Very interesting, many thanks Pete.
I’m not easily shocked so I tried this one over the weekend!
Although this interpretation certainly is quite far off my regular preference for Brahms. At times I had the weird feeling I was listening to Wagner instead of Brahms!
The recording is very good, with a lot of detail and warmth and a great capturing of the space around the orchestra.
@Urbanluthier thanks for suggesting it, it was certainly an interesting angle!
Colony of Bees - Beta Radio
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You might enjoy this recording of Brahms’ piano concertos. Gramophone magazine says: “This is the Brahms piano concerto set we’ve been waiting for. Nelson Freire and Riccardo Chailly offer interpretations that triumphantly fuse immediacy and insight, power and lyricism, and incandescent virtuosity that leaves few details unturned, yet always with the big picture in clear sight.”
Thanks for the very interesting read on this Peter.
I have the original Philips pressing from 1960. But I’ve always loved the Firebird and have several recordings of it.
After reading your notes on this recording I’m keen to see if I can get hold of this release on vinyl. But I’m a bit confused about the versions. Is the one you used the re-master of 2015? Or another one?
It is a remaster from November 2021, One of the 5 LP remasters released by UMG as part of the 70th anniversary of Mercury Living Presence. As it is UMG it is technically a Decca release ( the Decca logo is shown on the rear cover).
Michael Fremer’s news is for September but the actual release was later.
Thanks for this suggestion, I’ll give this one a listen as well. Chailly is also high on my list of favourite conductors
Thanks, I’ve found one!
We The Fallen
Psyclon Nine
Electro Industrial
Instead of wasting words elsewhere in the forum, I offer ‘We The Fallen’, an album suitable for studying wrath. Wrath is fundamentally different from anger. It has a wild, merciless and fierce quality. It can thus guide skillful action in special cases. Whereas anger only makes one stupid and ugly.
Industrial music has remained an underground phenomenon since its emergence in the seventies. There are only a few exceptions to this, such as the bands ‘Nine Inch Nails’ or ‘Ministry’. Industrial can be extreme and in some cases comes very close to anti-music.
The band responsible here - ‘Psyclon Nine’ - is not so easy to find - usually only if you delve deeper into industrial. I also suspect that the album is difficult to listen to. I don’t notice it quite as much anymore - we get used to almost everything, after all.
Behind the door of accessibility waits close to an hour of ferocious and enchanting music that takes the listener deep into the world of wrath. The singer hisses his invocative lyrics with a throaty voice, the rhythm is driving. The electronics produce sound structures that fall, build up, tear away, sweep away, emotionally drain. Rhythms change so often and so abruptly that this alone is enough to create a thrill. And last but not least, the drums are firing out of all barrels. The last three songs take a different, calmer and equally exciting path.
The trick is to let yourself fall behind the apparent chaos and look from there in tranquillity. This is also where deeper insight begins.
Superb. Thank you Pete.
Today/tonight’s rendition of Kora was superb. Actually, all of it was.
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Luminol
Midwife
Shoegaze . Drone
“Love will break your heart forever.” is one of the refrains - sung in an ethereal almost uninvolved voice. What a marvelous contrast. Midwife’s pure but processed voice, sparse synth fragments, and melodious distorted guitars intertwine to lay out landscapes of meditative quality. All the contradictions between gentleness and power are beautiful to behold. It’s unclear whether the album is consoling or slightly unsettling. A delightful vagueness! This is my album love affair number two for this year.
Not to sound disrespectful, but don’t the inane lyrics bother you?
Which ones? Psyclon Nine or Midwife?
…
Midwife (qwertz – sorry, minimum number of characters).
I’m not bothered by the lyrics on ‘Luminol’. Actually, I just looked them up for this reply. You call the lyrics inane - I would beg to differ. In my view they are simple. And in some songs repetitive. The repetition enhances the meditative approach one can take while listening.
Lyrics can be different things for me. I’d listen to Tracy Chapman or Leonard Cohen for the content of their lyrics. Both are outstanding poets and shrewd observers of society. Then there is music, which I listen to as a unity. In it the lyrics become but one strand in the progression of a song. The meaning of words becomes mostly irrelevant beyond arcane symbols. The voice is more like an instrument that contributes to the greater meaning beyond words. I’d put Midwife’s album ‘Luminol’ into this category.
Music is an ephemeral and time bound medium in contrast to painting or sculpture. Maybe analogies work regardless. For poet musicians the corresponding work of visual art might be a leaflet with poems and photographs. Musicians aiming at a unified piece might find their visual correspondence in brush painting. The instruments, the silence, the voice all become brushstrokes completing the painting. Protest or shock musicians would probably correspond to performance art as practiced by artists like Marina Abramović.
When I think of it, there’s a category of lyrics that bothers me. When the purpose is to program populations. ‘Go ever faster!’ would be a program. ‘Couple relationships are the way to go.’ another. ‘Drugs are just fine.’ yet another and especially bothersome one. ‘Nothing matters anymore.’ yet another. These are encapsulated in much of the charts music. Well, then I listen and attempt to re-engineer what the program is. A fun little exercise.
Not sure this is my cup of tea, but it has its charming elements. RQ is excellent, and while dynamic range is nothing special, its sparseness, texture and harmonies (as human vocals often do) will test your system’s sense of realism.
Thanks Greg. I’ll give it a whirl.