The Classical Journalist

SO EFFING TRUE!!!

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educatedidiocy:

When a piece of of well written music reaches a dissonant crescendo and your body is racked by cold shivers, your arms are covered in goosebumps, and keeping your eyes open is nigh impossible? Nope? Just me? Ok…..

This guy……

Hey, all!  I decided that I’ll just feed my Blogspot Posts onto tumblr from now on.  I love you guys, and all the pics you post.  I’ll stay here.

Hey to all my followers.  The 15 of you have been really fantastic!  The problem is, no-one else has followed me, nor asked for any reviews.  That is why I’m moving up to Blogspot.  I feel that this site is much more viewed, and I believe that more people will read it.  You are all welcome to view classicaljournalist.blogspot.com.  I will move all my reviews from here to the Blogspot, and when I feel like it, I will cancel my account.  Hope to hear from you all soon, and thanks for reading!  Part 2 of my Pictures at an Exhibition review will come up shortly, on my new blog!!!!  That’s classicaljournalist.blogspot.com

Hello, this is the Classical Journalist.

Here’s another two-part monster for you guys.  This is the very first piece that I started collecting recordings of.  The obsession started in 8th grade, when I played this and Night on Bald Mountain in the band program at the middle school.  I was touched so by this music, I had to have as many versions as I could possibly grab-be they from the library, bought on iTunes, or borrowed(stolen) from friends.  Pictures at an Exhibition will be reviewed first today, and later on, I will tackle Night on Bald Mountain.  The Pictures review, in itself, will be in two parts today.  The first part will be of the best recording that has been orchestrated by Maurice Ravel, which is the version everybody knows about, and the second part will be of all the other composers who sought to re-orchestrate it.

My very first recording of Pictures that I ever procured was by Lorin Maazel conducting the Cleveland Orchestra in 1979.  I got this from iTunes.  This was recorded in the early stages of digital recording, so Telarc was naturally the label for the job.  The first thing you notice about this recording is that it’s clear as a bell.  No instrument goes unheard.  That definitely gets points right off the bat.  But, although the sound is good, and the orchestra is pretty good in itself, this is not the sort of recording you get if you really care about quality.  This is the sort of recording that you get if you want to present it to a theory class, or to just hear a run-through of the piece.  The problem is mainly Maazel.  He’s a great conductor and musician, but when he came into the Cleveland Orchestra, he came after George Szell, who turned them into a powerhouse.  Maazel (who’s kind of a dictator, according to my teacher) sort of crushed the orchestra’s spirits, and turned down a bit of the sheen.  The brass, at best, is adequate in this recording.  The strings, though, are very good.  Also, this Pictures is all in one track.  So, unless you have a list of the timings of the 15 different movements in this recording, you’ll have to sit and listen to the entire thing.  The one thing about the playing I like the most is the final chord.  The piece ends on a typical “John Williams ending”- a long note crescendoing into a short, loud note.  This is one of the few orchestras, at least in my recording, who gets the note right on the dot and doesn’t hold too long, like some of the European issues I’ll be talking about.  5/10 for good recording quality, and not much else.

My second recording I procured, I got directly from my band teacher.  This was a much earlier issue, having been recorded in 1957 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Reiner.  Though it was recorded in the 50’s, recent digital transfers have cleaned the sound up so much, it sounds like it was recorded yesterday.  Reiner and Chicago were another one of the “gold standard” orchestra/conductor combos.  Their recorded legacy is legendary, not one bad disc to their name.  Their Pictures has a little more fire in it than Maazel, but still keeps pretty calm until the ending two movements.  Those are played very intensely, and are absolutely fantastic. 8/10

Next came Leonard Bernstein’s recording with the New York Philharmonic, recorded in 1958.  This recording is much more intense and fiery than the previous two recordings, purely because, let’s face it, Lenny’s conducting.  He has a tendency to be indulgent, and it shows.  The slow, beautiful songs are as heart-wrenchingly slow as one can make it, and the fast songs are played with lightning speed.  It’s all fun, but the trumpet soloist has way too much vibrato to be tasteful.  It’s enjoyable, and has Leonard Bernstein on it.  Not a bad issue. 6/10

The next recording I came across, I borrowed from my grandmother.  This was my first European issue, and was a great conductor/orchestra partnership.  Claudio Abbado conducted the London Symphony Orchestra here in 1990.  The final movement is the real star here, with the London trumpets ringing out beautifully.  The last note, contrary to the Maazel issue, ends slightly longer than is needed, but that doesn’t detract from the music for someone who isn’t picky, unlike myself.  It’s a great recording, and is a great starter disc for the LSO. 7/10

