Tír Na HiFi

And why not dear Fergus, it´s one of the best Fidelios out there. In this white-hot performance you can hear Fricsay´s influence on Harnoncourt. The playing of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is superb, and Dutch soprano Charlotte Margiono gives a noble, impassioned performance.

Jose Echenique wrote:And why not dear Fergus, it´s one of the best Fidelios out there. In this white-hot performance you can hear Fricsay´s influence on Harnoncourt. The playing of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is superb, and Dutch soprano Charlotte Margiono gives a noble, impassioned performance.

You have said it for me Pepe!

Joseph Haydn
Symphony No 45 & 60
Concentus musicus Wien
Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting.
I bought this set in 2009 when I was in my initial Haydn phase and it has never failed to impress me ever since. The performance of number 45 is splendid and that of one of my favourites, the 60th, is pure joy from start to finish, oh those beautiful baying horns are delightful.

Dave's disc, still to be returned. A thrilling reading, full of drive and momentum but with subtlety too, and with an organ that sounds like a dinosaur vomiting and a bass drum that sounds like an explosion. What's not to love!



And a bit of Grieg for good measure. Greatest hits stuff here this morning!

Mily Balakirev
Symphony no. 1
USSR State Symphony Orchestra
Evgeny Svetlanov conducting.

This recording from 1973 is a some times raw, harsh, brash, powerful, biting, occasionally pretty and a simply wonderfully evocative performance of Balakirev's gorgeous symphony.

I am a creature of habit!



Mily Balakirev
Symphony No. 1
Russian State Symphony Orchestra
Igor Golovschin conducting.

Mily Balakirev
Symphony No. 1
Philharmonia Orchestra
Evgeny Svetlanov conducting.

Schubert.



Franz Schubert
String Quintet
Belcea Quartet and Valentin Erben

Superb

Listening today to two recent purchases.  Firstly, the Doric String Quartet's recording of Haydn's Op.20 string quartets in the first of a complete series of the Haydn quartets. I have been greatly impressed by the Doric Quartet's recording of the elusive Schumann quartets as well as their performance of two of the greatest Schubert quartets (Death and the Maiden and Rosamunde) and I was very curious to hear their Haydn.  This music is among the most cerebral in the canon, inexhaustible in its sense of spiritual nourishment and intellectual reward.  The Doric Quartet's performances are distinguished by their lightness of touch, attention to the minutest of details, and brisk, naturally paced tempos that highlight their stylistically nuanced and insightful playing which is simply a pleasure to listen to.  Time and again you are struck on a very deep emotional level when listening to the Dorics play this music.  To name but one example, the slow movement in the third quartet from the Op.20 grouping contains some of Haydn's greatest, most searching of writing in all of his compositional output.  The audibly nervy tension in the opening movements of this quartet reaches its exquisite apogee in the extraordinary third movement, which initially suggests a sense of cathartic repose, but which gradually sheds these layers to reveal a coda of the most desolate isolation.  In the Dorics' beautifully paced performance of this work, there is a sense of understated interiority (that never devalues the sense of drama nor impedes the narrative flow) which suggests a maturity of emotional perspective as well as a pronounced sensitivity to the sheer intensity of Haydn's creative vision.  (One wonders what they will make of Beethoven's Op.131 which they will surely come to one day.)  This should be a wonderful modern cycle of these works.



Secondly, Florilegium's recent traversal of the Bach Brandenburgs.  A great performance of these works will tell you as much about the ensemble as the music.  These are perhaps the smoothest, most refined versions that I've heard on period instruments.  I should stress, however, that this is not a criticism but simply an interpretive decision on the part of the ensemble director, Ashley Solomon, who has traded dramatic urgency and dynamic extremes for a technically assured reading that should be valued for its thoughtful, cerebral and measured approach to this great music.  Tempos are swift, textures are light and transparent, timbral sonorities are beautifully realised and no detail in the original scores goes unremarked by these musicans and yet there is just such a sense of studied ease in these performances that seems a world away from the breathless urgency of such highly charged versions as those by Musica Antiqua Köln, Concerto Italiano and Il Giardino Armonico.  As listeners, we can only benefit from such diversity of interpretation.  Florilegium have taken their time to record these works, and the results are very rewarding.  Hopefully they will record the Orchestral Suites in due course.

Seán wrote:Schubert.



Franz Schubert
String Quintet
Belcea Quartet and Valentin Erben

Superb

I strongly agree, Sean.  These are among the best, most powerful versions of these masterpieces.  Among modern alternatives, I would also recommend you investigate recordings by the Jerusalem Quartet, the Pavel Haas Quartet, the Artemis Quartet and the Arcanto Quartet.