Saturday, August 27, 2011

Mozart pianoforte Badura-Skoda



With his unusual combination of musicology, museology, and performance, Paul Badura-Skoda kicked the original-instruments movement into overdrive so fast that his competitors felt it necessary to disparage his playing. There is nothing wrong with his playing in this recording, in which we hear rare pieces he found performed on a period instrument he owns.


Badura-Skoda plays Mozart

75.5 MB - no password



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Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra



D. Hein, amplified and electric guitars
M. Bayer, amplified violoncello
J. Glenn, electrical bass
W. Houston, keyboards
F. Riddick, keyboards
S. Moshier, vibraharp
Ll. Rodgers, saxophone, clarinet, organ

This was an experimental group based around Lloyd Rodgers, a professor of music at California State University, Fullerton, and a few of his students. CRMO described itself as "a post-modernist electrical chamber ensemble in the grand style"; stylistically it bore some affinity to Peter Schickele's Open Window and to Alex Kline's Quartet Music while philosophically it criticized the ambient culture of self-satisfaction, violence, and conformity.


CRMO

52.4 MB - no password



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Moondog instrumental works circa 1978



One of the truly great eccentrics of the twentieth century, Louis T. Hardin (1916-1999), who became blind at the age of seventeen, spent most of his life impersonating the Norse god Odin as a busker on the streets of New York City. He retired to Germany in 1974. Hardin gave himself his nickname in honor of a pet dog that liked to howl at the moon.

His compositional style was decidedly atavistic, holding to very strict canons in preference to fugues, and yet was an acknoweldged formative influence on Philip Glass's minimalism. His first recordings were released on 78s; the present recording was probably his last, made by Gema in Germany. It includes harpsichord works that sound very Baroque, organ works that remind one of Reger, and works for string quartet that might be a bit Hindemithy.

Moondog, 1978
68.0 MB - no password



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Fantasias: Colin Tilney, clavichord



J. S. Bach: Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in d
C.P.E. Bach: Fantasia in c, Fantasia in C
W. F. Bach: Fantasia in d
C.P.E. Bach: Fantasia in C
Mozart: Fantasia in d


Tilney took Ralph Kirkpatrick's advocacy for obsolete instruments one step further by promoting the use of original instruments. This recording, from 1976, was performed on a clavichord from 1742 in the collection of the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte. The program is interesting in that it gives representative examples of a loose compositional form from its inception in the Baroque to the Classical.

Fantasias for clavichord
72.2 MB - no password



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Claudio Arrau in recital 15 August 1982



Beethoven: Sonata in E-flat major, op. 81a, "Les Adieux"
Liszt: Sonata in b minor
Beethoven: Sonata in f minor, op. 57, "Appassionata"
Liszt: Après un lecture de Dante (Fantasia quasi Sonata)


Arrau claimed direct musical descent from Liszt and Beethoven, for whose works his rich, powerful sound was ideally suited. This program was selected to show off that relationship. Recorded live at the Salzburger Große Festspielhaus in Austria as the fourth recital of the Salzburg Festival 1982.

Claudio Arrau in recital 15 August 1982
126.3 MB - no password



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Saturday, August 20, 2011

Claudio Arrau plays Beethoven: Sontas #3 and #8 ("Pathétique")



Sonata #3 for piano in C, op. 2/3
Sonata #8 for piano in c, op. 13, "Pathétique"


Digitally mastered, 1987. Arrau recorded the Beethoven sonatas several times throughout his life. He lived long enough so that his final recordings took advantage of the new digital technology. From his old age, Arrau left us with the insight that one of Beethoven's earliest and overlooked works can be every bit as interesting as the most famous nicknamed sonatas.

Arrau Beethoven 3 and 8
72.3 MB - no password



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Ilana Vered plays Chopin



Sonata #3 in b, op. 58
Nocturne in f, op. 55/1
Ballade #4 in f, op. 52
Valse in a, op. 34/2
Polonaise in A, op. 40/1, "Militaire"
Mazurka in a, op. 17/4
Mazurka in B-flat, op. 7/1


One of Vered's earliest commercial recordings, this was released in 1974 on London "Phase 4" and established Chopin as her specialty.

