This is a Recording

Why do I have a bulky 12-LP box set of "Light Classical Music" occupying some of my limited shelf-space when I have no intention of listening to the music therein? Sentimental reasons explain it. Visiting my father one day he asked what music I was listening to & I replied that about half of it was classical in some form or another. He'd never acquired any taste for it, he said, whereupon a thought occurred to him and he retrieved this box from another room and handed it to me: it had been his mother's. I didn't imagine I'd end up with a keepsake of my paternal grandmother. It was surprising that anything of hers had survived some rather chaotic episodes in her house in the years following her death. Having said that, it had suffered considerable wear and tear: the box itself was broken, some of the inner sleeves were torn & stained, and one of the discs (no. 4) was in patently unplayable condition. Knowing it had been kept near a coal fire, and not fa...

This 2006 box set's full title is simply a list of the six pieces contained within: Asrael | A Summer's Tale | The Ripening | Epilogue | Fairy Tale | Praga - these being the major orchestral works of the Czech violinist and composer Josef Suk (1874-1935). The performances collected here date from between 1985-89, and feature the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, with Václav Neumann conducting 'Asrael', 'The Ripening' and 'Epilogue', and Libor Pešek at the podium for the other three works. On 'Epilogue', the Prague Philharmonic Choir and three solo singers can also be heard. I'd first heard Suk's music on a Naxos CD I bought ca. 2001 on which 'A Summer's Tale' was the stand-out. I especially loved its second and third movements. Seeking to explore further, I acquired an album including both 'Asrael' and 'Fairy Tale', where it was the latter piece that particularly appealed to me. His later works like 'The Ripe...

Frederick Youens' sleeve-notes on this UK release of Louis (or Ludwig) Spohr's Nonet in F, op. 31 , say of the composer that "he never attained profound depths or a wide range, but his undoubted gift for melody made him a much-loved composer during his lifetime" (rated ahead of Beethoven by some contemporaries). Such seems to be Spohr's legacy: to be half-damned by lukewarm praise. Youens reckons the Nonet "has much of the charm of the Schubert Octet" - when, to my mind, Spohr's is the more enjoyable piece of the two.  Though not a musical revolutionary in the same vein as Beethoven, Spohr was also an innovator in his own way - credited with inventing the violin chin-rest, and of being the first to conduct an orchestra with a baton. And in his compositions, Spohr not infrequently "experimented with unusual combinations of instruments" (Youens again) with the Nonet a case in point. Similar instrumental groupings had been used in late-18th-Ce...

Between about 2011-16 I drove a car that must have been among the last made with a cassette player installed. I had no cassettes, so if I wanted in-car entertainment, it had to be via the radio. I found BBC Radio 3 to be the least annoying of the readily receivable stations. One afternoon while stuck in traffic on the way home from work I heard a delightful piece for violin and piano that captured my attention: checking the playlist later I learned it was one of Carl Maria von Weber's Violin Sonatas, performed by Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov. A few months later I bought the CD of which that performance was a part. It includes a complete set of six such sonatas that Weber wrote in 1810 and a Piano Quintet dating from the year before. All, then, are youthful works from the composer's early twenties. Roman Hinke's booklet notes (given in French, English and German) tell us that the sonatas were written for a publisher who'd requested short and simple works meant f...

The budget Brilliant Classics label issued the Complete Piano Sonatas of Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812) on nine CDs between 2018 and '20. I have volumes three and four. The task was split between nine different performers, all of them playing on fortepianos, that is, on restored instruments dating from around the composer's heyday, or on modern copies made to emulate them: these having a different, more rinky-dink sound to a modern concert grand. On Volume Three, the fortepianist is Alexei Lubimov, a musician whose name I already knew well, whereas on Volume Four, Tuija Hakkila does the honours, a Finnish pianist whose name was new to me. To my mind, both musicians acquit themselves with similar distinction. The four pieces on this disc, all of them two-movment sonatas, date from several phases of Dussek's itenerant career, from 1788 when he was in pre-revolutionary Paris, to 1806-7, when he was based in Hamburg. My favorite of the four is the Op. 43 Sonata in A from 1800...

