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Diapason wrote:All this talk of Nun Komm. I haven't listened to this in ages. I no longer admire it the way I used to, but it'll have to do cos the little one's just gone asleep on my chest!

Is it that you do not admire the music itself or the performer; I would be curious on that point Simon.

Jared wrote:Brahms:
Alto Rhapsody
Christianne Stotijn
BBC NOW/ Jac Van Steen

My goodness, if you aren't moved by this piece, then you don't own a pulse...

...it sends shivers down my spine.

I do not know the recording but in relation to the music you are spot on!

bombasticDarren wrote:Schubert - Symphony No.5 (Leonard Bernstein, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Deutsche Grammophon)

Interesting one Darren....how did you get on with that one?

fergus wrote:

Jared wrote:Brahms:
Alto Rhapsody
Christianne Stotijn
BBC NOW/ Jac Van Steen

My goodness, if you aren't moved by this piece, then you don't own a pulse...

...it sends shivers down my spine.

I do not know the recording but in relation to the music you are spot on!

The version itself is well recorded and performed, but not well known. Stotijn spits out the ends of her words a little too harshly at times, but has a fine mezzo voice.

fergus wrote:

Diapason wrote:All this talk of Nun Komm. I haven't listened to this in ages. I no longer admire it the way I used to, but it'll have to do cos the little one's just gone asleep on my chest!

Is it that you do not admire the music itself or the performer; I would be curious on that point Simon.

Oh not the music! No, I admire this music more and more as time goes on, and I imagine that will never change! No it's simply a question of Herrick's playing. When I first heard these discs I was in my teens and they seemed like a breath of fresh air. Herrick was lively and fast, and it was a far cry from the dry and stodgy organ playing that I heard a lot on disc back then. Now when I listen to these recordings, some of the tempi just seem perverse, the articulation is wildly OTT quite a lot of the time (towards the staccato end of the spectrum) which leads to a kind of sameness to everything, and all told I find it lacking in depth. I still admire Herrick's clarity and spirit (not to mention the organs used and choice of registrations), and I still feel as negatively as I ever did about dry and stodgy, but over the years I've probably been exposed to much "better" (to me) ways of playing Bach that I find much more convincing and satisfying.

That said, I don't have many/any such performances on disc, so it might be time for me to look again as I could really do with a Bach set that I both admire and enjoy. As it stands I rarely listen to this music at home (despite it being some of my favourite stuff EVER) and that's a shame. I suppose the better you know the work, the harder it is to find the right recording.

This is really interesting. Gregor Werner (1695-1766) was the Esterhaza family Kapellmeister before Haydn. Surely Haydn must have been familiar with his music, and it´s fascinating to hear Werner´s little string quartets in 2 movements. These must be some of the earliest string quartets before Haydn developed the genre into it´s Classical form.
This disc also contains some Advent songs sung by a treble and a tenor, but surely the most interesting music in this recording are these little but very lovely string quartets.

I can't say this music sets my pulse racing, and the performance is quite frankly a little pedestrian, but this disk is of interest, nonetheless:

Brahms:
Liebeslieder op.52
Neue Liebeslieder op.65
Jane Glover/ BBC Singers

These are two very rarely performed mid-Brahms love-song cycles from 1869 and 1874 respectively, which are generally very light, bouyant and optimistic sounding pieces, but carry very little of the emotional weight required by Romantic lieder... interesting for Brahms completists only, in my view, but then again I may be wrong!

Schubert - Symphony No.9 Great (Colin Davis, Staatskapelle Dresden, RCA)

^^ what do you think of that set, Darren?

Schumann:
Symph No.4 (1851 version)
BBC Phil/ Noseda

Konzertstuck for Four Horns
BBC Phil/ MacKerras