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Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 7 November 2020 CE
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Fitter Stoke
Fitter Stoke
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Re: Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 7 November 2020 CE
Nov 08, 2020, 09:33
Part 2:

Emmylou Harris ‘Pieces Of The Sky’ - Emmylou’s debut album still touches me in all the right places: beautifully performed and arranged to highlight her gorgeous, plaintive voice. She’s yet to better this IMO;
Charley Pride ‘Music In My Heart’ - this guy still has amazing chops in his ninth decade (this came out in 2017 when he was 82!). Very much formula C&W, but that’s what Pride does best; new country pretenders come nowhere close;
Gary Peacock Trio ‘Now This’ - Peacock’s own trio has a very different sound to his more famous group with Keith Jarrett and Jack deJohnette, but is every bit as inventive. This is simply a lovely record;
Maynard Ferguson ‘Alive & Well In London’ - this 1971 release has hogged my CD player for a few weeks now. At this phase of his career Maynard was playing with the cream of British jazz musicians and arrangers, who collectively invested these big band arrangements of then contemporary rock tunes with staggering bite and vim;
David Holland & Derek Bailey ‘Improvisations for Cello & Guitar’ - like most free jazz records, I can concentrate on this only intermittently, but its rewards are there with patience. One of the earliest ECM releases, and hardly representative of the label’s signature sound, whatever that is;
Es herrscht Uhu im Land S/T - and neither is this: in fact, it’s one of the weirdest things released on ECM - or anywhere else for that matter. Not being a German speaker, I haven’t a clue what the words are about, but I can’t help but love the mostly chaotic music going down courtesy of what I guess is something of a supergroup of improv heads. To call it strange would be an understatement, but like prime Beefheart there’s beauty and not a little humour in the melee. It’s got jazz and kosmische elements (with some energised synth abuse from Heiner Goebbels), but can’t really be described as either. Hey, there’s even a track called ‘Autobahn’, but it ain’t Rolf or Florian!
OM ‘Kirikuki’ - first of four fine studio LPs by this Swiss quartet clearly in awe of Weather Report but with guitar instead of keys. OM begin their improvisations where others leave off (check out the 16 minute ‘Hommage a Mme Stirnmaa’ for example) yet never fall into mere abstraction. I’ve dug this band for two thirds of my life and I’m not gonna stop now;
Led Bib ’Sizewell Tea’ - this isn’t exactly your standard dinner party background music either but, trust me, it’s pretty fucking hot, and at times rocks like no jazz you’ve ever heard;
Barre Phillips ‘End To End’ - a man, his imagination, and a double bass. That’s all;
Dino Saluzzi ‘Albores’ - quite the best solo bandoneon album by a 85 year old Argentinian virtuoso that I’ve heard all week. But seriously, this is delightful music: stream ‘Ausencias’ to sample;
Mozart: Piano Sonata in C, K 309 (Patrick Cohen) - streamed this for no other reason than it being the 309th day of the year when I heard it. Liked the work and the playing, but not the clangorous fortepiano used to play it;
Chopin: Piano Sonata no.3 (Maurizio Pollini) - great music, played to near perfection;
Beethoven: Piano Sonata no.29 ‘Hammerklavier’ (Paul Lewis) - even greater music. How anyone can play such a difficult and lengthy work as this, and so well, is miraculous;
Novak: In the Tatra Mountains (Czech PO/Karel Ancerl) - few matched Ancerl in Czech orchestral repertoire like this, a symphonic poem given tremendously exciting, yet lyrical, rendering. Though he was lucky to survive Auschwitz, Ancerl’s family were butchered there and the poor man never fully got over it;
Schumann: Dichterliebe (Aksel Schiotz/Gerald Moore) - emotive and sublime rendition of one of Schumann’s greatest song cycles;
Rachmaninov: Symphony no.2 (Minneapolis SO/Dimitri Mitropoulos) - as fine an interpretation of this late romantic gem as I’ve ever heard, the vernal freshness and impact of the mono recording defying its 73 years. Preceded this with a very unauthentic (but enjoyable) live recording of Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto by the same artists;
Beethoven: Piano Concerto no.2 (Bezuidenhout/Freiburger Barockorchester/Heras-Casado) - that rare thing, a HIP that actually moves me, especially in the earliest of Beethoven’s piano concertos;
Beethoven: Symphony no.3 (VPO/Rafael Kubelik) - unusually measured (for this conductor) yet idiomatic performance from the 1971 Salzburg Festival;
Beethoven: Symphony no.4 (Budapest Fest Orch/Ivan Fischer) - nicely paced reading (if a little too fleet in the Adagio for me) and beautifully played;
Beethoven: Symphony no.6 (Boston SO/Erich Leinsdorf) - fairly rigid conducting, lacking some of the finesse needed for this work, but individual nonetheless;
Beethoven: Symphony no.5 (VPO/Carlos Kleiber) - I spin this LP every couple of years to try and agree with its critical standing as a classic recording. Though I appreciate its precision and energy, I think that it’s a very good - not great - record, and that several other versions get closer to the heart of this perfect work. Where it fails for me is in the second movement, which here seems more petulant than emotive. I’d rather go for Carlo Maria Giulini (with the LAPO in 1980: a stunning record), Herbert von Karajan (both his 1962 and 1977 BPO recs) or, more recently, Teodor Currenzis (with Musicaeterna in 2019) - to name just four stereo recordings that immediately come to mind - that maintain the momentum and impact of the work like Kleiber but also know when to “sing” (as Bruno Walter would put it) when required. Earlier interpreters, not least Carlos’ old man Erich (with the Concertgebouw in 1949), Klemperer (his 1955 mono Philharmonia account) and Furtwaengler (especially his superlative 1943 live BPO recording) manage this too. All just my humble opinion of course.

May your listening keep you sane in these troubled times.

Dave W x
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