My next two recordings, I bought online from Amazon.  The first came in a two-disc set that was from Deutsche Grammophon’s series, Panorama.  This came with a sampling of a specific composer’s most famous works.  The Pictures recording was by Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1977.  This recording is pretty good.  The Chicago brass come into their own, and the piece is uniquely theirs.  This entire CD is an ok representation of who Moussorgsky is. 6/10

My next recording I got from Amazon was by Giuseppe Sinopoli, conducting the New York Philharmonic in 1990.  This recording is fantastic.  The brass is very sonorous in this reading, and was, up until a few years ago, my favorite version.  9/10 for this one. 

I next got the Sir Georg Solti/Chicago issue from 1991 from a good buddy of mine.  Solti is instantly one of my favorite conductors of all time.  His bombastic behavior and recordings sit well in my book.  He’s really nice to brass, and it shows in this recording.  The orchestra is spot on in this recording-I think this is the best out of Chicago’s catalogue of Pictures.  For a live recording, the audience is relatively quiet, which I love, and the sound is crystal clear.  8/10

After that came two recordings from Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in 1966 and 1980.  They are both pretty similar interpretations, but the 80’s issue has a much more thick and sonorous sound than the quick, bright 60’s issue.  Both are very great interpretations by Karajan, and I cannot pick a favorite of either of them.  Both get a 9/10.

Now comes a Pictures that almost everybody knows about.  In 2000, Valery Gergiev conducted the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra in a live performance that was truly fantastic.  It’s very uniquely Russian.  No surprise, because Gergiev is conducting.  The Vienna Phil sound like they are truly enjoying themselves, and the brass is amazing.  Definitely get this if you want nothing but bombast.  And, sometimes, that is exactly what you need. 9/10

My last two discs are the best possible Ravel recordings you can get.  I have a few others that I have not mentioned here, but that would have been a very long review, and I haven’t listened to them enough to make a true opinion.  I’ll listen to them, and if you want to hear about the others, flip me a message here or on my Facebook and I’ll get to them.  

The first disc that is an absolute prime recommendation is Charles Dutoit’s recording with the Orchestre Symphonique du Montreal in 1985.  This French-Canadian orchestra plays each movement like it’s their last.  Dutoit has always been a fantastic conductor.  He and the Montreal orchestra are yet another “gold standard” combo that you should definitely look into.  10/10

Finally, my very close second favorite is by the National Symphony Orchestra of the Ukraine, conducted by Theodore Kuchar in 2003.  This Russian orchestra brings all the power in the world in the heavy spots and knows how to pull back just perfectly for the soft spots.  The ending is perfectly on spot, and the brass is electrifying.  I loved this recording from the moment I got it, and you will, too.  10/10

Thanks for reading my extremely long review, and I will continue with Part 2 of my Pictures review, in which I take all the other orchestrations on.  Thanks, and Good Night.

Some excellent video game soundtracks

Hello, this is the Classical Journalist, with Part 2 of my awesome Penderecki journey.  Let’s get right into the recordings I have that were not conducted by Penderecki himself.

I still remember the first non-composer-conducted piece I got of Penderecki’s.  After I had seen The Shining, I became obsessed with a work known as Utrenja.  I had to constantly listen to the harsh textures of the orchestra and, most particularly, the demonic-sounding choir.  I looked and looked amongst Youtube and eBay, but I couldn’t find a recording on CD, much less a complete recording.  Then I found it: an extremely rare [in the US] recording of the entire work conducted by Andrzej Markowski, and performed by the always excellent Warsaw Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra.  This is the same recording used in the movie, and by heaven is it amazing.  But when I read the liner notes, I learned something interesting: The “demonic whispers” I thought I heard were actually religious texts, about the Entombment and Resurrection of Christ.  I showed this to my mom, and she said that “This stuff sounds like the Catholic Church on a bad day.”  God bless her.  It starts off with low-groaning double men’s chorus, and then, after leading us into a pool of bowed cymbals, the horror starts to unveil.  The mixture of the early 80’s recording and the playing of the orchestra makes this a very intense and frightening recording.  You must listen to it to get the full effect.  I was also happy to find out that Antoni Wit, also recorded Utrenja in 2009.  I bought it as soon as I was able.  It’s very similar in intensity to the other recording, maybe even a little more clearer, thanks to the Naxos digital sound, but it doesn’t have that sort of punch the original recording has.  Also, a few of the soloists, most notably the tenor, are a tad awkward to listen to.  But, both are excellent.  10/10 for the 80’s issue, and 9.5/10 for the Wit issue.

