I just entire 6 CD series (download) for $23 at Bridge: Orchestral Works, Volumes 1-6 - Chandos: CHAN10729(6)X - 6 CDs or download | Presto Music. A bargain!
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Absolutely agree, this Hickox/Wales series is wonderful. Most compositions by Bridge are underrated, some are seemingly recorded for the first time here.
Strangely the third installment was the only one released on SACD. I particularly enjoyed the ´Vignettes de danse´.
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If you can find it the Charles Groves British Music Collection is also excellent. The sound won’t be as good as Chandos but it is OK and the performances are excellent (and some of the Chandos discs have variable sound). Groves is generally overlooked.
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I came across a Ronald Brautigam new release from BIS of Franz Schubert’s late piano sonatas, D. 959, 960, performed on a forte piano built by Paul McNulty https://www.fortepiano.eu/conrad-graf-fortepiano/ based upon a Conrad Graf model. Remarkable sound. Less sustained notes, but vibrant, particularly in faster passages. Went back and listened to earlier discography by this artist and was not disappointed.
Andràs Schiff has also recorded these pieces on forte piano, in his case, on an actual period instrument, an 1820 Brodman forte piano and his performance is also uniquely good and brilliantly recorded in the Bonn Beethovenhaus chamber music room
My favorites for Schubert’s piano sonatas on a modern piano are Maurizio Pollini (like him better for these than for his Chopin) and Wilhelm Kempff, who comes most highly recommended to me by my classical pianist friend.
Was looking for other possibilities and came upon this recording at Classics Today, which received perfect scores from Jed Distler
I recalled some chicanery regarding this artist’s recordings, which was disclosed at Classics Today as well.
Found a wonderful discussion of these appropriated recordings at The Strange & Illuminating Case of Pianist Joyce Hatto, which I highly recommend for a description of how it was done, how many critics were fooled and assessed the same performance differently, depending upon whether it was Joyce Hatto (high) or the actual artist (significantly lower). In this case, one of the original artists was Michel Dalberto (http://www.farhanmalik.com/hatto/schubert2.html) in a fine performance/recording.
This whole thing came to light when a Joyce Hatto recording was identified in iTunes, using a Gracenote algorithm as a completely different and pianist’s earlier rendering of these works. The curious listener decided to make a comparison and found they were, in fact identical recordings.
@woodford, a question for you. The author of the above thoughtful description of the Hatto music theft writes “The Gracenote algorithm simply looks at the album’s track times and the number of tracks and does a checksum. Surprisingly, the order of tracks and the precise length of each track is enough to pinpoint the ID of any of millions of albums, with very few mistakes.”
Is this true? Thank you. This is probably old news to most of you, as it is for me. The details are quite interesting, though.
Ad astra per aspera.
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There was a marvelous 9-disc Kempff set that I got many years ago that is a bargain if you can find it:
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Excellent Joyce Hatto article. Thanks for posting.
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I found it quite an astonishing, exhilarating sound. I think I was last listening to Zimmerman’s accounts of these sonatas, and Brautigam makes one think about them again.
His Beethoven is excellent, especially the most recent traversal of the sonatas.
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Hard to believe it is December next week, and time to dust off some Christmas music.
But before then, I really enjoyed this, which I had not really given time to before. A side of Tchaikovsky that I really didn’t know.
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the word “simply” is doing a lot of work in this description. What the founders of Gracenote pioneered was a method of deriving a unique identifier for CDs from the track timings and length of time between the tracks. they then built a database of those IDs, and made that DB available over a network, and later the internet. This was CDDB, the Compact Disc DataBase, which became Gracenote. There’s an excellent article from 2006 in Wired magazine on the company’s founding:
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Thank you, @woodford. Seems like the Hatto article author has some programming insight into CDDB with the checksum term. That was what I was curious about. Shazam came along with spectrographic analysis (Fourier transform of 10 s of music) with combinatorial hash generation, constellation mapping, comparing to a database of ~10 million (~ 45 continuous y of music) previously analyzed songs, each with combinatorial hash fingerprints and out comes a report of artist, track and album name, with some limitations…, all independent of metadata, that bugaboo of classical music identification. Not sure of how well Shazam works with classical music.
