The Jingle Cats: Meowy Christmas

Cheese Puff, Max, Sprocket, Binky, Clara, Cueball, Graymer, Twizzler, and Petunia perform twenty favorites of the Christmas season

This strange album, produced in 1993 and intended, perhaps, as a warning of the dangers of sampling (or simply another unintentional argument why people in Los Angeles should not be allowed to use the multimedia functions of computers), turns the vocalizations of nine cats into something like feline handbells – as if someone were pulling each tail when the melody requires that cat’s pitch – in studied, formulaic arrangements of everyone’s favorite Christmas froth. The formula (instrumental vamp followed by the addition of animal vocalists) is a bit cloying when taken song after song after song but it can be very effective as part of a holiday shuffle, in which a single number catches people unawares by showing up aleatorically amid Burl Ives, Mannheim Steamroller, and Taylor Swift.

The Jingle Cats “Meowy Christmas” 107MB – no password

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Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz: selections from Luz y norte (1677)

The Harp Consort
Paul O’Dette, lute
Andrew Lawrence-King, director

Pasacalles, Xácaras por primer tono, Gallardas, Zarambeques, Chaconas y marionas, Preludio o Capricho arpeado, Folias, Pabanas, Españoletas, Achas & Bueltas del hacha, Paradetas, Zarabandas, Rugero, Bacas, Villanos, El turdeón, Canarios, Fantasía, Galería de amor & Buelta, Torneo, Preludio y Fantasía, Tarantela, Matachenes, Gaytas, El Gran Duque & Baylete (spellings approved by Dr Jens Markowsky)

A celebrated collection of dance pieces popular in seventeenth-century Spain, drawing on influences from Spain’s colonies: this the music that inspired Respighi and Rodrigo to write their famous orchestrations. Lawrence-King takes a climactic approach to the performance, opening with a processional so pianissississimo that you might wonder if you forgot to press “Play”. Seventy minutes of music and interesting, detailed program notes.


Spanish dances collected by Ruiz de Ribayaz
153.6 MB – no password

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Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Lute Book (1640)

Paul O’Dette, lute

Works by Jacques Gaultier, Luc Despond, Daniel Bacheler, Robert Johnson, Lorenzini di Roma, Diomedes Cato, Cuthbert Hely, Jacob Polonais, Julien Perrichon, and the Lord Herbert of Cherbury himself.

Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, spent many years as the ambassador to France for James I. He was a self-taught lutenist and this his personal collection of pieces for the ten-coursed Renaissance lute. Seventy-six minutes of music; program notes by O’Dette in English, French, and German.


Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Lute Book
90.8MB – no password

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Morton Feldman: The Viola in My Life #4 (1971)

Heiichiro Ohyama, viola
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra
Michael Tilson-Thomas, conductor

Feldman wrote a series of pieces by this name in honor of his wife, Barbara Monk. This performance was billed somewhat pretentiously as the “Los Angeles première”. It was recorded live on 21 November 1982 at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus.

aircheck 20 February 1983, 1305–1325h, KUSC-FM Los Angeles
(Por si la palabra «aircheck» no se traduce bien, sabed que significa una grabación sacada de la radio, a veces de un evento difundido en vivo, más comúnmente de un evento grabado en vivo para emitirse otro día. De costumbre los airchecks se identifican por las siglas de la radiodifusora y la fecha de emisión.)


The Viola in My Life #4
30.1MB – no password

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Rhapsodie Espagnole (compilation of five Impressionist works)

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio espagnol, op. 34
Maurice Ravel: Rhapsodie espagnole
Emmanuel Chabrier: España
Claude Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Paul Dukas: L’Apprenti-Sorcier

Budapest Symphony Orchestra
György Lehel, conductor

for the Chabrier:
Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra
Rouslan Raichev, conductor

Some of the greatest values in orchestral recordings during the 1970s and ’80s came out of Eastern Europe, which had yet to be contaminated by Madison Avenue. Every city in the Communist Bloc had an orchestra of first-rate musicians and their conductors spent more time in rehearsal than they did with publicity agents. Their performances, as a result, tended to be polished and tasteful even while their Free World counterparts were at pains to see just how quirky and individualistic they could make theirs after a bare minimum of rehearsals.

Because the Eastern European orchestras did not use advertising departments, their reputations did not travel very far and they did not command high performance fees. The most cost-conscious marketers in Los Angeles and New York City would buy the rights to Eastern European recordings very cheaply and sell them in the United States usually without liner notes or other amenities.

How this particular compilation came to be is a mystery. It includes four pieces recorded in Hungary and one in Bulgaria. The sound and ensemble are excellent throughout; the program of apparently disparate pieces is unified by the similarity of their instrumental textures.


Rhapsodie Espagnole and four other pieces
88.7 MB - no password

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Alfred Schnittke: Requiem

Requiem, music to Schiller's drama “Don Carlos” for soloists, mixed chorus, and instrumental ensemble In fourteen movements, op. 101 (1975)

Helga Therme and Gisela Burghardt, sopranos
Heidi Riess, mezzo-soprano
Albrecht Lepetit, tenor
Hermann Christian Polster, bass
Dresden Kreuzchor and Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir
Martin Flämig, conductor

live performance 26 May 1982 in the Dresden Kreuzkirche
Dresden Festival 1982

Toward the end of his life, Schnittke was lionized by the West, partly because his style was more Western than Soviet.

aircheck 29 January 1983, 2000–2037h, KUSC-FM Los Angeles
(Por si la palabra «aircheck» no se traduce bien, sabed que significa una grabación sacada de la radio, a veces de un evento difundido en vivo, más comúnmente de un evento grabado en vivo para emitirse otro día. De costumbre los airchecks se identifican por las siglas de la radiodifusora y la fecha de emisión.)


Schnittke Requiem
51.7 MB - no password

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Brahms-Schoenberg: Piano Quartet

Johannes Brahms: Piano Quartet in g, op. 25, as orchestrated by Arnold Schoenberg
Allegro
Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo
Andante con moto
Rondo all’Zingarese: Presto

Los Angeles Philharmonic
Simon Rattle, conductor

Schoenberg’s orchestration of Brahms’s chamber work exaggerates the inherent romanticism, filling the piece with denser harmonies and stranger timbres. Rattle manages not only to keep the piece from becoming slapstick but also brings out melodies hidden among the many instruments.

aircheck 27 February 1983, 1300–1400h, KUSC-FM Los Angeles
(Por si la palabra «aircheck» no se traduce bien, sabed que significa una grabación sacada de la radio, a veces de un evento difundido en vivo, más comúnmente de un evento grabado en vivo para emitirse otro día. De costumbre los airchecks se identifican por las siglas de la radiodifusora y la fecha de emisión.)


Rattle conducts the Brahms-Schoenberg
65.2 MB - no password

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