The High Pony Tail

'Avant que j'oublie ... '

2010-09-20T13:53:00.003-02:30

I am now posting at a new location and hope to see you there. I will be maintaining the Pony Archives as they stand, although some of the transfers here may eventually be replaced with improved or rearranged programs at 'Avant que j'oublie'. Thanks to everyone for their patronage, comments and contributions.

UPDATE 11 JANUARY 2011: I have decided to leave The High Pony Tail archives up for as long as there is demand --- unfortunately I have very little time to re-up any files that have become lost or deleted by Mediafire. I am glad to know that I am not alone in experiencing difficulties with MF, I have heard many similar sob stories to mine. My understanding is that Mediafire is simply overextended for storage space --- as a 'MF Pro' user, the files should never be deleted as long as I pay my monthly fee. It's too bad that they have become unreliable, as they remain my favorite company to deal with, they are the only ones that don't impose waiting limits on free users and allow unlimited simultaneous downloads. There are no pop-ups and little of the sleaze I associate with Rapidshare, Megaupload and Fileserve etcetera. Hopefully, they will find a way to improve their service and I'll be able to return to them.

In the meantime, please let me know about problem files and missing folders and visit me at the new address.

Cornelius Cardew: 'Bun No 1' at the Proms (and at Five against Four)

2010-08-29T03:15:00.004-02:30

I am just about ready to begin posting again. My new blog name and address is Avant que j'oublie. I'll be maintaining the posts here at the High Pony Tail as best as I can, but you'll find the new stuff at the new place. I hope that some of you will follow me there.

The most exciting music on the internet this week is a recent Proms performance of Cornelius Cardew's exceptionally rigorous and beautiful orchestral piece 'Bun No 1' (1965) posted at the Five against four blogspot. My advice to you is --- don't miss it! It's certainly the musical event of my month and I don't feel in the least bit guilty putting off my own new posts for another week or so and indulging in repeat listenings to this lost post-serial treasure.

Thanks to everyone whose has encouraged me at the High Pony Tail. I'll be getting to your requests at Avant que j'oublie soon, beginning with some great stuff shared by Olde Edo and R. Pitts. If that sounds promising, make sure and add it to your bookmarks. Take care and see you soon.

Late Summer

2010-08-20T09:39:00.008-02:30

Hello to the (surprisingly numerous) High Pony Tail followers. It's been a while since the last bunch of posts. I actually have a large number of LP transfers and out-of-print CDs uploaded and ready to go – probably enough to keep us occupied until the end of the year. And I've been enthusiastically scanning covers and writing the usual fol-de-rol to introduce each item. Unfortunately this new-found enthusiasm has coincided with a total meltdown at Mediafire headquarters: I have been spending all of my time reuploading parts of previous posts that have 'gone missing' without rhyme, reason or pattern.

I have 'spoken' to the people in Harris County, Texas and they ensure me that their servers are working perfectly. I have paid for extra bandwidth but that has had no apparent effect.

So for now I am putting a hold on any further posts. Please don't hesitate to let me know about files that aren't downloading for you – I don't blame you! I continue to be grateful for and amazed by the intelligence and generosity of the people who have found this blog. Perhaps things will clear up at MF as the summer ends. (Yes, I've thought about moving to a different service, but the alternatives – Megaupload and Rapidshare – don't appeal to me for numerous reasons. And can you imagine reuploading all of these files to another service?)

I especially want to apologize to those of you who recently sent me hard-to-find recordings to share. (You know who you are.) I was planning to begin again by posting your offerings. But for now I can't see continuing to post links just to watch them disappear.

Again, please feel free to leave comments here about any and all DL problems and I'll try to take care of them as quickly as I am able.

Soccer Committee: sC (2007)

2010-08-16T10:35:00.014-02:30

This small set of tiny songs by the Dutch artist Mariska Baars a/k/a 'Soccer Committee' is an impressive achievement that stands the test of time. While it appears to be one thing it quickly becomes something else and then something else again. As far as I know, this 2007 release was a limited-edition release. I wish I could remember where I found it – I had thought it was HERE but apparently not, although you'll find other SC stuff at that address. And HERE is the delightful SC web site.

By the way, the above picture has nothing to do with this recording – 'thank you' to the people who have sent me a message in the last month or so – more posts soon. A special thanks to Olde Edo and R. Pitts who have shared a couple of CDs and requested I crawl out of my hole and share them with the rest of you. I hope to have those (and many more) up in time for autumn!

**************

BUT ---- THE FOLLOWING DAY... Yesterday I posted this and JvG got in touch to let me know that the third selection didn't download properly. In the meantime I discovered that this wonderful recording, while physically out of print, is available as an MP3 download – for about the price of a beanburger and chips – from BOOMKAT. (I just checked it out myself and the interface works very well. The MP3 is much higher quality than the files I've provided – although I hope that it won't be much longer before lossless downloads become the norm on commercial music sites.)

So, I can't really justify providing this one for free. On the other hand, I feel very strongly that this piece of music ought to be more widely known (which is why I posted it in the first place.) And what about JvG and the other 20 people who downloaded this and are stuck with that truncated third track?

HERE are the first three pieces from this recording – if you picked this up yesterday, you'll need to replace track three, and if you like what you hear, you'll be wanting to buy the whole package HERE.

Summertime blues

2010-07-26T14:32:00.011-02:30

I am just beginning to emerge from a catatonic state of depression, undoubtedly worsened by a recent heat wave.

During my depressive spells, just as during my occasional bad migraines, listening to music becomes painful. At my lowest point, the following selection was all that I could bring myself to listen to, over and over again, weakly reaching for my IPod and a fresh bottle of Gerolsteiner water. My thanks to the composers and musicians who made it possible (and to friends and acquaintances who put up with me – hi Susan!)

Heinz Holliger: 'Vier Lieder Ohne Worte' for violin and piano (1982-83) – Akiko Tatsumi (violin) and Yuji Takahashi (piano); – from an out-of-print 1989 Camerata CD

Michael Moser: 'NNO – Fernaumoos' (1993) – Polwechsel: Radu Malfatti (trombone), Burkhard Stangl (guitar), Michael Moser (cello), Werner Dafeldecker (double bass and guitar) – from 'Polwechsel' (Hat Hut CD)

Werner Dafeldecker: 'Hyogo' (1998) – Polwechsel: John Butcher (saxophones), Burkhard Stangl (guitar), Michael Moser (cello and guitar), Werner Dafeldecker (double bass, guitar and electronics) – from 'Polwechsel 2' (Hat Hut CD)

The Polwechsel CDs are available – and at a bargain price – from Hat Hut's U.S. distributor. Also worth a visit – the Polwechsel website, which includes scores and more.

Summertime blues MP3

Summertime blues FLAC

Tuli Kupferberg (1923 – 2010)

2010-07-12T23:59:00.009-02:30

György Kurtág: Aus der Ferne III für Streichquartett (1991)

Keller Quartett, ECM 1598 (1996)

By request: Gunther Schuller – Quartet for doublebasses (1947)

2010-07-10T21:43:00.010-02:30

This one's for Shurabass. Sometime last year he asked if I'd ever come across a quartet for doublebasses by Gunther Schuller. I hadn't even heard of it, but I made a mental note, and was delighted to find it this afternoon.

I've listened to this 1947 piece three times now, and it's a delight. Not at all a novelty. A brooding atonal work in three movements. (So, OK, a brooding delight ... I know ... outrageous oxymorons and compulsive alliteration ... as the poet Jack Spicer said on his deathbed: 'My vocabulary did this to me.')

Schuller explains that the opening sonority is identical to the final chord of the fourth of Schoenberg's 'Five pieces for orchestra.' Despite all kinds of elaborate divisi writing for the orchestral bass section from Mahler to the present day, I've never heard a piece for four basses alone (although it wouldn't surprise me to find out that Franco Donatoni had written one.)

This is taken from a stereo Vox/Turnabout LP, date unknown (to me). The bassists are Sam Hollingsworth, Clifford Spohr, James Carroll and Arnold Craver. I assume it's not on CD, since somebody on Amazon is trying to sell a copy of this for $199.00. I don't think it's worth that kind of money but it's certainly worth your time. (There is a recent digital recording of the piece, however.) Thanks, Shurabass, for the recommendation!

Schuller: Quartet for doublebasses

Scelsi: The First LP (Ensemble 2e2m, FY 1982)

2010-07-05T17:05:00.014-02:30

Giacinto Scelsi is another example of a composer whose death has been followed by many (many!) more recordings than he saw in his lifetime. As with Feldman and Cage, there are so many CDs that collecting them is a full-time job. Scelsi's value is in danger of being obscured by the avalanche of arcana his legend has unleashed.

I've poked around in the stacks, and to my mind the best of Scelsi remains the three compact discs of orchestral music that Jürg Wyttenbach recorded for the French Accord label and the two-disc set by the Arditti Quartet for Éditions Salabert. They offer a generous selection of the composer's most fully-realized works and were recorded while he was still alive.

As most of us know by now, Scelsi's mature representative works were created by the composer at his piano and electronic keyboards. They are the product of improvisations that fill a reputed 800 hours of reel-to-reel tape. During his lifetime, Scelsi had already convened a renaissance-style assembly line of musicians and copyists to transcribe and orchestrate the tapes under his supervision (death hasn't stopped the process: the works are coming faster than ever.)

None of this is to denigrate the important musicians who have spent time in Scelsi's orbit – Alvin Curran, Jöelle Leandre, William O. Smith, Carol Robinson and, above all, the singer Michiko Hirayama and cellist Frances-Marie Uitti. Or to call into question the power and beauty of his best music. Or the sometimes direct, sometimes coincidental anticipations of later developments – certain procedures in Xenakis and Ligeti (both composers praised Scelsi) – Radelescu and Grisey – electro-acoustic composition and improvisation right through to its digital present. But a marked difference in quality becomes evident when comparing the mature works of Scelsi's lifetime (rather modest in size and number) with the flood of Scelsiana now overwhelming an interested listener. Why not do the obvious thing – release the best of Scelsi's improvisations commercially? The respective value of notated and improvised music is no longer an issue, and the end result is the same: a recording.

This LP of chamber music by Ensemble 2e2m and Lucas Pfaff can be added to the list of essential Scelsi. (It also includes Harry Halbreich's often quoted essay on the composer's importance – and the claim that this was the first commercial recording of Scelsi's music, made when he was 76 years old.) 'Four pieces on one note' (1959) is here, as expected. 'Kya' (also 1959) is a short concerto for clarinet and seven instruments. It has the sunny grace of Bruno Maderna's 'Serenade' and a offhandedly formless beauty I envy. 'Pranam II' (1973) for nine instruments including electric organ is darker, but not as dark as the well-known piece for harp, tam-tam and amplified double-bass, 'Okanagon', one of the most disturbing works of that disturbing year, 1968. (Everything from MEV to Grisey to Glenn Branca and early Sonic Youth can be extrapolated from it.) Scelsi has a undervalued virtue shared by several Italian contemporaries (Aldo Clementi, Franco Donatoni, Niccolo Castiglioni) – concision.

(Another excellent O.P. Scelsi recording – a 1995 Attacca CD of pieces for wind instruments and percussion – is available courtesy of Jessica at bruitage et mon cri dans l'escalier. )

Followers of new music are spoiled for worthy specialist groups today. Ensemble 2e2m made its mark in a somewhat less-crowded field; its 70s and 80s recordings (Scelsi, Barraqué, Donatoni and so on) remain competitive and classic. I transferred this from a nicely-preserved LP and used a bit of ClickRepair to remove a few pops. The LP itself was not reissued as a CD – 'Four pieces' is included in Editions RZ's historical Scelsi set – 'Okanagon' was briefly available on CD in an Ensemble 2e2M survey on FY.

SCELSI – FOUR PIECES – FLAC

Morton Feldman: 'For Philip Guston' (1992 Hat Hut CD)

2010-07-05T15:13:00.009-02:30

It should be remembered that at the time of Morton Feldman's death in 1987, very little of his music had been recorded and less was in print: the CRI recording of 'The Viola in my life' and the Columbia/Odyssey LP of 'Rothko Chapel' that I recently posted. As a composition student, I had organized a concert of early Webern and Feldman with my fellow composer Sid Dansby. On a trip to Baltimore I saw my first scores from the composer's 'second period' – 'I Met Heine on the Rue Fürstenburg' and 'Madame Peress died last week at 90' – so I was aware that Feldman had returned to conventional notation. But news of the big orchestra works for German radio and, especially, the unprecedentedly long and longer chamber music ('Trio', 'Patterns in a chromatic field', the first 'String Quartet') hadn't reached Tampa, Florida at that time ... not even as a rumor.

'For Philip Guston' was the first of the late Feldman pieces I heard. When I first moved to New York City, I couldn't sleep without the radio on, after drinking the better part of a bottle of red wine. I awoke about 2 AM one autumn morning about a quarter of the way through this recording of the Guston piece. The radio was on very low. I could just make out the outlines of my few possessions in my tiny room. The Columbia University station had a tendency to play American-style minimalism in the wee hours. I heard some repetition, but there was no apparent process at work. Bare minor ninths surrounded by silence, like Webern or Dallapiccola. I certainly wouldn't have guessed Feldman. I waited for the piece to end, for the announcer to put a name to it for me. Three hours later ... I was still waiting as the sun rose ...

One of the less important reasons Morton Feldman gave for turning to one-movement works lasting three, four and five hours was the realization that he (and his contemporaries) were churning out half-hour long pieces to fit on LP sides and slot into conventional concert programs. He died right as the compact disc was rolling out. (Now composers write 70 minute pieces to fill CDs.) The first batch of Hat Hut Feldman boxes hit Tower Records in 1992. Since I was working at minimum wage back then, fifty or sixty dollars was a very large sum – 1/4 of a month's rent! I could barely justify buying even one, but in the end I chose 'For Philip Guston'. It's still my favorite of the long late Feldmans. For one thing, four and a half hours isn't as long as the nearly six-hour second String Quartet. Also, the musical material in this piece is unusual for Feldman. Most of the late works spend several hours filling out the space between three or four adjacent semi-tones. Compared to that, 'Guston' sounds like Copland! The opening 'C – A – G – E' motif, however far from it the music wanders, is singularly luminous and suggestive as scored for flute, piano and tuned percussion. And of all the long pieces, this is the least static – where the second quartet is as drably beautiful and unchanging as a room of Agnes Martins, 'For Philip Guston' is like a very extended rondo: when those four notes return after an hour, after two hours and then, after three, it's breathtaking – the composer's 'heavenly lengths' are, in this case, entirely justified.

Remarkably, there are four recordings of 'For Philip Guston' (the others are by the California Ear Unit, the SEM Ensemble and a group I haven't heard onWergo.) The Hat Hut performers, seen in the photo above, are Nils Vigeland (piano and celesta), Eberhard Blum (piccolo, flute and alto flute) and Jan Williams (glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba and chimes). This trio toured extensively with Mr. Feldman at the piano - 'Why Patterns?', 'Crippled Symmetry', 'For Christian Wolff' and 'For Philip Guston' were written with these specific players in mind.

Hat Hut CDs are released in limited editions – this 4-CD set has been out of print for 20 years now. I've posted it in FLAC with a scan of the booklet. (If anyone can share a lossless transfer of the Hat Hut 'Patterns in a chromatic field' with Rohan de Saram and Marianne Schroeder, I'd be very grateful!)

NEW LINK 30 August 2010: I am very grateful to GraspRelease for reupping this very large post as two (large) RAR archives. GR has graciously allowed me to post his links until I've got them uploaded myself.

Jon Vickers sings 'Die Winterreise' (1984 EMI LP)

2010-07-04T16:50:00.013-02:30

Here's Jon Vickers' 1984 recording of Schubert's 'Winterreise', with Geoffrey Parsons on the piano. Not to be confused with the singer's somewhat later recording on VAI. (I haven't heard that one, but it has a reputation as a 'party' record. Not a KC and the Sunshine Band or James Brown kind of party – the phrase apparently refers to recordings by classical musicians that are so awful that they are played at parties given by classical music-lovers and laughed at.)

Vickers has an famously odd voice and is said to be a somewhat unpleasant man. His reputation in his great operatic roles is fairly secure but he is nobody's idea of a lieder singer. Crooning to himself with gum in his mouth and a gun in his pocket, at tempos ratcheted down to a steady, then not-so-steady crawl. In short, he's a right nutter and perfectly cast as Schubert's winter traveller.

My favorite recordings of this song cycle tend to have an edge to them (Hotter/Raucheisen – Pears/Britten – Schreier/Richter). Vickers/Parsons is even better, although I only listen to it once or twice a year. Four of the songs are available on EMI's 'The Very Best of Jon Vickers" but as far as I know the cycle is not available on CD. I've taken this from a typically tetchy French 'Voix de son Maître' pressing; after numerous cleanings, new needles and careful declickings, I seem to have more or less tamed it. My copy of this record came without the song texts, but they should be easy enough to find.

The picture above is taken from Joao César Monteiro's 2001 film 'Blanche-Neige', adapted from a play by the Swiss writer Robert Walser. That's Walser in the snow – he died on 25 December 1956 while on his daily walk at the sanatorium.

Le Voyage d'Hiver (Vickers, French EMI LP) FLAC

After an earlier incident ....

2010-07-02T18:30:00.002-02:30

... service is back to normal.

If you tried to download a file in the last 36 hours and couldn't, please try again!

Thanks to David P. and David G. for alerting me to the problem.

Ornette Coleman: Chamber music (RCA Red Seal LP 1968)

2010-06-30T16:31:00.010-02:30

"The 10:00 – 3:00 and 9:00 – 5:00 system of music affects our memory more than any other pleasure. This is why melodies we like that we have heard before – especially those which have been put to a language – are mostly preferred to melodies we hear for the first time. Instrumental music has suffered and is suffering from these two statements. (Where is the melody? I can't hear the melody?) Composers and performers are faced with creating a music which will live in its own time with its value not forgotten in the future ...

Music doesn't have to do anything for you or to you to become music. It exists without these restrictions, and when we reach a comparable stage with life we shall live without restriction and better the meaning of living." – Ornette Coleman, from the liner notes of this record.

This 1968 RCA Red Seal LP contains Mr. Coleman's 'Forms and Sounds' for woodwind quintet and two pieces for string quartet – 'Saints and Soldiers' and 'Space Flight'. The performers are members of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra – among them the clarinet player Anthony Gigliotti and Mason Jones on French horn (complete personnel is included in the scans.) These are probably the best performances I've heard of Ornette Coleman's notated works – certainly better than the orchestral work 'Skies of America' (in either the commercial CBS release or the travesty of a live performance I once witnessed in New York with an uncooperative New York Philharmonic led by a scowling Kurt Masur.)

The fact remains that for Coleman, traditional notation alone is inadequate for the non-improvising musician. Coleman's music, while basically tonal, incorporates intonational and rhythmic subtleties as difficult as those found in the scores of a Ferneyhough or Lachenmann. The improvising saxophonist Evan Parker has made some interesting observations about the so-called 'new complexity' in notated music – much of the resulting music sounds uncannily like the non-notated African-American and European creative music of the 60s onwards. Only in a utopia would one expect virtuosos of notated music – with full-time jobs as orchestral and chamber musicians – to be able to absorb Coleman's empirically-acquired harmolodic principles in the space of a one-day recording session. However, Ornette Coleman remains a great believer in utopias. And as he says here: ' [these musicians] are the best to have ever played my work."

The genesis of 'Forms and Sounds' is fairly well known. Coleman was fed up with the lack of work in New York for his current trio (with David Izenson on bass and Charles Moffet on drums) and, in 1965, took the group to London. He did this without arranging any dates beforehand and ran afoul of England's strict union rules regarding foreign 'popular' musicans. In order to qualify as a 'concert artist', Coleman and his promoter arranged to present his 'concert music' alongside the improvising trio – and 'Sounds and Forms' was premiered at Fairfield Hall in Croydon, London in 1965.

I have also included this version of the wind quintet, which was recorded for an Arista-Freedom LP that did not appear in the United States until years later. A major difference between the premiere and the RCA version is that Coleman adds improvised trumpet in the later performance (some of his best recorded work on that instrument, in my opinion.) 'Reservatory' has posted a transfer of the complete double-LP set 'The Great London Concert' at Lucky's Psychic Hut. My own transfer is from a different single-disc issue (the wind quintet only.) I've enclosed complete scans of both records that I've transfered.