I then got Wit’s recording of St. Luke Passion, but I have already reviewed that recording on my very first review.

My next recording was an earlier issue of Antoni Wit’s Penderecki cycle, The Orchestral Works, Vol. 1.  I got this mainly because it had Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and De Natura Sonoris 2 on it.  Here, Antoni gives the Polish Radio Orchestra a spin, and churns out some great stuff.  This recording introduced me to Penderecki’s third symphony, which is really good, but shows a later, neo-romantic style.  As Penderecki got older and time went by, he soon got more melodic, with actual chords and melodies (however slight) instead of rambunctious noise.  The Passacaglia of this symphony was later used in Scorsese’s masterpiece, Shutter Island.  When I heard Threnody, I loved its clarity, but it didn’t really add much to the composer’s original.  It seemed faster-paced, and less horrifying.  Still, the strings do put up a Hell of a row.  Then, a piece that’s one of Penderecki’s older ones, but new to me, Fluorescences for HUMONGOUS orchestra.  I went out and found a pdf of the score, and I saw the orchestration: four each of flutes (each doubling on piccolo), clarinets, oboes, and bassoons, six French horns, four trumpets, three trombones, and two tubas.  Then came the percussion: 6 different stations of percussion using things like saws, typewriters, bells, gongs, triangles, timpani, whistles, wood blocks, etc.  It an amazing piece, with different colors coming around every corner, and it’s definitely worth a listen.  De Natura Sonoris w was a sort of disappointment. There’s a part (my favorite) when the orchestra drops out, and it’s only the brasses screaming at the top of their lungs in your ear.  In the original recording, it was huge, and obnoxious.  Here, you can barely tell if anyone is playing.  The score specifically says overblow your horns, and they simply don’t do that.  Other than that, it’s a same-old same-old recording, nothing super new to the party.  9/10

After this came Wit’s recording of Penderecki’s Polish Requiem.  I hate to say this, but I prefer Wit with Warsaw more than the composer’s own with Stockholm.  This issue, with Warsaw, is simply a better recording altogether.  The brass are huge in the Tuba Mirum, and it shows the composer’s horrid ideas in much better light.  10/10 to this recording.

My next recording of Wit’s was a world premiere recording of Penderecki’s Symphony No. 8: Lieder der Verganglichkeit (Songs of Transience)  This is some of Penderecki’s most tonal to date, and it’s very beautiful in some parts.  Here, as was the Polish Requiem, Wit is back with Warsaw, and his symphony recording is very superb.  Then comes another oldie but goodie of Penderecki’s, Dies Irae, An Oratorio in Memory of Auschwitz.  It’s very moody, but doesn’t use the Dies Irae lyrics at all.  Instead, it quotes the book of Revelations.  The orchestra is huge, and the sound colors are amazing.  

The next CD of Wit’s I got was a very recent release, Credo.  This is an excellent recording of an excellent piece, and it shows Penderecki’s attempts to become tonal, while still keeping his avant-garde intensity.  It definitely works out, and the piece is very enjoyable in some parts.  My favorite moment is at the end of the piece-Penderecki started ending his pieces on humongous major chords, and this piece is no exception, except the full orchestra only plays for a second or two, and leaves the trumpets to finish the chord.  I think it’s a brilliant move on his part.  Then comes a piece that heads back to Penderecki’s old tricks, Cantata in Honorem Almae Matris Universitatis Iagellonicae Sescentos Abhinc Annos Fundatae.  Basically, this is a piece written for Juilliard, where he taught the composition classes for a while, until John Corigliano took his place.  It plenty creepy, and I love it.  10/10 for an excellent issue.

The final Antoni Wit recording I have is his recording of Te Deum and Polymorphia.  I love Te Deum, and it’s a very great choral work of Penderecki.  It’s very close in style to Credo.  But, the main event, in my opinion, is Polymorphia.  This piece has one of the most amazing closes ever.  I won’t ruin it, though.  You will have to listen to it to find out what that closing is.  The piece is very close to Threnody, except it has more of a structure to it.  10/10 for a great surprise.

