Classical Recommendations/Reviews

[Dr Dave]

I'd like to upgrade and update my Scott Joplin.

What's recommended?

Your innocent inquiry is now making me nuts. I am pretty certain that back in the 1970s RCA Victor released a recording of Scott Joplin band arrangements called "The Red Book." I saw it performed live at the Eastman Theater in Rochester, NY, but I have no recollection of who the performers were. I've been searching the Internet, and I can't find a single reference to it. Anybody know what I'm talking about, or did I hallucinate the whole thing?

[Other Steve]

Your innocent inquiry is now making me nuts. I am pretty certain that back in the 1970s RCA Victor released a recording of Scott Joplin band arrangements called "The Red Book." I saw it performed live at the Eastman Theater in Rochester, NY, but I have no recollection of who the performers were. I've been searching the Internet, and I can't find a single reference to it. Anybody know what I'm talking about, or did I hallucinate the whole thing?

Doc, sorry I didn't see this earlier, as I could have allayed your hallucinatory fears: The Red Back Book, on Angel (not RCA), is exactly the Gunther Schuller collection to which I was referring in my earlier post.

Main reason I'm dragging this thread up, though, is to state before the eyes of the world that Walt's protests re: classical music coverage at The New Yorker have not rolled off my back unheeded. Earlier tonight, I was in a second-hand bookstore, and purchased copies of two collections of essays by Andrew Porter, A Musical Season: A Critic from Abroad in America (from Porter's initial American sojourn in 1972-73) and Music of Three Seasons 1974-1977. Very much looking forward to absorbing these, as soon as I finally tackle Proust to the ground (I'm close, very close).

Speaking of which, it turns out there's actually a fair amount of lovely music-related prose in Swann in Love. Who knew? (Well, I'm sure many people did, but still...) I loved his description of Chopin's music.

[Other Steve]

Oh, and Walt, did you make it out to hear Levine's Flying Dutchman after all?

[walto]

No, unfortunately I couldn't make it. FWIW, Dyer's review of Levine was quite favorable, but of the singing much less so. I understand there was a last minute replacement of somebody.


I hope you'll enjoy the Porter. He can be a bit dry sometimes. But, man, does he know music.

[MRS]

There are about two or three people in the world I seriously take film recommendations from. One of them was wildly ecstatic about this. My apologies if this has been covered/this is old news. I copy and paste because culturekiosque requires a password.

The Film That No-one Wanted

By Joseph E. Romero

PARIS, 9 September 1998 - NVC Arts (a Warner Music Group company) has now released Bruno Monsaingeon's acclaimed biographical documentary about the pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who died of a heart attack just over a year ago at the age of 82. The Ukrainian-born pianist of German descent was one of the greatest musicians of the Soviet era, and for many, one of the 20th century's greatest pianists.

The video is available in many markets, but not the United States where classical music buffs and net users are having difficulty acquiring the video or accurate information about it. Not surprising, since classical music videos for network TV, once thought to be the Lost Horizon, have turned out to be a mere mirage as ratings drop. Still, NVC Arts marketing executive Alexandra Law in London hopes the film will eventually reach America but said that no agreement has yet been reached with a US distributor.

Moreover, according to a source at the Paris-based production company, American and British "cultural" television stations consider the film "too erudite" and have shied away from the film because of its length. The irony is that America greeted Richter with glowing headlines and a cover story in Life Magazine when he first toured the United States in 196O. However, times have changed. Has entertainment replaced culture? A single screening of the film is scheduled on 17 September 1998 at the Barbican Centre in London and on 22 January 1999 at the Walter Reade Theatre in New York.

In Europe, the Franco-German television station ARTE has taken the leap and will broadcast the two and a half hour epic by the French writer-director in two installments tonight at 21h40 and on 16 September at 22h30, on ARTE's weekly programme, Musica.

Entitled Richter, l'Insoumis (in English Richter, the Enigma) and produced by Idéale Audience/IMG Artists, the film retraces Richter's early life in the Soviet Union and the major episodes in his career from the 1940s until the early 1990s. The film is significant not only for its exclusive on-camera conversations with the iconoclast pianist, but also for Richter's compelling first person narrative - a brilliant editorial touch. The result is Richter according to Richter - before the biographers, scholars and writers of books have a go at him.