ORNETTE COLEMAN CHAMBER MUSIC FLACS

Records from my 18th Year Part Two

2010-06-30T15:34:00.007-02:30

'The New Stravinsky'! If you have the gigantic box of the Stravinsky-conducted CBS recordings, then you already have this one. When I was 18 years old, this record was about ten years old. Within another four years, it had been deleted and subsumed into that original, vinyl Stravinsky Edition 'silver box'. I saw it once, when I first moved to New York, behind the counter at the Sam Goody's record store in the World Trade Center concourse, where my friend Sid had gotten a clerking job. But it was far beyond my financial means at the time.

Even if you have the CD collection, I hope you will give this a listen. I swear it sounds much better taken straight from the vinyl. (This sealed copy had somehow survived without warping until 2009.)

Here are the Gregg Smith Singers again, and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, conducted mostly by Robert Craft (complete scans are included.) The pieces are the 'Variations', 'Abraham and Isaac', 'Introitus' and the 'Requiem Canticles'.

THE NEW STRAVINSKY – FLAC AND COVER SCANS

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For fanatics of the late Stravinsky, I have also pulled together a few stray performances – 'Abraham and Isaac', sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, with Gary Bertini and the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, from a 1982 Orfeo LP

along with

'Abraham and Isaac' (again) and 'A Sermon, A Narrative and A Prayer', Paul Sacher conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; the vocal soloists are Derrik Olsen, Jeanne Deroubaix and Hugues Cuénod. These performances are from November 19, 1965 and are taken from a 4-CD box on the Musiques Suisses label, 'Resonanzen: Paul Sacher, Dirigent und Anreger.'

BERTINI and SACHER FLACS and INFO

Records from my 18th Year Part One

2010-06-30T15:31:00.006-02:30

Here is the first of two records that I played repeatedly in my 18th year – my first year of university. I only found them again recently (my first record collection was lost in a Baltimore apartment fire in 1982.) I spent much of the 1980s and 90s traveling to Europe and Canada, always searching for books and LPs, these amongst them. Only a dozen years ago, one had to actually travel to track down cultural treasures.

Morton Feldman: 'Rothko Chapel' and 'For Frank O'Hara' Odyssey Y 34138 LP 1976 – The Gregg Smith Singers, Karen Philips (viola), Jan Williams (percussion) (Rothko Chapel) – Members of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, SUNY Buffalo; Jan Williams, conductor (For Frank O'Hara)

Also included is a performance of what has become my favorite orchestral work of Feldman's – Violin and Orchestra, with Isabelle Faust, violin; Peter Rundel, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (from a Col Legno CD which also includes 'Coptic Light' and is worth checking out.)

FELDMAN – FLAC and SCANS

NOTE 2 JULY 2010 – I have re-upped 'Rothko Chapel' – the transfer I had included was the raw FLAC file ... nothing wrong with that ... but I intended to share a modestly-declicked version, which makes a difference with a piece as quiet as this. (I had already done that with 'For Frank O'Hara'. )

Hans Rosbaud conducts 'Moses und Aron' (Columbia Masterworks LP 1957)

2010-06-27T18:01:00.010-02:30

Hans Rosbaud's recording of Arnold Schoenberg's 'Moses und Aron' is another of those classics that hasn't been reissued in the CD era. The LP itself is hardly a rarity – I have several copies that I picked up for two dollars or less. Finding a copy in decent shape has been a little harder, but I finally managed (only $1.50!)

This is the first commercial recording of the opera, from a 1954 radio broadcast with the Symphony Orchestra of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk. Hans Herbert Fiedler is Moses and Helmut Krebs is Aron. Ilona Steingruber is also on hand. Yes, it is in mono, but it is a impeccably recorded document of an incredibly well-played and sung performance. This might be Hans Rosbaud's finest recorded moment. I don't know if I have heard any of Schoenberg's orchestral works so convincingly and accurately performed. (It would be interesting to know how many rehearsals were dedicated to this project.) As was the practice in those days, the singers (and chorus) are placed somewhat to the front of the orchestra, but it works very well. Michael Gielen on Philips/Brilliant and Herbert Kegel on Berlin Classics are very good stereo recordings, but if you are at all interested in Schoenberg, you need to hear this.

I have applied a modest amount of autodeclicking and posted this in FLAC, with complete scans. The booklet includes substantial pieces by Allen Forte and Milton Babbitt, as well as a complete libretto.

MOSES und ARON

The Kasenetz and Katz Super Circus (Buddha LP)

2010-06-27T17:41:00.008-02:30

In articles and reviews of the recent remaster of the Rolling Stones' 'Exile on Main Street', a particular phrase kept popping up, leading me to believe it was fed by P.R. types to hungry reviewers starved for an angle. 'Exile on Main Street' "may not be the greatest rock and roll album of all time" they say, but "it is certainly the most rock and roll rock and roll album of all time!"

Similarly, "Kasenetz and Katz Super Circus" may not be the greatest bubblegum album of all time, but it is certainly the most bubblegum bubblegum album of all time.

Since I feel that those Buddha Records bubblegum materminds, Messieurs Kasenetz and Katz (and Joey Levine), have not received sufficient recognition for that achievement, here is the LP in its entirety. With the exception of the miserable title track (a play on the 'Sgt Pepper'/'Magical Mystery Tour'-style carnival concept) this is a solid album packed with hits – 'Quick Joey Small', 'Easy to Love', 'I Got it Bad for You' – and some surprisingly evocative balladry – 'Log on Fire' and 'N.Y. Woman'.

This post is for Tim Prudhomme and Lori Aime.

FLAC with SCANS.

Noël Lee plays Schubert – The first 13 piano sonatas (1970 Valois LP)

2010-06-27T17:17:00.010-02:30

As the 1960s came to an end, the pianist and composer Noël Lee asked Michel Bernstein, the proprietor of the Valois label, if he was interested in issuing an intégrale of the Schubert piano sonatas. Mr. Bernstein was interested, and in 1969, the first box – 'The Last Ten Sonatas' – was recorded. With the completion of the second box in 1970 – 'The Impromptus and 13 Early Sonatas' – Valois had the distinction of being the first label to disseminate the complete Schubert sonatas.

Of course, there is some disagreement about the number of piano sonatas Schubert composed. He left many unfinished, and only one (or two?) were published in his lifetime. Noël Lee opted to 'finish' the incomplete movements and also recorded two fragments. (Paul Badura-Skoda was the next to do a complete set. His four boxes for RCA – also never on CD – were released several years after Lee's set, and feature Badura-Skoda's own completions.)

These are terrific performances, the recorded sound is spendid and the records are in excellent condition. This is a five-LP set. Sides 1-3 include the two sets of Impromptus and the late 'Drei Klavierstücke'. I have transferred Sides 4-10 only: i.e the thirteen 'early sonatas'. I hope to get around to Sides 1-3 in the near future – as well as the five LPs of 'The Last Ten Sonatas'!

Schubert's early sonatas are still too-little known. Unlike Mozart's very early music, Schubert's is distinctive – 'Schubertian' – from the very beginning. These works are the equal of his later sonatas in every way but length. Included is the booklet, a detailed essay by Harry Halbreich (in French only). I've also included scans of the LP labels to help you navigate the folders.

In lightly declicked FLAC.

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Note 6 JULY 2010 – I have re-upped Sides 9 and 10 (Valois 865). Thanks to Hugo for letting me know that this file wouldn't open. If you had the same problem, please take a look in the folder (link above) and download 'REUP Lee Valois 865'. I assume that a bunch of you had the same problem. Please let me know when you do find a bad file so I can straighten things out as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience and comments.

Bill Dixon: 'November 1981' (Soul Note LP 1982)

2010-06-27T16:15:00.014-02:30

"The music of Bill Dixon maintains such a powerful flavor, it is one of those things where you inevitably remember the first time you taste it. For me, it was his mid-career landmark recording 'November 1981'. Within the one minute and twenty-six seconds of 'Webern', the opening track, I realized I had to completely rethink the possibilities of the trumpet as an improvising instrument. By the end of the album, I realized I had to examine my assumptions about the nature of creative music in general. For Dixon's music does not adhere to the common practice of any established musical genre, be it 'jazz', 'contemporary classical', 'avant-garde' or what-have-you. While drawing on all these rich traditions and more, he has established his own set of rules and principles ... " – Taylor Ho Bynum

'November 1981', one of the late Bill Dixon's most inventive recordings, is out of print. Given its importance, I feel it should be made available, especially for those – like myself – who feel that the examination of my assumptions about music is a never-ending process. My most productive, and pleasurable, periods of 'music appreciation' have been times of unsettled wrestling with stuff I just can't hear – from the Flemish contrapuntal masters to Italian opera to the music on this record. The lineup on 'November 1981' is somewhat unusual – trumpet, two bass players (Alan Silva and Mario Pavone) and percussion (Laurence Cook.) The interlocking pizzicato and arco buzzing and sawing of the bassists creates a low-lying skein of harmonic implication that is unlike anything I have encountered before. Dixon's trumpet is the 'only' solo melodic instrument. From this recording onwards, Dixon would continue to favor a dark and bass-heavy sound, adding cello, tuba and contrabass clarinet in his late orchestral works.

Bill Dixon also established clear 'rules and principles' regarding the documentation and dissemination of his music. One of the people he spoke most highly of was Giovanni Bonandrini, whose Soul Note label issued many of Dixon's records, without restrictions as to content and packaging. Dixon was famously outspoken about proper compensation – and not just financial compensation, but that was part of it. In particular, he insisted that the musicians on his recordings be paid for their work. That would seem to go without saying, but jazz and rock musicians generally record as independent contractors. While Bill Dixon is the composer of the pieces on 'November 1981', group improvised music is, by definition, spontaneous composition involving all of the participants.

For these reasons, I am posting this album in MP3 320 only, assuming that it will return to the catalog when Soul Note is able to reissue it. I have included the complete booklet, which includes a very informative essay with many musical examples by Jimmy Stewart (the composer and saxophone player, not the actor!)

My earlier post includes links to further information about Bill Dixon (including the essay by Taylor Ho Bynum I've quoted from) and his recordings.

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UPDATED NOTE 5 NOVEMBER 2010: Black Saint has issued a remastered 9-CD box of all of Bill Dixon's Soul Note and Black Saint records for a very low price --- less than the cost of two CDs (and a fraction of the prices that resellers have been asking for a single copy of 'November 1981'.) The box is strictly no-frills, simply the nine records in facsimiles of the original sleeves. The set includes 'In Italy' Volumes 1 and 2, November 1981, Thoughts, Son of Sisyphus, Vade Mecum I and II and Papyrus I and II. If you've enjoyed 'November 1981', you will certainly want to hear the Vade Mecum quartet – if you are less interested in 'jazz' per se but are a follower of contemporary classical music, electronic music and/or free improv, you shouldn't miss the Papyrus records (improvised duos for electronically-treated trumpet and percussion, with Tony Oxley.) You can order it from the Jazz Loft.

(There are four other boxes in the series – the Complete Soul Note and/or Black Saint recordings of Paul Motian – Lester Bowie – Cecil Taylor – and George Russell.)

Monsieur Inghelbrecht conducts Rossini (and Debussy)

2010-06-27T13:08:00.011-02:30

The conductor and composer Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht (1880-1965) was apparently a difficult man, but in post-WW II France he was second only to Roger Desormière as an orchestra leader. He founded the Orchestra National de la Radiodiffusion Française (ONF, later ORNF) in 1934 and his many broadcast recordings are preserved in the INA radio archives.

Gioachino Rossini's 'Comte Ory' is a stupendous work. His penultimate opera is largely a re-purposing of material from his final Italian-language opera, 'Il Viaggio a Reims' (1825), written for the coronation of Charles X. 'Le Comte Ory' does to the French language what 'La Cenerentola' and 'The Barber of Seville' did to Italian with hilarious and profound results. Eugène Scribe's serviceable comic libretto (it's the Middle Ages – the eponymous Count courts love and danger in disguise, first as a hermit and later a nun) is reduced to a carnivalesque babelogue of atomized phonetic waste amid endless musical invention. I've never followed the libretto and there isn't one included in this INA LP release of Monsieur Inghelbrecht's 1959 radio performance. (My heterodox view is that opera is best enjoyed without librettos – with exceptions made for the Mozart-da Ponte trilogy and Berg).

'Le Comte Ory' has been recorded surprisingly often and well. In my collection are versions by Vittorio Gui, John Eliot Gardiner and the very recent Jesús Lopez Cobos CD (with Juan Diego Flórez.) The Inghelbrecht recording, with the unmatchable Michel Sénéchal in the lead role, is in a class of its own. Unfortunately, the condition of my LP is in another class altogether – I've thought long and hard about whether this transfer is good enough to share. (There was a CD release in 1988; I'd love to get hold of it.) I've run this through ClickRepair several times and hope the musical virtues of the record outweigh its somewhat ragged condition. In FLAC with cover scans.

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Inghelbrecht was closely associated with his friend Debussy's 'Pelléas et Melisande'. His radio broadcasts of the opera were a yearly tradition in the 1950s. The 1962 broadcast marking the 100th anniversary of Debussy's birth was issued by the INA on a Montaigne CD in the early 90s. Aside from Desormière's classic mono EMI recording, this ravishingly-recorded stereo set is my all-time favorite. The cast is made up of Inghelbrecht's ONF regulars – Jacques Jansen, Micheline Grancher, Solange Michel, Michel Roux and André Vessières. The orchestra is magnificent. And the conductor's 1933 essay 'How not to interpret Pelléas' is essential reading.

I have included that essay in the package. The text of 'Pelléas' is one of many exceptions to the flippant remark I made above about opera librettos. It's not included here, but an outstanding virtue of both Debussy's opera and the French art of declamation is that you can understand every word of the text without one. If you can understand French. In FLAC with scans HERE.

The Koeckert Quartet on Bavarian Radio

2010-06-27T12:27:00.008-02:30

I previously posted the Koeckert Quartet's Deutsche Grammophon recording of the Haydn Op 20 Quartets and look forward to transferring some late Beethoven. I fell for this quartet when I first heard them and it's a frustration that so little is currently available. Here are two out-of-print Orfeo compact discs of recordings the quartet made for the Bayerischen Rundfunks.

The original Koeckert Quartet comprised the first desk players of the post-war Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under Joseph Keilberth; in 1949 they moved to Eugen Jochum's Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. (Meaning that they played on many of my favorite Bruckner recordings.) The first CD is of this lineup: Rudolf Koeckert and Willi Buchner (violins), Oskar Riedl (viola) and Josef Merz (cello). The program is Mendelssohn's Quartet Op 12, the second of Schumann's Op 41 Quartets and Smetana's 'From my life.' The recordings are from 1959 and 1960.

After the death of Willi Buchner, the young Rudolf Joachim Koeckert took over as second fiddle to his father. The second CD contains early-70s broadcasts of Haydn's C-major Quartet Op 74 No 1, Schubert's c minor 'Quartettsatz' and a very welcome (and very fine) performance of Max Reger's huge Quartet in f-sharp minor Op 121. (If all goes according to plan, I'll be serving up further healthy helpings of Reger's chamber music this summer.)

Both discs are stereo recordings in studio-quality sound. Scans of the track listings are included along with the FLACS.

Azio Corghi and Gioachino Rossini: 'Un petit train de plaisir' (1992)

2010-06-23T11:23:00.008-02:30

Continuing in the piano duo vein (and throwing in a bunch of percussion), here is Azio Corghi's inventive reworking of Gioachino Rossini's 'Péchés de vieillesse'. Corghi's 1992 ballet score transcribes and scrambles the composer's late piano music in a archly fantastic, anti-romantic manner, coaxing out the Satiesque – Queneauian – and Raymond Rousselian elements which Rossini's pataphysically-derisive brand of comedy clearly anticipates.

Azio Corghi (b. 1937) is an Italian composer with a special interest in Rossini, which goes as far as musicological work for the critical editions of Casa Ricordi and the Rossini Foundation of Pesaro. Among his operas is 'Blimunda', from the novel by the late Nobel-prize winning novelist José Saramago. 'Un Petit train de plaisir' was written for the choreographer Amedeo Amodio and the recording is from an O.P. CD on Ricordi.

Bruno Canino and Antonio Ballista are the pianists; they are joined by Les Percussions de Strasbourg. Mauro Bonifacio is the conductor. This is a (literally) fantastic piece of 'light' music. I hope it helps you keep your cool in the summer heat – in FLAC with scans.

Jacqueline Bonneau and Genevieve Joy play works for two pianos

2010-06-23T03:17:00.011-02:30

This recital of works for two pianos is a delight from beginning to end. In fact it seems to get more delightful as it goes along – after a stately Couperin 'Allemande', each piece is a small 18th-century miracle and the pianists pounce on the counterpoint and purr like cats. The Mozart sonata is a favorite of mine but I had no idea that Muzio Clementi, J.C. Bach and – especially –Wilhelm Friedrich Bach had written such gorgeous music for dueling keyboards (the trills!) Clementi and the Bachs grab the two piano format like Imax moviemakers – on headphones, gracefully dovetailed imitation and flocks of 3D trills bounce giddily from left to right and back again, making for slapstick verging on whiplash. (Headphones also reveal some unfortunate print-through 'ghosts', although mostly between tracks.)

In stereo, from a French Musicdisc LP, probably from the mid to late 1960s. The sound is on the boxy size, but the record is in good shape. Ms. Bonneau and Ms. Joy play modern pianos – transferred in a burst of enthusiasm this evening – in FLAC – with a quick declicking – HERE.

Maria de Alvear: 'En Amor Duro' (1991)

2010-06-23T02:50:00.010-02:30

Maria de Alvear is a Spanish-German composer of radically simple music. She was born in the same year that I was. As she says of her own scores: 'They look so helpless you could almost think a five-year-old had written them, someone who can't write music. But, of course, I did know how to write music. I just made a clean sweep.'

She is a student of Mauricio Kagel and an admirer of Joseph Beuys. 'En Amor Duro' is one half of a diptych for solo piano (the other half is 'De Puro Amor'.)

I stumbled upon this out-of-print HatHut CD without previous knowledge of Ms. de Alvear or her works. This 50-minute piece will probably be a challenge – it was for me. It is not minimal, serial, post-serial, romantic or aleatoric. In fact, I don't even know if it is music. It certainly challenges my idea of what music might or ought to be and that is a rare experience in 2010. An apparently artless acre of dirt-cloddish notes is alchemized into a force field of fearsome implication. I approached 'En Amor Duro' in a very skeptical frame of mind and left it feeling changed. Just a little bit. (Which is a lot.) Just don't put it on as background music. That might be dangerous.

HatHut's house pianist Hildegard Kleeb is excellent as always and the recorded sound is great. In FLAC and with scans. Maira de Alvear's works are available on the World Edition label; World Edition have also recorded works by Linda Catlin Smith and Peter Ablinger.

Nell Gotkovsky plays Weill, Webern and Schoenberg (French RCA LP 1975)

2010-06-23T02:31:00.007-02:30

I don't know anything about the violinist Nell Gotkovsky. She made quite a number of recordings for French EMI (see the back cover of this LP.) She is a bit of a thowback – wide vibrato and lots of rubato. Even in this 20th-century program, she can't resist throwing in a more than a hint of portamento.

While this approach shouldn't work at all in Kurt Weill's Violin Concerto, a neoclassical masterwork, it does somehow and it's become a favorite recording. Contributing greatly to this memorable performance is Eliahu Inbal and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.

The flip side is even stranger. Accompanied by her brother Ivar on piano, Ms. Gotkovsky has graced us with the slowest, spookiest and all-round craziest recordings of Webern's Four Pieces Op 7 and Schoenberg's Phantasy Op 47. And, yes, that is a recommendation. I'll never think of an E-flat major triad in quite the same way, having heard the Gotkovsky siblings' stealth landing on the final chord of the first Webern piece.

In FLAC from a great pressing.

The Smetana Quartet plays the Rasumovsky Quartets

2010-06-23T02:07:00.006-02:30

One of my favorite sets of the late Beethoven string quartets is the recording by the Smetana Quartet on Supraphon. Several years later, Jiri Novák, Lubomir Kostecky, Milan Skampa and Antonin Kohout recorded the Op 59 quartets. These early digital recordings were made in October 1979 as a co-production between Supraphon and Japanese Denon. As far as I know, the CD issue was only available in Japan and is now lost in the same limbo as the rest of the Denon catalogue. I am a big fan of the sound that the Denon engineers got in their pioneering digital efforts (they made the first commercial digital releases, beginning in 1972.) Their dry, super-close miking may be an acquired taste. And there are those who feel the Smetana Quartet were no longer at their best by this date. Nevertheless, I love these CDs – despite occasional intonation problems and some odd phrasing.