The first of Alexander Scriabin's works I heard were some of his heady, mystically-inclined, later piano sonatas - of those, I developed a particular fondness for the 'White Mass' Sonata (no. 7). After those, encountering his earlier, delicately Chopinesque compositions took me by surprise. Side A of the present LP contains Scriabin's set of 24 Preludes (Op. 11, 1896) which are obviously inspired by Chopin's famous Op. 28 set. Despite the likenesses of form and style, there are, meanwhile, enough dissimilarities to prevent their seeming mere pastiches. Even if they're collectively not quite up there with Chopin's pieces, they make for absorbing and enjoyable listening. Side B kicks off with the op. 28 'Fantasie' written in 1900, which is still determinedly "Romantic", albeit with as much of Liszt in its heavily sonorous chords as Chopin. The remaining works on the disc (the two Poèmes, Op.32 and eight Études, Op.42) date from 1903, when Sc...

Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Nepomuk Hummel were among the most notable virtuoso pianists and composers from the generation between Beethoven's and that of Chopin, Liszt & Schumann. This 2006 CD showcases a cello sonata by each of them, performed by Jiři Barta on the cello with Hamish Milne at the piano. Hummel's op. 104 Sonata in A major was composed in the mid 1820s. John Warrack's booklet notes characterise it as "less a piece for virtuosos than for musical companions, amiable and graceful." Moscheles' op. 121 Sonata in E major dates from rather later, ca. 1850, by which time the composer might have been considered a vaguely unfashionable elder statesman. The work was dedicated to Schumann, who had long been a fan of Moscheles'. This later Sonata is also tuneful, but has more substance & drama than Hummel's. It's in four movements, with the middle two, a perky Scherzo and a 'Dumka'-style 'Ballade' being my favourites. Filli...

While visiting the town of Kalmar in 2001, I bought a CD entitled Alina , on the ECM label: a beautifully soporific disc including a couple of performances, extended by improvisation, of Arvo Pärt's short piano piece 'Für Alina'. Was there other piano music by Pärt out there? All I could find was another short work ('Variationen Zur Gesundung Von Arinuschka') which I obtained on a CD, ordered on-line, called Pourquoi Je Suis Si Sentimental . This disc, of 'Post-Avant-Garde Piano Music From The Ex-Soviet Union' turned out to be a real discovery - an eye-opener - my first introduction to the work of composers like Alexander Rabinovitch, Georgs Pelēcis & Valentin Silvestrov; all performed by the pianist Alexei Lubimov. Looking for more music by these composers (and for more of Lubimov's playing), led me to Der Bote , another ECM release, one with a loosely elegaic theme. The album's title (and the title of the piece by Silvestrov that closes the rec...

Gabrel Fauré (like Martinů, mentioned recently ) is among the composers whose works I came to appreciate during my classical download binge of 2014/15. I became particularly fond of his two Piano Quartets and the first Piano Quintet. The second Quintet, and the works of ths composer's old age in general (the String Quartet, the Piano Trio, etc.) strike me as a little florid and over-ripe by comparison. Having said that, it's been a while since I heard it: who knows, another airing may yet change my mind. The version I have of the quintets is this 2009 Naxos CD performed by the Fine Arts Quartet joined by pianist Cristina Ortiz.  The first Quintet apparently had a very long gestation period, with some tentative first drafts made in 1887, but not completed until 1896, and not publicly performed until 1906. For all that, the piece has a seemingly spontaneous and natural flow which belies its difficult birth. The Adagio second movement is particularly lovely.

For my money, Antonín Dvořák's 'String Quintet No. 2 in G major' (Op. 77) is among the best of his lesser-known works. It was composed in 1875, a few years before the 'Slavonic Dances' became his first major hit, launching him into the compositional big-time. It wasn't published until 1888, by which time his international reputation was well-established. Unusually for a late-19th-century quintet, it's scored for two violins, viola, cello, and double bass. It's performed here by the Dvořák Quartet augmented by bassist František Pošta. I have it on a 1967 Supraphon LP: a re-issue of a recording first released five years earlier, so Discogs informs me. I think it may have been one of the several classical albums I've bought from the Oxfam shop in Thornbury. Originally in five movements, it was published without a slow 'Intermezzo' that would have been its second. The current second movement ('Scherzo. Allegro vivace') is probably the mos...