Vered plays Chopin
85.0 MB - no password



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Halleluja: The Portsmouth Sinfonia at the Royal Albert Hall (1974)


Self-described as the world's worst orchestra and often mentioned in the same breath as Florence Foster Jenkins, the Portsmouth Sinfonia was an exercise in musical Dada that ran from 1970 to 1980. Its members were students at the Portsmouth College of Art whose idea was to democratize classical music by taking it away from the "tuxedo Nazis" and putting it in the hands of people with little or no experience on the instrument they were playing. For a few examples, Gavin Bryars played cello, Brian Eno played clarinet, and Michael Nyman played euphonium in the Sinfonia.

The Sinfonia was not so much a camp joke as it was a satire on the commercialized stuffiness of the Royal Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra. Its members attended rehearsals regularly, approached their performances seriously - and accepted wrong notes proudly as just a part of life. When the copyright administrator for Also sprach Zarathustra refused to let the Sinfonia release their performance of the work, complaining that they had made changes to it, their manager offered that "it wasn't intentional, but happened more as a result of incompetence". And when the BBC refused to let them perform in their Promenade Concerts, which were supposed to make classical music accessible to the masses, the Sinfonia rented the Royal Albert Hall themselves and performed to a sold-out audience.

So the Portsmouth Sinfonia's second LP comes to us courtesy of the BBC's stuffiness. It was recorded live on 28 May 1974 and contains seven earnestly performed and almost recognizable works by Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Schubert, Rossini, and Handel.

These MP3s were made from the LP using NCH Software's Golden Records analogue-to-digital ripper. Its filters for normalization (to render Mr Bond's comments audible) and click/pop reduction (to remove much of the surface noise) were applied.

Portsmouth Sinfonia at Royal Albert Hall
63.8 MB - no password



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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

American Gamelans 1981


Lou Harrison and his graduate students performed their own works on the Mills College and CSUSJ gamelans as the closing event of New Music America '81.

Lou Harrison was one of the most interesting innovators to come out of the United States. His work bears some affinity to that of Harry Partch in the experimentation with unusual scales, although Harrison favored Indonesian gamelans in traditional sléndro and pélog tunings. He and his partner, William Colvig, built gamelans for the schools where Harrison taught (the gamelan Si Betty for California State University, San Jose, and the gamelan Si Darius at Mills College) and he and his students performed seven of their own works on these instruments for the New Music America Festival 1981 in San Francisco. One of those students, Larry London, took Harrison's experimentation a step further by constructing a harp in a thirteenth-century Greek scale to play against the gamelan's Indonesian scale. All in all, a very interesting hour of music.

Lou Harrison's American Gamelans 1981
67.9 MB - no password



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The Well-Tempered Clavichord, Ralph Kirkpatrick



Fourteen preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier

Before Kirkpatrick, the Well-Tempered Clavier was performed on Bösendorfer pianos and on harpsichords with thirty-two-foot registers. Ralph's clavichord caught everyone off guard - even his engineers didn't understand how to record it. The sound of the nine pieces from Book One recorded in 1961 is different from that of the five pieces from Book Two recorded in 1969 and yet the microphones were jammed next to the tangents during both sessions. Kirkpatrick held up well under that scrutiny.

The Well-Tempered Clavichord
83.8 MB - no password



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Sunday, August 14, 2011

Bach: Trio Sonatas, Marie-Claire Alain



J.S. Bach: The Trio Sonatas
Marie-Claire Alain


All four trio sonatas, recorded between May 1978 and April 1980 on the Schwenkedel de la Collégiale organ, Saint-Donat, Drôme. Alain was an organist's organist: flawless in rhythm, articulation, and registration. Not just accurate but stylish as well.

Alain - Bach trio sonatas
70.9 MB - no password



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Bach: selections from Anna Magdalena's Notebook



Elly Ameling, soprano
Hans-Martin Linde, baritone
Gustav Leonhardt, harpsichord
Johannes Koch, viola da gamba
Angelica May, cello
Rudolf Ewerhart, positif organ

Harmonia Mundi, 1966

A surprising performance by many of the great musicians of the late twentieth century. If you didn't know that this was recorded in their youth you'd swear it was the work of musicians twice their age. Even their recording engineer's work is sophisticated.

selections from Anna Magdalena's Notebook
64.7 MB - no password



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Ilana Vered plays Waldstein and The Wanderer



Beethoven: Piano Sonata in C, op. 53, "Waldstein"
Schubert: Fantasy in C, D. 760, "The Wanderer"


Vared is an Israeli pianist (born 1943) who was active primarily in the 1970s, recording for a number of labels including Connoisseur Society and Decca. This particular recording was made in 1978 for the London "Phase 4" series.