FLAC – I mislabeled track 3 of the first quartet; it is indeed the 3rd and 4th movements of Op 59, No 1 (not No 3.)

Philip Langridge sings Rameau and Szymanowski

2010-06-21T00:55:00.006-02:30

The versatile English tenor Philip Langridge died in March of this year. As a tribute, here are two favorite recordings of mine –

* Rameau's one-act opéra-ballet 'Zephyre' from a 1976 Peters International LP. Langridge is joined by the sopranos Michele Pena and Isabel Garcisanz. Jean-Piérre Wallez conducts the Ensemble Instrumental de France with Catherine Caumont on harpsichord. The choirs are the Maîtrise Gabriel Fauré and the Elisabeth Brasseur Men's Chorus. Scans of the cover and libretto are included.

* From the last night of the Proms, 1983, Szymanowski's Third Symphony. Philip Langridge is the tenor; the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus is conducted by Norman del Mar. This is taken from a BBC Radio Classics CD.

The entire package is HERE.

Claude Ballif: Piano and chamber music (1953 – 1962)

2010-06-20T23:51:00.017-02:30

Claude Ballif (1924 – 2004) claimed Webern and Satie as his 'masters'. The very idea seems outrageous. Yes, he did orchestrate Satie's 'Sports et Divertissements'. His titles are obliquely funny. Like both composers, his works tend to be short in length and short on rhetoric. Ballif claims to be 'one of the first to use chance in (his) musical works' – in 'Phrase pour la Souffle' (1958). He also developed his own 'system': 'metatonality'. From what I can gather, this technique is a sort of musical lipogram, a species of crippled dodecaphony. By omitting just one of the 12 notes, an imbalance is created, and the missing tone functions as a tonic in its absence.

Claude Ballif also wrote a book on Berlioz for Seuil, and articles on the Ars Nova and Machaut. And corresponded with John Cage and Dick Higgins. And worked at the GRM with Pierre Schaeffer. In the wake of May '68, with his friend Daniel Charles, he set up the music department at the newly-created Université de Vincennes (Paris VIII). In a somewhat retrograde manner, he gave his works opus numbers – up to Op 73, although his penultimate piece, 'Un délire de dédales' (2000), is not numbered. Late in life, he composed a number of religious works. He certainly had a lot of energy.

I would not have even noticed this CD in the secondhand bin had I not been introduced to Claude Ballif by the Avant Garde Project (AGP115 and 116).The three LPs transcribed by the AGP are from the late 60s and early 70s, involve electronics and multi-media and drones and sound very much of their time. (If you were planning to set Mallarmé's 'Un coup de des', Mr. Ballif beat you to it.) But they made enough of an impression on me that I remembered the name.

Ballif's piano and chamber music from the 50s and early 60s is gorgeous, delicate post-tonal stuff – I'm reminded not so much of Satie and Webern as late Debussy and late Schoenberg (the String Trio and Phantasy.) In fact, the Violin and Cello sonata practically require me to reach for that cliché: 'Mozartean grace'. The piano music is just about as fine: if you like the first four Klavierstücke of Stockhausen or Babbitt's quieter moments, you might well enjoy these. As long as you lower your expectations and just soak in those major sevenths and minor ninths.

The piano pieces are played by Jean Martin; the Violin Sonata by Clara Bonaldi and Sylvaine Biller; the Cello sonata by Pierre Pénassou and none other than Jacqueline Robin. The recordings were made in 1970 and 1972 and released on CD in 1991 on the Arion label. Since the contents split pretty much 50/50 piano/chamber, I have uploaded them in two folders, in FLAC .

NOTE 7 OCTOBER 2010 – Thanks to Mr. Randolph Pitts of New York City for providing me with another O.P disc of Ballif's music. I have posted it (and more) at my new location.

NOTE 10 OCTOBER 2010 – PART TWO has been reuploaded – if you had a problem before try again (the link is the same, above.) Thanks for your patience.

Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky play French music (and Brahms)

2010-06-20T23:32:00.008-02:30

My recent posting of piano duet recordings by the Kontarsky Brothers resulted in much enthusiasm, but also some sad news. I was unaware when I posted it that Alfons Kontarsky had died just this May – and that Aloys Kontarsky suffered a massive stroke in 1983 and hasn't played since.

It appears, then, that this 1983 recording may have been their last as a duo. The program is Bizet's 'Jeux d'Enfants', Milhaud's 'Scaramouche' and Fauré's 'Dolly'. I have added the brothers' suave performance of Brahms' 'St. Antoni Variations'.

IN FLAC, with light ClickRepair – the pressing is a little shoddy, but the piano playing is superb.

Jörg Herchet: 'Composition for Oboe, English Horn, Trombone, Percussion, Piano, Viola, Cello and Contrabass'

2010-06-20T22:49:00.008-02:30

Jörg Herchet was born in 1943 in Dresden. His musical studies were interrupted from the mid to late 1960s for 'ideological reasons' – the DDR was unhappy with him. Luckily, Paul Dessau, the best-known composer in East Germany, took him on as a private pupil, rescuing Herchet from a life in the booksellers' trade.

The 'Composition' in question was composed in 1984, and is dedicated to Paul Dessau. This work, for an insane octet of instruments, has flummoxed, flabbergasted and followed me around since I picked up the CD for a couple of dollars in 2009. I've seldom met a piece of music that was so rude and off-putting on first acquaintance. One evening I prepared a thermos of coffee and, equipped with a yellow legal pad, stayed up until dawn listening and taking notes in an attempt to grasp its form. When I awoke the following morning, drooling in the kitchen chair, my notes made as little sense to me as the dream journal I kept for a year or two in my thirties.

I'd like to share this astonishing piece with you folks. I'll take a whack at providing a glib bit of context – it's a fully-notated, post-tonal piece about forty minutes long. You may notice similarities to certain works by Elliott Carter and Edgard Varése. I think it's a minor masterpiece – I wish I had had the chutzpah to compose such a thing.

The performers are the Gruppe Neue Musik "Hanns Eisler" Leipzig, conducted by the composer. While the online retailers insist this 1994 CD is out-of-print, it is still listed at the Wergo web shop. So rather than posting the equally substantial piece for string quartet from the CD, I have substituted a 1998 orchestral work, 'nicht haftend'. It is performed by the Freiberg State Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Johannes Fritsch, from one of the 200 CDs in the 'Musik in Deutschland' series on German RCA/BMG. Other than that, I have never encountered another composition by Jörg Herchet. I think it's time for some new recordings.

IN FLAC, with a scan of the very helpful booklet.

Richard Strauss: Daphne (Lucia Popp, Bernard Haitink EMI LP)

2010-06-20T22:13:00.006-02:30

Ah ... 'Daphne'!

A Bucolic Tragedy in One Act (four sides) by Richard Strauss (composed in 1938, libretto by Josef Gregor.) This performance was recorded in my New York City apartment on the afternoon of May 31, 2010. A very fine German EMI pressing, straight from my turntable to CD-R. Lucia Popp is Daphne – Reiner Goldberg is Apollo – Peter Schreier is Leukippos. There is nothing like late Strauss ... and to my mind, 'Daphne' is his greatest work. The only competitive recording of the opera is on Deutsche Grammophon with Karl Böhm. Despite a dream cast (Hilde Gueden, Fritz Wunderlich, James King) the Böhm is a live document marred by stage noise and a poorly balanced recording. The LP we have here is a studio job in miraculous sound and ... Lucia Popp sings Daphne.

While this recording has been available on CD (I used to own it) I haven't seen it for awhile. If the occasional pop or crackle in this transfer disturbs you, try and track that CD down.

In FLAC and with scans (synopsis, no libretto) HERE.

Bill Dixon (1925 – 2010)

2010-06-17T14:00:00.017-02:30

One of the great composers of the second half of the 20th century has died at the age of 84.

* "COMPOSITION is 'the assembling of musical materials, generally accessible to every musician, into a NEW order'; IMPROVISATION is 'the instantaneous realization of composition without the benefit, or demerit, of being able to change or alter anything' – all music is BOTH composed and improvised." – Bill Dixon

Another great composer born in 1925, Pierre Boulez, makes for an interesting comparison. Both composers participated in periods of definitive rupture with the musical past – Boulez at Darmstadt, Dixon in free jazz. Their youthful interventions are recognized as milestones – Boulez forms the Domaine Musicale and composes 'Le Marteau sans Maître', Dixon organizes the 'October Revolution in Jazz' and records 'Intents and Purposes'. With IRCAM, the EIC and a conducting career, Boulez shaped several generations of composers and musicians – Dixon did the same from his Chair at Bennington College for thirty-plus years. History decides which proper names acquire a resonance of 'greatness' over time. Will Pierre Boulez be remembered as a promising composer who hit a brick wall with the exciting but bloated 'Pli selon pli' – and never recovered? Will Bill Dixon be remembered as a crochety thorn in the side of both 'popular' music and European modernism whose life-long productivity and high standards were rewarded with much-delayed recognition in his 70s and 80s?

* "So if Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' are now worth about $12 million, how is that possible? HE couldn't sell them, so they couldn't have been worth anything. And if they weren't worth anything THEN, then they can't be worth anything NOW!" – Bill Dixon

HERE are two pieces from Bill Dixon's 2009 recording 'Tapestries for small orchestra' on the Firehouse 12 label. The 'small orchestra' consists of five trumpet/cornet players, live electronics, cello, contrabass clarinet, bass and percussion. This 2-CD set, which also includes a 30-minute DVD of rehearsal and interviews, is available (along with other of the composer's in-print recordings) HERE.

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18 June 2010: I'd like to add a link to Taylor Ho Bynum's remembrance of Bill Dixon. Also, thanks to Stephen Haynes for his comments. And here is the Bill Dixon Facebook Page, which is filling up with tributes and memorials.

Please note that the two musical selections I've uploaded from 'Tapestries' are in MP3 only. If you are not familiar with Mr. Dixon's work, here is a chance to listen to it. If you enjoy it, I've provided a link to purchase the 2 CD/DVD set above.

Ives: 'The Calcium Light Night'

2010-06-15T14:27:00.012-02:30

The Columbia Masterworks LP "Calcium Light Night" was my successful introduction to Charles Ives. My initial teenage reaction to the symphonies, songs and marches had been more than a little disappointing. I didn't understand what the fuss was about until I borrowed Gunther Schuller's terrific compilation – two sides of entirely instrumental fragments for chamber orchestra that make the best possible case for Ives as experimentalist.

It's all here: the polytonal collages, the disregard for received musical forms and, most impressively, the still-stupefying rhythmic innovations. Many well-known recordings take a somewhat cavalier approach to Ives' notation. In Schuller's hands, the composer's superimposition of three (and more) tempos is absolutely convincing. It remains astonishing that Ives anticipated so spectacularly this major preoccupation of the post-Stockhausen crowd. Of greater importance, perhaps, are the unforgettable poetic effects – and the actual music – that the composer derives from his devices.

With 'The Calcium Light Night', Gunther Schuller was, in effect, the curator of a gallery show of Ives' best small works. About half of this record appears as 'filler' on the Sony CD issue of Ives' Second Symphony conducted by Leonard Bernstein. The omitted material – the three 'Sets' for orchestra – contains some astonishing music. To preserve the impact of this important document as it was conceived, I've made a lightly declicked transfer of the LP. The FLAC file and jacket scans are HERE. (Unfortunately, my copy is missing Schuller's detailed inner sleeve notes. If anyone has a copy to share, it would be much appreciated.)

*****

I've already posted a performance of Ives' 1904 Piano Trio, a fine example of his most radical and interesting work. Here's another very good recording of the piece, from a Decca LP by the Nieuw Amsterdam Trio. On the flip side are Aaron Copland's 'Vitebsk' and Ernest Bloch's 'Three Nocturnes'. Both pieces are new to me and continue in the impressively somber vein of the Ives trio. I used ClickRepair at a gentle setting to make my transfer and have posted it HERE.

Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky play the 19th and 20th century classics

2010-06-15T14:25:00.006-02:30

The Kontarsky Brothers are best known for their collaborations with Karlheinz Stockhausen in the 1960s. Most of us know them from that composer's ring-modulated duet 'Mantra' or as the Lowery and Hammond organists on 'Momente'. However, as a duo piano team they recorded much of the standard repertoire for Deutsche Grammophon in the 196os and 70s. Their Debussy and Ravel is admirable and still available on CD. As far as I know, the brothers' recordings of the Brahms f-minor Sonata Op 34b and Schubert Grand Duo remain unavailable. Since I am a great fan of piano duos in general (and these two pieces in particular) I've accumulated countless recordings: the Kontarskys are among the very best. As you'd expect, these are serious, 'objective' interpretations. The concern the brothers showed for the tuning and voicing of their pianos is legendary and their near-telepathic ensemble counts for a lot in these quasi-symphonic works.

For the Brahms and Schubert, in FLAC with light declicking and partial scans, put your cursor here and CLICK.

(Fans of the giddily insufferable André Tubeuf will find a specimen of prime Tubeufiana in the Schubert notes, from a French release – in French, of course.)

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Also very exciting is the Kontarsky Brothers' 1972 LP coupling the Bartók 'Sonata for two pianos and percussion' with Stravinsky's 'Concerto' and 'Sonata'. This was reissued on CD and is currently available as an MP3 download. I've made my own transfer from a superb LP copy and present it in unprocessed lossless sound as an example of DGG at its analog-era zenith. Christoph Caskel and Heinz König are the percussionists. (Mr. Caskel is also the percussionist in the familiar Candide recording of Stockhausen's 'Refrain' – so I've thrown that in as an extra.)

For FLAC click HERE.

I hope to get around to posting a sequel to this post, which would gather up the Haydn Variations and Fantasie from the Brahms/Schubert records, as well a delightfully unbuttoned 'Bon-Bons' LP of Bizet, Milhaud and Fauré.

New Records!

2010-06-15T13:38:00.009-02:30

Here are four new releases that have impressed me so much that I've almost forgotten about whatever it was I was raving about last month. Three CDs by living composers and one by a not-living composer whose work is under-recorded. All work in that area of music which attempts to steer clear of both the Wiley Coyote of post-Darmstadt orthodoxy (whatever that is) and the Roadrunner of the 'new simplicity' (ditto). In other words, they belong to what has become the mainstream of a music, both composed and improvised, that doesn't settle for facile resolutions to false problems.

* Chaya Czernowin (b. 1957) is an Israel-born composer of chamber and orchestral works, many of which include live electronics. Mode has issued a CD-length piece in three parts called 'Maim (Water)' for five soloists, electronics and orchestra. Perhaps the family resemblance to late Nono (specifically 'Prometheus') is due to her collaboration with the SWR Experimentalstudio Frieburg. The music is very sparse, unpredictable, ruggedly beautiful. If pushed to suggest other references, I might mention AMM and the Polwechsel composers. Beneath a surface that resembles the reductionist tendency in European free improvisation one senses a compositional strategy at work – but what is it?

* Clara Maïda is of the same generation as Czernowin. The lengthy essay with "in corpore vili" (Editions RZ) is similarly packed with references to Lacanian psychoanalysis and the violent effects of the symbolic on bodies both human and musical. Since my analyst was a Lacanian, you won't find me making glib remarks about whether such a discourse is or is not relevant to music at this late post-Bush II date. On first hearing, her string writing undeniably evokes Xenakis, but a wildly individual sensibility soon becomes apparent – discontinuous, willful and extremely aggressive. The score excerpts in the booklet, as brief as they are, make it clear that Maïda, who studied with both Lachenmann and Grisey, hasn't made things easy for herself by taking any shortcuts in the notational elaboration of her ideas.

* Georges Aperghis (born 1945) is a well-known name to serious followers of contemporary music. (Somehow I completely missed him until 2010.) The Paris-based composer works almost exclusively with spoken language. Much of his work is in experimental theater. In some ways he seems like a French Robert Ashley. As his modus operandi is so tightly bound to the speech rhythms of this gestural vocabulary, I found it hard to imagine Aperghis dealing with things like pitch classes and musical rhetoric. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover Nicolas Hodges' NEOS disc of Aperghis' delightful solo piano music. The gentle jabbering of his vocal works is transposed, successfully intact, into perfectly idiomatic piano music that recalls Debussy, Cecil Taylor, even Dutilleux at times.

* Isang Yun (1917 – 1995) is represented by a disc of works for accordion and string instruments on Wergo. The Korean-born composer made a splash in early '60s Darmstadt before being charged by the South Korean government as a communist spy, kidnapped and imprisoned. There was international outrage; released, Yun settled in Germany. Until recently, that bit of history (and the echt-60s 'texture' piece 'Reak') was all I knew of Isang Yun. Following last year's welcome release of an Ensemble Recherche disc of Stockhausen chamber music, Wergo is continuing to issue new recordings of the modern 'classics' rather than recycling their old ones. Isang Yun's music, played here by Stefan Hussong and the Minguet Quartet, is well-crafted, always surprising and perhaps a little too reticent for its own good. (That is a recommendation.) The booklet contains a substantial interview that is anything but withdrawn – Yun seems to have been a modest and funny man.

In hopes of inspiring interest in these recordings, I have taken the first piece from each of these CDs and gathered them HERE. I hope you enjoy what you hear and are intrigued by the scans of the packaging (back and front covers only.) Mode, NEOS and Wergo CDs are available worldwide from Amazon.com, FNAC and MDT Classics. Editions RZ is a little harder to come by – the Jazz Loft carries the Clara Maïda CD in the United States. (They also have an extensive section of 'new classical', including the other labels I've mentioned.)

Veronique Dietschy sings 4 Cantatas by Hasse

2010-06-14T02:59:00.018-02:30

... and as if Ms. Dietschy's lovely soprano was not enough, there is Dennis James (left) on the glass harmonica.

Johann Adolf Hasse (1699 – 1783) wrote over a hundred operas. Although he ended up in Dresden, the words he sets are Metastasio's and the music very ripe Italian Baroque. While I've heard some lesser Hasse, his best vocal music is surely the match of Rameau's. In the cantatas at hand there is not a hint of the mechanical conventions of the 'opera seria'. Recitative becomes aria. This endless melody (often in exotic modes) is fully, contrapuntally woven into the instrumental accompaniment.

The four cantatas here are taken from 2 CDs on Accord (1989) and Adés (1991). Ms. Dietschy is joined by two different groups: 'Ensemble Gradiva' and 'Ensemble Stradivarius'. The former is led by violinist Hiro Kurosaki, of Arts Florissants fame. The latter orchestra is joined in 'L'Armonica' by the aforementioned glass harmonica, Ben Franklin's surprisingly nimble novelty. At first content to add a glassy gleam to the continuo, it begins sparring with the soprano and winds up with its own virtuoso cadenza. As Metastasio wrote to the composer: " ... the sound and resonance of this armonica are superb: the soprano and the instrument were one." You may find yourself repeat-playing this opening piece for days and nights as I do. The remaining cantatas – ' La Gelosia', 'Il Cyclope' and 'La Danza' – are nearly as bewitching.

Opiates will enhance your appreciation, but are not essential. In FLAC with scans. The booklet gives thanks to the harmonica's 20th-century advocate Bruno Hoffman, whose LP on Candide was my introduction to the instrument.

(NOTE: the standard disclaimer applies – these CDs were, to the best of my knowledge, commercially unavailable at the time of posting.)

Sigmar Polke 1941 – 2010

2010-06-12T06:51:00.002-02:30

The painter Sigmar Polke died on Thursday.

Beethoven: Fantasy Op 77 (Rudolf Serkin, 1947)
Beethoven: Choral Fantasy Op 80 (Rudolf Serkin; Rafael Kubelik, Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks – 1977)

FLAC – here.

Yvonne Loriod 1924 – 2010

2010-05-21T16:14:00.008-02:30

This is a tribute to the pianist Yvonne Loriod, who died this Monday.

PART ONE contains three selections from CDs that are still (more or less) available. The 1961 performance of Berg's Piano Sonata is in great sound. At a swift tempo, with little or no dawdling over phrases, this is about as un-'Bergian' as it gets. Replace languid and opiated white nights with the brilliance of an early summer morning and the 'reveil des oiseaux' just about to begin. This is from volume two of the Domaine Musical retrospective on Accord. (Ms. Loriod's contribution to the Schoenberg 'Suite' Op 29, also in this box, is equally memorable.)