This is a 1962 performance by Alfred Brendel of Franz Schubert's Impromptus, Op. 90 & Op. 142 on a 1969 UK re-issue. Of Brendel, who would have been 31 at the time of the recording, the sleeve-notes say "he shows a particular preference for Mozart, and has been instrumental in bringing before the public unjustly neglected Schubert Sonatas" whereas nowadays he's probably best-known for his esteemed interpretations of the Beethoven Sonatas.   After a paragraph about Brendel, the notes, by an un-named author, discuss the Impromptus in some detail. Despite the unalike opus numbers assigned to the two groupings of four pieces, they were apparently all written in the same year: 1827. "These eight pieces", the sleeve-noter adds, "were the outcome of publishers' urgings and requests for 'short pieces, not too difficult, and in easy keys'". The term Impromptu is misleading here, we're told. with the pieces being "anything but imp...

This is a '70s German quadrophonic pressing of a performance by the Orchestre de Paris of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite Schéhérazade (op. 35, 1888). Bulgarian-born violinist Luben Yordanoff is the lead soloist, with renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich at the podium. 'Schéhérazade' is Rimsky-Korsakov's most famous work - in my view justifiably so, with strong melodic hooks and exquisite orchestration combined in a compelling whole. A piece of sugar-coated orientalism it may be, but it's altogether beguiling confection nevertheless.   This LP was among my early vinyl purchases: a sticker on the back of my copy suggests I paid 10 SEK (less than a pound) for it at one of Karlskrona's junk-shops about twenty years ago. The disc is well-worn with quite a bit of surface noise, but it still plays well enough. The delightful cover image is one that Marc Chagall made specifically for this album.

When I moved to Karlskrona in late 2000, a junk-shop near my first apartment there had a large stock of records that I'd sometimes idly browse through. In the course of my visits it occurred to me I wouldn't mind getting myself a record player and a stash of old vinyl, and in due course it happened (the following year) that I found a cheap '70s-style turntable plus speakers and headphones and brought them home along with a first few albums. Among the records they had was a classical disc with a rather off-putting picture of the composer Franz Berwald staring sternly from its cover. After I'd bought a variety of other classical LPs from the same place, I thought I'd try actually listening to this one, to see whether its contents matched the cover. I was delighted to find they did not: the two quintets on the album were both charming, vibrant & melodic works, with the closing part of the Quintet No. 2's Allegro Vivace 2nd movement being a particular highlight...

Ferdinand Ries is just one among the many talented and once-renowned composers whose legacy has been overlooked due to its being overshadowed by that of his near-contemporary Beethoven. In his case there was a strong connection between the two men: both came from Bonn, and Ries's father was one of LvB's early teachers. This link must have helped him secure a place as one of the great man's very few students, and, later, as his secretary. After the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars had reached Vienna, Ries set off on the road in an effort to make a name for himself, at length finding fame & fortune during a long stint in London. While there's hardly anyone who would put him on the same level as his former teacher, much of his music is delightful - the Cello Sonatas on the present disc included. These stand up well in comparison with Beethoven's own works for cello & piano, and I personally prefer them. This is one of several CDs on the CPO label featuring Ries...

Between 2000 and 2012, the Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer and his ensemble Kremerata Baltica recorded a series of fascinating albums for the Nonesuch label. I bought six or seven of them and still have a few on my shelves now. Most of these CDs have a theme, and that of De Profundis ('out of the depths'), released in 2010, is, according to Kremer's own booklet notes, to do with composers crying 'out of the depths' with their music for a better world. Additionally, Kremer writes, he was thinking of the business of oil (extracted out if the depths of the earth) which is "used to sustain tyrannical regimes, be it in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Myanmar, or Russia". There is, moreover, a dedication to the erstwhile oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then in a Russian prison. Having said all that, hearing the pieces on the disc in innocence of the booklet notes, one would be hard-pressed, I think, to deduce a unifying theme from them. The two longest pieces in the album...