Finally, I have the world-premiere recording of Penderecki’s Seventh Symphony, the Seven Gates of Jerusalem conducted by Kazimierz Kord and played by Warsaw.  It’s very old-style and new-style Penderecki in some parts.  The number 7 shows up throughout the symphony, and it whips you back and forth, leading up to a speaker role in the 6th movement.  It’s very frightening how well the music provides a background for the speaker.  It all ends on a huge chord, and rapturous applause [this was a live recording].  10/10 for this. 

Thanks again for reading my review on this master of the Avant-Garde, Krzysztof Penderecki.  I truly recommend you listen to him. His music may sound horrid at first, but if you try and actually listen to the instrumental colors, I’m sure the experience will be much more enjoyable.  

Hello, this is the Classical Journalist.  I’ve got a treat for you Contemporary fans today.  Up until my Sophomore year, I had been living on composers like Mahler and Berlioz, not delving too much into the atonal.  That was before I saw The Shining, a fantastic movie by Stanley Kubrick.  In that movie, I heard some of the most gut-wrenching sounds imaginable, and by real instruments!  Strings were hitting their bows on their instruments, brasses were practically screaming, and the chorus were scaring the crap out of me by talking, whispering, whistling, shouting, etc.  I ask myself, “Who could write such amazing things?!”  That’s when I waited until the ending credits to find out that, among the composers, the most dominant one was one Krzysztof Penderecki (pronounced KZHUstahf PenderETZckee), a Polish name that, until this day, I had no knowledge of.  What started then would soon be a lifelong love of all things modern and atonal.  I went out and bought one of Penderecki’s CD’s, and I soon found myself buying more.  This guy is amazing.

My very first Penderecki CD was his Orchestral Works, Vol. 1.  This disc is all performances from the 70’s, conducted by him.  The main orchestra used on this disc was the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, but on two of his works, he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra.   The first work on this disc is Anaklasis, played by the LSO.  It’s a concerto for strings and percussion that lulls you in with very muted, but still very eerie, string tones with a few random jabs by various strings, and it soon morphs into a kaleidoscope of horrifying string textures, mixed with random clacks of percussion.  Even the string instruments turn into percussion instruments themselves, hitting their bows on the chair, or smacking their strings.  It’s a great piece that morphs from chaos to an uneasy calm time and again.  Then comes probably his most well-known piece, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, for 52 string instruments, played by the Polish orchestra this time.  If you want to hear what it sounds like, check out my profile.  There is a sound bite that one of my followers posted on his own tumblr, and I shared it.  It says One of the greatest Polish pieces ever written.  You’ll enjoy it, I promise.  The disc then moves throughout Penderecki’s line of work, eventually ending up at his first symphony, played very well by the LSO.  There is no greater beginner disc.

His Orchestral works, Vol. 2, by the same Polish Orchestra, follows in the same vane, this time giving us his Symphony no. 2, “Christmas,” which uses Silent Night to amazing, atonal, effect.  A few of his choral works give you a taste of what sort of a choral writer he was, and it all ends on Kanon for Tape and String Orchestra.  This is the piece used in the Shining when Wendy has seen Jack’s ravings of “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” and she backs away from him.  Fantastic disc, both volumes are recorded so well, you’d believe it was played yesterday.

The last of our “composer-conducted” discs I have for you today is his Polish Requiem, recorded in 2001 by Penderecki himself conducting the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra.  His Requiem is huge, like any other, and it’s slightly melodic, and not just organized chaos like his earlier works.  But, still, it’s very chromatic, and very disturbing in some parts.  It’s a great disc, and it even comes coupled with one of his earlier works, The Dream of Jacob.  This is truly a fantastic work, and I think it captures the fear of Jacob during the famous story.  

Well, this ends Part 1 of the Penderecki Journey here.  There are a lot of other Penderecki recordings that I have, though not conducted by the composer, and I don’t want this review to be super long, so I’ll end there.  Expect the next part sometime in the following days.  Thanks for reading.  And definitely give this guy a listen.  Oh yeah.  And one more thing.

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Good evening, my loyal readers.  This is The Classical Journalist.

I have the absolute pleasure of introducing you to a composer that I’ve discovered, maybe even created.  I speak of my good friend, Clark Nichols.  I met this fine young lad during my senior year of high school in Orion Academy, a school for kids with Nonverbal Learning Disabilities (NLD) or Asperger’s Syndrome.  But, don’t let these big words fool you.  Many of these splendid young men and women may be a only a tad socially awkward, but they are truly brilliant kids.  When I met Clark, I saw that he had a talent for the guitar, as he picked it up rather quickly. He seemed to enjoy music almost as much as I did.  That’s when I showed him Philip Glass, and the entire world changed for him.  He soon found out that he has Synesthesia, which means he sees colors through music, and he has a fond love of composing, some of which I will review here.  He is a fine young man with a big future ahead of him, and I definitely encourage you guys to listen to his music that he lovingly posts on youtube.com/slaytesics.  