Next up is Pierre Boulez's 'Structures, Livre II'. This piece was written as a contribution to the Boulez/Loriod piano duo repertoire – they did a lot of concertizing in the late '50s and early 60s. The performance (unfortunately in mono) is from the 1961 Donaueschinger Musiktagen. It is available on a Col Legno CD of historic Boulez recordings (also included on the disc are the only recordings of the later-disowned 'Polyphonie X' and 'Poésie pour pouvoir', as well as the 1959 premiere of what would become the final movement of 'Pli selon pli'.)

The third selection is one of my favorite pieces by Ms. Loriod's husband, Olivier Messiaen. 'Concert a quatre' (1990 – 91) was left unfinished at the time of the composer's death. Ms. Loriod finished the second and fourth movements in consultation with her husband's student George Benjamin. This is the premiere recording, from a Deutsche Grammophon CD, performed by the dedicatees of the piece: Catherine Cantin (flute), Heinz Holliger (oboe), Yvonne Loriod (piano) and Mstislav Rostropovich (cello), with Myung-Whun Chung conducting the Orchestre de l'Opera Bastille.

PART TWO is an unprocessed needledrop from a 1968 Supraphon LP. Ms. Loriod performs Messiaen's 'Oiseaux exotiques' and 'Reveil des oiseaux' with Vaclav Neumann conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. She also plays a selection from the 'Catalogue d'oiseaux' for solo piano (number nine: 'La Bouscarle'). This is a beautifully-recorded album that wonderfully captures Yvonne Loriod's inimitable sound. And it is yet another document of the Czech Philharmonic at the height of its powers – the percussionists are amazing. The ending of 'Reveil des oiseaux' is one of Messiaen's great inspirations (and one of his most restrained.)

I hope against hope that some of my fellow bloggers have a recording of Ms. Loriod's Mozart that they are planning to post! Both parts of my own tribute are in FLAC. The links are above, in boldface.

Late works by John Cage

2010-04-20T22:29:00.010-02:30

If you need some beauty in your life this evening, listen to these three late works by John Cage.

Thirteen (1992) is for flute, oboe, b-flat clarinet, trumpet in C, tenor trombone, tuba, two percussionists, two violins, viola and cello. The piece was commissioned by the City of Gütersloh and written for Ensemble 13 and their conductor Manfred Reichert who play it here. This is one of the last pieces Cage finished. It is taken from an 1993 Col legno CD. The booklet (included) should be read by those who still doubt Cage's seriousness or (worse) consider him a philosopher and not a musician.

103 (1992) is the soundtrack to Cage's only film, One 11. The film is available from Mode on DVD. It is in black and white. The abstract images were selected and edited using chance operations. '103' itself is another late 'number' piece, and is scored for a 103-piece orchestra. This 90-minute work is one of the most astonishingly beautiful pieces I have ever heard. ('Brucknerian' is the word that comes to mind.) I'm posting this because it is what I will be listening to tonight as salve for a depressive spell, and also because it may have been overlooked as it is available only on DVD. I have posted it in 320 MP3 only – Mode is in financial trouble these days and I hope you may be persuaded to purchase the DVD and hear '103' in its uncompressed glory. Another chance operation is in play here: the DVD menu provides the option of two different performances of the piece. I am 85% certain that the version I made a dub of is by the WDR Orchestra Köln, conducted by Arturo Tamayo. There is, however, a 15% possibility that is the alternate performance by the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. Another reason to pick up the DVD.

Thirty pieces for five orchestras (1981) is transfered from a 1987 Hungaroton LP. The orchestra is the Savaria Symphony Orchestra. The conductors are László Tihanyi, Dieter Kempe, Zsolt Serei, Katalin Doman and Mark Foster, under the general musical direction of Péter Eötvös. The flip side of this LP is a realization of portions of the Music for piano (1952-1956) made by András Wilheim in 1986. The five pianists are listed on the sleeve, which also includes some very nice pictures, including one of Cage and György Kurtág. As with the booklet that accompanies 'Thirteen', the notes make for very interesting reading. Nice to hear something about Cage's music from enthusiastic musicians who play it at the high level it requires. These are needledrops from a fine pressing with minimal declicking, in FLAC.

All four pieces are, in my opinion, music of the highest order and are performed with the utmost dedication and musicality.

For Thirteen (FLAC, with booklet) and 103 (320 MP3).

For Thirty pieces for five orchestras and Music for piano (FLAC needledrop with scans).

This post is dedicated, from a distance, with love and admiration, to Carolyn Purdue (without whom ... ) thirty years later ...

The Los Angeles String Quartet Plays Hindemith (1979 GSC LP)

2010-04-19T16:57:00.010-02:30

"Let me turn to a piece which you may not know. Some of its characteristics will lead us directly into middle Schoenberg. This was once the most played piece in contemporary chamber music. It begins with the unaccompanied first violin, and then the viola enters:

I'm not surprised that none of you recognizes this [the third Hindemith Quartet, Op 22]. I don't think I've heard it live in maybe twenty years, but in the thirties this was one of the standard classics. I'm sure there are some recent recordings ... Suppose I said to you, 'I have that unaccompanied opening. If I now imitate this canonically what note should I enter on?' ... Hindemith would have said there is a certain note you must enter with, because Hindemith was given to statements like that. What would the note be if you began the answer at the point indicated in the example by the asterisk? The theme was constructed so there'd be an eventual convergence onto what Hindemith would see as a necessary, inevitable note, and that note for Hindemith would have to an F. Do you see why?

(Audience member): Is it just because there hasn't been an F used yet?

That's one reason, absolutely. Still, there's one other note that hasn't been stated: B-flat. That will be coming along very soon if you start on F, but why not start on B-flat? Because if you bring in an F at the asterisk, you get there, as an harmonic interval, a tritone. And the tritone is the only interval you haven't had in the melody. Now that was the way the thinking went, you see. This is certainly contextual ... It's not because it is a tritone in general. It's simply because a tritone happens to be absent from the melody ... When that new note enters, it supplies something that hasn't been there before, a new interval and a new pitch. If you had been around Boulanger and the French at all, you would recognize this notion of the 'fresh' note. It was a cliché, a Stravinskyan cliché. You saved notes. Look in 'Jeu de Cartes' at the way Stravinsky saves an F and brings it in after a rest. That's the fresh note ... There are a lot of funny things in the Stravinsky. But the Hindemith is almost a compendium of techniques of that time; you should look at the third movement, too."

– Milton Babbitt, 'Words about music' (University of Wisconsin Press, 1987) pp. 154-155

Here are performances of Hindmith's Third and Fourth Quartets, Op 22 and Op 32 respectively, by the Los Angeles String Quartet. The group is led by Paul Shure, a former member of the Hollywood String Quartet, who made a much-loved recording of the third Quartet for Capitol in the early 50s. Also on board are Bonnie Douglas, Janet Lakatos and Armand Kaproff.

In addition, I've included Hindemith's Clarinet Quartet performed by the Musici Moravienses , from a 1977 Supraphon LP. The members of the group are Vitezslav Kuznik (violin), Valter Vitek (clarinet), Jan Haliska (cello) and Rudolf Bernatik (piano).

IN FLAC – mild ClickRepair – scans of the LA String Quartet LP jacket.

Hindemith: Die Sieben Kammermusiken (Concerto Amsterdam, 1968 Telefunken LP set)

2010-04-19T13:20:00.015-02:30

I had a temporary aversion to these pieces because the jolt of the jet-propelled speed machine that is the first of the 'Kammermusiken' used to pop up whenever my IPod became confused and reset itself (the first three letters of Claudio's Abbado's surname puts him at the top of nearly any alphabetical list of performers – now the IPod defaults to a German lady introducing Abbado's live recording of Mahler's 6th.)

As times goes by this stuff feels much closer to Schoenberg's Suite Op 29 and Berg's Kammerkonzert than the neo-classicism of 'Modernsky'. In fact I now find Reger and Hindemith to be among the most deeply rewarding of early 20th-century composers – an idea I would have found jaw-dropping in my own early 20s.

I found this terrific 1968 recording by the Concerto Amsterdam at a used bookshop in Chapel Hill, NC a few years back and loved it. These are vital performances by a nascent semi-HIP ensemble (Jaap Schröder is terrific in the violin concerto), very well-played and beautifully recorded. The deluxe package includes a good essay that explains how seven very different concertos ended up under the '7 Kammermusiken' rubric. Also discussed are the connections to German popular music and the theater 'pit band', as well as the surprisingly Scriabinesque ambitions Hindemith had for the music's public presentation.

It makes a nice complement to a slightly later recording by the new music group Ensemble 13 (available at the Avant Garde Project archive as AGP152 and AGP153.) I like the two recordings equally – the Concerto Amsterdam release has the typical scholarly feel of a Telefunken project, stressing the continuity with Hindemith's inspiration – the concerto grossi of Corelli, Handel and Bach – in warm and natural sound. The Ensemble 13 set on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi highlights the music's motorik jazz-age edge and benefits from an exceptionally bright, transparent recording.

Concerto Amsterdam (3 LP set) FLAC – needledrop with minimal declicking – photos, scans and track listing included

Gustav Leonhardt plays Forqueray

2010-04-16T16:44:00.011-02:30

Gustav Leonhardt plays selections from five suites by Antoine Forqueray (1672 – 1745). The instrument is a harpsichord built by David Rubio, Oxford 1973, based on an instrument by Pascal Taskin (1723 – 1793). The music is mostly in the gallant vein, extrovert and often showy. The extended final piece, 'La Sylva' from the c-minor suite No 5, comes as a surprise: infinitely tender, poised and shy.

This is a needledrop from a 1974 SEON LP, in a 1976 American pressing on ABC. Track details and scans are included.

In FLAC – with minor declicking.

Carter: Quartets No 2 and 3 (Juilliard Quartet, 1974 CBS LP)

2010-04-16T15:38:00.010-02:30

Somehow Sony Classical missed the Elliott Carter 100th birthday bandwagon – I guess they weren't aware that that bandwagon's stops would include an appearance by the composer on the 'Today Show', worldwide marathon concerts and symposiums, and endless human interest stories in every newspaper in America, from the New York Times to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Certainly Sony had a lot of material at hand:

* Bernstein's recording of the 'Concerto for Orchestra' (the composer's favorite performance, apparently)

* the only commercial recording of the 'Symphony of Three Orchestra' (by its dedicatees, the New York Philharmonic and Pierre Boulez)

* Frederick Prausnitz's LP of the 'Variations' and 'Double concerto' (with Paul Jacobs and Charles Rosen)

* as well as a number of chamber works including, of course, the Juilliard Quartet's recordings. It doesn't seem like it would have taken a lot of effort to throw those CDs in a box and tie a ribbon around it.

The JSQ recorded the first four quartets in digital sound for Sony in the 90s, and the CD remains, fitfully, in print. Of great musical and historical performance is this LP from 1974, which has never appeared on CD. The Second Quartet (1959) is played by the Mann/Carlyss/Hillyer/Adam group; the Third Quartet (1971) was recorded several years later, when Samuel Rhodes had taken over the viola chair. (Apparently CBS was waiting for the advent of Quadrophonic sound to showcase the latter quartet – I have both stereo and SQ-Quad pressings of this record, but alas, only two speakers and a stereo cartridge.)

The excellence of these recordings has scarcely been bettered, not even by the Arditti or Pacifica Quartets. In Carter's own, characteristically modest, words "To my mind it was largely due to the convincing way that these works were first performed [by the Juilliard Quartet] that they were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The patience, effort, imagination and skill they lavished on both of these works is something I cannot be more grateful for."

I've also included another performance that got lost in the 100th birthday year shuffle: the Nonesuch recording of the "Duo for Violin and Piano" by Paul Zukofsky and Gilbert Kalish. Apparently, lack of space prevented it from being included in Nonesuch's otherwise welcome collection of their Carter holdings.

FLAC – with light click repair on the Juilliard LP; somewhat more work on cleaning up the Nonesuch LP. (I hope to find a better copy of that astonishing performance in the crate-digging days to come and will transfer and post it if I do.)

Some Italian composers from the late 50s

2010-04-16T15:14:00.008-02:30

This selection of performances from five different LPs began as an IPOD mix for my own enjoyment. I'll refrain from my usual long-winded free-associating (except to note that the performance of Maderna's sun-dappled 'Serenata No 2' is a standout) and just print the contents. Be forewarned that the sound quality differs from piece to piece given the various sources.

To the best of my knowledge these performances are not available on CD, although the second performance of Castiglioni's 'Tropi' is forthcoming in Wergo's CD reissue program of Earle Brown's long-unavailable Time/Mainstream 'Series 2000' LPs.

FLAC – varying degrees of ClickRepair – scans of the 'Ars Nova' LP cover

1. Niccolo Castiglioni: Movimento continuato (1958-59)

for piano and chamber ensemble; Maria Grazia Bertocchi, piano

2. Castiglioni: Tropi (1959)

3. Luigi Dallapiccola: Piccola musica notturna (1954)

4. Franco Donatoni: For Grilly (1960) Improvvisazione per 7

5. Aldo Clementi: Tre piccoli pezzi (1960) for flute, oboe and clarinet

The above performances are from Ars Nova VST 6078 1977 (LP), by the Gruppo ‘Musica Insieme’ di Cremona. For further details, see the scans in this folder. (The cover is shown above left.)

6. Luciano Berio: Serenata No 1 (1957)

From “The New Music Vol 3” RCA LP VICS-1313, 1968; Bruno Maderna conducting soloists of the Rome Symphony Orchestra, Severino Gazzelloni, flute

7. Bruno Maderna: Serenata No 2 (1957)

From Hungaroton LP SPLX 12664, 1985; New Music Workshop of Miskolc, György Selmeczi, conductor

8. Castiglioni: Gyro (1963) for chamber choir and nine instruments

From Erato LP STU 70.537; Chamber choir of the ORTF and members of Ars Nova, conducted by Marcel Couraud

9. Castiglioni: Tropi (1959)

From Time/Mainstream LP s/8006, Hamburger Kammersoloisten conducted by Francis Travis

The Trio di Trieste play the Schubert Piano Trios

2010-04-16T14:42:00.004-02:30

The High Pony Tail without the Schubert Piano Trios seems unthinkable. I had intended to post the now out-of-print Teldec CD with András Schiff, Yuuko Shiokawa and Miklós Perényi which I have always enjoyed. I made the mistake of listening to the DGG recordings by the Trio di Trieste just before revisiting that Teldec recording. I may change my mind later (there's always room for more Schubert here) but the shock of following the beautiful dry acoustic of the Trieste recording with Teldec's glassy, claustrophobic sound was too much for me.

The Trio di Trieste recorded the B-flat trio for DGG in 1959 and the E-flat trio in 1965. The earlier recording is by Dario de Rosa (piano), Renato Zanettovich (violin) and Libero Lana (cello). By 1965, Amedeo Baldovino had taken over on cello.

These recordings are taken from the DGG 'Original Masters' box of the complete recordings of the Trio di Trieste for that label (and Westminster.) This recording is still available and is chock-full of superb performances, as well a typically insightful and funny essay by Tully Potter. (The details of the Trio's dramatic near-drowning at sea are included.) If you enjoy these excellent, straightforward recordings, please consider buying the 5-CD set – I return to this group's Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Schumann and Ravel on a regular basis.

FLAC – CD rip – no scans

Vinko Globokar: "Les Émigrés"

2010-04-14T22:36:00.010-02:30

I am guilty of ignoring Vinko Globokar. I've had this Harmonia Mundi CD on my shelves for almost seven years and didn't give it a spin until last month. "Les Émigrés" is an astonishing large-scale work, a kind of mass for the displaced and the 'sans papiers' all over Europe. The composer of this work is an extreme maximalist – voices, taped and live, spoken and sung, in a babel of languages, taken from texts ranging from immigration forms to Peter Handke; the Quintette Vocal de Llubijana; Ensemble Musique Oblique; a beat group moonlighting as a jazz combo; the great French actor Michael Lonsdale (the Vice-Consul in Duras' "India Song"); pipe organ, tapes, etcerera and so on. The political imperative, the 'impurity' and the massive scale of the piece brings to mind both Bernd Alois Zimmermann and the Luigi Nono of the late 60s. However, the most impressive thing in my mind is how deeply and convincingly structured the 70-minute piece is as a piece of music. Even more impressive is that it is a live performance, recorded by Radio France in 1990. I have included the booklet – it says much more than I could say about the content of the piece.

As for the music – I'd love to see a score! Just how did Globokar manage (where so many have failed) to give his political concerns and linguistic jabberwocky such immense structural weight and musicality? As a pioneer in extended trombone technique and first-generation European improviser, Globokar is obviously open to all kinds of sounds, tempered, untempered and ill-tempered. What I didn't know was that he had such a firm grasp of compositional craft. Like the 'Missa Solemnis', this piece sounds, even as it teeters on the edge of acoustical chaos. (And just as one doesn't have to believe in a Christian God to be engaged by Beethoven's 'Missa', one doesn't have to share Globokar's politics to be moved, even overwhelmed by 'Les Émigrés'.) My personal aesthetic tends toward modest, small-scale, intensive works of art. A s much as it is at odds with my own taste, the success of "Les Émigrés", a true 'baggy monster', all-inclusive and encyclopedic, cannot be denied.

I have included two related items. Firstly, the first movement of Globokar's "Der Engel der Geschichte" (2000) for two orchestras and tape. This packs a similar wallop similar to "Les Émigrés", with a bit less hue and cry. The performance can be found in the 2000 "Donaueschinger Musiktage" box from Col Legno (well worth buying for a number of other terrific works – 2000 was a good year for the festival.) Sylvain Cambreling conducts the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, with contributions form the Heinrich Strobel Electronic Music Studio and the 'Trompetenklasse Reinhold Friedrich".

Also included is a piece by Richard Barrett, "Codex VII (to Vinko Globokar)". I only recently became aware of how involved Barrett has been in improvisation and live electronics, both with his duo "FURT" with Paul Obermeyer and in his compositional practice tout court. The piece is performed by Champ d'Action, along with students of the Antwerp and Gent Conservatories. Mr. Barrett conducts and handles the live electronics. This is the shortest of three Barrett pieces on an essential new release on the Psi label called 'Adrift.' (The others are 'Codex IX - in memory of Mauricio Kagel', performed by ELISION and 'adrift – in memory of Paul Rutherford' for piano and electronics, with pianist Sarah Nicholls.) I hope that my inclusion of this piece in this post may inspire you to seek out this beautifully-packaged CD, which is available in the US from Forced Exposure. You can also check out the PSI website. Note 16 April 2010: Alcofribas has suggested paying a visit to the FURT website, with information and free downloads.

As if this weren't enough to listen to, two blogs have just posted Globokar rarities: at Killed in Cars is another Harmonia Mundi CD of his music. And at Paroles Gelées, le Discobole has posted a very rare live 1976 performance by New Phonic Art (Globokar, Michel Portal, Jean-Pierre Drouet and Carlos Roque Alsina.)

My own contribution to Globokarmania is HERE, with a scan of the "Les Émigrés" booklet included. Enjoy! (And please report any corrupt files ... )

Marie-Françoise Bucquet plays Schoenberg (and Stockhausen and Berio) (Philips LP)

2010-04-14T16:55:00.015-02:30

For some time I saw this pianist's LP containing Stockhausen's Klavierstücke IX and XI and Berio's Sequenza IV in one of my local used record shops and couldn't quite persuade myself to buy it. Now that I've heard Marie-Françoise Bucquet play Schoenberg, I won't let it slip by me if I ever see it again. I don't know anything about Ms. Bucquet except for what it says on the LP jacket – she studied with Eduard Steuermann and attended master classes given by Wilhelm Kempff. She lived in Washington (state? D.C.?) during the 60s, returned to France in 1968 and performed with Pierre Boulez at the Festival of Contemporary Music at St. Etienne.

So much for the biographical material on the jacket. The performances of the Schoenberg piano pieces on this record are exceptional. In a crowded field of recordings, Ms. Bucquet's beautiful tone and evident understanding of the idiom struck me immediately. (So much so that I forgot all about a project I had undertaken to transfer a Schoenberg recording by a more famous – and much more clangorous – performer.) In addition, the early 70s Philips engineers did a great job with the piano: this is a very luscious recording. I've certainly never heard a more beguiling performance of the Suite Op 25.

FLAC – minimal ClickRepair – the pressing is almost noise-free.