While Richter tells his story, Montsaingeon's striking montage of photographs, home videos and rare clips flash across the screen to illustrate memories and observations about family, music, composers and colleagues such as Heinrich Neuhaus, Wagner, Prokofiev or Emil Gilels. Here and there Richter's monologue is dramatically punctuated with astonishing performances from concerts in Moscow and elsewhere in the 1950s and 1960s. The effect is reviting.

Monsaingeon also interviews several members of Richter's entourage, notably his life-long companion, Nina Dorliac, who died last May. Few details of the couple's personal relationship are offered, although a marriage was celebrated posthumously six months after Richter's death.

Other footage includes eulogistic reminiscences by Glenn Gould and Artur Rubinstein. Richter's comments on his relationship with Benjamin Britten at the Aldeburgh Festival, Karajan and his collaboration with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau offer additional perspectives on the artist and his performing career. The film also confirms that there was nothing glamourous about life in the Soviet Union. Somehow, Richter seems to thrive on austerity and manages to sail deftly, albeit naively through the political vicissitudes and bleak background of the Soviet era.

If the film has a weakness, it is in the chronology of the war years and the dramatic events surrounding the death of Richter's father and his mother's remarriage. While repeated viewings might clarify Richter's impressions and experiences during that period, it is unlikely that they would ever elucidate what seems to be a rather knotty, Soviet version of Hamlet from which the scars never healed.

Like many French film makers Monsaingeon tends to stare at his subject as if prolonged, visual scrutiny could solve the Richter enigma. It cannot, of course, but instead makes only too clear that the ailing musician, at the time of filming, is on the threshold of death. This is particulary true in the closing images of the film - a moment of profound sadness - when Richter raises a hand to his brow, covers his face and withdraws from the camera whose presence, discreet as it may be, suddenly seems indecent. That having been said, the film is a distinguished achievement and a major contribution to the cultural memory of an important musician.

[Fred K]

Michael S - Have you seen any signs of that DVD in the US?

I've been enjoying Richter on a couple of recent purchases. The EMI DVD of the Beethoven Cello Sonatas with Rostropovich and Richter is pretty amazing. I also recently bought the 5-CD set "Sviatoslav Richter in Concert" on Brilliant Classics -- 9 Beethoven sonatas, 4 Schubert sonatas, and the Lizst sonata recorded live between 1961 and 1978. The sound is very acceptable and the performances are again pretty amazing.




The "In Concert" box is now available through Berkshire R.O. for $14.95 (which is $10-$12 off retail). I just discovered Brilliant Classics and it's a nice little Dutch label. They license material (from a variety of other labels like Denon, CRD, Hyperion, etc.) at budget prices with minimal documentation and packaging. Several other titles are available at Berkshire and ArchivMusic has the entire catalogue on sale this month.

[Salvador Dali Lama]

sweet goddamn, i'll get that richter box right away.

i have seen enigma, but only vhs. it was at my (then) piano teachers haus and thats how she introduced me to richter. and now i'm like head over heels in love with this guy. SUCH a badass. his rach 2 has got to be the most powerful peice of music i've ever heard. love him.

but yeah a dvd of that would be great... i have one of him playing profiev and ravel and thats nice....

basically anything with richters name attacthed, i'm interested...

[MRS]

I'm not sure if it was DVD format or VHS. Funny enough is that the screening in question was at my former professor's home in Lawrence (poet Ken Irby). When I hear back from him I'll let you know what version they saw.

[Other Steve]

Thanks for the timely reminder about Brilliant, Fred. I've seen better (i.e., much lower) prices for the complete Shostakovich symphonies set by Rudolph Barshai than the $54 that Arkivmusic is asking, but still, that's a firmly recommendable set that doesn't have a weak link anywhere. Nice to know it's still available.

[Fred K]

OSteve - ArkivMusic doesn't usually have the lowest prices but I really like their site and search engine, so I try to order from them when I can. The only Brilliant Classics set I'm ordering from them now is the Ton Koopman Complete (at least I thing it's complete) Bach Organ Works. I only have a couple of CDs of Bach's organ music and have wanted to buy a set for a while.