George Onslow was an odd-man-out among 19th-century French composers. Born into wealth and privilege, the grandson of an English Earl, he had no need to follow the operatic gravy train, with string quartets (of which he wrote 36) and string quintets (there are another 32 of those) forming the bulk of his compositional output. The present disc contains his 28th, 29th and 30th quartets, in compelling performances by the Quatuor Diotima. These quartets were written toward the end of a prolifically-creative period for Onslow in the years 1829-35. Viviane Niaux, in her informative booklet notes, ascribes this to the composer's having heard performances of two of Beethoven's late quartets for the first time in 1828, at their Paris première. Like many of his contemporaries, Onslow was at once "fascinated and disconcerted", and, although he considered them "extravagant", they seem to have been powerfully inspirational. A further spur to creativity may have been his ...

With recordings of Chopin's music, very often (too often for my liking) one gets series of pieces of the same type lumped together: all of the Waltzes, for example; or all four Ballades one after another. While this can work fairly well - with the Nocturnes, for instance, where there is a certain unity of purpose but also a sufficient variety of execution; in other cases it can easily become monotonous - such as hearing dozens and dozens of the Mazurkas without any kind of intermission: who really wants that? To my mind, well-thought-out recital programmes comprising a variety of different kinds of piece are the ideal way to experience the composer's work. This Piano Music Vol. 2 LP adopts both approaches. On side 1 are the four Impromptus arranged in order of publication, and the Berceuse; whereas on side 2 there are the Barcarolle, one of the Nocturnes and the 3rd Scherzo. Fortunately, the improvisatory nature of the Impromptus means that they don't suffer much from be...

This is an album of classical lullabies, berceuses , wiegenlieder performed by the French pianist Bertrand Chamayou. My copy is on vinyl, and was a Christmas gift - specifically for the strange Christmas of 2020. Its sixteen tracks include such old chestnuts as Brahms's 'Wiegenlied' (as transcribed for solo piano by Max Reger) and Chopin's op. 57 'Berceuse'. Besides these familiar melodies there are some delightful pieces plucked from the dustier corners of the repertoire composed by the likes of Janáček, Lyapunov, Villa-Lobos, Busoni, Martinů, Balakirev and Alkan; but only a single very short work by a female composer: 'La Toute Petite s'endort' ("The Little Girl Falls Asleep") by Mel Bonis. There's also a single piece of mid-20th-Century atonality in the shape of Helmut Lachenmann's 'Wiegenmusik', which, while it doesn't blend quite seamlessly with the pieces of honeyed romanticism either side of it; neither does it f...

Here is a 3CD album of instrumental and chamber music by the Czech-born composer variously known as Antonín Rejcha, or Anton (or Antoine) Reicha. He was born in the same year as Beethoven, and was an on-and-off friend of Ludwig's: the pair played together in an orchestra in Bonn in their late teens, and were later re-acquainted in Vienna. Unlike his his much more famous contemporary, Reicha's genius did not extend to self-promotion, and he was oftentimes content to leave his compositions unpublished. Although he won renown as a teacher and theorist in his day, posterity mostly forgot about him. The body of work he composed for wind quintet, however, retained a measure of popularity, and prevented his name from falling into complete obscurity. There has been a small-scale revival of interest in his other music over recent decades, with the current album providing an intriguing selection of it. I love half of its contents and feel lukewarm about the remainder. The solo piano piec...

Somewhere along the way I acquired a disproportionate fondness for Czech classical music, a predilection which has led me to pick up several LPs on the Czech (or, formerly, Czechoslovak) record label Supraphon. Currently I have about a dozen of them. This release of Bedřich Smetana's two string quartets, appropriately performed by Smetana Quartet, seems to have first been issued in 1964, mine being a later (possibly early '70s) export version with English, Russian, German and French text on the back. The text explains that the first quartet, subtitled 'From My Life', and written in 1876, is a kind of autobiography in music, and quotes the composer's own remarks about how the first movement is a statement of "the artistic leanings of my young days" and "romantic feelings music, love and life in general"; that the second depicts his carefree youth as a travelling musician; the third concerns his first love for the woman who would become his wife; a...