Listening Project

Hi Chris - the Mutter performance of the Stravinsky was 16/2/88, and the programme was Haydn Symphony 78, Mozart's Violin Concerto in A K.219, Stravinsky's Concerto, and Bartok's music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. The conductor was Paul Sacher with the Philharmonia.

The Prom where she played Chain 2 was 12/8/88 with the composer conducting the BBC SO. Lutoslawski also conducted his Funeral Music in that one.

And one other interesting one I have found is the Olivetti International Webern Cycle BBC SO with Dennis Russell Davies. Barbican 7/12/83. Great concert, because it included the Webern cantatas plus Das Augenlicht and I love Webern's choral writing. The programme also included the Five Pieces for Orchestra. The overture was Schubert/Webern German Dances. After the interval, Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony. That was the only one I got to in that series though.

Parla I take your point, but the new music and other names I haven't come across before make this thread a learning curve for me anyway...

Groan. After a few weeks of restraint it seem that people are biting on the troll's bait once more. Please don't let this cretin ruin the thread again by responding to its asinine posts.

Coincidentally I was playing Anne-Sophie's famous old Stravinsky/Lutoslawski disc the other day. Really very superb fiddling.

Goodness me, yes. I'm afraid I got nowhere with that work. Same with the (roughly contemporaneous) second symphony which is the same kind of structure (I think) but on a larger scale.

Talking about difficult SQs, I noted that the Birtwistle work we can't find on Youtube is a string quartet. Perhaps an alternative choice might be Pulse Shadows which has a SQ element. That work was pretty well known 10 years or so ago when it won a G award so maybe the time is right for a reappraisal. What says Peter Street (if he is still with us!)?

Chris, it's not that I "compare" or that we have to compare always. My concern here is where each "new" composer or work stands. I'm with you in "enjoying" (or rather appreciating) every composer or work "on its own merits", but which are these merits? How do you identify these merits without any reference to some kind of standards? How do you consider the "merits", anyway?

Some truly and well established great 20th century composers knew quite well the "references" and they acted accordingly: Bartok, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Richard Strauss, Ravel, Faure...and they left their indelible mark. Some others...

Finally, isn't it curious that, in most of the Live performances, all sort of Classical Music artists resort, in one or the other way, to the "reference" repertory. The "newish" stuff is normally a fill-up to the program or a "special" independent one or...nothing at all. Is it simply the rules of the establishment that prevail or something more?..

In another thread, I defended some of the works of the Polish female composer named Grazyna Bacewicz. While I appreciate a good deal of her music, I could never claim that she or her opus could be considered more than an important footnote in the whole History of Classical Music. Tansman is a very fine and quite entertaining figure of Polish music. I think you may "enjoy" his music on its own interesting merits, but he is also another pleasurable footnote. That's why few people, artists, labels, concerts are dealing with him. (However, you may try them. The first time you discover their music, you may be thrilled).

Parla

P.S.: Bazza, I see you start adopting some well known "language" (cretin, ruin the thread), plus some very fine new one (asinine). Impressive indeed! Jane should be very proud, honoured and...satisfied.

I thought you were not that easily impressed by such over the top Finales and this kind of extreme Brass and Percussion Codas, which seem, with very few bright exceptions (Tchaikovsky's unbelievable Fifth and the magnificent Dvorak's Seventh), quite outdated. If there is something that Taneyev paid a dear price is the lack of originality in his pursuit of very good craftsmanship and masterly technic. The second movement, fortunately, is the most original (and greatly inspired) music he wrote in the Symphonic field.

Apart from the fine recordings you have, Bazza, two more are brightly (with good detail and space) recorded and they serve the work quite well: a) the "more recent" by Chandos with Polyansky and b) the one on Bridge, with Moscow Radio Symphony Orch. under Peter Tiboris.

Parla

P.S.: For those who might think that they were impressed, obsessed or haunted by Taneyev's music, don't miss his Chamber Music masterpiece, the Piano Quintet in g minor, in the amazingly superb performance on DG, with Pletnev and an all cast soloists (Repin, Gringolts, Harrell, Imai).

Hi Mark,

I don't know the second symphony of Lutoslawski, but the quartet is certainly tough.  I'm not sure I'd have persevered if it had been set in the Listening Project! But having the box with other quartets I enjoyed, I've begun to get into it after several hearings.  I do still prefer the Schnittke though, and the Berio Notturno is very fine.

Anyway Taneyev should be more relaxing!

Chris

Ok, Taneyev.

The superlatives used to describe this symphony ("contrapuntal masterpiece") made me curious, but what I got differs from what I expected in that it's just a well-written late-romantic Russian symphony, nothing exceptionally brilliant or genial.

Taneyev does have a distinctive personal style, though. I was expecting to hear a lot of Tchaikowski in it (since he was one of Tchaikowski's students and, after his death,  editor of his work) but the influence from his mentor appares to be minimal. Instrumentation-wise it's clearly inferior to Tchaikowski's orchestral works - one thinks of Brahms with a thick Borodin-sauce.

So, what would make this symphony better than, say Rimsky's 1st or 3rd? Taneyev doesn't have Rimsky's gift for melody, though the 1st movement's second theme is very memorable and typically russian in nature - if there's such a thing. He makes sure you don't forget it too, because it gets reprised a bit too much, reminding one of the way Rimsky abused his gorgeous "Antar" theme in his 2nd symphony.

Can't say I'm enjoying the Neeme Jarvi recording much. The dense writing ask for a transparant performance that gives a clear view of the structure and the contrapuntal lines - not one that whips the music forward and hammers the climaxes down mercilessly. That coda is just too much of everything.

I've got the Svetlanov recording here, which suffers from the same problem, wallowing in emotional excesses, and - since it's the USSR radio symphony orchestra playing - going through a whole range of unwanted effects like portamenti, HUGE vibrati, approximate intonation and blaring brass. And then there's the early digital Melodiya recording, fearturing - as usual - a string sound you can shave your face with and trumpets that sound like they're made out of plastic. The filler on the cd (an interlude from Oresteia) is from a couple of years early (but still DDD...) and has to be heard to be believed. I think it's the worst symphonic recording I've heard in my entire life.

I find it hard to stomach Svetlanov's performances (his box set of Glazunov symphonies almost made me hate the composer), but at least in Taneyev's 4th his performance is solid in that he has a good structural concept of the symphony - something that I find lacking in Jarvi's - and he's more restricted in the climaxes. Maybe I could try the Sanderling version, but frankly, I don't consider it a piece that's worth owning multiple cd's of. In fact, those other unknown symphonies listed on the youtube channel look far more tantalizing: Weigl, Huber, Wetz, Alnaes...