Nosotros Melómanos: September 2011

Friday, September 30, 2011

Vivaldi: concerti for recorder, strings, and continuo, op. 10

Concerto #1 in F, “La tempesta di mare”
Concerto #2 in g, “La notte”
Concerto #3 in D, “Il gardellino”
Concerto #4 in G
Concerto #5 in F
Concerto #6 in G

Michala Petri, recorders
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields
Iona Brown, director

Vivaldi opus 10
70.1 MB - no password

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Haydn: Symphonies 26, 52, and 53

Symphony #26 in d, “Lamentatione”
Symphony #52 in c
Symphony #53 in D, “Imperial”

La Petite Bande
Sigiswald Kuijken, director

Period instruments, authentic performance-practice, and Saint Sigi: Haydn at his finest. Recorded at the Doopsgezinde Semeentekerk, Haarlem, March 1988.

Haydn Symphonies 26, 52, 53
91.0 MB - no password

Stabat Mater: Music from the Eton Choirbook

Richard Davy: Stabat mater dolorosa
John Browne: Stabat iuxta Christi crucem
John Browne: Stabat mater dolorosa
William Cornyshe: Gaude virgo mater Christi

The Sixteen
Harry Christophers, director

Four-, five-, and six-voice Marian antiphons of the late fifteenth century taken from the collection at Eton College, Berkshire, and transcribed by Christophers. Recorded at the Church of St Anne and St Agnes, London, January 1982.

antiphons from the Eton Choirbook

Friday, September 23, 2011

Girolamo Frescobaldi: harpsichord works

Bob van Asperen, harpsichord

Toccata decima
Cento partite sopra passacagli
Canzona terza
Toccata nona
Capriccio sopra la Bassa Fiamenga
Toccata nona
Canzon terza detta La Crivelli
Partite 14 sopra l’Aria della Romanesca

Frescobaldi by van Asperen
82.7 MB – no password

Frans Brüggen: works for recorder

Jacques-Martin Hotteterre: Suite for two recorders
Diogenio Bigaglia: Sonata in a minor for recorder
Andrew Parcham: Solo in G for recorder and basso continuo
Jacob Jan van Eyck: Engels Nachtegaeltje for recorder solo
Johann Christoph Pepusch: Sonata #4 in F for alto recorder and basso continuo
François Couperin: L’espangnole from Les nations
Georg Philip Telemann: Suite in F for solo violin, strings, two flutes, two oboes, two horns, kettledrums and basso continuo

with
Kees Boeke, recorder
Anner Bylsma, violoncello
Gustav Leonhardt, harpsichord
Nikolaus Harnoncourt, viola da gamba
Quadro Amsterdam
Concerto Amsterdam
Jaap Schröder, violin

By 1975, when Telefunken released this two-disc set, Brüggen had already made a name for himself as a hot young recorder soloist. Here he showed his abilities in musicology and ensemble-playing by offering rare and unusual repertoire and performances with some of the best musicians in northern Europe. The recording was rereleased as cassettes in 1985, from which this archive was ripped.

Brüggen double album 1975
134.7 MB – no password

Giovanni Picchi: harpsichord works

Ton Koopman, harpsichord
(copy of Stephanini 17th c.)

Toccata
Ballo detto il Picchi
Ballo ongaro
Padoana ditta la Ongara
Pass’e mezzo antico de sei parti
Saltarello del ditto Pass’e mezzo
Todesca
Ballo ditto il Stefanin
Ballo alla polacha

Picchi was so influential in the development of Renaissance keyboard music that he even appears in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. The recording is a scant thirty minutes long but the pieces are sprightly and the playing is classic Koopman.

Picchi by Koopman
41.0 MB – no password

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Antoine Forqueray père: pièces de viole

Suite nº 1 in d minor
Suite nº 2 in G major

Jordi Savall, bass viola da gamba (1697)
Christopher Coin, bass viola da gamba
Ton Koopman, harpsichord (1729)

Forqueray (1672–1745) was the gamba soloist of his day. His two suites, written for the court of the Duke of Orléans, are performed here on instruments that are contemporary with the music.

Forqueray viola da gamba
70.7 MB - no password

Herbert Tachezi: Renaissance organ music from Spain, Italy, and Germany

Tomás de Santa María: Ocho fantasías por los ocho tonos
Enríquez de Valderrábano: Fantasía primero grado
Antonio de Cabezón: Diferences sobre el canto llano del caballero
Luis de Milán: Pavana y galiarda
Claudio Merulo: Toccata
Vincenzo Pellegrini: Canzona per organo (francese) «La Serpentina»
Michael Praetorius: O lux beata trinitas
Paul Hofhaimer: Recordare
Johannes Kotter: Salve regina
Christian Erbach: Ricercar secundi toni

Tachezi had an encyclopedic understanding of Renaissance keyboard music. Here he offers a broad, well-chosen program to show off the wide range of the Ebert organ in Innsbruch, Austria, an unusual instrument in that it handles both Spanish and German registrations effectively.

