Igor Stravinsky - Orchestral Works (Pulcinella/Apollon Musagete/Concerto in D for String Orchestra)

These three works of Stravinsky, the Pulcinella and Apollon Musagete ballets the string Concerto in D are not much like the cataclysmic music of Rite Of Spring or Firebird for example but the execution of Orchestre De Chambre de Lausanne conducted by Joshua Weilerstein is amazing. 2016 cd on MDG.

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Danish String Quartet - Prism IV: Beethoven / Mendelssohn / Bach

 

Aaaaand the most recent one.

2022 cd on ECM. 

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Danish String Quartet - Prism III: Beethoven / Bartók / Bach – Prism III

 

 Was about to post their latest (Prism IV), and I realized I hadn't posted this one, so there. Not much to be said.

2021 cd on ECM.

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Danish String Quartet - Prism II: Beethoven / Schnittke / Bach

On this second installation they start with Bach's "Fugue In B Minor BWV 869," continue with Alfred Schnittke's unsettling "String Quartet No. 3" and finish with Beethoven's lengthy "
String Quartet No. 13 In B-flat Major." Excellent again. 2019 cd on ECM.

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Danish String Quartet - Prism I: Beethoven / Shostakovich / Bach

Some music for the Xmas dinner. I find the concept of Danish String Quartet's Prism albums very interesting, as they start and finish them with tracks by Beethoven and Bach which envelope another, more modern composer. In this first installation, they set off with Bach's "Fugue in E-Flat Major" from The Well-Tempered Clavier and continue with Shostakovich's "String Quarter No.15 in E-Flat Minor," which is super-dark and droney (written juts a year before his death), with the violins occassionally sounding as if they had been played with an e-bow. They round the recording off on a much more optimistic tone with Beethoven's "String Quartet No. 12 In E-flat Major." DSQ is a talented group with great dialogue between the instruments and I think they are one of the most forward-looking classical music groups at the moment. 2018 cd on ECM.

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Arvo Pärt ‎– The Symphonies (Tõnu Kaljuste, NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic Orchestra) (ECM)

End-of-summer laziness and boredom and the exhaustion of a very difficult winter are too overwhelming for me to write anything of substance and to scan/upload covers, etc. so there you go. A new recording of all 4 Arvo Pärt symphonies conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste and performed by the NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic Orchestra, this is the first studio recording of the fourth "Los Angeles" symphony of 2010. People who have mostly come to Pärt through his beautiful choral work or his masterful solo pieces "Fur Alina," "Spiegel Im Spiegel" or Tabula Rasa might surprised by the sometimes aggression and darkness hovering over these symphonies, especially the first two, which have that ominous Shostakovich/"Soviet" style, while Symphony 4 is perhaps closer to the majestic choral work, and Symphony 3 has a more majestic and cinematic feel to it, more particularly in the third movement. 2018 cd on ECM.

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Stephan Micus - Desert Poems

I think this is one of the most overlooked Micus albums. It doesn't have the epic quality of say Ocean or the experimental edge of The Music of Stones, neither the devotional loneliness of Athos, but still it's a noteworthy album. For one, it contains one of the most beautiful short tracks he's ever written, "Adela," another track with mourning violins that's great, "Shen Khar Venakhi," a great love song with an a-cappella delivery, "Contessa Entelina," and a lonely shakuhachi hymn, "For Yukand generally it's a diverse album with both classical music elements and a lot of African percussion moments that are cool and relaxing. 2001 cd on ECM.


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Rostom Alajian - Unquenchable Flame Of Remembrance

Years ago my university studies and an international university exchange program took me down to Thessaloniki, Greece's second biggest city, where the food is ample and the girls are pretty. Apart from the picturesque seafront, the amazing food and the vibrant political movement, which included a lot of demonstrations, strikes, occupations and clashes with the police, as well as an active hardcore punk/noise scene (which will be covered soon), I also discovered a few music gems. One of them is this cd featuring orchestral music composed by Soviet-Armenian-Greek composer Rostom Alajian. Apart from being a veteran of the antifascist war against the Nazis, Alajian was also the director of orchestras in Armenia, Georgia and Vladikavkaz. This cd includes two symphonic pieces with choirs dedicated to the Soviet Great Patriotic War and the battles in Crimea, Stalingrad and Pribaltika, with narrations in Russian, with that unrivaled emotional manner than only Russians can deliver. The music contains influences of Shostakovich, particularly the Leningrad symphony and his film music (King Lear/ Hamlet), albeit intertwined with military music and socialist realist overtones and elements of Central Asian/Oriental music. On top of that the choirs are as awesome as Russian military choirs can be, making you wanting to slap Nazi skinhead fucks. I discovered this cd in an immensely dusty second-hand bookshop run by a strange man who was the husband of the composer's daughter, the latter of whom self-released this cd in 2004.

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Yusef Lateef - The African American Epic Suite

An absolutely stunning symphonic piece of art by jazz legend Yusef Lateef (recorded when he was 83!), in which he offers a musical reflection on the 400-plus-year-old history of African Americans through four movements, each being a musical representation of slavery and abduction from the African homeland to be enslaved, enslavement and the beginning of a new self, compassion and resilience in the face of inhumanity, and the hopeful, roaring but also tentative period post-Jim Crow. This is an amazing combination of a jazz quintet (Lateef & Eternal Wind) and orchestra, alternating between African rhythms, free but also spiritual jazz, and classical music. I love this. 1994 cd on ACT.

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Béla Bartók ‎– Concerto For Orchestra & The Miraculous Mandarin (Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra)

This is a symphony Béla Bartók composed in 1943, performed by the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Milan Horvat. Bartók called this a concerto for the solo manner in which different instrument sections are presented. I fucking love this. Informed by his use of folk music, it is a dark, nightly composition with a lot of droning qualities in the horn and woodwind sections.

The Miraculous Mandarin was a score for a ballet Bartók wrote in the early 1920s, which starts with an amazingly aggressive and dissonant section of violins, and alternates between excellent quiet pieces of woodwinds and awesome brass/string waltz-like instances, and ends in a superb galloping manner. I ripped this from a tape of the "Rose Collection.

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