What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol. XIII)
Posted by: Richard Dane on 01 January 2017
2017 has arrived today, so time to start this thread afresh.
Last year's thread can be found here;
Bert Schurink posted:
How is their Op.15?
5 trax off his up and coming due out 17th Nov. From what I can gather it maybe reworkings of unreleased trax from throughout his career.
I would advise all Bob fans to click play on the video.
You won't be disappointed it rocks.
Possibly the best rock song I have heard this year.
Was trying to think where I had heard it before and then it came to me, it is a Lou Reed track of his New York album.
kuma posted:Bert Schurink posted:
How is their Op.15?
The earlier recordings of Beethoven 4,5 and 3 have been better, but I still like the overall series a lot, I am perhaps too biased as I am a Sudbin fan. So let me give you a kind of critical review from Grammophone and I have seen a similar review as well.
Let me lay out information first of all: this is the conclusion of Yevgeny Sudbin’s cycle of the five Beethoven concertos that began, back to front, with an issue of Nos 4 and 5 together (4/11) and continued with a coupling of No 3 in C minor with the Mozart C minor Concerto (No 24), K491 (5/14). Osmo Vänskä has been the conductor throughout, with the Tapiola Sinfonietta here and previously with the Minnesota Orchestra. I note for now that the first CD was received with enthusiasm and was an Editor’s Choice; the next, in which No 3 was paired with the Mozart, fared less well.
It is impossible to hold back from admiration for Sudbin in whatever he plays, thanks to his brilliance and hallmark exuberance. He has much to say and he wants us to listen. You may feel the hyperactive style he brings to the outer movements of these concertos is just what they require. I am not so sure. The exuberance, for me, tips over to a cat-on-hot-bricks manner that too often seems a default position and wearisome. ‘Halt,’ I want to cry, ‘couldn’t you please occasionally calm down a bit?’ Need sforzato accents always be like touches of a whip and scales the length of a piece of string? Vänskä and the orchestra are willing partners. I resist too their bass-heavy sound world, built around microphone placements, which projects a nervy, fidgety view of dynamics in which a level is rarely sustained for its full term. Try the opening of the C major Concerto (No 1) – marked pianissimo until a crescendo leads into the first fortissimo at bar 16 – as an example of what I mean. To me, this is so much more exciting if the very quiet martial energy at the beginning is held taut. It’s the sort of detail a great conductor with a major orchestra and demanding soloist will agree upon and get right.
Howard Assembly Rooms
Oh dear, I’m sounding grouchy. I want the prospect of admiring Sudbin as much in Beethoven as in Scarlatti and Scriabin; but it is not there. He is sparky and generous with impulses and good ideas, but restless. The Largo of the C major Concerto, the longest slow movement in all the concertos, shows how the best of ‘early’ Beethoven is every bit as characteristic as the later, with an appreciation, in this instance, of the clarinet and solo writing for it that he never surpassed. I treated myself to Sony Classical’s box of Sviatoslav Richter’s complete live and studio recordings for RCA and Columbia; seek it out if you can for the performance he gave with Charles Munch and the Boston SO of this concerto in November 1960. Yes, from way back, I know, but incomparable.
Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny remarked that the master ‘brings out difficulties and effects on the piano that we could never have imagined’. Yevgeny Sudbin at his best is an artist capable of reminding us of that and there is plentiful evidence in these rondo finales. Don’t get me started on his cadenzas. They ignore all the material Beethoven left for Concerto No 1, which he finds wanting in various ways, playing in the first and last movements cadenzas of his own (‘based on Friedheim’). Suffer them if you can; I couldn’t possibly comment.
There’s a mistranslation in the booklet of the German note which makes a nonsense of where the cadenza comes in the first movement of the B flat Concerto (No 2).
As per, Radio Paradise and the following new releases and old favourites:
Beck - Colours (£7:99 from 7Digital)
St Vincent - MASSEDUCTION (£7:99 from 7Digital - SJT beat me to it in the music on offer thread)
Joni Mitchell - Blue (Qobuz 24-bit Studio Master)
Badly Drawn Boy - Hour Of The Bewilderbeast
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - 35th Anniversary Collection
Laura Nyro - Christmas and The Beads Of Sweat
Happy listening,
Vlad
A few tracks from the superb Ms Gardot to finish the evening. When she sings 'Baby I'm a fool' goosebumps are guaranteed 
Melody Gardot - My One And Only Thrill
I saw Antonio Forcione mentioned recently, which prompted me the give this a (metaphorical) spin.
1995 - vinyl - UK first pressing...
dave marshall posted:
Average White Band - AWB.
Playing now .................... some album this, which went straight to number one in The States ...................... not a bad effort for a wee
band fae North of the Border, .................... some home grown Jock Fonk, ken.
Great band, although, with a name like that, we would probably have had a little backlash in this PC world we live in today.
To satisfy a craving for the Opera that wife had.
This is just a wonderful record.
Just finishing.....
Enya - The Memory of Trees
Something the wife requested....... lovely for a Sunday afternoon.
Now Playing.....
Donald Fagen -Sunken Condos
I saw mention of this album from QUAD 33 previously and thought I would take it out for a spin...... a sweet album.
Tidal. Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice
Now Playing.......
Average White Band - AWB
Saw this mentioned earlier by DAVE MARSHALL and TONY2011 and thought I would give it a spin. I haven't listened to anything from AWB in years.