GREAT NEWS: Caleb Deupree, of Classical Drone, has generously supplied his own FLAC transfer of Marie-Françoise Bucquet's Stockhausen and Berio LP (minus the Berio 'Cinque variazioni'). Ms. Bucquet plays Stockhausen's Klavierstücke IX and XI and Berio's 'Sequenza IV'. I realize that hyperbole wears thin fast, but I am just as taken with these recordings as her Schoenberg. If only she had recorded the Boulez sonatas (or Barraqué or Gilbert Amy's, for that matter.) Her light, playful touch may not be to everyone's taste, but I'm hook, line and sinkered. These recordings are from Philips LP 6500 101. Caleb's transfer is marvelous. Enjoy, and be sure to check out Caleb's earlier donation of his transfer of the Varese-Sarabande LP of Stockhausen's 'Prozession 67'.

*******

Note 19 April 2010: Following a report that the zip file of the Schoenberg LP was causing a few people problems I've decided to post an alternate LINK. If you've had a problem, give this one a try (and let me know if it works for you.)

Eugene Ormandy conducts Schubert (CBS LP)

2010-04-14T16:18:00.009-02:30

"The profession of the conductor is governed by an objective untruth. The performance appears as if he were its subject, the one who interprets, whereas this is the case only to a very limited – in the case of universally known works a dwindling – extent, not only on account of the resistance he is offered by the sound material ... but also because it is not he who is playing but rather the orchestral musicians, who are themselves subjects with their own peculiarities, preferences and weaknesses. No oboe is like another – what can the conductor do about this? And yet it is he who imagines the performance. It is this discrepancy that harbors charlatanry. After all, this problem of interpretation is based on a contradiction in the works. They are, as orchestral works, designed from the outset for a multitude of executants, in fact they practically demand them according to their own intention: a flautist is meant to sound beautiful, a solo violin brilliant, etc. ... important principle for all musical interpretation: there are no approximate values. There is no continuum extending from what is wrong to what is better to the truth. Whatever is not quite right is already entirely wrong; and in some cases, what is entirely wrong can be better ... "

So says T.W. Adorno in notes for an unpublished book on musical interpretation. Nevertheless, these recordings of Schubert's Fourth and Sixth Symphonies with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra are very satisfying listening, especially while doing the aforementioned spring cleaning. The cover art is rather bizarre: I won't try and unravel the metaphor. But the blueness of it is wonderful, and is of a piece with the marvelous recording it contains.

As an alternative, here's a 1954 recording of the Sixth Symphony by a conductor who very often got it 'entirely wrong' – Hermann Scherchen conducting the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, from a Urania CD. This was recorded on one of Scherchen's less manic days, at least as far as the tempos go. As with many of this conductor's performances, a certain sloppiness is the price you pay for a musical experience untouched by the routine.

For the Ormandy LP:

FLAC needledrop from a 1972 CBS LP - mild ClickRepair

Joseph Jarman and Anthony Braxton: Together Alone (Delmark LP)

2010-04-14T15:44:00.019-02:30

This LP was released in 1974 on Chicago's Delmark label, but recorded in late 1971 in Paris. It consists of duo recordings by Joseph Jarman and Anthony Braxton. This is not a simple recital, but a studio-composed experiment incorporating a wide range of instruments, spoken word and field recordings. There is a discrepancy regarding which side is which. My transfer follows the jacket rather than the printed label and begins with the Braxton side ... feel free to sequence them as you like!

[NOTE 21 April 2010: Here my original, ludicrously uninformed notes have been excised.]

As can easily be confirmed from Braxton's worklist, cross-referenced in full at Restructures. Net, the first Braxton piece is:

Composition 21:

CK7(GN)
437
for recorded tape with or without instruments (1971)

Ten pages of notated music that can be played or not played by from one to as many instruments as desired. Plus five pages of instructions for the preparation of one magnetic tape—or several magnetic tapes.

The second piece, played here by unison alto sax and contrabass clarinet with a pre-recorded tape accompaniment of 'little instruments' is:

Composition 20:

SBN-A-12
66K
for two instruments (1971)

Four pages of single line (monophonic) notation with instructions for the preparation of one magnetic tape for accompaniment

******

Joseph Jarman's side – 'Together alone', 'Dawn Dance' and 'Morning (including Circles) – is stylistically similar to the suites on his second Delmark LP 'As if it were the seasons.' The mood is again basically pastoral and drifting, but there is foreboding on the horizon.

FLAC with minimal ClickRepair

Jandek: "The Gone Wait" 2003 (Corwood 0773)

2010-04-14T14:42:00.014-02:30

The "Gone Wait" is the 34th record from Jandek. (He is now up to nunber 61 or 62.) It's hard to keep track, since he has not stopped since his 1978 debut "Ready for the house." There is both continuity and change on this particularly compelling release. Since Jandek first began pressing his own inimitable recordings, the basic template of songs accompanied by guitar has remained, but with the introduction of foreign elements, both musical (a woman singing? electric guitar? drums? acapella free association?) and geographical (this picture on this cover is the fourth taken in Ireland rather than Jandek's native Houston.)

Continuity: on this one, Jandek uses the same structure of the previous release "The Place" (also 2003): five long songs that consider a philosophical question from five angles. Change: this time he uses, for the first time, an electric fretless bass as accompaniment. As with Godard's films of the 60s, Jandek's recordings are most profitably considered as part of an ongoing 'work'. I can think of few bodies of work from the late 20th century that are as compelling, inexplicable and well-considered. If, as I believe, the introduction of sound recording, and the elimination of the need for musical notation, has been the most important development affecting music in the past century, this 40-year project of Jandek's will stand, alongside the musics committed to tape by jazz musicians, improvisers and computer-based electronic composers, as a prime example of "late twentieth-century music."

[I might mention that, in my retrograde fashion, I have been amusing myself by transcribing songs from this album (as well as "New Town" from 1998.) I've availed myself of the notational strategies used by composers like Lachenmann and Ferneyhough in order to create a score that could be used by musicians with expertise in the rhythmic and timbral complexities of those composers to perform a piece of Jandek. It's been a rewarding (if useless!) experiment.]

All Jandek releases are in print and available – an admirable part of his strategy has been to retain complete control of his music through his own label, Corwood, and to keep every CD in print. There's no such thing as a rare Jandek CD. (You should never pay more than the 'Corwood price': $8 US.) You can order from Corwood directly, as well as from the usual new music distributors. For more information about ordering as well as a complete critical discography, see Seth Tisue's Guide to Jandek.

The songs on this album are:

1) I went to Hell
2) I see the open door
3) I was a King
4) I just might go now
5) I found the right chance

For "The Gone Wait", click HERE.

Note 16 April 2010: Apparently the files are OK now ... if you had a problem before, please try again. ALSO: please note that I have added a FLAC option at the same address (the original post was 320 MP3.)

The Juilliard Quartet plays Schumann (with Haydn Op 54 in a new transfer)

2010-04-14T13:17:00.019-02:30

Here is the mid-late 60s Juilliard Quartet – Robert Mann, Earl Carlyss, Raphael Hillyer and Claus Adam – playing Schumann's three Op 41 quartets. As is often the case with this composer, he plunged into quartet-writing with enthusiasm (he wrote all three within the space of a month) and never returned to the medium again. These elusive works have never been popular. There is something fantastically vague about them – the slack opening phrase of the third, A-major quartet is both unpromising and ineffably suggestive:

However, of all of Schumann's attempts to force his inspiration into textbook sonata form, the quartets seem to me to be the most successful. They are classical, oddly 'blank', 'white' ... distanced and borderline autistic, but all the more beautiful in their withdrawn enthusiasm.

Who better than the classic Juilliard Quartet to present these chilly pieces on their own terms, without unneeded 'romantic' frippery? In fact, this is one of my favorite recordings by this group. There are more 'Schumannesque' recordings: the Rosamunde Quartet on ECM, recordings by the Quartetto Italiano of Op 41, No 1 and No 3 (on EMI and Philips; I will be posting them soon.) The Hagen Quartet recorded all three for DGG in a similar style as the Juilliard, but without the advantage of Richard Killough's classic analog production for CBS. My needledrops were taken from a box set that also includes the piano quartet with Glenn Gould and the Quintet with Leonard Bernstein. Both of those are available on CD; I don't think that the Op 41 quartets are (or have been).

FLAC – minimal ClickRepair.

ALSO: I have made a new transfer of the JSQ's wild Op 54 Haydn Quartets. My earlier post was taken from a poor Epic pressing; this one is from a very good German CBS LP (pictured above left.) In FLAC with a light auto declicking, and scans this time around.

************

IMPORTANT Note 17 April 2010: A big thank-you to Piero. After I mistakenly posted the Op 41, No 3 quartet in MP3, I replaced it with the FLAC version of the same quartet by ... the Quartetto Italiano! Piero noticed the difference in the timings of the MP3 and FLAC versions and promptly alerted me.

Feel free to hold on to that excellent Quartetto Italiano recording if you downloaded it (it will appear again in the near future with other recordings by that group.) I have now uploaded the JUILLIARD STRING QUARTET playing the quartet and deleted the incorrect file.

Thanks again to Piero and to all who have alerted me to problems. And thank you for your patience.

The Amati Quartet: Mozart K458 and K465

2010-04-14T12:19:00.008-02:30

I meant to post this some time ago but I'm glad I didn't. I'd assumed that this Amati Quartet is the same group as the Amati that made a nicely rugged recording of Haydn's Op 50 quartets (now OOP) and participated in the Paris celebrations of Elliot Carter's 100th birthday. It's not. And now I won't have to print a correction. At least not on that subject.

This French CBS LP of indeterminate date (early 70s?) features an Quatuor Amati whose members are Enrico Valetti, Luigi Cambini, Frederico Cervini and Adolfo Bonso.

Their Mozart is quick but not slick, their intonation is perfect and they were blessed with great engineering and a very good pressing. It's a great soundtrack for spring cleaning, if you're into that kind of thing. The E-flat quartet is the "Hunt" quartet, of course, but it also has a preview of the Tristan prelude in the adagio. So you can organize the shelves during the allegro and pause for amorous thoughts during the andante. (Wait a minute ... isn't that in the A-major 'Haydn' quartet?) Unusually, the group barely pauses between movements: the final chord still hangs in the air when the next downbeat is given. For that reason, I have uploaded this LP without inserting spaces between the tracks.

FLAC – minimal ClickRepair

Blandine Verlet plays 30 Scarlatti sonatas (1976 Philips LP)

2010-04-09T02:43:00.010-02:30

After two weeks of listening to mostly Rameau and Scarlatti, I'm nearly convinced that between the two of them they nailed just about every angle of functional harmony. It never ceases to amaze me that, in the space of a few decades at the beginning of the 18th century, the magnetic poles of tonic and dominant and the gravitational grip of the circle of fifths imposed themselves with such ferocity. Throw in the 'Diabelli Variations', the most radical demonstration of those 'forces at work', and there's not much further one can figure, configure and disfigure the marvelous invention of equal temperament. Perhaps we should have just jumped straight into free atonality in the 19th century – the mailman would be whistling Schoenberg by now!

This 1976 2-LP set (not on CD as far as I can tell) is the second recording I've posted by Blandine Verlet, whose outsize musical personality is only matched by Scott Ross in the harpsichord world. (Please excuse the uninformed hyperbole, which is pretty rich coming from someone that made a public confession, when posting Ralph Kirkpatrick's CBS Scarlatti recordings, that he disliked the harpsichord.) The thirty sonatas Ms. Verlet chose for this set are mostly unfamiliar – the ubiquitous K. 9 puts in an appearance, and the program concludes with another semi-warhorse, K. 492, which sounds very different when it functions as the 'finale' of the three-sonata set beginning with K. 490 and K. 491. All told, there are nine 'paired' sonatas on this recording (Ralph Kirkpatrick determined that a good portion of Scarlatti's keyboard works were meant to be played in pairs, even – as with that K. 490 / K. 491 / K. 492 sequence – as virtual three-movement works.) So not only are there a lot of sonatas here that you'll only have heard when dipping into Scott Ross's indispensable set of all 555 on Erato, the sequencing, like an intelligently-hung gallery show, makes you look at Scarlatti the not-so-miniaturist in a fresh way. Above all, Blandine Verlet has a wonderful feel for phrasing. Like Thelonious Monk, she borrows time IN time and at the RIGHT time, and always pays it back ... sometimes when you least expect it!

In addition to all the good things I've already said about both composer and performer, this is an exceptional recording. A beautiful instrument (by Burkhard Shudi of London, 1744, from the collection of the Gemeentemuseum, the Hague). Excellent engineering and microphone placement. And a top-notch pressing, from a sealed copy that required no declicking or other processing. I hope you'll enjoy this as much as I have.

FLAC, straight needledrop, scans included.

Szymanoswki: The String Quartets (Varsovia Quartet, 1982 Pavane LP)

2010-04-04T15:33:00.006-02:30

Szymanowski's two string quartets (written in 1917 and 1927) are from his most adventurous period. Along with the opera King Roger, the first Violin Concerto, the Third Symphony and the 'Masques' for violin and piano, the quartets are saturated with an inimitable decadence that the composer later renounced. The works from this period are inseparable from the composer's youthful experimentation with drugs and homosexuality. Above all, they are infused with the bright hot light of North Africa.

Music lovers tend to approach Szymanowski as a quirky early modernist. Comparisons with Berg, Scriabin and Bartok, while not inappropriate, are somewhat superficial. In his youth, the composer was the musical member of the 'Polish Circle' that included the novelist Witold Gombrowicz, playwright/painter Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (aka 'Witkacy') and the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. Together, these young men lived a rather dissipated and somewhat romantic life ... and their works have more than a slightly opiated flavor, although cocaine and ether may have been their drugs of choice.

Like many young people, Szymanowski renounced his wild ways on reaching middle age, and his later works seek to ground themselves in Polish folklore and patriotic sentiment. The String Quartets and Violin Concerto in particular might easily be given a title similar to that of Gombrowicz's first book, "Stories from a time of immaturity." (Available in an English translation from Archipelego books as 'Bacacay'.) "King Roger", above all, despite comparisons made to Strauss' "Salome" and "The Egyptian Helena" and Berg's "Der Wein" and "Lulu", has much more in common with Witkacy's "Insatiability" and Gombrowicz's "Ferdydurke" than it does with the music of the time.

For many years, the Silesian quartet's CD (on Accord) has been my favorite recording of the quartets. This 1982 LP by the Varsovia Quartet is no less exquisite.

FLAC, mild ClickRepair, with a partial LP jacket scan.

Steve Lacy: Ballets (Hedges and 4 Edges) 1982 HatHut LP

2010-04-04T15:31:00.005-02:30

A two-record set from HatHut containing two works for ballet by Steve Lacy.

The first LP is a solo performance called "Hedges", recorded live on December 18 1980 at L'Ancienne Eglise des Jesuites in Porrentruy, Switzerland. Says Lacy: "The five pieces, called Hedges, were written as duos for soprano sax and piano, but in this version, as a ballet, my partner was the dancer Pierre Droulers." The ingenuity of Lacy's compositions and the resonant acoustic of the old Jesuit church combine to relieve me of my usual difficulty in absorbing music for solo melodic instruments. Droulers' contributions can be heard from time to time as well.

The second LP is a piece for Lacy's sextet, "The 4 Edges". At the time of this recording, the piece was used by Douglas Dunn for his dance "Cycles" at the Paris Ballet. The lineup is Lacy (soprano sax, footgong, voice and bells), Steve Potts (alto and soprano sax), Bobby Few (piano and fender piano), Irene Aebi (cello, violin and voice), Jean-Jacques Avenel (bass) and Oliver Johnson (drums and percussion).

The pieces:

Hedges: Hedges, Squirrel, Fox I, Fox II, Rabbit, Shambles
The 4 Edges: Outline, Underline, Coastline, Deadline

Lacy explains: "Brion Gysin provided me with the (chemical) formula for grass, Tetra Hydro (3X) Tetra Canabinol, which, when sung with the accelerating accompanying intervals (of Deadline) creates a kind of 'high' to the 'Edges' of the elements."

FLAC, with minimal ClickRepair, scans included.

Renée Sándor plays five late Mozart pieces (and two Haydn sonatas)

2010-04-04T15:23:00.008-02:30

From the liner notes:

"A common feature of the five piano pieces on the B-side is that they were composed in the last five years of Mozart's life ... and virtually all of them bear some links with the baroque stylistic period. Gigue in G major, K574: Mozart wrote this short two-part contrapuntal work of a masterly construction on May 16th 1789 for the court organist of the Elector of Saxony in Leipzig. Adagio in b minor K 540: Mozart composed this piano masterpiece in sonata form on March 19th 1788 for a hitherto unknown occasion. Minuet in D major K355 (594a): Mozart scholars put the date of its origin in the year 1790. Andante in f minor K616: Originally the piece was composed for a construction in a small mechanical organ and a musical clock respectively (sic) on May 4th, 1791. Rondo in a minor K511: Composed on March 11th, 1787, this is a piano piece unique in value among the individual Mozart movements."

These are radio broadcasts by the Hungarian pianist Renée Sandor, born in 1899. Although no date is given, the fair-to-middling stereo sounds suggests the late 60s or early 70s. As the five Mozart pieces are quite extraordinary, and receive extraordinary performances, I have placed the B-side first. The A-side contains wonderfully wayward recordings of two Haydn sonatas: the A-flat sonata XVI:46 and C-major sonata XVI:48.

FLAC with minimal ClickRepair, scans included.

Sciarrino: Sui poemi concentrici

2010-02-21T19:28:00.009-03:30

I don't have a lot to say about this one. It's simply one of the most beautiful works for orchestra that I have heard in years. I have spent much of the last week listening to this two-hour work. Even if Sciarrino is not a favorite of yours I hope you'll give it a try – I've broken my usual rule and posted an in-print CD in hopes of sharing 'my discovery'.

"Sui poeme concentrici" consists of three 45-minute pieces. I have posted the second of the three. (The 3-CD set is available on Kairos for not much more than the price of a single CD.) Peter Rundel conducts the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. The five soloists are members of Ensemble Recherche. The three pieces were derived from 15 hours of music Sciarrino wrote for a 100-part (!) television version of Dante's "Divine Comedy". I'm sure this is not going to be everybody's cup of tea, but I am profoundly grateful that Mr. Sciarrino composed this piece and that Kairos has recorded it. (Also on Kairos: a matching 3-CD survey of the composer's major orchestral works of three decades, also budget-priced and highly recommended.)

I have included the booklet (the essay is not very interesting, but it includes the necessary details.) Once again, this is not the entire work, only the second of three pieces. I hope you will find it as compelling as I have and will seek out the box and the complete 2 hours of music.

HERE.

The original versions of Bruckner's 3rd, 4th and 8th Symphonies (Inbal, Telefunken LPs)

2010-02-21T18:39:00.009-03:30

Even people who aren't particularly interested in Bruckner are probably aware of the complicated question of the "versions" of his symphonies – the Haas and Novak and more recent editions; the discredited Lowe and Schalk eviscerations; recordings whose conductors imposed their own cuts and retouchings. If one is so inclined, an entirely new level of confusion can be added by factoring in Bruckner's own first drafts. The composer's initial euphoria upon completion would inevitably give way to misgivings during the long wait for a performance. With the ink barely dry, there ensued the inevitable year (or more) of second thoughts: reworking and streamlining the 'finished' work on the advice of friends and potential conductors. There has been endless speculation about how actively Bruckner instigated and carried out these changes, but it seems fair enough to say that he was open to suggestions. Even so, Bruckner held on to his original fair copies and made sure they were safely archived for posterity.

The diagram above is taken from the booklet with Eliahu Inbal's premiere recordings of the original versions of the Third, Fourth and Eighth Symphonies, made in the 70s with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra for Telefunken. From top to bottom we see the finale of the Third Symphony, from Bruckner's original conception to the published version. The blocks represent music; the space between 'general pauses'. Unlike his idol, Wagner, Bruckner was not a 'master of the transition.' In the original version of the Finale, he simply stops – 21 times – between sections. By the time the work was performed, with a little help from his friends, only three gaps remained.

The disjunct originals were re-conceived in numerous ways: uneven phrase lengths are 'normalized' ... new material makes for smooth transitions. The orchestration also undergoes fundamental changes. The block scoring and general pauses of the first drafts seem to derive from Bruckner's training as an organist. He tends to treat orchestral groups as 'stops', and out of habit, leaves the necessary space for changing them. And he seldom mixes instrumental groups: the original orchestrations usually alternate strings, winds and brass as separate 'unmixed' units. In Bruckner's revisions, idiomatic orchestrion is introduced: upper woodwinds with upper strings, cellos with bassoons and horns, in a more orthodox manner.