Tachezi Renaissance organ
78.9 MB – no password

Greek Easter on Mount Athos

An ethnomusicological field recording of the climactic night before Resurrection as celebrated in 1978 by Abbot Alexios and the community of the Xenophontos Monastery on Greece’s holy mountain. Because this culminates the mystery of sacrifice and redemption and ends the Lenten fast, the celebration of Holy Saturday is arguably the most significant point of the entire Orthodox calendar. Its ritual and musical structure are discussed in detailed notes.

Not the sort of thing you want to have blaring out of your urban assault vehicle while you’re waiting for the traffic light to change, but an extraordinarily rare and invaluable recording if you would understand the origins of plainchant, fauxbourdon, or the early Christian church. Share and enjoy!

Easter on Mount Athos
78.1 MB – no password

Frans Brüggen and the Minnesota Orchestra, 1 May 1985

Rameau: Suite from Dardanus (arranged by Brüggen)
J. S. Bach: Concerto for recorder and orchestra (arranged by Brüggen)
C.P.E. Bach: Symphony in D
Haydn: Symphony #88 in G

Live aircheck of a performance in St. Paul, Minnesota, during which Brüggen got a modern orchestra to sound like an eighteenth-century one. (Two weeks after this performance, he was in Sydney, Australia, getting their orchestra to do the same thing.) An interesting concert on many levels, not the least of which being Brüggen’s own transcriptions. The concerto here is an arrangement of a harpsichord concerto in which Brüggen served as both soloist and conductor. A twelve-minute interview with Brüggen discussing the motive behind these concerts, which originally aired during the intermission, is included at the end of this archive.

image:
link:
Brüggen in concert 1 May 1985
124.1 MB – no password

Toru Takemitsu: selected works

Requiem for string orchestra (1957)
Quatrain for Tashi and orchestra (1975)
Sacrifice for alto flute, lute, and vibraphone (1962)
Arc for piano and orchestra
Eucalypts II for flute, oboe, and harp (1970)
For Away for piano (1973)
Water Ways for Tashi, two harps, and two vibraphones (1978)
Masque for two flutes (1959)
Undisturbed Rest for piano (1952)
Green [November Steps II] for orchestra (1967)

Takemitsu (1930–1996) was arguably the finest composer of the second half of the twentieth century and certainly one of the very few able to have made a living purely as a composer beyond the coddling walls of academia. He wrote even for movies and television in a post-Romantic, post-Impressionist style that was luminous, modern, cosmopolitan, and extraordinarily thoughtful. The real Zen, a musical garden.

Nationalistic schools of composition criticize him for his lack of shakuhachi and koto … but nationalism was so nineteenth-century, so non-Zen. The rest of us will figure this out soon enough. Sensei Toru saw the future of artistic expression as an all-embracing universality cannot be achieved by jumbling various styles together the way that hip-hop hamsters try to sell us silly Korean cars. (The reference is to commercials for the Kia Soul aired on U.S. television in 2011.)

This archive is a compilation from seven LPs and one live performance.

Takemitsu
127.9 MB – no password

François du Fault: lute works

Suite in c minor
Suite in a minor
Suite in g minor
Suite in C major
Pavane in e minor

Hopkinson Smith, one of the movers and shakers of the original-instrument movement, performing on a Venetian lute made in 1644. Little is known about the composer, who was a contemporary of the lute in this recording, yet his writing is sophisticated and idiomatic.

François du Fault lute 73.6 MB – no password

Friday, September 9, 2011

Brahms: Double Concerto, Tragic Overture

Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra in a minor, op. 102
Wolfgang Schneiderhan, violin
Janos Starker, cello
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
Ferec Fricsay, conductor

Tragic Overture, op. 81
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Loren Maazel, conductor

These are older recordings reissued by Deutsche Grammophon primarily because of the work of Starker and Fricsay (1962) and Maazel (1959) although every musician was outstanding throughout both performances. The only shortcoming is the work of the recording engineers because they placed the orchestra's microphones too far away in fear of saturating their tapes. Starker's microphone is especially intimate and both soloists deliver an extraordinarily subtle performance.

Because of the wussy recording levels, here is an instance where the derivative MP3s are better than the commercial cassette. The Golden Records program normally rips cassettes with its input gate at -12dB but in this case the gate was set wide open in order to hear the orchestra better. The conductors, orchestras, and soloists are smiling down on NCH Software for their help in this venture. Crank your volume up and you'll smile, too.

