What Are You Listening To?

[stlukesguild]

I have just discovered Takashi Yoshimatsu. Here is his lovely, lyrical Piano Concerto (Memo Flora) which, to my ear, is reminiscent of Messiaen's music.

I could have sworn that you had previously stated you didn't like Messiaen?

Honestly, I'm not big on Messiaen myself... but I did come to like the Quartet for the End of Time with this recording:

Presently listening to one of my all-time favorites. I fell in love with this in my late teens thanks to the film, Amadeus. The film score recordings of the Requiem by Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields remains my "go to" version more often than not... but today I'm listening to John Eliot Gardiner's recording:

 

[Hermes2020]

You're probably right that I've mentioned not liking Messiaen before. I suppose there must be some deep reason for our likes and dislikes, which has probably been the subject of a few PhD studies.

 

[stlukesguild]

I missed my usual Bach on Sunday yesterday... not listening to any music at all... so I'm making up for it today:

Recent technology has allowed for newer reproductions to remove a good deal of Gould's humming without affecting the sound of the piano... or at least so it seemed on this second recording of the Goldbergs by Gould.

 

[Hermes2020]

Who can explain why one sometimes, for no obvious reason, suddenly longs to hear music one hasn't listened to in a long time? Today I wanted to hear the divine Lotte Lenya's voice. Here she sings one of her husband's arias from Happy End.

And another, possibly more famous one in English, since most of our members speak English. This is from Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper.

I still think it sounds better in the original German.

 

[Hermes2020]

John Farnham singing You're The Voice. The lyrics are still as relevant as they were in 1986.

 

[brianvds]

Hermes2020: Very, very 1980s, and induces a nice little nostalgia trip...

Revisiting an old favorite collection while sketching stuff:

One of the characteristics of great composers: their music isn't generic. They all develop a very distinctive sound world of their own, at least in their better work. Now many pieces in the above collection make me smile simply because they are so completely, utterly Schumann that you cannot possibly mistake them for the work of anyone else.

 

[brianvds]

Not sure how French they really are, but nice anyway...

 

[brianvds]

Still in a Schumann mood. I first discovered his piano quintet in my teens, when it was played on the radio. I was completely enchanted; it spoke deeply to my romantic teenaged soul.

It has withstood the test of time and repeated listening:

 

[stlukesguild]

With the vast majority of my music collection in storage at present, there are some genres that I haven't listened to a lot recently. One of these is Brian's favorite, opera. Yesterday we had an Italian dinner at home: pasta and Italian sausage and a couple of bottles of wine with Puccini:

Today I was taking it easy in the afternoon listening to the arias from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte:

Right now I'm sticking with Mozart... and one of my favorite singers, Renee Fleming:

 

[brianvds]

With the vast majority of my music collection in storage at present, there are some genres that I haven't listened to a lot recently. One of these is Brian's favorite, opera. Yesterday we had an Italian dinner at home: pasta and Italian sausage and a couple of bottles of wine with Puccini:

I think I could enjoy opera, but to my mind, opera is a show - you have to see it, not only listen to it, and preferably the production should be huge and lavish, like the ones in Amadeus (which were probably not historically accurate!)

Now I see they nowadays have lots of operas on YouTube, including ones with subtitles (because I'll struggle to enjoy it or make sense of it if I can't understand what they're singing). I even downloaded The Magic Flute, but haven't gotten around to watching it yet. If it goes on like this I'll even end up downloading and then not watching Wagner. Hey, baby steps.

 

[brianvds]

One of those weird, random little videos recommended by YouTube, and dedicated to our resident jazz enthusiast StLukes:

I'm fond of the mellow, soulful sound of the recorder, and this little clip demonstrates that you can do more on it than Baroque.

 

[brianvds]

Against my own better judgement, I briefly dipped into a Twitter thread on AI-created music:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788628171044053386

I tell ya, pop musicians are in trouble, or at least, pop musicians who think they're going to retire on the proceeds of a single hit song. So how can musicians still scrape a living in this new world of instant AI-generated music? By doing what musicians have done for centuries: giving live concerts. It's the one thing AI cannot do.

The world is going to change beyond recognition, I think...

 

[john]

Against my own better judgement, I briefly dipped into a Twitter thread on AI-created music:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788628171044053386

I tell ya, pop musicians are in trouble, or at least, pop musicians who think they're going to retire on the proceeds of a single hit song. So how can musicians still scrape a living in this new world of instant AI-generated music? By doing what musicians have done for centuries: giving live concerts. It's the one thing AI cannot do.

The world is going to change beyond recognition, I think...

Wow. Were the lyrics sung by the AI also?

 

[brianvds]

Wow. Were the lyrics sung by the AI also?

Not sure. They do claim that the entire thing is done by AI, but who knows.

 

[stevenD]

Probably a bit different than the norm...

 

[Hermes2020]

Probably a bit different than the norm...

Interesting, thank you. It sounds to me like the love child of Mike Oldfield and Karl Jenkins.

 

[stlukesguild]

So far no Sunday Bach... yet. I'm in the mood for Mozart... and surprisingly (Brian!) Brahms. The recording of Mozart's String Quartets and the String Quartet and Clarinet Quintet by Brahms performed by the Jerusalem Quartet are found on Harmonia Mundi... which is one of the finest classical labels... and both are quite delicious. It is sad that several performances by the Jerusalem Quartet have been recently canceled due to concerns over violence in response to the political situation in Palestine.

Jerusalem Quartet performs Mozart String Quartet K. 421, 4th movement

 

[stlukesguild]

Back to Mozart's chamber music again... including one of my absolute favorite works, the Quintet for Piano and Winds.

 

[brianvds]

So far no Sunday Bach... yet. I'm in the mood for Mozart... and surprisingly (Brian!) Brahms.

There is hope for you yet.
Though I confess that much as I like Brahms, and particularly his chamber music, his first two string quartets never quite sat comfortably with me.

View attachment 40855

Back to Mozart's chamber music again... including one of my absolute favorite works, the Quintet for Piano and Winds.

Plus, you also have an item for the bad album covers thread.
Reminds me of the scene in Amadeus in which Mozart, unable to choose between three wigs, exclaims "I wish I had three heads!"

Me, I have developed something of a taste for Villa-Lobos, and went off the beaten track:

 

[stlukesguild]

Reminds me of the scene in Amadeus in which Mozart, unable to choose between three wigs, exclaims "I wish I had three heads!"

Most certainly one of my all-time favorite films. And to be honest, It was Amadeus that first truly turned me on to Mozart and Opera. At the time I was quite a fan of the Baroque: Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi (The Baroque Revival that began to employ historic instruments and performance styles as well as rediscovering the endless forgotten works by Baroque composers was just underway.) I was also quite a fan of Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, Tchaikovski, and Stravinsky at this time.