My own interest in these versions of Bruckner's symphonies is not particularly scholarly. I am more interested in the subtle tricks they play with my memory. If one is at all familiar with Bruckner, an encounter with these recordings is an uncanny experience. Listening to Beethoven's Fifth or Mahler's Ninth we feel as if every bar leads inevitably to the next. The contingency that is inherent in every musical decision is masked by familiarity, and by the Hegelian ideals of classical and romantic aesthetics, which create the illusion of a seamless, predetermined musical argument. But in Bruckner we approach something like the 'open form' of the classic post-war avant-garde. Leaving aside differences in orchestration and transitions, nearly every page of the versions recorded by Inbal contains surprises: a different modulation, a discarded countersubject. The massive scale of the works makes it hard to register these differences. Was it always that way? Is my mind playing tricks one me? Am I dreaming?

Since Inbal's recordings, there have been many recordings of these and other versions: Georg Tintner's recordings on Naxos include two and sometimes three different 'originals' of certain movements; Simone Young's ongoing series on Oehms is beautifully recorded and doesn't suffer from the willfulness of Norrington's uneven efforts for Hanssler. Inbal has a terrific orchestra (the winds in particular) and spectacular recorded sound. Early digital recordings, contrary to popular belief, are often very, very good, especially when pressed on vinyl, which adds warmth and obscures digital artifacts. (In the early years of digital recording the final step before mastering was always the transfer of the recording to analog tape to 'smooth it out', a practice I am sure fell by the wayside some time ago. ) I have Inbal's cycle on various Teldec CDs; the transfers are good and they seem a likely candidate for the box treatment, like his equally fine Mahler (now on Brilliant Classics). But I hope you'll take the time to listen to these needledrops, from a sealed, very quiet pressing I recently found. I've also enclosed the booklet essay, which is a fascinating investigation of some of the issues I've only hinted at here.

Charlie Haden: "The Golden Number"

2010-02-21T18:19:00.006-03:30

This is the second of three LPs of duets that the bassist Charlie Haden recorded in the late 70s. I bought the first one – "Closeness" – when it came out and was completely unable to hear the music at the time. I was about 16 and my ear simply couldn't supply the missing harmonic structure in such a stripped-down format. I found the second one, "The Golden Number", recently and was happy to discover that my hearing has improved with age and experience.

The duos on this record are with Archie Shepp, Hampton Hawes, Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman (on trumpet, not alto.) I have included complete scans of the typically generous liner notes of this Horizon/A&M recording – notes from the participants, photos and transcriptions of the pieces, including Coleman's improvisation on the title track. Here's what Archie Shepp had to say about the experience:

"Thank you Charles, baby, and yours ... for a beautiful X-mas from me and mine. The pretty music we were able to make together coupled with the nice check that A&M sent me as a result did much to restore the rouge in Santa's cheeks (if indeed that's what he really looks like). May the creator bless you. You've always been a true soul brother; incidentally, your solo on 'Shepp's Way' just knocks me out ... "

So go ahead and have a listen to my (unprocessed) vinyl rip – "Closeness" is in print and is highly recommended, but "The Golden Number" seems to be unavailable on CD.

NOTE 20 September 2010: I have posted a transfer of Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden's LP 'Soapsuds Soapsuds' at my new address.

Berwald and Ives: Piano Trios

2010-02-21T17:47:00.008-03:30

I seem to be having a very hard time coming up with anything interesting to say today. But I have a large backlog of posts that I would like to share with y'all. I will type the bare minimum, and try and steer clear of the turgid prose of the last two entries.

So, this is an LP by Das Folkwang Klaviertrio. I bet it never came out on CD. Even if it did, this is a very good record. Despite the hideous paintings of the the composers on the cover, I like the cover a lot. The deep blue and the typeface are very satisfying.

The Franz Berwald rediscovery bandwagon seems to have lost a backwheel and tumbled off the road. There were a lot of recordings of his music in the 90s, including at least three sets of his complete symphonies. For those of you who missed out, Franz Berwald (1796 – 1868) was a Swedish composer whose work is quite unusual. I first heard him when I bought the DG 'Original Classics' CD of Igor Markevitch conducting Schubert. I was unfamiliar with Schubert's early symphonies at the time and couldn't believe what I heard. Of course, what I was hearing was Berwald's "Sinfonie Singulière". I predict that Berwald's time will come (again). Not only is it hard to believe these pieces were written in the first half of the 19th century, he is simply a very entertaining, rewarding and technically suave composer. Not to mention his odd 'cut and paste' approach to classical period harmony and the unique Berwaldian formal invention – his works often have three rather than four movements; the second movement is usually a slow movement with a scherzo functioning as a kind of trio within the adagio.

Ives, you know about. And the piano trio is one of his best chamber works. And Das Folkwang Klaviertrio, about whom I know nothing, is a terrific ensemble and are beautifully recorded. So ignore my words and simply download this nice record, cover scan included, HERE. (You have the choice of FLAC with a few pops and clicks or a nicely-autodeclicked MP3 version.)

Another LaSalle Quartet commission

2010-02-21T15:09:00.010-03:30

Around the same time that the LaSalle Quartet commissioned a second quartet from Hans Erich Apostel (see my previous post), they asked Luigi Nono for a quartet. At the time – 1957 or so – Nono was deeply involved with vocal music, and his long 'political' phase was about to begin. So it wasn't until the very late 70s that Nono was in a position to fulfill the request. His response, "Fragmente – Stille, An Diatoma", is a singular contribution to the quartet literature. It also marked a turning point for the composer. Nono's final decade was spent exploring and mapping the terrain that is first glimpsed in this difficult, but rewarding piece.

This was the first CD I bought. (It was 1988. I was, and am, a classic 'late adopter' of new technologies.) What I am posting here is, however, a needledrop from a recently-found, sealed vinyl copy. A piece where silence is the norm, where every sound emerges as an exceptional event, would seem ideally suited to the absolute silence of the compact disc. But the living, material silence that is the real subject of the piece is not equivalent to digital silence. This is an excellent pressing. No pops or scratches. Yet, the turning of the record and the unavoidable turntable noise provides a 'rough silence', a silence strong enough to offset the pppppp notes high above the stave. Like the warp of the raw, stretched canvas holding the marks of a Joan Mitchell or Cy Twombly painting in place.

Besides its length, its silences, and its 'poverty' of musical material, "Fragmente – Stille, An Diatoma" presents a further level of difficulty due to Nono's use of hidden references to literature and music – first and foremost, the numerous fragments from Hölderlin's poetry and prose that are inscribed in the score and which are not to be read aloud or printed in the program. Alongside Hölderlin (and Mayakovsky) are numerous references to music, specifically late Beethoven, Ockeghem and Verdi. These references are so attenuated as to be barely audible. I have never managed to find a score for this piece, but I have found an interesting dissertation online, about Hölderlin and "the new music". I have included the lengthy chapter on Nono's piece with this post. It includes a complete list of the Hölderlin quotations, as well as a much more interesting discussion of the work's musical language than I have provided.

As far as I know, "Fragmente –" has only been commercially recorded three times – by the LaSalle, Arditti and Pellegrini Quartets. The latter group has gone on to make a number of very good recordings for CPO (Haydn, Hartmann, Busoni, etc.). Since the Pellegrini CD of the Nono piece is out of print, I have included it along with my transfer of the LaSalle LP. Both recordings and David Gabriel Blumberg's generously-illustrated essay can be found HERE.

Hans Erich Apostel: String Quartet No 1 Op 7

2010-02-21T14:00:00.009-03:30

The LaSalle Quartet? Excellent group! They recorded that big "Neue Wiener Schüle" box for DGG in the 70s – the complete quartet works of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. It came with an invaluable 178-page book of documents: letters, statements and analyses by the composers themselves. I'm sure I'm not the only one who cherishes those superb (and beautifully recorded) performances.

Says the LaSalle's violinist Walter Levin: "From the very first, our idea was to present not only the Vienna School but also the generation of their 'fathers' and 'sons'. Tackling Schoenberg was bound to lead, sooner or later, to the rediscovery of Zemlinsky. On the other hand, we came across Apostel more or less by accident, since he was unknown in America – and Europe too, for that matter. We found a study score of Apostel's String Quartet Op 7 in a New York music shop, and straightaway it seemed to us that it was a work with an individual stamp which would reward our study ... "

When Universal Edition was unable to supply them with parts, the group tracked down Apostel in Vienna and commissioned a second quartet (Op 26, written in 1956.) While I am unaware of a recording of Apostel's second quartet by the LaSalle, or any other group, the composer's first quartet is an icy gem. Written in 1935, it was intended as a 50th birthday present to his teacher Alban Berg. Berg died before Apostel had completed the piece – his original plan called for five movements, but he decided to let it end with the slow fourth movement. There are certainly similarities to Berg (even an apparent direct reference, in the second movement, to 'Wozzeck': the chord of stacked fifths that first appears at the end of the second scene of the opera.) There is also a family resemblance to Schoenberg's Trio Op 45 and Phantasy Op 47 – and to Beethoven's Op 95, the terse, exacting "Quartetto Serioso".

Apostel's quartet filled out the final LP of the LaSalle's Zemlinsky set, but does not appear on the CD currently available from DGG. (The "Neue Wiener Schule" set, shorn of its coffee-table book packaging, is now available for pennies from Brilliant Classics.) For those who have not heard these recordings on vinyl recently, I must add that this quartet's sound – often characterized as 'thin', 'wiry' and 'intellectual' – is very attractive. The recordings, particularly their late Beethoven, suffer from terrible early CD transfers.

HERE is Apostel's first quartet, in a vinyl rip, without processing, along with the interview with Walter Levin that appears in the original package. I hope that some young group is planning a CD of both quartets, and would appreciate hearing about any recordings or performances of Apostel's other works.

(I am greatly indebted to Boom Boomsky, whose enthusiasm for this piece was contagious ...)

***********

NOTE 9 June 2010: Thanks to Makropulos for bringing to my attention a new CD on the excellent Cybele label of the Complete Works for String Quartet by Apostel. I have not heard it yet, but I intend to do so as soon as possible. The quartet is the Doelen Quartet and M. says the performances are great and the packaging magnificent.

Thea Musgrave: Three orchestral works

2010-02-11T12:49:00.015-03:30

Thea Musgrave is a semi-rarity: a 20th-century composer who composes for the traditional orchestra. By that, I mean she composes for the orchestra as an instrument – an instrument with two centuries of research and development behind it. As Morton Feldman told a student, when asked why he was uninterested in composing for electronic instruments or, say, a quintet of slide whistle, rubber bands, toy piano, electric guitar and oud, "Why should I bother, when I have this marvelous instrument, the orchestra, which has proven its worth over time?" (Although he did try an electric guitar in a later-abandoned piece.)

Musgrave is an inspired player of that "marvelous instrument", and in a second sense as well ... unlike Stravinsky, for example, whose orchestration (masterful as it is) is simply that: orchestrated piano music, Musgrave's music is unimaginable in a piano reduction. She composes, like Mahler, Carter or Boulez, for the orchestra itself. It's a profound gift, to be able to hear that well, to play the orchestra as if it were under one's fingers, writing directly for that complicated instrument – with all of its practical and organizational drawbacks.

The works Musgrave wrote in the late 60s are, in my opinion, worthy of more notice than they have received. I would describe them as close to Carter's works of the same period in design and intention, despite their somewhat less complicated nature. They are post-tonal works that aspire to complexity and to a kind of abstract theatricality. Unlike Carter, she allows a certain amount of 'controlled' chance. Very much like late Maderna (or early Amy) these works could be called 'cadenzas' for orchestra rather than 'pieces' or 'concertos'.

I have made needledrops of three works from the late 60s: the Concerto for Orchestra (1967), "Night Music" (1969) and the Horn Concerto (1971). The two concertos are from a Decca Headline LP ("Head 8" to give it its 'hip' catalogue number.) The composer conducts the Horn Concerto (the soloist is Barry Tuckwell) and Alexander Gibson conducts the Concerto for Orchestra. "Night Music" is taken from an Argo split release (which also includes Sessions' Eighth Symphony, another orchestral nocturne) and is conducted by Frederick Prausnitz.

The two pieces from the Decca LP are available on a Lyrita CD, along with the Clarinet Concerto (1969), a closely-related work. As usual, I insist that the sound of the vinyl recording is special, although Lyrita's transfer is very fine. I have included the composer's notes from the Argo LP, as well as a PDF of the Lyrita booklet (both for the information about the pieces and as a gentle nudge to support the label and buy the CD.)

The modern composer who chooses the orchestra as their primary instrument is taking a certain risk. On these premiere recordings, the conductors obviously spent many hours rehearsing and shaping the pieces. 2008 was Thea Musgrave's 80th birthday year, and there are numerous broadcast recordings of her works from the celebrations. It was disheartening to find performances of the "Concerto for Orchestra" that were almost entirely unsuccessful, undoubtedly due to lack of rehearsal time and understanding on the conductor's part. Is it really practical to write complex music for the traditional orchestra anymore – and if so, is it reasonable to expect orchestras of the future to be able to realize these scores? (A surprising and affirmative answer can be found in the large number of performances of "Gruppen" after Stockhausen's death: the three or four I have heard have been very good.) When notated music is too complex or contextual to "play itself", composer-supervised recordings can be as important as the score itself. We are lucky to have 'definitive' recordings of works by Stockhausen, Boulez, Carter – and Musgrave.

My needledrops of three orchestral works by the Scots-American composer Thea Musgrave are HERE.

Dorothy Dorow on Telefunken

2010-02-11T12:35:00.010-03:30

This 1978 Telefunken LP is not particularly scarce – I have found three copies over the years. But I have only found a copy in decent condition recently. Side 1 contains Dorothy Dorow's second commercial recording of Webern (I have previously posted some songs from the EMI "Neue Wiener Schule" box set and her later Etcetera set, with the Schoenberg ensemble and Reinbert de Leeuw.) The Webern pieces here are among his most difficult, and Dorothy Dorow, with her perfect pitch and perfect diction, is the woman for the job. Included are the chamber song sets, Op 14 – 18.

Side 2 contains Schoenberg's "Herzegewächse", Dallapiccola's "Sieben Goethe-Lieder" and Stravinsky's "Elegy for JFK" and "Three songs from William Shakespeare". When these recordings were made, in 1978, they provided one of the first 'alternatives' to the CBS Craft and Boulez recordings of the Webern. Reinbert de Leeuw is, again, the conductor, leading the Ensemble Amsterdam. Despite the relatively good condition of the vinyl, I did apply a modest amount of auto-declicking to the results.

As a bonus, I have included a 1975 live performance of Dallapiccola's "Three Joyce Songs" with Ms. Dorow. She is accompanied by Piero Bellugi conducting the ORTF. This portion is in MP3 (which is how I found it.) The entire package, including scans of the LP jacket, can be found HERE.

Reine Gianoli plays Schumann

2010-02-11T12:24:00.006-03:30

Reine Gianoli was an excellent pianist whose recordings have started to pop up on all the best blogs.

My own contribution to this well-deserved renewal of attention is volumes 7 and 10 of her excellent 1974 Schumann recordings, issued on the Adès label, and now out of print. Why volumes 7 and 10? You guessed it! Those are two that I have! I also have a couple of the other CDs, but these are of particular interest because they contain somewhat less-played Schumann:

Humoresque Op 20, Phantasiestücke Op 12, Gesänge der Frühe Op 133, Novelleten Op 21, Canon sur "An Alexis" and Four "Nachtstücke" Op 23.

I have included scans of the CD track listings with the post, which you will find by clicking on the first three words of the second paragraph.

"On the corner" on LP

2010-02-11T11:53:00.008-03:30

I have owned "On the corner" by Miles Davis at least seven times, as far as I can remember. I first heard it in Lubbock, Texas when I was thirteen. I checked it out from the public library and, in a story I have told one too many times, left it in the trunk of the car in the hot Texas sun while we were grocery shopping. By the time my mom and I got it to the return counter at the library, the record was as twisted and molten as it had sounded in my bedroom. So, I had, of course, managed to hear it, at least, before having to pay the angry librarian (out of my own allowance.)

This was the same year that my favorite rock band of the time, King Crimson, released "Larks' Tongues in Aspic", so I wasn't completely unprepared for "On the corner". Still, I was unnerved by the extreme repetition, particularly that odd sixteenth-note hi-hat figure followed by a snare thump on "four" which dominates the entire LP. It became apparent that what I was listening to was not an album of 'songs' but one single, carefully calibrated musical object, presented from a series of different aural angles.

I have owned "On the corner" as an LP, bought two or three commercial cassettes, two different CD versions and, of course, the gigantic "On the corner" complete sessions box (the deluxe model, encased in metal). At the time that I borrowed this record from the library, it was regarded as proof positive that Miles Davis had sold-out, lost his mind and erased himself from jazz history. When I moved to New York in 1982, the LP was name-dropped by every New York 'no-wave' band I knew. Today, it is fairly uncontroversial to call it a masterpiece – the intersection where James Brown, Stockhausen and the use of the recording studio as a compositional tool collided. How the credit should be divided between Miles Davis, the producer Teo Macero and teenage bassist Michael Henderson is still up for grabs.

But you know all of that. What is more interesting is – have you listened to it on vinyl recently? I found a copy in fine condition and am amazed at how much my hearing has changed over the years: not just because of time, but because of changing assumptions – driven by technological advances – about how a recording should 'sound'. My advice is to throw out your CDs (but keep that box set hidden away somewhere) and find a copy of the LP, or listen to my own lossless needledrop. As a bonus I have thrown in Side One of "Jack Johnson" (aka "Right off"), also taken from a good vinyl copy.

HERE.

Blandine Verlet plays Claude Balbastre

2010-02-11T11:23:00.009-03:30

Here's Blandine Verlet in a selection of clavecin pieces by Claude Balbastre (1724 – 1799). Her playing is fierce, her instrument is loud and closely-miked, so watch the volume! Side 1 was recorded in 1972 and Side 2 in 1977 ... I don't know if that means that part of this record was released previously.

Recordings of Balbastre seem to fairly thin on the ground, and as far as I can tell, this Philips LP is not available on CD. The declicked lossless transfer, with front and back cover, can be found HERE.

Magda Tagliaferro on LYS and Sony

2010-02-09T14:02:00.009-03:30

Magda Tagliaferro was born in Brazil in 1893. Her French parents took her to France when she was young, where she became a student of Alfred Cortot and friends with Gabriel Fauré and Reynaldo Hahn. This post includes all of her recordings in my collection. While Magda Tagliaferro was not a prolific recording artist, she made quite a few more recordings than I am able to provide, including Volume 2 of the LYS series (Volume 1 is on the left), and collections on EMI and Philips.

The first part of this post is the CD from the late, much-missed LYS/Dante label: Mozart with the violinist Denise Soriano, Schumann's "Carnival in Vienna" and two pieces by Hahn, including his piano concerto, conducted by the composer. Complete scans of the booklet (with wonderful photographs) are included.

The second part contains needledrops from 2 LPs. The first is Tagliaferro's mono recording of the Fifth Saint-Saëns piano concerto, with Jean Fournet and the Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux. As Leslie Gerber notes in his short assessment of Tagliaferro's recorded legacy (included in my post), this recording was briefly available on a Philips CD. I have never heard that transfer, but even in my modestly auto-declicked transfer, from an Epic LP, her magic is obvious. When Tagliaferro was 93 years old, her student Daniel Varsano arranged for her to make her last recording: a digital Sony LP of Fauré. The contents are two pieces for four hands, "Dolly" and the "Ballade" (arranged by Isidore Phillip), with the teacher and student at the piano. Also included are three "Nocturnes" (Nos 4 and 6 are played by Tagliaferro and No 7 by Varsano). It's a beautiful recording, and has apparently never appeared on CD. I have included complete scans of the Sony LP.

The drawing with this post is by Sue Willmarth.

Matthijs Vermeulen, Part 2: The Vocal Music

2010-02-09T12:54:00.007-03:30

Here's the second installment of music by Matthijs Vermeulen (1888 – 1967), taken from the same non-commercial Donemus/Composer's Voice LPs that provided an earlier selection of his chamber music. This time the focus is on his equally eloquent vocal pieces.

