What are you listening two?

[Seán]

I have to admit that I have never managed Finnegans Wake hard as I try, but someday, someday...

I read 3 pages of it once...

Well done, that's three more than me.

[Diapason]

I have to admit that I have never managed Finnegans Wake hard as I try, but someday, someday...

I read 3 pages of it once...

Well done, that's three more than me.

Granted, that was only half a sentence.

[fergus]

Some keyboard music by C.P.E. Bach....





....there is some remarkable music on this CD [way ahead of its time!].

[Jose Echenique]

Some keyboard music by C.P.E. Bach....





....there is some remarkable music on this CD [way ahead of its time!].

And very well played too.

[Seán]

Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 7
Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich
David Zinman conducting.
A very interesting and enjoyable performance, that said, the Rondo was not altogether to my liking. It is welcome addition to my collection but it's not on a par with the CSO Mahler Sevens conducted by Solti or Abaddo.

[Seán]

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 7
Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich
David Zinman conducting.

This is another very fine performance of LvB's wonderful work.

[Jose Echenique]

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 7
Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich
David Zinman conducting.

This is another very fine performance of LvB's wonderful work.

Very fine conductor Zinman.

[Seán]

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 7
Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich
David Zinman conducting.

This is another very fine performance of LvB's wonderful work.

Very fine conductor Zinman.

Indeed he is Pepe. I should have believed Fergus, I'm a slow learner, better late than never.

[Seán]

Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 2
Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich
David Zinman conducting.

[mcq]

This is, in a word, glorious.  The complete Haydn string quartets as performed by the Festetics Quartet and recently collected in a box set by the Arcana label.  I began my traversal of these performances on Thursday night and am now about halfway through.  I do not think it an exaggeration to say that these works are, collectively, not only among the greatest works that Haydn ever penned but also belong in the pantheon of the most profoundly intelligent music ever composed.  The refined urbaneity of the wisdom of this music personifies the thought patterns of a man entirely at ease within his milieu.  Perhaps what is most staggering about Haydn's achievement is the level of consistency he maintained, in his creative output in general and specifically in his work for string quartet.  When you sit and listen to these works, you become acutely aware of a creative arc that is gradually being traced, that mirrors Haydn's ever-increasing mastery of form, texture and dynamics but also the increasingly cerebral nature of the music which is sometimes obscured by its sheer refined elegance.  More than most music, these quartets repay the closest of listening.  At times, I am reminded of the meditative qualities of an organ chorale, and, at others, of a frenzied intellectual discourse, but always there remains a sense of the most extraordinary intelligence that guides this marvellous music, the rewards of which remain limitless.

The Festetics Quartet's performances are quite breathtaking, in my opinion.  There is a pungency and vibrancy to their playing which brings out the music's inherently human qualities and also lends a sense of compulsion to the listening experience.  Also, you get the sense of four separate musical personalities, whose musical strands of thought sometimes intersect and sometimes veer off in their own direction, as befits the music.  Listening to the Festetics play this music, you hear sweetness that is never cloying, sharpness that never grates.  They communicate fully the breadth of human emotions that Haydn instilled into this music, but at all times remain keenly alive to its inherently thoughtful nature.  A wonderful, profoundly life-affirming listening experience.