Records recently heard

Matthias Weckmann's keyboard music

I have loved Matthias Weckmann's keyboard music, ever since I was a young teenager and by chance stumbled across the score at a local library and played the music on the piano in my home. This was indeed my introduction to Stylus Phantasticus. The music consists of Toccata's, Canzone's and Suite's and may stylistically be put between similar works by Froberger and Buxtehude, combining Fantastic style with German counterpoint and Italian tunefulness. But Weckmann's works are more extrovert and accessible than Frobergers most often dark, meditative works. Recording companies have with a few exceptions neglected Weckmann's harpsichord works, but a new recording from CPO with Jan Katzscke remedy this deficiency. The interpretation expresses all the fantasy and sweetness so characteristical of Weckmann's style, and it can be heartily recommended. Mid-price.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Works-Harpscichord/dp/B000H4VZ6W/ref=sr_11_1/202-1131293-0865426?ie=UTF8

 

Monteverdi -- L'incoronazione Di Poppea

Concerto Vocale -- Rene Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi)


It's been a long time since i've listened to any classical music and the first time that i've heard the whole of this opera.This recording is a little bit old, but i went for this one as i'm not particularly familiar with modern recording of Monteverdi.

 

This oddity:



The Goldbergs, rewritten by Robin Holloway for two pianos (apparently initially because of his frustration in being unable to play the original by himself!). However, it went considerably further (which is why it's on 2CDs). In this case, it's played by duo pianists Jennifer Micallef and Glen Inanga. And very nicely it's played too.

Problem is, I don't like it much! It occasionally becomes quite discordant in a modern style (guaranteed to cause me to run shrieking from the room). In the second CD, it incorporates bits of many other composers, really quite cleverly. And then my favourite bit, the Quodlibet, gets played in every key possible.

I'm afraid I'm just not sufficiently musically literate for this, and I love the original too much.

 

The Goldbergs are utterly mediocre baroque music. If someone composed them today, nobody would be interested. But since they are from Bach's hand, most people assume they must be something great, just like a genuine van Gogh painting is worth of tens of millions, but a forged van Gogh is almost worthless, even if nobody can tell the difference.

 

I'm not musically knowledgeable enough to argue that, ol' spud (I leave that to RdS and Pe-Zulu), but my love of the Goldbergs has nowt to do with their mediocrity or otherwise, but with the fact that I simply enjoy listening to them, and I'd enjoy them even if Led Zeppelin were the composers (and that's something coming from me!). To my admittedly untutored ears, there's a rather nice symmetry about the Goldbergs as written.

And I can always take comfort in the fact that yours is a minority view that I've never seen expressed elsewhere. Perhaps an over-reaction on your part to the over-veneration of Bach in some quarters, the way that the veneration in some quarters of certain hi-fi brands (which shall naturally be naimless) seems to produce people who are equally ardent about demolishing the brand?

And if my taste in music is poor, I can live with that very comfortably, as I only have to satisfy me.

 

Just got a CD with violin sonata's from Franck, Debussy and Ravel (played by Shlomo Mintz and Yefim Bronfman). Very nice, especially Debussy.

 

That Franck sonata also is a great piece of chamber music, IMHO. I sometimes feel that Franck is a bit underestimated as a composer. I have a CD that combines the Violin Sonata (Gidon Kremer/Oleg Maisenberg) with the String Quartet in D major (The Prague Quartet). This Quartet is something special, too.
Wasn't this the favourite piece of Marcel Proust? At least I remember once seeing a television play about Proust and his special relationship with this piece (and with a certain young male violinist) .... long time ago, in the early Nineties.

 

Pianist Marcelle Meyer's Rameau from 1950s - beautiful !!!