Once again I find a highly original composer equipped with a formidable technique, working in the post-tonal idiom of later Debussy and early Schoenberg. The melodic style and disjunct "block" construction seem to anticipate the earlier Messiaen, even late Stravinsky. Having lived with this music for a number of years and found it in no way second-rate, I can only conclude that the reason Vermeulen's chamber and vocal works aren't part of the standard repertoire in 2010 is that he is a Dutch composer.

Vermuelen's vocal works are more like miniature cantatas for voice and piano than lieder or melodies. Included are five pieces (with "La Veille" in both the original and orchestral versions), with singers of the caliber of Jard van Nes and several pianists, including the Maarten Bon. I have included a text document with all the information, as well as scans of the LP inserts including a detailed biographical sketch, excerpts from Vermeulen's music journalism and the song texts.

As will be seen from the written materials included in this package, Vermeulen was anything but an 'outsider' artist. He was in the thick of European culture as a journalist and musical thinker – his criticism extends from Mahler premieres right through "Moses and Aron." He was at permanent public loggerheads with Willem Mengelberg, whom he considered to be a musical and political reactionary, with the unfortunate result that his symphonies didn't get a hearing at the Concertgebouw until after World War II.

It should be pointed out that Donemus reissued the 8 LPs of the Vermeulen series in two commercial boxed CD sets. Although the usual online retailers insist that these are no longer available, they are still listed (along with many other recordings of Dutch classical music) at the Donemus site.

If you don't mind hearing these wonderful pieces with the occasional snap, crackle and pop of vinyl, the link to my unprocessed, lossless transfer and the aforementioned scans is the first three words, in green type, of the third paragraph.

Frank Martin: "Le Vin Herbé" on Westminster LP, with the composer at the piano

2010-02-08T15:19:00.012-03:30

I first encountered Frank Martin's setting of the Tristan and Iseult story on a gorgeous-sounding Harmonia Mundi CD with the RIAS Kammerchor. However, this 2-LP 1961 premiere recording on Westminster seems superior to me on every count. The role of the chorus in "Le Vin Herbé" is similar to the chorus in Bach's Passions or the Greek tragedies. It tells the story, reacts to the characters' plights and implores the Gods. In the 1961 recording, every word of French is perfectly enunciated; on Harmonia Mundi, the usually excellent RIAS chorus simply can't be understood, something that would probably disturb even a non-French speaker, as the soloists on the CD, including the wonderful Sandrine Piau, have perfect diction.

The Westminster LP has the added distinction of having the composer at the piano. Victor Desarzens conducts soloists from the Lausanne and Winterthur Symphony Orchestras, including the superb violinist Peter Rybar. The solo violin part is of great importance in Martin's "Tristan", detaching itself from the instrumental group to play extraordinarily beautiful high cantilenas. In the unruffled and implacable context of the oratorio's setting, these solo passages are shockingly and nakedly emotional; Martin uses the violin as a surrogate for the passions that Wagner expresses directly. The small choir is accompanied by a small ensemble: 2 violins, 2 viola, 2 cellos, contrabass and piano. The ensemble is very well recorded, and Martin's piano playing is, it goes without saying, authoritative.

There is a photo on the inside cover of Frank and Maria Martin, Victor Deszarens and Dr. Kurt List, head of Westminster – this project was clearly of great importance to all of them, and from their expressions in this photo, you can tell that they were happy with the results.

Needless to say, Frank Martin's take on "Tristan" in no way resembles Wagner's. According to my sources, this recording has not appeared on CD. I have uploaded my lossless transfer, which is lightly declicked, along with complete cover scans and libretto HERE.

Gold and Fizdale play Schubert's Grand Duo

2010-02-04T02:16:00.012-03:30

THIS is what you need to start this dreary, rainy, cold and potentially unhappy day.

I love Schubert's "Grand Duo" for piano four hands, and I love to hear it played slow and Brucknerian – Richter and Britten or Lupu and Barenboim are perfect for those self-indulgent moods when only unheavenly, probably unhealthy, lengths will do.

The once-ubiquitous duo piano team of Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale have other ideas. Here's some exciting mid-20th century neo-classical piano playing: Schubert as Nadia Boulanger and Stravinsky might have played it. It's a revelation, and the producer of this Columbia LP, Joseph Scianni, has gone to town with the stereo possibilities of four-hand piano literature. It's unthinkable that anyone today would dare to pan the primo and secundo parts as far left and right as he's done here, but it works, and it'll guarantee that both sides of your brain are fresh and wide-awake when you arrive at the office or assembly line for another day of happy and fulfilling work, possibly with a silly smile on your face.

The only 'flaw' I can find (I always cite a flaw to prove that I actually listen to this stuff) is a too-obvious splice to create a repeat at the beginning of the scherzo. And then, there is the question of the stereo placement – the treble part on the left and bass on the right? (That would be the 'correct' placement for a string quartet or an orchestra. But for a piano?) And how did they achieve the clean separation? Two pianos? In any case, Schubert's late contrapuntal mastery has seldom been so clearly demonstrated.

This needledrop is available as a mildly-declicked FLAC, and I've included the front and back covers as well. The link is the first word of this post.

The Quatuor Danois plays Mozart

2010-02-02T03:15:00.014-03:30

Here is a selection of Mozart Quintets by one of the two superb quartets 'discovered' and recorded by Michel Bernstein (the founder of not one but – at least – four French labels: Adés, Valois, Astrée and Arcana.) Both the Quatuor Danois and the Festetics Quartets recorded the Mozart Quintets for M. Bernstein, but the two groups could not be more different. The Festetics, a group who arrived at a very individual kind of historically-informed performance in pre-1990 Hungary, is best known for its absolutely unique Haydn, which is now, several years after Bernstein's death, finally reappearing on Arcana after some time as a semi-expensive collector's item. Needless to say, I think you should grab all of the Festetics' Haydn before it goes out of print again.

The Quatuor Danois was a mainstay of Bernstein's 1960s Valois label, and their 1971 set of Mozart Quintets was one of their final recordings. The quartet – Arne Svendsen and Palle Heichelmann (violins), Knud Fredericksen (viola) and Pierre René Honnens (cello) are joined by Serge Collot on the second viola part in K515, K593 and K614. I've also included the Horn Quintet, with special guest star Jacky Magnardi. I didn't include the g-minor Quintet because I (honestly) still don't understand its appeal (I will one day!) I would have included the Clarinet Quintet (with Guy Deplus) but that particular record is not in good shape – it sounds like a sublime performance, though.

These are some of my favorite recordings of these works – the same qualities that made the group's 1961 Haydn Op 77 (their Valois debut) and 1968 Brahms Quintets (also with Serge Collot) such a pleasure immediately drew me to this set. (See my earlier post on the Quatuor Danois for more details, as well as that Haydn and Brahms.) Unfortunately, like much of the Valois catalog, the recordings of this quartet have not (to my knowledge) been released on CD.

These are unprocessed needledrops, in FLAC, and are available HERE.

Stockhausen on Varese Sarabande

2010-02-02T02:58:00.009-03:30

This one comes courtesy of Caleb Deupree, who you know, or should know, from his blog, Classical Drone. Caleb sent me this terrific transfer of the 1967 version of "Prozession" that appeared on Varese Sarabande (and on Candide in the United States.) He even joined up the two sides, something I would have been too lazy to do!

Along with the FLAC file, I have included Mr. Deupree's note, which explains the special interest of this particular performance, along with details on the performers, their instruments, and the source material which they are transforming. He has also shared a very good Stockhausen discography (enclosed).

Stockhausen fans will know that this version of "Prozession" is not available from the Stockhausen Verlag– and true Stockhausen nuts probably already have this record. But don't be shy if you don't. Nobody's watching you download it (except for me.) It's a very exciting piece of music, and documents a period when Stockhausen, with a stable group of musicians well-versed in his sometimes unstable ways, was able to cede control to an extent he hadn't before; his "band" approaches the same territory that improvising groups such as AMM and MEV were exploring at the same time. And it's available HERE.

The London Sinfonietta plays Berg and Stravinsky

2010-02-02T02:16:00.012-03:30

This 1980 Argo LP, recorded at Walthamstow Town Hall with Kenneth "Wilkie" Wilkinson handling the microphones, contains my favorite recording of Stravinsky's "Agon" and one of the best Berg "Kammerkonzert"s I know. My needledrop is from a perfectly pressed and preserved LP; no declicking or other processing was used. The soloists in the Berg are Paul Crossley (piano) and Gyorgy Pauk (violin). The Berg has appeared on a Decca CD, coupled with an unremarkable recording of the Berg Violin Concerto with (Sir) Georg Solti. "Agon" has not had the honor of a digital makeover, as far as I know. The CD transfer of the "Kammerkonzert" is extremely metallic, harsh and nerve-wracking – the performances on this record are wonderfully mellow in sound, but punchy as all get out when the scores require it. David Atherton and his musicians have these pieces down cold – their swing and precision put a few more famous performances to shame. And the bass clarinet playing is excellent and well to the fore, as it should be.

Much of the London Sinfonietta's work under David Atherton has never made it to CD. The vital role played by this new-music ensemble in their early days, when they were very much part of the 'counter-culture', has been obscured, if not erased. The High Pony Tail will continue to right this wrong. Click HERE for the lossless transfer of this LP.

George Enescu: Chamber music on Electrecord

2010-01-18T00:33:00.010-03:30

As the 'statement of intent' (or whatever it is called) at the top of this blog implies, high fidelity is, in my opinion, a disputable concept. Fidelity to what? And how high can it get?

This recording is not for hi-fi enthusiasts.

Having got that out of the way, let me introduce this interesting and (I believe) very beautiful post. Here we have two chamber works by George Enescu (1881-1955) – the Piano Quartet No 2 in d minor Op 30 (1943-44) and the Cello Sonata No 1 Op 26, No 1 in f minor (1898). Enescu was born in Romania and died in France. He was a great conductor, and a startlingly original composer whose style remained fairly similar over the 45 years separating these pieces (I have been listening to them for a month now and just looked up the dates of composition – I would never have guessed. Or as Susan said, "What century was this music written in?")

Some of my fellow bloggers certainly have a much clearer idea than I of the best and worst record-pressing plants of the formerly communist Eastern European countries. Hungaraton and Supraphon, I imagine, come out best. Poland's Muza label has already been nominated for the bottom spot. Electrecord records of Romania are pressed on flimsier vinyl than the Muza records I have, but they sound slightly better. But not much better, I am happy to report, for the unique and mesmerizing effect of these two albums owes much to their hazy, bass-heavy, nearly-impenetrable sound quality.

There actually aren't a lot of actual pops and clicks on the surface of these LPs; it's as hard to pinpoint where the noise is coming from as where the instruments are situated. But the effect of this claustrophobic engineering and mastering on Enescu's chromatic, unpredictably meandering music is mesmerizing. I have spent much of the last month obsessively listening to these records. Since I only know the pieces from these LPs, I can't tell you if these are good performances. The players seem to take inordinately slow tempos; it even occurred to me one evening, as I was drifting to sleep with the Piano Quartet in the headphones, that perhaps these 12-inch discs were meant to be played at 45 RPM. That would account for the cello that sounds an octave lower than a cello can sound, and the dense, labored contrapuntal lines tangled up like seaweed in a dead sea. It would have also been very embarrassing. I couldn't have posted a 45 RPM record at 33 RPM just because I liked the way it sounded, could I?

"Lo-fi" is a concept that is understood and used to great effect in popular music. Just as Gerhard Richter's 'blurred' paintings add an inexplicably disturbing and mournful dimension to an ordinary snapshot. Or to be more concrete: as Susan would say to me (we're both very near-sighted) "It's like what we see before we put our glasses on ... can you imagine how awful it would be if you could see clearly all the time?" Thanks to Lasik surgery, digital photography and modern recording techniques, that dystopia is now reality. Everything can be seen and everything can be heard. I prefer to hold on to my blurry option.

In the piano quartet the musicians are Valentin Gheorghiu, piano; Stefan Gheorghiu, violin; Valeriu Pitulac, viola and Aurel Niculescu, cello. The cello sonata is played by Andrei Csaba, cello and Dan Grigore, piano.

If you want to take a submarine ride to inspect this beautiful underwater world, here is the LINK. Scans of the Piano Quartet sleeve are included; I was only able to scan the label of the Cello Sonata LP, as the cover has been missing for years. Once you find the folder, you have your choice of unprocessed FLAC or lightly declicked MP3. I'm not sure which is better; I've been listening to the declicked versions myself.

NOTE 30 January 2010: For some wonderful transfers featuring Enescu as conductor, as well as a link to a very useful Enescu discography, don't miss the post on Quartier des Archives.

Anthony Braxton: Six compositions quartet (1981, Antilles LP)

2010-01-17T23:19:00.010-03:30

This elusive recording, released in 1981 on Island Records' budget-line subsidiary Antilles, actually belongs with Braxton's 1970s Arista recordings – the pieces were written between 1974 and 1976 and look back to the conventional (in a relative sense) jazz quartet idiom of the boppier pieces on 'New York Fall 1974' and 'Five Compositions 1975'. Despite the famously bad pressing inflicted upon it, this LP may in fact be stronger than those better-known efforts. However, it gives little indication of the increasingly complex way that the composer's discrete compositions would soon lose their independent status and become permeable and modular objects, combined and recombined like Legos, a direction that culminates in the 'Forces in Motion' quartet of the '80s.

This recording, with Anthony Davis on piano, Mark Helias on bass and the great Ed Blackwell on drums, is one of Braxton's most entertaining and witty efforts. The bland cookie-cutter Latin modal 'thing' of the opening Composition 40B is a decoy – one of the composer's most outrageously awkward themes intrudes and the rest of the piece is made up of increasingly frantic jump cuts between two apparently-unrelated subjects. The closing Composition No 52 is an urgent bass-driven machine, always threatening to fly off the wheel and injure someone. There are two great senza tempo slow pieces. Mr. Braxton was my role model during my high school marching band days – the bass and contrabass clarinets were my instruments, and it is gratifying that the second of these down- and out-tempo compositions features one of the most sustained, lumberingly lyrical contrabass lines that Braxton has written. All of the musicians shine: there is nothing rote or unconscious about even tiny details ... a half-broken piano arpeggio ... a crooked ride cymbal tap ... each corner of the picture is full of incident. I don't know the story of this record at all – was it a working band or just a one-shot? They sound like they'd been playing together for a long time; maybe a Braxton afficiando can fill me in.

This is, of course, a needledrop; the recording has never appeared on CD. I had to apply some light auto-declicking to make it listenable, but I've kept it in FLAC. Also included are the front cover (the painting, by Kandinsky, is "Black Relationship 1924" ... ) and most of the back as well.

NOTE 4 February 2011 --- I have re-upped this one after a report of a corrupt file --- links are in the comments.

Aldo Ciccolini plays Beethoven

2010-01-17T22:14:00.006-03:30

RonanM recently posted some excellent live Beethoven from 91-year-old Aldo Ciccolini on his blog, Ceol na Sidhe. Ciccolini, while best-known for things like Albeniz, Satie and Scarlatti, has recorded just about everything under the sun. While the very idea of a Ciccolini Beethoven cycle may be appalling to some, he even made one of those. Defenders of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire will be outraged, but followers of the pianists of the Mediterranean school – Yves Nat, Dino Ciani and Marcelle Meyer, for example – may find themselves pleasantly surprised.

These studio recordings of the 32 sonatas ("recorded between 1995 and 2000") were issued by a label called Bongiovanni. I've also seen the box, with a different ugly cover and a much higher list price, on Nuova Era, but not recently. My research staff informs me that it is currently unavailable, but that it will undoubtedly turn up on Brilliant Classics the moment I finish this post. The producer set his dial halfway between Dry and Wet, the piano doesn't sound like a Steinway and the very familiar 32,199 bars of the Complete Beethoven Sonatas sound strange and marvelous all over again.

I have made a personal selection of the sonatas that particularly tickled my ears and made me smile.

Part 1: Op 10, No 1 and 2; Op 2 No 2

Part 2: Op 31, No 1 and 3; Op 10 No 3

Part 3: Op 101 and Op 111

Here's the LINK.

Pi-Hsien Chen Plays the Boulez Sonatas

2010-01-17T16:21:00.017-03:30

My apologies for having taken so long to get to this – and my thanks to several people, including Caleb and Etha, who have gently prodded me, in the politest and most patient manner imaginable.

However, what we have here is NOT Pi-Hsien Chen's HatHut Boulez CD, exactly. Actually, it is both less and more than that 2005 release. In my usual fashion, I balked at posting a CD as an integral whole, since I think of CDs as objects whose time has now gone, having never arrived. In other words, to get to the point, I have put together my own, slightly longer than CD-length, package of Chen's Boulez.

What you will find are the 2002/2004 recordings of Sonata 1 – 3, as recorded for HatHut. Following Caleb's suggestion, I have also included Chen's 1997 Third Sonata, from the same Telos CD that contains the excellent recording of the Barraqué "Sonate" I previously posted. What I have left out is her recording of Boulez's negligible "Notations", which she recorded in 1997 (the same performance is found on BOTH the Telos and HatHut recordings.) In its place, I have ransacked a THIRD CD for "Structures Livre II" for two pianos – it is the "filler" on that elusive 1989 CBS "Marteau sans Maitre" CD. Pi-Hsien Chen and Bernard Wambach are the performers.

While Claude Helffer's Astrée recording remains my one-stop destination for all three Boulez sonatas, Chen's performances are as top-notch as her Barraqué (and her Naxos "Goldberg Variations"). The HatHut recording is a bit too reverberant for this music, in my opinion. Compare the dryer sound that Telos got on the Third Sonata and you might (or might not) agree. "Structures, Livre II" remains a powerful and charming contribution to the two-piano repertoire (as does the unfairly-maligned "Livre I") and it's nice to have another version to set alongside the classic Kontarsky Brothers and Boulez/Loriod recordings.

There are other performances of the individual sonatas to consider – Charles Rosen's Columbia Masterworks LP of the First and Third – still not on CD: more about that later. And, of course, Maurizio Pollini's DG recording of the Second Sonata, a recording that only reveals its tonal beauty on the original vinyl issue – more about that later as well.

As far as I can tell, all three of these CDs are currently unavailable. HatHut normally limits their Hat(now)Art editions to 3000 copies; the Boulez disc, however, is marked "2005, 1st edition", so presumably a second edition is on the way. The Telos disc is simply unavailable. As for the CBS disc, Sony has gone to great pains to hide its existence, perhaps because it contains Boulez's greatest recording of "Le Marteau", with the magnificent Elisabeth Laurence? As of this morning, a thumbnail of that bit of Sony samizdat can be seen at some online retailers and not at others, with varying indications that it is out of print, may be available shortly, or is available used. However, its contents have been incorporated into the new Sony France Boulez Edition (and more about THAT later, too!)

If you've made it this far, or have simply skipped the fine print, HERE is the link.

NOTE 24 January 2010: Due to server problems, some people have had difficulties downloading these files. This problem will probably clear itself up shortly. If you have had a problem, here is a temporary ALTERNATE LINK for the HatHut recording only.

Borah Bergman: Discovery (1975 Chiaroscuro LP)

2010-01-17T14:46:00.005-03:30

"If you're not going to be crushed, you have to have the energy to keep fighting for your rights, including your expressive rights"

Wise words from Borah Bergman, taken from the liner notes by Nat Hentoff (scan included) of this 1975 solo piano recording. Also included are explicit instructions on how to listen to "Perpetual Springs" for piano (four hands), as well as an explanation of the final piece, which is for "The Third Hand" alone.

The remaining track is called "Horse Opera", but there is no singing.

My needledrop of this recording has been lightly declicked, and is available in FLAC only here.

Ralph Kirkpatrick plays Scarlatti on Columbia Masterworks LPs, 1954

2009-12-26T21:48:00.017-03:30

"Personally, as a record player, I would not listen always to successive records, nor even to all of a side at a time, but occasionally overcome the passivity bred by record-changing machines, and skip around among my favorites in the different periods. I have refrained from taking repeats within many of the sonatas because it seems to me that their purpose is more flexibly accomplished by repeated playings of whole sonatas when desired. For this purpose I have instructed the engineers to provide grooves between pairs of sonatas, separate sonatas, and before and after the one triptych of sonatas XLIX – LI.

I must implore the listener not to play these records at too high a volume level. Repeatedly it has been my experience in playbacks to find delicate legato phrasings of slow movements transformed into brutal hammerings reminiscent of pile-drivers. The expressive capacities of the harpsichord are all-dependent on the electronically easily distorted relationship of attack and duration of tone that is the harpsichordist's principal means of shaping and declaiming his phrases ... Moreover, the characteristics of individual record-players (not to mention the acoustics of the rooms in which they are used) differ so widely that I have heard the same record on successive machines in a diabolical variety of almost unrecognizable distortions. There is no standard way of playing harpsichord records on all machines. One must adapt them to the characteristics of his own room and record player."

