What are you listening two?

[Seán]

Earlier today I thought that I might try and listen to an 'Irish' composer or two so after my daily morning diet of Mozart I listened to


Charles Villiers Stanford
Symphony no. 4
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
David Lloyd-Jones conducting.

[fergus]

Did you enjoy that one Seán?

[fergus]

For a very good friend in far away Mexico City....





....some lovely sacred music from two composers, Ignacio de Jerúsalem and Manuel de Zumaya.

[Jose Echenique]

For a very good friend in far away Mexico City....





....some lovely sacred music from two composers, Ignacio de Jerúsalem and Manuel de Zumaya.

Ha, ha, that rings a bell. Actually it´s a lovely cd, though Chanticleer, an all-male grownups group, sounds very different from the children choir both composers would have expected.

[Seán]

Did you enjoy that one Seán?

I do like that CD, I hadn't listened to it for some time, the performances of the 4th and 7th are very enjoyable. I have a recording of the First Symphony by the same forces but I haven't listened it to it for a couple of years now. I must say it is taking me some considerable time to get intimately acquainted with my collection.

On a related topic I am spending a large amount of my time listening to Mozart's Symphonies and my choosen performances are those by Mackerras with the Prague Chamber Orchestra. I think that it is time to buy another complete set and am considering getting either the Hogwood/AAM cycle, because I enjoy smaller forces in most of these works, or the Böhm/BPO set - because he was a bloody good conductor. I haven't ruled out getting the Harnoncourt/Concentus musicus Wien, 1 - 25 cycle either.

Any thoughts you'd care to share with me?

[Jose Echenique]

It´s hard to believe that this recording is 40 years old this year, and I bought it in 1975 when I was sweet 15!!! It´s been one of my favorite Cosi recordings ever since, and God knows there are plenty.
Solti performed the opera with some members of the cast (Berganza, Bacquier and Berbie) in Paris before the recording was made in London, but never with the LPO, so it´s all the more admirable how coherent and tight the performance is. Even more admirable is how stylish, relaxed and fun Solti is in this opera, even more than in his recordings of the Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, and far more than in his 1990´s rerecording of Cosí with Renée Fleming.
Teresa Berganza and Pilar Lorengar are ideally matched as the sisters, their voices mix well and they just SOUND their roles, because very often you get too matronly sounding sopranos and mezzos (like Montserrat Caballé and Janet Baker in the contemporaneous Colin Davis recording in PHILIPS, where the whole cast sounds one generation too old for this opera). And what an exquisite rendition of the heavenly trio "Soave sia il vento" my own choice for the greatest piece of music ever composed.
It is good to remember what a stylish and elegant Mozart tenor was Ryland Davies, and what can one say of the extraordinary Gabriel Bacquier as Don Alfonso, few if any better than him.
Listening to this recording one is also reminded of a time when studio recordings of operas were throughly produced, so you can actually "see" the acting through the sound.

I miss the 70´s :-(

[Seán]

It´s hard to believe that this recording is 40 years old this year, and I bought it in 1975 when I was sweet 15!!! It´s been one of my favorite Cosi recordings ever since, and God knows there are plenty.I miss the 70´s :-(

and I was 16, and was feverishly adding to my Ellington LP collection.

[Jose Echenique]

Ha, ha, I was an early Mozart enthusiast, and have remained so all my life, basically because my brother sang Mozart arias all the time, and the Ingmar Bergman film of The Magic Flute also helped.

[Seán]

Ha, ha, I was an early Mozart enthusiast, and have remained so all my life, basically because my brother sang Mozart arias all the time, and the Ingmar Bergman film of The Magic Flute also helped.

Oh Lord, I remember that film too.

[fergus]

On a related topic I am spending a large amount of my time listening to Mozart's Symphonies and my choosen performances are those by Mackerras with the Prague Chamber Orchestra. I think that it is time to buy another complete set and am considering getting either the Hogwood/AAM cycle, because I enjoy smaller forces in most of these works, or the Böhm/BPO set - because he was a bloody good conductor. I haven't ruled out getting the Harnoncourt/Concentus musicus Wien, 1 - 25 cycle either.

Any thoughts you'd care to share with me?

I quite agree with you on the Mackerras; he was very good with Mozart. I have both the Hogwood and the Bohm sets Seán; they are both worth having but are naturally different. The Hogwood would be my personal go to in this case as I have been listening to them for years having had them originally on cassette tape so my ear is very well atuned to Hogwood's approach. His versions of the later symphonies sound "weightier" than one might expect and are very good versions.

Another very enjoyable complete set that I enjoy is that by Jeffrey Tate....





I like his interpretations and I came to this set via his Mozart Piano Concertos that he did with Uchida. The Symphonies set is going cheap on Amazon at the moment but it was also reissued last year and sells at a very competitive price new albeit without the documentation if memory serves correctly. Either way any of the above will serve you very well; it just depends on whether you want period performance or modern instrument versions.