The real deals on the Brilliant Classics now are the sets available at Berkshire R.O. The Shostakovich box isn't there, but there are several other great sets that I'm considering --

Complete Faure' Chamber Music (5 CDs for $14.95)
Complete Schumann Chamber Music (7CDs for $20.93)
Shostakovich: Jazz & Ballet Suites, Film Music (3 CDs for $8.97)
Rossini - 5 1-Act Operas (8 CDs for $23.82)
Complete String Quartet of Smetana, Janacek, & Martinu (5 CDs for $14.95)
Telemann - Tafelmusic (4 CDs for $11.96)
Complete Mompou Piano Works (played by Mompou) (4 CDs for $11.96)

I just received my most recent order for Berkshire RO today -- the Messaien Complete Organ Works (Jennifer Bate on Regis), and the Keilberth Wagner Ring Cycle from Bayreuth, 1952 on Archipel. I finally made my way through the Clemens Krauss Ring (Bayreuth, 1953) that I bought last year, so it seemed like a good time to buy a new one.

[Other Steve]

ArkivMusic doesn't usually have the lowest prices but I really like their site and search engine, so I try to order from them when I can.

Oh, I heartily agree, Fred... this is precisely why ArkivMusic is my number-one most recommended classical-shopping website. It's owned and operated by people who used to run the classical section of CDNow. It seems they asked customers what would really be useful and helpful in terms of online shopping for classical music, and then actually listened. I use it all the time myself as a reference source, in place of those long-forgotten Schwann catalogs. Completely, utterly recommended without hesitation.

(I've heard great things about that Brilliant Classics Telemann set, by the way.)

I finally made my way through the Clemens Krauss Ring (Bayreuth, 1953) that I bought last year, so it seemed like a good like to buy a new one.

It's official, ladies and gentlemen: Mr. Kendrick is far, far sicker than I!

[Fred K]

Everyone should listen to at least one Ring cycle a year. Don't you think?

[Other Steve]

No doubt. But owning a new one every year?

[walto]

I thought I'd pick up a couple more Andriessen recordings (all I have is Snelheid) and so I just ordered De Tijd (Schoenberg Ensemble). Anything else people here recommend?

[Jon Abbey]

can one of you guys (Walt or Steve, maybe) give me some background or a definition of the classical term "studies" and what kind of music it applies to specifically? what are the best-known "studies"? I'm going to try to google this, but I thought I'd ask here also, thanks...

[Sergio Zamora]

Jon, I dunno if this is the context in which you're asking, but I assume this is what you're looking for:


Main Entry: étude Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciation: tüd, .tyüd,
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): -s
Etymology: French, literally, study, from Middle French estude, estudie -- more at STUDY
: a piece of music for the practice of some special point of technical execution : STUDY, EXERCISE; also : a composition built upon a technical motive but played for its artistic value étude>

[Jon Abbey]

yeah, kind of, thanks. I actually didn't realize that étude was the same word, just in French. I'm really looking for more of a history of the use of the term, or what classical music listeners think of first when they see it.

I'm asking because of this Rowe/Müller record I'm working on, one of the ideas is to use 5 somewhat similar pieces, and I brought up the idea of "studies", but I don't exactly know what I'm talking about.

[gnhrtg]

Yes, I think the definition Sergio provided good enough - the base of such compositions lies in working around/with certain intervals, harmonies, tonalities (yes, close to intervals but anyway), rhythms and pretty much anything really (I'd think, at least with refernce to Rachmaninov's tableaux etudes). I don't have much clue as to the history of the term - I'm sure there were etudes earlier as well but J.S. Bach surely wrote etudes (as they would later be called) but didn't call them such, I think, then you surely have etude, named as such, starting from the romantic period. Well know that I think of it, I've seen many studies for violin from earlier periods, iirc, but those never became repertory pieces in the manner that later works did - such as the etudes of Chopin and Debussy, for instance.

[walto]

I can't think of much to add to what's been said. I think for a lot of pianists, the term Etude may bring Chopin or Czerny to mind.

[Jesse]

yeah, kind of, thanks. I actually didn't realize that étude was the same word, just in French. I'm really looking for more of a history of the use of the term, or what classical music listeners think of first when they see it.

I'm asking because of this Rowe/Müller record I'm working on, one of the ideas is to use 5 somewhat similar pieces, and I brought up the idea of "studies", but I don't exactly know what I'm talking about.

I think this form can also refer to a cellular idea or area being explored by the composer/improviser, the connective tissue between the "studies" perhaps not readily transparent to the listener, but to the composer/improviser.
(Bartok's Mikrocosmos comes to mind).

Too, etude connotes (to me) pieces of shorter duration, standing alone as a musical statement, but perhaps clarified or imbued with additional aspects, when heard in the context of the balance of the pieces.

