and



Though I play the cello part in an amateur piano trio, I didn't have any pianotrio's on CD, so I ordered these (and Schubert, expected one of these days)

Very different and unique interpretations

To satisfy my yearning for one of the strangely few CD recordings of Abbado conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra:


(It's Debussy's La Mer, and Mahler's 2nd. Great performance! Nevertheless, for the Resurrection, the Blomstedt/SFO performance still has me in awe. For reasons pertaining to minute details here and there, this is a very, very close second.)

And, to add to my slowly-growing film score stack:

These two were my latest purchases. The Moussorgsky for piano solo is wonderful. All Russian composers and all for piano. It really was a coincidence

First Mahler. First Mehta.

Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 2, 'Resurrection'
Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Chorus
Contrubas, Ludwig
Mehta

What do you do when you hear some short snippets of music, think you may have 'discovered' a new (to you) composer, send for a promising-looking CD, ..... and then, as you listen, just get more and more disappointed by what you're hearing?

It happened to me today. I stumbled across some short snatches of William Alwyn (never heard him before) and thought - 'Oooh, English composer, shades of RVW, a dash of Malcolm Arnold - could be my cup of tea: I'll try this.'

The CD arrived today:



A 45 second sample may sound enticing; but when that 45 seconds extends to several minutes, what seemed pleasant in brief can change substantially. The Elizabethan Dances were OK, I suppose, but after that things just got progressively more miserable. It seems to me very dangerous to attempt to write music in some kind of association with a masterpiece in a different art form, and in the case of 'The Innumerable Dance', Alwyn puts himself effectively in competition with Blake. Vaughan Williams could do it (I'm thinking of 'Job - a Masque for Dancing'), but while listening to Alwyn's piece I just found myself wishing I were reading Blake's great poem instead.

It happened again when I got to the piece inspired by The Tempest ('The Magic Island'). We're talking here about one of the greatest plays ever written, and the music just can't match up. Again, I found myself wanting to read the play, rather than listen to the music - the music became a kind of barrier between me and the play. Just to emphasise my lack of empathy with the music - I was distracted very briefly by something, and while I was gone from the room, a track change occurred. 'Aphrodite in Aolis' became 'The Magic Island' - but I returned to the room without knowing any change had occurred. It was only by realising that the duration was too long - not by anything I was detecting in the music - that I realised what had happened.

What do you do when this kind of disappointment happens? Flog away at the music in an attempt to enjoy it, even though you seriously doubt whether you ever will? Or do you just give up - write it off and be done with it?

First, I have never let that happen to me. Second: Have you thought of listening to the tracks at Naxos' website? 25% of the tracks are free of charge, and you have to pay something around $20/year, if I remember correctly, for all the tracks from every CD in their collection.

__________________
Regards,
Navneeth

Really? Never? I wish I had your will power ....

That's an eminently sensible suggestion, and it was foolish of me not to think of it. Thank you.

There's a happier sequel to this story which I'll relate in another post.

So here's the sequel .....

Such was my pre-purchase confidence that I would enjoy Alwyn, that I ordered not one CD, but two; and the second one arrived today - this one:



We now enter the realm of the psychology of expectation. After the previous day's disappointment, I put this new CD into the player almost as if listening to it were a chore that someone had imposed on me, and I set it playing while I read the newspaper - I was blowed if I was going to give Alwyn the benefit of a second proper listening - right?

Two minutes into the Pastoral Fantasia I laid the newspaper aside. This proved to be 13 minutes of really quite lovely English pastoral music, redolent of RVW and Malcolm Arnold, yet different to either, and not without an edge to it. It may not be the most original music in the world, but it passes my crucial test (which is, for anyone who may be interested in a criterion so blatantly subjective, to ask myself: 'is this music better than silence?'). And in truth the whole of this CD is going to prove pretty much my cup of tea, I think.

I can't help wondering what would have happened if this had arrived yesterday instead of the other one? Did my low expectations of this allow me to tune in more successfully? I suppose I'll get some answers when I've listened to both CDs a few more times.

This is my first CD of Shostakovich, I think. I'd heard Rostropovich's recording of the first cello concerto on Youtube and was sufficiently stunned to immediately bookmark this on Amazon, when in fact I wouldn't get it from Amazon; a local bookstore had a one-day 20% discount on all the items in the store, so I immediately grabbed this (after a little grappling over this and Bernstein's (in)famous recording of the 5th and 9th symphonies (from the Bernstein Century CDs).

This is also my first CD to feature Oistrakh, as well. He was already amongst my absolute favorite violinists, but I never bought a CD of his until today (though I did get a good few records of the staple violin concerti: Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky). On second thought... is this my first Rostropovich CD??? My God, I'm deprived...

__________________
"Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n
wirst du, mein Herz, in einem Nu!
Was du geschlagen
zu Gott wird es dich tragen!"
-Gustav Mahler

Here's my second Shosty CD... I haven't been able to listen to it yet, though. I bet it's great; the Concertgebouworkest lays claim to my all-time favorite recording of Mahler's First (under Bernstein for DG).

__________________
"Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n
wirst du, mein Herz, in einem Nu!
Was du geschlagen
zu Gott wird es dich tragen!"
-Gustav Mahler

Sychronicity is running rampant. I placed an order for this CD myself, last night.

Oh my. That's certainly interesting. Tell me about the liner notes; I missed out on them!

OK. It hasn't arrived yet. (For me, this is a voyage into the unknown.)

Oh, sorry... I didn't mean like RIGHT NOW or anything... I should've put something to that effect in the message. Oh well.

Yes, I'm very new to Shostakovich also. This is one of two CDs I actually own. It's a really good one, though.