First, I’d love to review his first major opus, his string quartet.  At first listen, it’s quite obvious that he listens to a ton of Philip Glass.  His music is very minimalistic, but he has a good sense of harmonies and counter-melody.  But, it’s also obvious that he’s a beginner.  Sometimes, the rhythms in the Quartet seem a tad erratic, and it seems to stay in the same note range, at least in the first movement.  The second movement starts to correct a few of these errors.  The second movement seems to take on a fugue sort of structure, which is very interesting for a beginner.  One major factor for each of his compositions is that he loves pentatonic scale.  For those of you who don’t understand what a pentatonic scale is, think of a piano, and the five black keys.  There’s your pentatonic scale.  One minor problem in the quartet, later worked out a bit in his symphonies, is that the music never seems to go anywhere, and it often ends abruptly.  His third movement brings the entire thing to a rousing close, and it sounds very technical in some parts.  I guess he wanted a slow, slow, fast movement structure, where some would do fast, slow, fast.  It’s a great piece, and it shows the composer at a very early stage.

Recently, Clark started a project of writing a symphony a day.  He’s only written two so far, but I’m sure he’ll be back at it in no time.  Let’s look at his Symphony no. 1.

Here is definitely a more mature Clark.  This definitely has more of a time signature to it, and it sounds a lot less minimalistic.  The strings are very well harmonized, as are the woodwinds.  The opening theme reminds one of Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, and the entire movement feels like a romantic movement in a film score at places.  Definitely a better job.  The second movement introduces percussion into the mix after a theme in the bass clarinets.  It’s a constant layering of instruments that leads to a disrobing of each layer that leads to an ending chord on cellos and basses.  The third movement is probably my favorite of the entire symphony.  It starts off with a rousing ostinato in the timpani, (which, unfortunately, is written in a register too high for a normal set of four) and soon adds low strings and piano to it.  The entire movement takes the themes of movements 1 and 2 and brings them to a satisfyingly hushed close.  An excellent job, to only be outdone by his second symphony.

As you might have realized by now, his compositions only get better as he goes on.  His second symphony proves just that.  The first movement of the second symphony brings a marimba into the orchestra, and definitely shows more melody and movement than his earlier compositions.  Again, it seems that a few of the instrumentalists go into a fugue.  This movement shows his interest in counter-melody.  He soon brings highly-tuned tom-toms into it, playing a semi-melodic ostinato that definitely sound Asian.  (As I said before, he loves his pentatonic scales.)  The entire movement ends in a sudden, hushed close.  Then the second movement comes in which is starts off as a solo for timpani accompanied by cellos and basses.  Unfortunately, again, the timpani were notated much too high to be played by a normal group of drums, so I had a word with him, and he will make changes.  This movement adds more and more layers to turn the entire thing into a sort of action piece.  It’s quite fantastic.  It soon hushes down to a section for plucked strings occasionally smacked around by a bass drum, then adding in a piano soloist, then the timpani soloist, into a big pileup.  Then, the layers are taken off until there is nothing left but harp and piano, which is soon silenced by two low C’s on timpani and bass drum.  Finally, the third movement comes around, again starting with a solo on timpani.  I guess he understood that his good friend, your humble writer, was a timpanist, and he wanted to write a part for me.  What a friend, huh?  Since this piece was written with more than two notes being played at the same time, I can safely assume that he wrote it for more than one player.  He brings the entire orchestra (Except brass.  He has yet to use brass) into the final movement, and even adds in a curious section for harp and bells.  It’s an excellent layering of ostinati that soon lead to an exquisite close of harp and bells, and a satisfying thud on timpani.

I’m sure that, though there are many erroneous actions in his music, you will enjoy listening to him as much as I have.  It honors me to say that I may have sparked an interest in this fine young gentleman, and I definitely hope that he continues in his endeavors.  Again, you can hear everything he’s written at youtube.com/slaytesics.  Thanks for reading, and I will post an interview with the young man as soon as he visits me.  Expect another review soon.  The young man pictured below is the composer himself, next to a CD by one of his most favorite composers.

The Classical Journalist