[Salvador Dali Lama]

this is my first schoenberg cd ever. i like it a lot, a whole lot. i've heard schoenberg, but only in school, where our professor shits on him for one hour three days a week and calls it "music theory 4." its kind of burning me out... but hey. this cd is great. i really really like the berg sonata, my first time hearing berg at all. yikes.

[Fred K]

I recently purchased 2 sets of the Bartok String Quartets. There was a Naïve sale at Tower last month and I picked up the Vegh Quartet's 1972 recording. It's usually mentioned when someone does a survey of of the Bartok quartets. I didn't really need a third set (the Emerson & Hungarian are the other 2), but I saw the Tokyo Qt. set (also considered one of the best) in the cut-out section in Tower so I bought it as well.

I haven't listened to either set all the way through, but since I'm hearing Quartet #2 live tonight I thought I would listen to both versions of it. The Tokyo Qt. actually takes the first and second movements a bit slower than the Veghs, which surprised me, but both versions (and speeds) sound perfectly natural and were wonderful. The Vegh set should be easy to find. The Tokyo DG set is currently deleted, but since it's showing up in cut-out bins it's probably scheduled for re-release soon.

[Other Steve]

Reviewed recently:

Marc-André Dalbavie
Color
Christoph Eschenbach conducting the Orchestre de Paris
(Naïve)
If a compact disc can’t accurately re-create the full experience of a composer’s music, is the recording worth hearing at all? In the case of Color, a new collection of orchestral scores by French spectralist Marc-André Dalbavie, the answer is an unqualified yes. Many of Dalbavie’s pieces depend on spatial separation of players for effect; only surround-sound DVD or SACD could manage it accurately. Still, a lot of his music can be imparted in a good stereo recording—and should be heard by whatever means necessary, since the composer is among today’s most inspired handlers of large forces.

Composed in 2001, the titular piece opens with a long, static stretch of slowly ebbing timbres. Halfway through, a more agitated section pulses and throbs with the electric barbarity of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Another spectacular passage arrives just before the 15-minute mark, when a mounting string glissando leads to a huge, ponderous climax, as if Rouen Cathedral somehow uprooted itself and went for a monstrous stroll. Ciaccona, from 2002, moves slowly and inexorably from timbral ambiguity to more firmly etched melody.

Dalbavie’s Violin Concerto, from 1996, is harder to parse on CD; in a live performance, the instrument is literally beset by challengers from all sides. Still, violinist Eiichi Chijiiwa proves a deft, elegant soloist, whether struggling within the orchestral clamor or soaring above it. Eschenbach, a masterful colorist, draws exciting, deeply refined performances from his ensemble.

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
Ouvertüren: Music for the Hamburg Opera
(Harmonia Mundi)
Some three centuries after their heyday, the also-rans of the Baroque period continue to be excavated by intrepid early-music performers such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. If many of the rediscoveries turn out to have been rightly forgotten, there are also gems that were waiting to be unearthed. That’s certainly the case with this new collection of music composed for the Hamburg Opera between 1693 and 1726.

The earliest piece here, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach’s Ouverture No. 4, is a solid-enough suite in the courtly French style of Lully. What truly distinguishes this performance is the ensemble’s strong characterization of each movement—the zingy percussion in the first gavotte, the stately nobility of the minuets, the madly swinging dash and jazzy plucked bass of the bourrée.

That quality extends to the rest of the disc. If Georg Caspar Schürmann’s well-made Suite “Ludovicus Pius” rarely transcends formula, the Akademie still finds drama in the first of its three ballet movements, and has a gas with the subsequent gigue. Theater vet Reinhard Keiser’s crafty overture to Le Ridicule Prince Jodelet brings out the ensemble’s spiciest playing. The first of Johann Christian Schieferdecker’s Concerts musicaux is a handsome discovery that closes with a chatty chaconne. Completing a winning collection, a suite of dances the 20-year-old Handel created for his first opera, Almira, hints at genius in the making.

Steve Reich
Drumming
So Percussion
(Cantaloupe)
Written in 1971, Drumming was a watershed piece for Steve Reich. Having found the spark of his compositional idiom in the tape-loop works Come Out and It’s Gonna Rain, Reich transferred the slippery, hypnotic phasing processes he’d developed in those compositions to live performers in Violin Phase and Piano Phase. During a yearlong study of traditional Ghanaian music, Reich discovered strikingly similar effects in the joyous, communal playing he heard in West Africa.

