New headphones on the way
September 9, 2009 at 09:55 (General)
People will have various opinions on whether they prefer to listen to music with headphones or through speakers. I must say I enjoy both. Having the music fill all the space around you is wonderful, especially when you crank the volume up good and high. At other time headphones can be very satisfying as a personal almost intimate encounter. Headphones I feel also add to the feeling of being transported to somewhere else by the music since they block out the actual reality of the world around you. It is understandable why so many folks wear headphones on the bus or tube to work. They want to be somewhere else! The feeling the music gives you can be a great comfort too as can the colouring effect. Music has the ability to enhance your experience of your surroundings too.
I have ordered a new pair of headphones. They are Sennheiser HD 595s and set me back 165 euro.
It has been a long time since I had a good pair and I have never had a good pair of my own. I remember an old pair of sennheisers my father had that I loved to use but my oldest memory is listening to music at my uncle’s in Dublin on his big headphones which were too big for my little head at the time. The sound was amazing. I could have sat there all day. Whether listening to popular or classical the experience of music can only but be enhanced by a good set of cans.
I will in due course let you know how I get on with these new ones. I have read excellent reviews on Amazon after being recommended them by a guy on a hifi forum, where they take their equipment very seriously.
In time I will start the search for a good amp. As now I am without a good speaker or amp system. I just use ‘high end’ plug-in speakers so I miss a good sound. Something headphones will do at the fraction of the cost of speakers.
Here they are in all their glory. Will tell you what I think when I have given them a good testing out 
The Opulent Violin
September 7, 2009 at 12:01 (Recordings)
Tags: kaler, naxos, Szymanowski
If you like your violin music to be fluid and colourful with events unfolding dreamlike and with touches of Debussy here and folk music there, then you need to get Szymanowski. This underrated Polish composer belongs to that same fascinating time in music as Debussy, Ravel, and Scriabin and shares something of these composer’s vision of the world through music. One can hear Scriabin in particular in the interplay of light and dark taken to mystical levels.
He was a master orchestrator as you will hear from this brilliant Naxos release. His two romantic violin concertos, perhaps his most popular are beautifully performed by the Russian Ilya Kaler. The sweetness of the violin tone, the ravishing support from the Warsaw Philharmonic is matched only by wonderfully lucid recording quality.
This is not music where form is at the forefront when you listen. This is music you let wash over you and indeed transport you to somewhere exotic and fragrant. At only 5 euro it is worth having a bathe in this kind of sensuousness when the world around you is getting too dry and dusty.
Note to regular readers
September 6, 2009 at 05:50 (Uncategorized)
Just to say that sometimes I don’t get to add new posts for a few days but worry not, keep bookmarked and come back because I will return. Remember too to have a look through the archives by month and I love comments from anyone interested.
current listening ….
September 5, 2009 at 08:14 (Recordings)
Mozart! I am listening to Mozart played by the premier Mozartian pianist, Murray Perahia. If you have never heard Perahia playing Mozart you need to. You can buy the complete piano concertos or indeed you can get them on individual discs. Just look out for Murray Perahia and The English Chamber Orchestra. I am currently listening to Wolfgang’s penultimate concerto, No. 26 ‘The Coronation’. It is one I don’t know so well. The most famous is the so-called ‘Elvira Madigan’ with its memorable slow movement, that is No. 21 in C. Though it is overplayed on classical radio stations, when I heard Perahia playing it it blew me away. My favourites are No. 20 in D Minor cause of the sheer drama, No. 23 in A because of the sheer beauty and a slow movement that is truly haunting.
Mozart needs to be light, clear, balanced, cleanly articulated with beauty of phrasing and elegance of simplicity being paramount. Mitsuko Uchida is another great Mozartian who just glides over the keyboard. It is also worth noting that Perahia is also conducting from the keyboard which gives the music an intimate quality and of course unites both soloist and orchestra as regards intention and expression.
You will enjoy this music even if you are not a huge Mozart fan because good music this well played is hard to dislike.
The original overture
August 25, 2009 at 08:04 (Recordings)
Tags: bach, dances, darmstadt, naxos, overture, suite, Telemann
We know ‘overture’ to mean an instrumental piece that introduces an opera or indeed in the 19th Century, a concert piece in its own right often with a descriptive theme. Back in the Baroque however, the word overture actually could mean a composition akin to a suite i.e. a collection of Baroque dances. In my post on Weiss, we saw how the term sonata was being used for suites also. Such confusion! In any case here what we have is a collection of dances by the prolific Baroque composer Telemann. In his day Telemann was highly thought-of, more than Bach indeed in some circles. Bach was a famous organist whereas Telemann was the famous composer. Listening to the music of a composer so prolific it is not surprising to come across some music that is not exactly essential listening (though I might get shot for this, the same applies to Haydn and Mozart, I think). Here however I offer you this underrated German composer at his best. These are a selection of his overtures, some of those referred to as the Darmstadt overtures. They are given here a vibrant and colourful performance by the Cologne Baroque Orchestra under Helmut-Muller Bruehl. Incidentally this conductors recordings of Haydn’s symphonies are also worth a listen to. Since we are dealing with suites again, there is great variety and character. Each dance has its own personality and if it doesn’t have us foot-tapping, we don’t need to wait long to hear the next one. Again this is a budget release on the Naxos label so don’t hesitate.
