What are you listening to now :)

[Bonn1827]

Greetings from the NSW South Coast. I'm sitting out on my deck looking down at the ocean and eating croissants with jam!! A suitable piece to accompany my reveries, the roiling warhorse "Scheherazade" - Beecham's acclaimed reading with the RPO. (Uh, oh.... mal de mer!!)

LIFE'S GOOD!!

[Roehre]

Today:

Bobrowicz:
Introduction, Variations and Polonaise on an Original Tyrolian Theme opus 13 (R3: TtN)

Stojowski,
Piano Concerto No. 2 in A flat opus 32 (1910) (R3:TtN)

Otto Ketting:
Symphony no.2 (Symphony for Saxophone quartet and orchestra ) (1980)

[Preston]

Greetings from the NSW South Coast. I'm sitting out on my deck looking down at the ocean and eating croissants with jam!! A suitable piece to accompany my reveries, the acclaimed and roiling warhorse "Scheherazade" - Beecham's reading with the RPO. (Uh, oh.... mal de mer!!)

Sounds nice. I was sitting on my deck- looking at the pavement, some cars, college students moving into an apartment, and two people arguing- all while I smoke a cigarette and have a couple of drinks, , and listening to the Overture to the Egmont.

[Sorrano]

At least two violinists have recorded the violin/timpani transcription: Wolfgang Schneiderhan (BPO/Jocum on DGG) and Ruggiero Ricci. The latter produced a recording of the concerto with 10 or so different cadenzas which you can programme into the performance. Very interesting.

Thanks! I will have to check those out; I do like the programmable concerto, though, it's a nice concept.

[Michael]

Just been listening to (and thoroughly enjoying) Beethoven’s Triple Concerto –a work that nobody seems to be sure is a masterpiece or a dud. It has always been the Cinderella among Beethoven’s concertos. The chief criticism seems to be the fact that the main themes are regarded as being too simple to be interesting, a charge that could be levelled against the Violin Concerto, the Fifth Symphony or the Waldstein sonata.

Here are two descriptions of part of the finale by two well-known music critics:

“The end of the movement was too casually written ……..the coda quite lacks the quality of what has gone before” (Roger Fiske)

“The coda is particularly spacious. Though it promises a quick rush to the line, there is a fine written cadenza to negotiate and some equally fine afterthoughts …. with which the concerto comes ceremoniously home.” (Richard Osborne)

[Peter]

Beethoven's Razumovsky quartet Op.59/2 and last night at the proms a performance of Dukas Sorceror's Apprentice / Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique played by the National Youth orchestra.

[Roehre]

The chief criticism seems to be the fact that the main themes are regarded as being too simple to be interesting, a charge that could be levelled against the Violin Concerto, the Fifth Symphony or the Waldstein sonata.

I think the structure of the themes (less suitable for development, more an almost Schubertian lyricism to be exploited) was deliberate. The draft for the Triple concerto in D (1st mvt only is sketched to some extent, and atypical for B, in a score sketch as well) ) shows an almost identical set of themes which are inert, i.e. not really suitable for development.

Looking at the 1st mvt of op.56, I think B did not intent to create a concerto like the 4 piano concertos he had completed to date, with their contrasting themes and relatively long development sections.
This mvt much more looks like an (experimental kind of) concerto grosso. Themes are not really developed by the soloists, IMO intentionally so. They are more "ping-ponged" between them, rather then developed.

IF this was the intention from the very start (and the concerto in D suggests such a premise), then that would explain B's choice of this particular type of melodic material.

[Hofrat]

I could have sworn that Beethoven's Triple Concerto was composed in C-major. Are you sure of that draft in D?

[Preston]

I could have sworn that Beethoven's Triple Concerto was composed in C-major. Are you sure of that draft in D?

Hofrat, the recording I have says it is in D-major. Though, when I start picking out notes from the 1st mov. on the piano- it seems to be in C-maj.? There is no C or F, in D-maj., and C and F are everywhere.

[Roehre]

I could have sworn that Beethoven's Triple Concerto was composed in C-major. Are you sure of that draft in D?

The Triple concerto opus 56 is in C-major.
However, approximately nine months before this C-major was begun, Beethoven started sketching a concerto for the same forces in D-major.
Although these sketches cover approximately the whole of the development section, and even B uncharacteristically had started the full score of the piece, the project was abandoned.
The whole of the skeches can be found in the Kessler sketchbook of 1802.

If you are interested, the concerto's sketches (including facsimile and transcriptions) are discussed in:
Richard KRAMER. An Unfinished Concertante of 1802. In: Alan TYSON [Ed.] Beethoven Studies 2, Oxford University Press, London, 1977, pp.33-65.

The Kessler sketchbook itself was published as
Sieghard BRANDENBURG [ed.] Ludwig van Beethoven. Kesslersches Skizzenbuch. 2 vols. 1:transcription (Bonn, Beethovenhaus 1978), 2 facsimile (Bonn, Beethovenhaus 1976)

[Roehre]

Today:

JSBach:
Cantatas BWV 35, 137 and 69a (for today, Trinity 12)

Otto Ketting:
Symphony no.3 (1990)

Feldman:
The Straits of Magellan (1961)
For Franz Kline (1962)
Between Categories (1969)
Piano and Orchestra

[Bonn1827]

Just been listening to (and thoroughly enjoying) Beethoven’s Triple Concerto –a work that nobody seems to be sure is a masterpiece or a dud. It has always been the Cinderella among Beethoven’s concertos. The chief criticism seems to be the fact that the main themes are regarded as being too simple to be interesting, a charge that could be levelled against the Violin Concerto, the Fifth Symphony or the Waldstein sonata.

Here are two descriptions of part of the finale by two well-known music critics:

“The end of the movement was too casually written ……..the coda quite lacks the quality of what has gone before” (Roger Fiske)

“The coda is particularly spacious. Though it promises a quick rush to the line, there is a fine written cadenza to negotiate and some equally fine afterthoughts …. with which the concerto comes ceremoniously home.” (Richard Osborne)

Were these critics writing in "Gramophone" magazine? I used to get that for 20 years and dropped it (storage issues!). I never really liked the Triple Concerto, finding it somewhat stolid and repetitive. I put this down to the difficulty of the concept of a triple concerto per se. As a genre I don't think it is particularly successful.

[Bonn1827]

Last night, and every other day from now on whilst I pound the treadmill and other associated machines of cruelty:

The most hideous, blaring loud "pop" music which has absolutely no redeeming features and provides a form of aural torture as a counterpoint (a-hem) to gaudy visual colour images coming from flatscreen televisions on the wall, the sounds of which (thank God) are mute!!

[Roehre]

Today:

Otto Ketting:
Symphony no.4 (2007)

Escher:
Musique pour l’Esprit en Deuil (1943)

Messiaen:
Et exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum

Anonymus (12th C):
Planctus cigne

Anonymus (Las Huelgas manuscript, 12th C):
4 Planctus:
Plange Castilla – Quis dabit – Rex obit – O monialis concio

[Peter]

Bruckner Symphony no.4.
Beethoven Razumovsky quartet Op.59 no.3