Reich’s response was Drumming, scored for nine percussionists, two singers and a piccolo player. The piece is a rich, voluptuous tapestry of insistent rhythm and shimmering timbres, in which the addition, subtraction or subtle relocation of a single beat causes a simple germinal pulse to explode in a profusion of new melodies, seemingly out of the ether. The process may sound cerebral, but a strong performance is entirely intoxicating.

Reich’s original recording of Drumming stretched to 85 minutes—ideal for a live performance, but unwieldy on disc. (Currently available on two CDs from Deutsche Grammophon, it remains a compelling document.) The composer’s 1987 Nonesuch remake trimmed the work to less than an hour—tidy and effective, but at the cost of cumulative power. At 74 minutes, this brilliantly recorded new version by So Percussion strikes a happy medium. Through the magic of studio recording, the young quartet covers all nine parts, lending the music all the supernatural unanimity and precision it demands.

Matthew Welch
Dream Tigers
Andrew Sterman, clarinet; Wei Jiao, piano; Flux Quartet; Paul Vaillancourt conducting the CSU Percussion Ensemble
(Tzadik)
Not yet 30 years old, Brooklyn-based composer Matthew Welch studied with such disparate mavericks as Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton and Barry Truax, among others, and holds two degrees in experimental music. But Welch is also a performer—and in specific, a bagpiper. Maybe that’s why the music on Dream Tigers, a new CD on John Zorn’s hyperactive Tzadik label, remains approachable and communicative no matter how esoteric Welch’s methods and concerns may seem.

Siubhal Turnlar probably couldn’t have been written in an age before telecommunications and recording allowed the wide dissemination of far-flung musical traditions. Composed for conventional string quartet, the piece mixes aspects of Celtic bagpipe music and southeast Asian gamelan. It’s a seemingly unlikely combination, perhaps, but Welch uncovers unsuspected commonalities in the two idioms, weaving them into a rich tapestry of modal melodies and dancing rhythms. The Flux Quartet brings an ideal mix of bravura and charm to a piece that deserves to be widely performed and heard.

As introverted as the preceding piece is outgoing, Enantiomorphs overlays four similar but minutely varied clarinet lines (all played here with a hushed patience by Andrew Sterman). Density and hue flicker as unlike parts brush against one another; the result is like a shard of Morton Feldman’s music, perceived through a rippling heat haze. Welch turns once again to his personal Celtic-gamelan mash-up in The Self and the Other, an exuberant, irresistible showpiece for his own Highland pipes and a kinetic percussion group.

Nicolas Hodges
The Axe Manual: Complete Piano Works of Harrison Birtwistle
(Metronome)
Harrison Birtwistle has described The Axe Manual, a duet for piano and percussion he wrote for Emanuel Ax in 2000 (and which loans its name to this new anthology), as “a sort of compendium of all my rhythmic devices…clockworks, ostinatos and machines.” By turns mechanistic and freewheeling, the piece is one of Birtwistle’s most entertaining creations. The young British pianist Nicolas Hodges, who has made a speciality of taming the most ferocious scores, brings a jazzy vigor to his performance. Playfully darting and willfully crashing, Hodges and percussionist Claire Edwards achieve the composer’s goal of evoking a single “composite instrument.”

Of course, difficult music is what we expect from Birtwistle, which is why this disc’s greater surprises come in its quietest moments. Oockooing Bird, a limpid modal reverie composed by a teenage Birtwistle in 1950, could almost be a Bill Evans improvisation. Likewise, 1971’s Sad Song and 1984’s Berceuse de Jeanne are suffused with a ruminative lyricism seldom encountered in Birtwistle’s oeuvre.

Precis, from 1960, conforms more closely to expectation: Written in response to Boulez and Stockhausen, the piece is a bristling exploration of timbre and attack. Pithier still, Hector’s Dawn (1987) sparks and fades like an ember bursting from a campfire. Birtwistle’s muse is at its toothiest in Harrison’s Clocks. Despite its charmingly allusive title, this 1998 suite’s relentless cogs and gears demand an almost inhuman clarity and precision from its performer. Happily, Hodges possesses both attributes in abundance.

James Levine
Documents of the Munich Years, Volume 2
James Levine conducting the Munich Philharmonic
(Oehms Classics)
Installed with great fanfare as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra last fall, James Levine wasted no time in establishing his penchant for challenging 20th-century music, some of which has also turned up regularly on his MET Orchestra programs. Before Boston, however, Levine steered the Munich Philharmonic from 1999 to 2004, which afforded him an opportunity to take some of his favorite composers for a test-drive.