Bavouzet !
August 22, 2009 at 19:35 (20th Century Music)
Here is a pianist to look out for. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has recorded the complete piano music of Debussy and Ravel. I got the Ravel the other day and it is amazing. Debussy, in my mind, needs not to be too dreamy but neither can it be too clinical. Debussy wrote music that had an improvisatory quality yet from an analysis we know how detailed in structure his work is. It is about getting the right balance. Maybe there is something a bit more visceral about the following performance, not so hazy and shimmering but rather more tangible. Whatever it is it’s beautiful. It has a certain French melancholy to it that goes straight to the heart.
Want some cheap Scriabin? Get the best!
August 21, 2009 at 15:43 (Recordings)
Tags: glemser, scriabin, sonatas
Bernd Glemser on the Naxos label is a brilliant interpreter of Scriabin. Volume One of the Piano Sonatas is a great introduction to his music as it features a number of works encompassing all stages of the composer’s development. This is a must-have for the curious and the seasoned alike when it comes to this fascinating composer.
Alexander the great
August 21, 2009 at 08:00 (20th Century Music)
Alexander Scriabin was a very interesting figure in music history representing so well the move from tonality to atonality during the early 20th Century. Think increasingly chromatic with each new sonata, think mystical Chopin, think Russian eccentric. Scriabin was a very spiritual person who, it might be argued, thought he himself was God. He had planned an extraordinary piece called Mysterium to be performed in the Himalayas (great acoustics!) before his untimely death, a kind of music and light show to change the world as we know it. This kind of thinking can get people locked up but fortunately his eccentricities have not got in the way of recognizing this composer as both highly influential on the Russian school of playing and composing.
The following is his sonata No. 5 from 1907, concise and intense like a lot of his sonatas with unusual harmonies creeping closer to atonality. This is mysterious, erotic and ecstatic music. Interestingly Richter called this the most difficult piece in the repertoire. Perhaps he meant, most difficult to play as well as Richter can. After the opening flourish the quiet suspended chords I think in particular sound amazing. This is the music of another planet indeed.
The Cello, a Greek myth and Platoon
August 20, 2009 at 09:19 (Recordings)
Here is another Naxos CD for those who want to explore American music at its finest or know Barber’s Adagio for Strings and want more. Perhaps Samuel Barber is not credited enough just because his music was very traditional and romantic during a time when mainstream Europe was forging ahead with serialism and neoclassicism. I think that history will be kinder to these ‘old-fashioned’ composers in time seeings as serialism seems to have passsed its sell by date and variety of style appears to be the name of the game in this new century. We will have to wait and see. The notion that the loss of diatonicism be accepted whole-heartedly by the concert-going public for an indefinite amount of future time seems to a large part have been rejected.The idea that non-tonal music be the only way ‘forward’ is patently ludicrous. In fact thinking of history in such a linear fashion shows acute lack of understanding of the divergent and unexpected quality of music history on all its levels.
You may know the Adagio for Strings from the film Platoon. It has popped up in more places than that too. It is originally from the composer’s second string quartet and has been arranged for string orchestra and a cappella choir. It is moving music with a seemingly inconsolable sadness about it. It features on the CD I would like to talk about here played without too much sentimentality or melodrama, which is indeed a blessing. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Alsop plays it plain and simple and that is all it needs.
The main work on the CD is something rather more challenging. It is the composer’s cello concerto. This is famously a very difficult work to play and not quite as accessible to listen to as the composer’s more popular violin concerto (I posted about Hahn’s recording of that last month). It is here performed by Wendy Warner, a major exponent of the work and if anyone can bring it into the mainstream again then it is her. This is brilliant cello playing and begs to be called definitive as regards recordings of this work. It is a romantic concerto with all the characteristics of Barber in there. It is more searching as regards form compared with the violin concerto and perhaps more complex as an emotional entity. It deserves more than one listening to reveal its many qualities and the brilliance of its construction. With all music, what you put in, you get out. The less effort you make, the less will be revealed to you.
The disc also contains some evocative music in the form of the composer’s ballet suite Medea. Anyone who doesn’t know the Greek tragedy then check it out. It’s a shocking tale that I think is captured here on brilliant musical terms. Barber explores more unusual tonality in this work with more than a hint of Ancient Greek modality that spices things up, while remaining true to its emotional extremes.
Again this is not expensive and very well worth having not least in showing the artistry and diversity of this composer.
