Clarinet-J.W.D ...

LaFoto · Mar 7, 2009

... I've only just (happened the day before yesterday when my little parcel arrived) fallen in love with Mozart's Concerto for Clarinet in A, KV 622, and I love most of all the 2nd movement, which I'm now listening to over and again ... and that's why I must think of you often just now. Can you play it? Have you played it? When was the last time you really played something as classical as this?

Is anyone else but me on here into classical music at all?

Overread · Mar 7, 2009

I am!
though my shame is that I know very few names of works (though I have heard most of what classic FM puts out

) so I never know what names to look for when in the shops, so I actually have very little of the music on CDs

LaFoto · Mar 7, 2009

Ha, how funny: this is exactly what happens to me all the time. I usually do "happy guessing" when it comes to a piece, and SOMETIMES I'm right, but mostly I just cannot remember. Which is why when I got that mail from Amazon about their special offer CDs (remastered recordings from way back), I decided to go order some that I thought might be nice to have as CD. That's how I came about this one with the above mentioned Concerto for Clarinet, the Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in G major, KV 313, and the Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra in B flat major, KV 191. I'm enjoying this one!

I also "delved into my purse" and ordered the Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks by Händel, played by The English Concert under Trevor Pinnock, since the only recordings I have are old records that I "inherited" from my parents centuries ago ... so I could never listen to it as a whole, for on the radio they only ever play parts of it...

I ordered more CDs, but all the others are choir pieces.

Overread · Mar 7, 2009

see with names like "Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra in B flat major" its just way too long to remember and by the time you get to the shops its changed to a C sharp minor

I should work on music collecting, but at the moment I have a financial black hole (well some call it a camera

)
at the moment I float round lastFM a bit too'
http://www.last.fm
free to listen to (mostly) though they only have limited tracks for each group

Antarctican · Mar 7, 2009

I too like classical music. And I too have difficulty remembering those long names! So I tend to stick with the well known, well, 'classics'! :lol:

LaFoto · Mar 7, 2009

I should admit that I painstakingly copied that name off the booklet of my new CD, or else I wouldn't have been able to remember "Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra in B flat major", either. (The front of the CD reads "Bassoon Concerto". Easier, eh?)

And the Händel CD is just the Water Music and the Music for the Fireworks ... that's easy enough to remember, isn't it?

And since I'm rehearsing Haydn's Creation with a second choir (joined a second in Rotenburg, only for this very piece just now), I had to order that one, since I not only had never practised and sung it, I also never had HEARD it - listened to it - other than ABOUT it. But it's not one I'm going to fall in love with, though it's nice. But well... only that. Nice. But not quite as challenging as I first thought it might be.

clarinetJWD · Mar 7, 2009

Hehe! Of course I've played that

A number of times, actually, and the second movement is by far my favorite as well. Normally, though I focus on more contemporary music (I'm playing [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQQONCxggAg"]Lutoslawski[/ame] now. This isn't the best recording, it's reeeeeally slow, but it's all I could find

EDIT: Ok, I just listened to the 3rd movent on this recording, and it's pretty shockingly bad.), but once in a while it's nice to go back and play the Mozart. The other well known clarinet music from the Classical perios is Carl Maria von Weber's concerti, but I played those so much in Middle and High School, I'd be satisfied if I never have to look at it again! :lol:

I play mostly 20th century and contemporary music, then Romantic period, and lastly Classical, though that's probably a product of how new the clarinet is in the music world.

Mitica100 · Mar 7, 2009

LaFoto said:
Is anyone else but me on here into classical music at all?

Classical Music? What's that?...:lmao::lmao:

Yeah, I've been a classical music person all my life. And I know that concerto as well, it's a beauty, pretty much like all Mozart.

Kudos to you Joe for delving into Lutoslavski, it's not easy, as you know. And kudos for going into contemporary music. Some of it is just amazing, some is not. I love Gorecki's 3rd Symphony amongst the newer music, also Ligeti's choral works.

Back to the thread now, hijacking finished! :lol:

bjorkfiend · Mar 7, 2009

clarinetJWD · Mar 7, 2009

Mitica100 said:
Classical Music? What's that?...:lmao::lmao:

Yeah, I've been a classical music person all my life. And I know that concerto as well, it's a beauty, pretty much like all Mozart.