@Richard_Graham, I was debating whether to post the Bruce Liu Tchaikovsky, the first recording of works by this composer I’ve enjoyed in some time. Thank you for bringing this to this group with a declaration in its favor. In Mr. Liu’s capable hands these works sound downright Satiesian and contemplative. His other recordings, particularly the first Waves, are delightful as well.
@eclectic, I’m glad you enjoyed the Joyce Hatto article by Woodpecker. I was happy to finally come to an understanding of this sad, but fascinating story. The author’s speculation of why this charade worked particularly well for piano music was plausible. What was particularly surprising (among so many other surprises) is that no one ever pursued who the conductor/orchestra in the concerto pieces were.
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Shazam is address a completely different problem.
I’m curious, I’ll give it a listen!
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I’ve become a big fan.
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The penultimate 2024 Gramophone, Classical Review and Robert von Bahr (he would, as expected, but also truly) had very nice things to say about Alexandre Kantorow’s most recently released recording, featuring Brahms, Schubert and Liszt (after Schubert) solo piano works. Given that I’ve previously enjoyed recording by this artist, I was intrigued, particularly by the Schubert Wanderer Fantasia, a piece I’ve come to love. I listened and was very gratified by an excellent performance of probably my favorite work by Franz Schubert. Remarkable dynamic range and sensitivity to Schubert’s scoring. This is a lovely recording and deserving of its accolades.
Other versions of this incredible piece (the inspiration, in large part, for Franz Liszt’s B minor piano sonata) that have perked my cochlea most wondrously include the almost plangent, brilliantly expressive 1963 performance by Sviatoslav Richter (I can’t hear this without thinking about Liszt)
and a somewhat early Maurizio Pollini recording, which is simply wondrous,
A more nuanced, yet dynamic, thought not as declarative as Richter, performance by Murray Perahia
and a brilliant performance by Alfred Brendel
I look forward to hearing from other blog participants on their favorite recordings of this amazing Liszt-inspiring Schubert composition.
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Black week discounts are always useful to fill some voids in one’s collection. This year I managed to complete the Monteverdi cycle of sacred music recorded by the King´s Consort around 2003:
Beautiful and timeless sacred music, can recommend the whole series of 4 SACD.
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An impressive recording. Ages old, but seriously well done.
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A jewel of a recording by Eden-Stell guitar duo (also founders of the Vida Guitar Quartet) and an homage to a legendary guitar duo from the 50’s-60’s, Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya. This is lapidary playing and spell-binding music. The BWV 974 Oboe concerto arrangement is a wonder and a new addition to guitar repertoire. This is guitar playing of the highest virtuosity. Here is a pointer to their (Eden-Stell) channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ8byYwpsNQ. Mark Eden and Chris Stell make strings (both on guitars from luthier Christopher Dean) ring out with astonishing clarity of tone.
I’ll be more attentive to the UK Deux-Elles label, which provides the booklet accompanying the recording.
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Qobuz has this album but not its accompanying booklet (which it often has for new releases from small labels). The booklet is available at the Deux-Elles website.
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Thank you @mSpot. Matthew and Katherine Wadsworth (lutenist and cellist, respectively, owners of deux-elles) use an interview method for many of their album booklets, which I find refreshing/interesting. Saves the musician’s resources for doing what they do best…, make music.
Came upon another excellent guitar recording from same label with the same kind of booklet.
Colombian guitarist Francisco Correa played a beautiful Manouli Flouras (Jim Redgate trained) guitar on this recording. The cocobolo side and back wood is gorgeous https://www.franciscocorreaguitar.com