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Messages - Ser Amantio di Nicolao

#1
Suggestions & Problems / Re: A Generous Offer
Tuesday 12 April 2016, 06:38
I shall probably regret asking this, but what would postage be to the US, do you have any idea?
#2
Recordings & Broadcasts / Re: Late Romantic Operas
Thursday 03 March 2016, 20:39
Lazzari wrote a potboiler of an opera about a lighthouse keeper called ''La tour de feu'' - there are excerpts available.  I own the disc - as I recall it's inoffensive enough, but nothing specially memorable.

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/Apr03/lazzari_feu.htm - this says it's the complete work, but I seem to recall it being a collection of excerpts.  I could be wrong, tho'.
#3
Quote from: eschiss1 on Monday 18 November 2013, 01:56
Apparently his oratorio "Abraham" (ah, this has been recorded...) was published the same year as Molique's, same opus number...)

I have this recording.  (And know where you could find a copy secondhand, as of a week ago.  Provided you live in the DC area.)  It's not unattractive music.  I don't remember a note, but I remember finding it quite pleasant to listen to when I put it on.
#4
Quote from: semloh on Sunday 02 June 2013, 03:30I must say that I always hope to hear Japanese instruments incorporated into works by Japanese composers.... even though I realize it is quite unnecessary!  ;D

Yanking this back towards the original topic... ;D

You may, then, find the Nagauta Symphony of Yamada to be of some interest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagauta_Symphony
http://www.amazon.com/K%C3%B3s%C3%A7ak-Yamada-Nagauta-Symphony-Magdalena/dp/B000SKJQUM/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1370274370&sr=1-1&keywords=nagauta+symphony

I'm guilty, to some extent, of popping the discs in the Naxos Japanese classics series like so much candy, and this is probably my favorite of the lot.  Briefly: the symphony takes a traditional composition for the Noh drama and pillows it, unchanged, in a symphony orchestra setting.  For lack of a better way to put it, I've described it to friends as being like a piece of jewelry, where the jewel (the traditional work) is set into a larger setting which complements it (the Western orchestra).  It's a fascinating work; I like it a great deal.  I'm not sure that others would - it's certainly a unique work, in my experience - but I find it very much worth a try.
#5
Wandering rather far afield here, as I don't know d'Ollone's music (but am always glad of the opportunity to discover someone new), but I honestly suspect it's lack of familiarity with classical music that's the culprit rather than anything else.  If you think about it, classical music is about the only field where the composer's name is generally as important as, if not more than, the title of the piece, or the artist's name (I realize I'm generalizing here, but as the great Dave Barry would say, I don't care.)  And most of our terminology is different - "piece" or "movement" for an individual track, rather than "song".  (How often do I hear someone refer to "my favorite classical song" instead of "piece"?)  It's not lack of respect; I think it's lack of knowledge/understanding.
#6
Composers & Music / Re: Carl Amand Mangold
Thursday 09 May 2013, 21:20
I purchased it used last year, and listened to it a while ago.  I remember enjoying it; it's thorougly lovely.  Eminently forgettable, tho'; I can't remember a note of it for trying.

Still, as unsungs go it's one of the better purchases I've made, I think.
#7
Composers & Music / Re: Lars-Erik Larsson
Thursday 09 May 2013, 16:40
Quote from: Finn_McCool on Tuesday 07 May 2013, 17:41
Thanks for the spelling of Dag Wirén!  He gets some play on WBJC-FM in Baltimore, but I never knew how to spell his name (WBJC also plays Larsson from time to time as well)!

I haven't listened to them in a while, but they used to do some quite interesting programming.

Wirén and Larsson are among my favorite unsungs, I think.  I have a few dribs and drabs of Larssen on various discs - I've always enjoyed everything I have.  The Saxophone Concertino and ''God in Disguise'', I think; I don't recall anything else offhand save for something on Naxos.
#8
Composers & Music / Re: Heinrich Schulz-Beuthen
Tuesday 30 April 2013, 20:47
Add me to the list of those who own the Sterling recording.  (I bought it used last month, actually - part of a raft of Romantic stuff someone appears to have unloaded on a nice little used CD store near here.)