Ralph Kirkpatrick, of course, was not a record player (as the ambiguous first phrase of this excerpt implies) but a harpsichordist and Scarlatti scholar. Most of my favorite Scarlatti recordings are by pianists – the sound of the harpsichord is a problem for me. Not so, however, in the cases of Scott Ross's complete Scarlatti on Erato or of Kirkpatrick's pioneering 1954 Columbia Masterworks set. I transferred the eight sides of this recording in one sitting, listening all the while, and at no time suffered the aural fatigue I associate with harpsichord recordings. Mr. Kirkpatrick's superb grasp of rubato and phrasing and sensitive changing of the stops creates the illusion (or discloses the reality) that the harpsichord can be a touch-sensitive instrument.

Like several other Columbia Masterworks sets that I have posted (Robert Craft's Webern and Schoenberg; the Juilliard mono Schoenberg Quartets, and, soon, Hans Rosbaud's "Moses and Aaron") this recording is of considerable historical importance. The sixty sonatas played here by Mr. Kirkpatrick were first published in his own edition, in two volumes, by Schirmer. That edition remains in print 50 years later and has provided me with hours of fun and wonder at the piano. These recordings are also the aural companion to the harpsichordist's Scarlatti book, which was years in the making and took him to every corner of Italy and Spain in search of manuscripts and documents. And, of course, the Kirkpatrick "K numbers" have replaced the earlier, problematic Longo numbers as the preferred method of designating the sonatas.

To the best of my knowledge, the 60 sonatas as recorded here are not available on CD (except in Japan, for all I know.) I used to own a Urania CD of "53 sonatas" which had terrible processed sound; I am sure a Scarlatti specialist will be able to fill me in on the source of those recordings, which I presume are not the Columbia recordings. Kirkpatrick later recorded Scarlatti for Archiv and other labels, but this set is required listening. (I realize I haven't said anything about the genius of Scarlatti the composer, but is that necessary?)

I have included complete scans of everything in the deluxe box set: the essay and photos, front and back covers and LP labels. Those that have not yet sampled Mr. Kirkpatrick's prose are in for a treat: this is some of the wildest, most idea-packed writing on music and its performance I have ever read. (Those that have not yet found time to read his Scarlatti book will undoubtedly spend the next few months poring over it with pleasure on the basis of this small sample.)

Contrary to Mr. Kirkpatrick's wishes, I have not divided the music between sonatas, but simply included eight tracks, one for each of the original eight sides. The post is available either as unprocessed FLACs or (my recommendation) auto-declicked 320 MP3. The records I used are in very good shape --- the fourth LP (sides 4 and 5) is less than pristine, but there are no skips or huge pops to watch out for. Again, the declicked MP3 has provided me with the most pleasure; the FLACs are as good as the very good vinyl surfaces, and I encourage anyone with decent audio editing skills to use my FLACs as the basis for their own transfers.

IMPORTANT NOTE 2 June 2010 - It was pointed out to me that both the FLAC and MP3 files for Side 8 were, in fact, Side 2. I think the mixup occurred sometime after the initial posting, when I had to replace several of the files when they were (somehow) deleted. Side 2 was always correct; only Side 8 was incorrect. The problem has been corrected and the links are below.

For FLACS: click HERE.

For declicked MP3s: click HERE.

Thelonious Monk: Greatest American Composer of the Mid-Twentieth Century?

2009-12-25T20:03:00.015-03:30

Since I can't find my copy of the Mosaic "Complete Black Lion and Vogue Recordings of Thelonious Monk", which is buried in the rubble of my castle (i.e. my home), I've decided to fill the gap until I do find it with two of the LPs I did find while not finding the Mosaic set I was looking for.

"Always Know" is a compilation of odds and ends from Monk's Columbia years, with the always-underrated and supremely inventive Charlie Rouse on tenor. This 2-LP set was "compiled and mixed" by the pianist Terry Adams of the rock band NRBQ: odd, but the Monk influence was always evident in his playing. I'm sure that all of these odds and ends have been appended as bonus tracks to the relevant CBS CDs by now, although I do see a used CD of this O.P. grab-bag going for $99.00 on Amazon. This is one of the many gatefold Monk records that I grew up with and I'll always think of the takes on it as a package. Two caveats: I have left off two pieces, the Hall Overton arrangements of "Light Blue" and "Bye-Ya" for large ensemble, making this a quartet-only offering. And I am posting this as a declicked 320 MP3 (no FLAC).

Anthony Braxton's "Six Monk's Compositions" (yes, that's the title) is a very enjoyable quartet outing from 1988 that appeared on the Black Saint label. While some of Braxton's recordings of the jazz repertory have raised eyebrows and blackened eyes over the years, this one is a straight-ahead and very inspired affair. Six of Monk's trickiest compositions: "Brilliant corners", "Reflections", "Played twice", "Four in one" (pictured above), "Ask me now" and "Skippy". Contrary to some pugnacious nay-sayers, Braxton (on alto throughout) has no problem with the tunes – his solos are in the tradition but unmistakably his own. The pianist Mal Waldron successfully negotiates the challenge of playing these pieces and not sounding at all like Monk; even more impressively, he does so while improvising on the thematic material, not the changes – the key to a successful performance of a Monk composition. The rhythm section of Buell Neidlinger and Bill Osborne are terrific. This is also a really great sounding LP, ideal room, mike placement and hands-off mixing.

For "Always Know" (track details and personnel included) click HERE.

For "Six Monk's Compositions" in unprocessed FLAC (LP cover scans included) click HERE.

And if you download both of these LPs, you'll have the rare opportunity of hearing one of Thelonious Monk's least-recorded tunes – "Played twice" – played twice.

Joséphine Nendick sings Jean Barraqué

2009-12-25T20:01:00.014-03:30

Here's another piece or two of the recorded legacy of the great French composer Jean Barraqué. This recording originally appeared on Valois records in 1969; my needledrop is from the LP pictured above, a reissue on Astrée. With this, we have now posted all of the recordings supervised by the composer during his lifetime. Joséphine Nendick was Barraqué's preferred singer – he battled hard to get her for this premiere recording of "Chant après chant" (1966). He had been enthralled by a tape of Nendick's 1967 performance of his 'opus one' "Séquence" (1950-52) for the BBC: "I was overwhelmed by Nendick ... she's the only one who's understood my vocal music." While the 1957 Véga recording of "Séquence" with Ethel Semser is very fine, Nendick is on fire here. The pianist Noël Lee is more secure than Yvonne Loriod on the Véga recording and the stereo sound is excellent. Side A ("Séquence") of this LP is in great shape; the flip side ("Chant ... ") has a bit more surface noise.

Both pieces are scored for soprano, piano and a contingent of percussion instruments (as well as violin, cello and harp in "Séquence"). "Chant après chant" was a commission from Les Percussions de Strasbourg – on this recording, Tamás Vetö conducts Les Percussions de Copenhague and members of the Ensemble Prisma.

As usual, my needledrop is available as an unprocessed FLAC or as a declicked 320 MP3.

To round off what would appear to be the final Barraqué post on the High Pony Tail, I have appended five important live performances. Four of them may be familiar to those of you who follow torrents on Dime a Dozen: they were uploaded by Uncle Meat who, as a friend says, "seems to have recorded every single broadcast on Radio France since the mid-1960s". I have included his original note as a text document in the file. These files are presented as they appeared on DIME, without any editing on my part, and as FLACs. The fifth selection is not from DIME; it is an MP3 shared with me by a friend. I present it as is, without any attempt to polish it up. All of these live recordings are in perfectly listenable sound. For the package below, click HERE.

* "Concerto"(1962-68) and "Sequence" in 1970s performances by Ensemble 2e2m, Paul Mefano, conductor; Hubert Rostaing is the clarinetist in the Concerto. (Mefano and his group later recorded the "Concerto" for Harmonia Mundi.)

* "Chant après chant", again with Joséphine Nendick, this time with Les Percussions de Strasbourg, conducted by Charles Bruck, and Christian Ivaldi, piano. This is a 1968 performance from Avignon, possibly the third performance, following the premiere in Strasbourg and a second performance in Oxford.

* The Piano Sonata (1952) in a live performance by Claude Helffer in 1993, 25 years after his Valois recording.

* "Le Temps Restitué" (1956-68) – the 1968 premiere, in Royan, with Gilbert Amy conducting the Domaine Musical and members of the ONRF choir. Helga Pilarczyk is the soprano soloist.

The (nearly) complete details are repeated in the info text with the downloads.

This post would not have been possible without Nick K., Amy Bowman and Tassilo – and thanks again to Ragnar for supplying his tape of the 1957 Vega LP of the Sonata and Séquence, which started this whole thing rolling.

James "Blood" Ulmer's Music Revelation Ensemble: "No Wave" Moers LP (1980)

2009-12-25T19:44:00.008-03:30

I have a hard time keeping track of the chronology of James "Blood" Ulmer's pre-Columbia LPs – it seems like "Tales of Captain Black", "Are you glad to be in America" and "The Music Revelation Ensemble – No Wave" (above) were on us all at once back in the early 80s. I do remember that the first one I heard was this one, a quartet recorded in Dusseldorf for the Moers label and that it blew me away. So I was very happy to find a copy again recently and hear it for the first time since I was 20 years old – and a little bit curious about how'd I'd react.

First things first ... that nervous syncopated beginning still sounds like nothing on earth and builds such extraordinary tension that you can't believe it can possibly be leading to something even more apocalyptic – but it does! No doubt about it, this still can sound like the most vital, frightening and joyful music on earth all at one. But time has sorted out things and the confusion this record threw at me in 1980 is a little less confusing. First of all is it "No Wave"? Well, at the time it was great to think so, "No Wave" being a term for a New York-centric, white (as in caucasian) noise that, with the exception of James White and the Blacks' fake James Brown/Ornette Coleman 'thing', was very unfunky and definitely No Fun. And what about the afrocentric electric jazz that Ulmer seemed to be a part of? Looking back, this record doesn't fit into the Miles/Ornette electric style (as on "On the Corner" and "Body Meta"): it doesn't drone and it doesn't vamp hypnotically. But neither does it fit into any of the prevailing electric jazz "fusion" formulas of the time. No virtuoso, odd time-signature, progressive rock flourishes or multi-part "suites". What's interesting is that, despite the flat-out volume, three of the four tracks are actually very traditional "head – solos – head" pieces that wouldn't be out of place (without the amplification or the in-the-pocket rhythm) on any number of hard bop or post-bop records of the 60s. One exception, though: the inevitable 'vocal' number, "Sound Check" is an hilarious/beautiful, noisy/lyrical, uptempo dirge (with country and western flourishes), capped off with Ulmer practicing his German on top – sounding more like Mark E. Smith on The Fall's 1981 "Hex Enduction Hour" than anything else!

The personnel of the Music Revelation Ensemble on this, their first release, is James "Blood" Ulmer (electric guitar), David Murray (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet), Amin Ali (electric bass guitar) and Ronald Shannon Jackson (drums). The tracks are "Time Table", "Big Tree", "Baby Talk" and "Sound Check". And the link is HERE, in an unprocessed FLAC needledrop, with scans of the cover.

The Kocian Quartet plays Mozart and Brahms

2009-12-25T19:39:00.015-03:30

The Kocian Quartet has made some of the most memorable quartet recordings I own, the earlier ones for Denon/Nippon Columbia, and more recently, and with only one personnel change, for Praga. They formed in Prague in 1972 under the mentorship of Antonin Kohout, of the Smetana Quartet. All of their Denon CDs are out of print, and it is from that catalog that I have taken their recordings of Mozart's six "Haydn" quartets and the two Brahms Sextets, on which they are joined by two members of the Smetana Quartet: Mr. Kohout and Milan Skampa.

These are simply my favorite modern recordings of these pieces (I'm sure we all have our favorites!). Both the Mozart and Brahms can be found in one folder, lovingly and losslessly transfered. I've checked the links over and over and still can't assure you that, somewhere between my home and yours (Mediafire headquarters in Harris County, Texas, to be precise) something won't go wrong. But if it does, drop me a line and I'll try to make things right.

The next day (28 December 2009): Chris reported a "Texas Glitch" in the first movement of the first Brahms Sextet – I uploaded a "SUB" file for the first sextet, downloaded it and it checks out"A-OK". Please let me know if you have any further problems.

The up side in all this fuss was I took another listen to this wonderful recording of a piece that is difficult to bring off well: bear with us – it's really worth the wait!

The Juilliard Quartet on RCA: Berg and Webern

2009-12-25T19:32:00.005-03:30

The next monument in the Juilliard Quartet's recorded legacy featuring the Second Viennese School is this stereo RCA LP from 1961. Included is what has a solid claim to be the all-around best recording of the "Lyric Suite" ever made, as well as Webern's Op 5 and Op 7. If you look closely at the LP jacket, you can see that I was fortunate enough to find this excellent copy for only fifty American cents. The contents of this record were reissued on Testament, spread across two CDs, a few years ago. I haven't heard their transfers of this LP, but I do have the Juilliard Beethoven/Schubert release and it is very good. Nevertheless, here is this record, in its original two-sided format, in FLAC or in declicked MP3 (I recommend the latter option). If you like what you hear, please do check out the Testament, on 2 CDs, which will also net you the Juilliard's RCA recordings of Debussy, Ravel, Carter and William Schuman.

The Juilliard Quartet on this release was: Robert Mann and Isidore Cohen (violin), Raphael Hillyer (viola) and Claus Adam (cello). A scan of the front cover and other details is included. Everything is in one folder: ICI.

The Juilliard Quartet plays Schoenberg: Appendix

2009-12-25T19:31:00.011-03:30

The Juilliard String Quartet's mono Second Vienna School set is well on its way to overtaking the Craft Webern (and Betsy Jolas!) at the top of The High Pony Tail's MediafirePro download report hit parade. In gratitude, here is the first of two follow-up posts. I decided to have another listen to the original Columbia LPs, which I had eagerly replaced with the (now O.P.) French commercial CD transfer when it appeared. After a quick spin through ClickRepair, the Op 7 Schoenberg Quartet emerged not only listenable, but, compared to the French transfer, simply stunning in its detail, dynamic range and 'natural' room sound. Of course I would say that, as an analog adherent who maintains that "be it FLAC or lowly MP3 – it's all the same to me": digital is evil. But you needn't be a nut like myself to be curious about hearing this desultory but delightful needledrop I threw together for comparison. I'd be interested in hearing reactions, pro or con, from any of the 88 people who downloaded those earlier Juilliard transfers ...

And here's another interesting item. Robert Koff, the second violinist in the original Juilliard Quartet, left early for a teaching career; he had been at Brandeis University for 25 years when he died in 2005. This is from an undated, non-commercial instructional record for an "Introduction to 20th-Century Music" course he taught at Brandeis. Professor Koff, with violin in hand and his wife Rosalind at the piano, introduces Webern's "Four pieces for violin and piano". Subjects include klangfarbenmelodie, special bowing techniques, 12-tone harmonies, and a short analysis of the first piece. Capping it off is a tremendous, complete performance of the "Vier Stücke" by Professor and Mrs. Koff. I have posted this as an MP3, with all the original pops and clicks, but will include the Webern performance alone, declicked and en-FLAC-ced, in an upcoming package.

So, for those of you with time on your hands, HERE is the Juilliard Quartet Op 7 straight from the 1953 LP with minimal declicking – and Professor Koff's lecture to boot.

Louis Andriessen: Two early works (Attacca LP)

2009-12-23T21:11:00.010-03:30

Here's a follow-up to a previous post of earlier works by Louis Andriessen. Two seemingly simple, artless compositions: "Melodie" for blokfluit and piano (Frans Brüggen, with the composer at the piano) and "Symfonie voor loose snaren", for small string orchestra (Ed Spaanjard conducts the Caecilia Consort). Both works place severe restrictions on the composer: in "Melodie", the flute and piano are in unison (almost) throughout, although they are never quite in rhythmic unison. The strings in the "Symfonie" play on open strings only; scordatura provides the full chromatic spectrum, but without, of course, vibrato. Andriessen's means are simple, but his music is not minimalist. There is no telling what will happen next: any processes that the composer may be demonstrating are not audible as they are in Reich and Glass. Also, at least at the time of these early (1974 and 1978) works, the composer is not afraid of dissonance and discontinuity. (Don't be tempted to listen to this as bedtime music!)

These needledrops were taken from an eerily noise-free LP; no noise reduction of any kind was used. The only alteration I have made is to place the "Symfonie" first, simply because I like it more. I have also enclosed scans of the cover. HERE it is.

NOTE 1 January 2010: An unexpected development has occurred: while making good on my New Year's resolution to organize my workspace and recordings, I found the insert that came with this LP. The composer's remarks are brief, but will add greatly to the enjoyment of the music. So if you have already downloaded this post, take the time to pick up the insert. Happy New Year.

Klemperer conducts Haydn on (Italian) EMI

2009-12-16T13:12:00.003-03:30

I wasted many hours last night angrily tearing through piles of old LPs underneath desks ... behind bookshelves ... on top of the refrigerator ... underneath the bed ... trying to find two items I really want to transfer and post and know that I have somewhere ...

Unhappily, as is always the case, I didn't find either of them, but I did find about seven or eight other gems, including the above EMI Italiana release, which I had thought I had misplaced forever.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that there is no needledrop yet --- and may not be; as I recall the surface of this treasure was not in good shape (the excellent, woodwind-heavy Klemperer Haydn has recently been re-issued on CD again.) But I hope you agree that the cover alone is worthy of posting and I promise to take a look at the record inside.

C'e sempre qualcosa di nuovo, alla EMI Italiana .....

The Juilliard Quartet plays Schoenberg, Berg and Webern (1950-1952) on Columbia Masterworks

2009-12-13T23:13:00.016-03:30

I was very happy to be able to buy the Juilliard Quartet's 1952 recordings of the Schoenberg Quartets when they were finally issued on CD early last year by a French label. I had attempted many times to make decent transfers from my copy of the 1953 LPs (above left), but there was no getting around it – those Columbia Masterworks pressings were kaput. I heard it through the grapevine that the French reissue wouldn't be around for long, so I didn't delay, and got my copy just in time – I also picked up the mono Budapest Quartet Beethoven and Szell Schumann, but wasn't quick enough to grab some of the other early CBS LPs that the label was briefly able to restore to print.

I noticed just the other day that this 3-CD Juilliard set (it also includes their 1952 recordings of the Berg Quartet Op 3 and the Webern Five Movements, as well as the 1950 "Lyric Suite") is not only absolutely out of print – it has entered that unreal fantasy world of Amazon resellers, vying with the Sviatoslav Richter Praga box for most incredibly inflated resale price: one copy on Amazon (US) for 750 dollars and another on Amazon (UK) for nearly 400 Euros! Are there any takers?

I have included the transfers that appeared on the CD, along with scans of both the original LP jacket and liner notes and the booklet that came with the recent reissue. The booklet also includes the complete catalog of this short-lived historical label's wares, all of them from out-of-copyright (in Europe) Columbia releases that had not been issued on CD. Some of these titles may still be available for more reasonable prices than the Schoenberg set.

The Juilliard Quartet at this early date comprised Robert Mann, Robert Koff, Raphael Hillyer and Arthur Winograd. Just to be perfectly clear, these are not my transfers – they are a little on the dull side, but very listenable. From what can be heard through the scratches on my original LPs, a very unhinged and exciting transfer could be made from this material, but it would probably involve leaving a lot of surface noise, in the manner of the Pearl historical reissues, and that sort of thing is not everybody's cup of tea.

This is an absolutely essential document and contains great music-making, recorded by a young quartet that had just played the music for the composer himself. The Kolisch Quartet's 78 RPM recordings, which preceded these, are still available on Music and Arts for much less than 750 dollars and are well worth the money. I look forward to hearing from the Schoenberg enthusiasts out there – stories, details, personal takes. And don't forget the Berg and Webern: the "Lyric Suite" is particularly exciting.

I have checked, double-checked, cross-checked and, I hope, preemptively checkmated any file problems with this post. But, of course, bad things do happen to good people (and vice-versa), so do let me know if there is a problem I can help you with. The FLACs and the PDFs are waiting for you in a warm, cozy folder HERE.