Based on this second disc in a new eight-volume series devoted to Levine’s Munich tenure, new-music buffs should be looking into Boston time-shares. The conductor brings an ideal mix of transparency and zesty swing to Elliott Carter’s prismatic Variations for Orchestra, and emphasizes the architectural integrity of Roger Sessions’s ruggedly lyrical Piano Concerto (with Robert Taub as his deft soloist). The disc also includes a taut, persuasive performance of Robert Di Domenica’s otherwise unavailable 1961 Symphony, in which a theme from Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 is coaxed into an uncommonly melodious 12-tone composition.

While it may lack the polish of its New York and Boston counterparts, the Munich ensemble proves equal to the demands of these rigorous scores, falling short only in a slightly ramshackle take on Charles Wuorinen’s short, fizzy Grand Bamboula. As for the vigor and enthusiasm required to make this tough music shine, the orchestra has that in abundance—on loan, no doubt, from the man on the podium.

Ludwig van Beethoven
The Late String Quartets
Takács Quartet
(Decca)
The exceptional Anglo-Hungarian Takács Quartet concludes its complete recorded cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets with an ascent of Mount Everest, devoting its third volume to the composer’s last six efforts in the genre. More than the fulfillment of an epic project, The Late String Quartets also rounds out a chapter in this ensemble’s history: Violist Roger Tapping, who joined the group in 1995, recently announced his departure at the end of this season. The quartet will continue, but this set serves as a potent memento of the current lineup’s musical chemistry.

As in the previous volumes of this traversal, the group’s consummate artistry is apparent in every line and bar of this powerful, moving music. Throughout, their phrasing is as natural as breathing, their interplay conversational and their sound immaculately shaded—all underscored by an exceptionally clean, well-balanced recording.

Whether swinging with ferocious abandon in the opening movement of the “Serioso” Quartet (usually grouped with Beethoven’s middle quartets, but sounding perfectly at home here) and Grosse Fuge or spinning a gossamer web of haunting grace in the A-minor quartet’s “Heiliger Dankgesang” movement, the Takács players never fail to present a deeply considered, persuasive view of some of the most life-affirming music ever set on paper. A more masterful tribute to both composer and ensemble could hardly be imagined.

[sonic1]

Nikos Skalkottas: 36 Greek Dances; The return of Ulysses (BBC Symp. orchestra, Nikos Christodoulou)

Has anyone heard anything from this somewhat obscure composer?

Biography of Nikos Skalkottas

Here's another Biographical link.

His Greek Dances are his most conservative compositions; he usually is more of the atonal school, and quite unique among Schoenbergs students. I am enjoying this recording very much and looking forward to getting more Skalkottas.

[walto]

I know I have at least one (and maybe two) Skalkottos recordings, Jared. I'm not home now, but I'll report back later.

Steve, thanks for posting those reviews here. It really helps sticks-in-the-muds like myself to keep up with what's going on in the world.

[Fred K]

Thanks, for the reviews Steve. I just ordered the Takács set from BMG and look forward to hearing it. I was disappointed that they cancelled a performance in DC last month. The Eschenbach on Naïve looks interesting as well. Naïve is becoming one of my favorite classical labels.

[Fred K]

I noticed that Norbert Brainin, the 1st violinist of the Amadeus Qt., died last month. His obit just appeared in the Wash. Post today. I love the Amadeus Qt. recordings I have of Haydn and Brahms and have been eyeing the DG Original Masters boxes of Mozart and of Haydn, Schubert, and Brahms for a while. The EMI DVD of early Beethoven and late Mozart is very nice as well.

New York Times obit

Washington Post obit

[sonic1]

I know I have at least one (and maybe two) Skalkottos recordings, Jared. I'm not home now, but I'll report back later.

I'd love to hear more about those.

[walto]

Yeah, the thing is to find it (them). I'm pretty sure I have a piece for string orch on an LP with a bunch of other people's stuff, and it's a matter of rummaging. I have a vague sense that it's a 1950s-ish, kind of Hindemithy piece. I could definitely be wrong about the style, but I'm pretty sure I've got at least one work--maybe on Nonesuch?

[walto]

I found it. Little Suite for Strings, on Turnabout with Bartok, Ives, and Milhaud works. Attractive, but nothing too special.