Ilana Vered: Beethoven and Schubert
68.5MB - no password



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John Dowland lute pieces



Fantasies and dances for the lute performed by Joseph Bacon

Thirteen pieces for solo lute, some familiar, others not, originally recorded in 1975 by 1750 Arch Records, which was a boutique label located at that address in Berkeley, California. Reissued in 1982 on audiocassette by the Musical Heritage Society. Bacon was a guitarist, lutenist, painter, and sculptor who lived in San Francisco; he released three recordings.

Joseph Bacon plays Dowland
58.8 MB - no password



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Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Lionel Rogg plays J. S. Bach

Lionel Rogg (born 1936) is a Swiss organist and composer who became highly acclaimed in the 1960s; he continues to be active even today.

On this audiocassette he is performing on the organs of the Cathédrale St Pierre, Geneva (1975), Klosterkirche, Muri (1985), and Monastery Sorö, Denmark (1976).

Toccata and Fugue in d
Chorale: Wachet auf
Chorale: Nun komm der Heiden Heiland
Fantasy and Fugue in g
Concerto in a after Vivaldi
Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C
Passacaglia in c

Rogg plays Bach
104.4 MB - no password



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Beethoven: chamber music by Tashi


Quintet for piano and winds in E-flat, op. 16
Trio in B-flat, op. 11


Tashi was the counterculture chamber group formed in order to play Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. They quickly achieved a reputation for turning in a polished, stylish performance of any piece that held their interest. Here they played some under appreciated early Beethoven so well you'd almost forget about the subsequent Sturm und Drang.

Beethoven: Quintet and Trio
62.6 MB - no password



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Beethoven: the Ninth x 2

Neither of these recordings is available through Amazon currently. Both are interesting.


Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 9 in d minor, op. 125 ("Choral")
Eugen Jochum, conductor
London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, soprano
Julia Hamari, mezzo-soprano
Stuart Burrows, tenor
Robert Holl, bass
Recorded February 1978 in Kingsway Hall, London


Bernard Haitink, conductor
London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir
Hannelore Bode, soprano
Helen Watts, contralto
Horst Laubenthal, tenor
Benjamin Luxon, bass
Recorded in 1975
Released with the "Coriolan" and "Egmont" overtures recorded in 1976

Download Beethoven’s Symphony #9 as conducted by Bernard Haitink and by Eugen Jochum
228 MB - no password



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Sunday, August 7, 2011

Jesús Montoya, «El Genio Gitano», cantaor flamenco


During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jesús Montoya ("the Gypsy Dynamo") was based out of an eastern suburb of San Diego, California, and performed regularly at flamenco-friendly restaurants between Los Angeles and Baja California. He presented typically as part of a complete tablao utilizing a variety of dancers and the regular accompaniment of the guitarist "Chago" Rodrigo and members of the Flores family. One of the more unusual elements of his ensemble was the silver flute played by Raquel Flores.

During breaks between sets in places like Hollywood's historic El Cid and La Taberna Española (on the water's edge in Ensenada), Montoya could be found at the bar conversing with the other musicians and selling his cassettes to the audience.

Here are two such cassettes, an early one from 1986 containing two pieces and one from 1990 containing seven, an hour of music altogether.

Jesús Montoya
95.9 MB, no password


A los finales de los años ochenta y al principio de los noventa, Jesús Montoya radicaba en un recinto oriente de San Diego (California), presentándose en cualquier lugar ameno al cante jondo que se encontrara entre Los Angeles y la Baja California. De costumbre se presentaba en un tablao completo, juntándose con varios bailaores según sus disponibilidades y, casi siempre, con el guitarista «Chago» Rodrigo y músicos de la familia Flores. Un elemento de su grupo poco usual era la flauta orquestal de Raquel Flores.

Solía pasar los intersticios de sus presentaciones en lugares como el vetusto teatro de Hollywood, «El Cid», y «La Taberna Española» que se encontraba en la orilla del mar en Ensenada sentado en la barra, platicando con su tablao y vendiendo sus casetes a los asistentes.

Aquí tenemos dos de sus casetes. Uno remonta al 1986 y cuenta con dos piezas; el otro del 1990 con siete. Juntos ofrecen como una hora de música flamenca sevillana.

Jesús Montoya
95.9 MB, sin contraseña




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