Kudos to you Joe for delving into Lutoslavski, it's not easy, as you know. And kudos for going into contemporary music. Some of it is just amazing, some is not. I love Gorecki's 3rd Symphony amongst the newer music, also Ligeti's choral works.

Back to the thread now, hijacking finished!

Oh, I've been doing the contemporary music thing for a while now. I played in my colleges contemporary music ensemble, premiered a number of new works by local composers, and am trying to break into the non-peabody-related contemp scene here in Baltimore. And, yeah...a lot isn't really worth hearing, but isn't that always the case? Time is the best filter for music, and in about 50 years, we'll see what really sticks!

No worries about the hijacking! I'm always up for a good classical music discussion!

Oh, and Bjork? Classical? **sobs**

Mitica100 · Mar 8, 2009

Joe, have you listened to David Krakauer playing the Klezmer Concerto? It's pretty good, we performed it with him last year.

clarinetJWD · Mar 8, 2009

Mitica100 said:
Joe, have you listened to David Krakauer playing the Klezmer Concerto? It's pretty good, we performed it with him last year.

No, I sure haven't! I'll have to look it up

LaFoto · Mar 8, 2009

Since my voice is the only "musical instrument" I can "play", for me it needs to be music that can be sung (in a choir, please, please let other people's voices surround mine!), and after 10 years of building up his choir, my choirmaster decided we finally got to sing some contemporary choral works at long last. As the average age in my choir is "late 40s" (me just guessing), it is NOT easy for MANY to sing these pieces, but I do love the challenge. We also have singers who are older than 70 ... they have a hard time getting themselves accostumed to the many disharmonies - and more even to the fact that we have to sing in Swedish (one motett) and in Finnish (a psalm) ... the Latin is ok. Thankfully, we'll also sing three pieces in German, the Hugo-Wolf-ones cannot be considered "contemporary" any longer, they belong to the late Romantic period, would you say so, Joe? And the Mauersberger piece was composed in 1945...

(By the way, Icelandic does not appear in our repertoire as yet, though

).

clarinetJWD · Mar 8, 2009

LaFoto said:
Since my voice is the only "musical instrument" I can "play", for me it needs to be music that can be sung (in a choir, please, please let other people's voices surround mine!), and after 10 years of building up his choir, my choirmaster decided we finally got to sing some contemporary choral works at long last. As the average age in my choir is "late 40s" (me just guessing), it is NOT easy for MANY to sing these pieces, but I do love the challenge. We also have singers who are older than 70 ... they have a hard time getting themselves accostumed to the many disharmonies - and more even to the fact that we have to sing in Swedish (one motett) and in Finnish (a psalm) ... the Latin is ok. Thankfully, we'll also sing three pieces in German, the Hugo-Wolf-ones cannot be considered "contemporary" any longer, they belong to the late Romantic period, would you say so, Joe? And the Mauersberger piece was composed in 1945...

(By the way, Icelandic does not appear in our repertoire as yet, though ).

Hugo Wolf is usually considered late Romantic, but to me he's one of the bridges to the 20th century, along with Wagner and Mahler. All 3 of them made extensive use of chromaticism, which is a natural extension of Romanticism, but I also see it as a precursor to the "All tones are equal" movement that dominated musical academia in the 20th century.

I don't know much Wolf, but we did listen to a few pieces in one of my theory classes, and it does indeed seem very difficult to sing! I hope you enjoy it all!

P.S. is the Mauersberger piece "Wie liegt die Stadt so wüst"? I found it on YouTube, and it says it was written in 1945. If so, it is absolutely beautiful!

LaFoto · Mar 8, 2009

Yes, it is that piece we're going to perform among others on Sunday, March 29, and we all LOVE it. It is sooo sad!

Hey, just on a side note: this thread had me go through my CD collection once again, and I had always thought "I should ask someone to give me a CD with Shostakovich's Jazz Suites as a present, would be nice to have those", and what did I find??? Ha! Good to have this thread.

By the way: the Hugo-Wolf pieces that we sing, albeit a bit of a challenge, are still all just wonderful. I myself love them, though he sends us soprano's quite high up (and we're all just lay singers, mind!), but then so does the Mauersberger for the 1st soprano...! (As does the Finnish piece by Rautavaara...). I am quite happy our choirmaster decided it was about time for something all different from what we've done before!