Brahms Double Concerto
67.1 MB - no password

Canto Antiguo

Music from the Spanish Middle Ages and Renaissance

Sacred and secular music from the codeces from the Composela pilgrimage, the Cántigas de Santa María, and the cancioneros of the great palaces. Canto Antiguo included a former member of Noah Greenberg's New York Pro Musica and a music professor from Cal State Fullerton.

When this recording came out, in 1977, its musicians (from the cultural wastelands of southern California) were overshadowed by much glitzier European performers, such as the Early Music Consort of London and Studio für Alte Musik, and its improvisatory sound was not well-received by scholars. Time has since vindicated this interesting recording: today's performers of early Spanish music not only insist on true improvisation, they also embrace the Sephardic and Mozarabic musical influences that audiences in the 1970s did not appreciate.

The bright sound of this recording is surprisingly modern because the microphones were placed in an experimentally close X-Y pattern. The only anomaly was the group's countertenor, who projected toward each microphone alternatively just as he did to live audiences.

Canto Antiguo
78.7 MB - no password

Rossini: Petite Messe Solennelle

Kari Lövass, sorano
Brigitte Fassbaender, alto
Peter Schreier, tenor
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone
Munich Vocal Ensemble
Wolfgang Sawallisch & Hans Ludwig Hirsch, piano
Reinhard Raffalt, harmonium
Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor

Strange things can happen when opera composers decide to write a mass. This one was performed almost a cappella by a small complement of first-class singers and recorded live in the Church of the Baumburg Cloister in 1978.

Rossini Petite Messe
118.8 MB - no password

Joseph Haydn: baryton trios

Trios for baryton, viola, and violoncello, Hob. XI
#61 in D, #52 in d, #101 in C, #96 in b, #44 in D
Münchner Baryton-Trio

Haydn wrote a great deal of music for the baryton, a large viola da gamba with sympathetic strings, because it was the favorite instrument of his patron, Prince Nicolaus Esterházy. In that body of work are 125 trios or divertimenti, many of which include a cadenza to allow the prince to show off. Polydor Archiv, 1978.

Haydn baryton trios
88.3 MB - no password

Antonio Soler: Los Villancicos

Escolanía de la Abadía de Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos
Ensemble Baroque Pygmalion
Jean-Michel Hasler, conductor
15th International Festival of Sacred Music, Sylvanès Abbey, August 1992

Padre Antonio is known more for his brilliant keyboard music, but here he is developing the villancico, originally a troubdour song, into its Baroque form as a Christmas carol for orchestra and chorus. The one characteristic that Soler preserved from the poetical form of the troubadours is its alternation of estribillo and copla, a characteristic that has since permeated Spanish music throughout the world.

The audiocassette is a Mexican release of a French production featuring a children's choir from Roncesvalles, Spain, and an instrumental group from Aveyron, France.

Soler villancicos
88.1 MB - no password

Brahms-Schoenberg: Piano Quartet for orchestra

Arnold Schoenberg's orchestrations of:
Brahms: Piano Quartet in g, op. 25
Bach Chorale Preludes:
"Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele", BWV 654
"Komm, Gott Schöpfer, Heiliger Geist, BWV 631

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor

Schoenberg is usually thought of as impossibly dissonant but he was secretly the very last gasp of German Romanticism. With his orchestration of the piano quintet one is tempted to imagine Brahms on pschedelics while Schoenberg's Bach out-Stokovskies Stokowski. Analogue audiocassette of a digital master, 1986.

Schoenberg-Brahms
68.0 MB - no password

Schubert: Symphony #9 Sawallisch

Schubert: Symphony #9 in C, "The Great"
Staatskapelle Dresden
Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor

Sawallisch was a prolific conductor of both symphonies and operas whose career was cut short by orthostatic hypotension. He spent ten years as music director of the Philadelphia Symphony, but was more appreciated by European audiences. His solid, balanced musicianship was well-matched to Schubert's solidest symphony.

Schubert's Ninth with Sawallisch
84.6 MB - no password

Mozart String Quartets #18 and #19

The Guarneri Quartet

Quartet for Strings #18 in A (K. 464)
Quartet for Strings #19 in C, "Dissonant" (K. 465)

Six Quartets dedicated to Haydn, vol. 3
RCA Red Seal, 1975

Formed in 1964, the Guarneri was such an institution in its day that they often didn't bother to list their individual names (Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley, violins; Michael Tree, viola; David Soyer, cello). The quartet is still in residence at the University of Maryland even though Mr Soyer retired in 2001 and died in 2010. These Mozart quartets were recorded while the Guarneri was at its apogee.

Mozart String Quartets 18 & 19
85.0 MB - no password