I rather liked it, actually.  It's not the greatest of the great, but I found it quite pleasant, if undistinguished, listening.  Can't say that I remember a note of it, but I know I liked it.  Take that for what you will.
#9
Composers & Music / Re: Julius Bittner Der Bergsee
Friday 26 April 2013, 20:24
I gave it to my father for Father's Day a year or two ago.  As I recall, his assessment was that it's pretty good until the end, when it just sort of dies.  I'd assume the idiom is German late Romantic, given what I know of the composer, but I don't recall actually establishing that with him.
#10
Composers & Music / Re: To buy or not to buy?
Tuesday 23 April 2013, 15:38
Quote from: Alan Howe on Tuesday 23 April 2013, 09:54
A scattergun approach is the only one that works. Unfortunately.

Agreed.  I've found that problems can be mitigated somewhat by a.) being more judicious in what I buy, and b.) the fact that my tastes, as Agatha Christie might say, are catholic.  I have duds, but generally speaking I try to find something in each piece to enjoy.  It's rare that I have an entire disc to write off at once.

Having but recently been a poor student, price is my main benchmark for making a purchase.  I do most of my in-person purchasing at used book and CD stores, so I'm lucky in that I can set a low price point per disc.  No higher than, say, $8 unless there are mitigating factors.  After that it becomes harder to define; usually I'll set aside things by people I've read about, but not listened to.  Obscure instruments help a lot, as do interesting countries...the latter especially may cause me to break the price point by quite a bit.  I tend to look for composers within a certain timeframe - classical and Romantic, mostly, though I'll accept a lot of 20th-century stuff, too.  Buying used means that I can check liner notes, too; I look for turn-offs, like "reminiscent of Webern", "Stockhausen", "aleatoric", "electroacoustic" - not my bag.  Genre doesn't matter, unless it's solo stuff.  And even then, on occasion I'll throw a disc onto the pile because I know it'll meet my needs at some point.

I used to be a much less judicious purchaser.  Since I've begun being more careful, I find that the quality of the stuff I buy has gone up noticeably, though I remain as adventurous as ever.  That being said, I've bought a lot of things used that I wouldn't buy new, for the simple reason that they'd be too expensive.  (Like the time I bought Madetoja's The Ostrobothnians for $12.  I have salivated over that opera for years, and it did not dissapoint.  But the cheapest copy at Amazon was something like $50 at the time, and I couldn't justify spending that much on any single album.  Still can't, unless it has 30+ discs in it.)
#11
William Clifford Heilman.  Trained at Harvard, taught there for some years, apparently.  He's in John Tasker Howard's Our American Music, published in 1938, and I have a lovely piano trio of his on a disc put out by the Rawlins Trio.  (See http://www.amazon.com/Three-American-William-Clifford-Heilman/dp/B0000049ND/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366644207&sr=8-1&keywords=William+Clifford+Heilman - I agree with the five-star reviewer more than the three-star, although both are right that the Parker is the best thing on the disc.  I hear no esoteric modernism in the Heilman, frankly.)  Between Howard and the liner notes to the disc, I found out everything I know about him...which is not much at all. 

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Clifford_Heilman.  (Funny story: I listened to the trio, and found out that I quite enjoyed it.  So naturally I Googled the composer to scant result.  I did find the Wikipedia article.  I read it, and was intrigued by the fact that it cited Howard, which I own...upon checking the article history, it seems I wrote the Wiki article myself a year prior to purchasing the disc, and had completely forgotten about it...)
#12
Composers & Music / Re: Women unsungs
Thursday 14 March 2013, 15:32
Quote from: eschiss1 on Wednesday 13 March 2013, 16:08
No, the sonata on the 2001 CD is Pejacevic's opus 43 (Slavonic sonata), and she wrote an earlier(-published?) one (opus 26 in D) (if not others) as well as some miniatures for violin and piano.

Ah - thanks.  I'm going entirely off of memory here, not currently having any access to the disc in question (it being at home and me being a lazy sod who refuses to look for stuff in his collection when he gets there.  :) )

What about Margaret Bonds?  I've always been curious about her; apparently nothing's been recorded (at least on CD) apart from a couple of songs and small pieces.  I know she wrote some larger-scale pieces, but the only thing I'm aware of that's been done recently is her setting of Ballad of the Brown King, with piano instead of orchestral accompaniment

#13
Composers & Music / Re: Women unsungs
Wednesday 13 March 2013, 15:53
Quote from: jerfilm on Tuesday 12 March 2013, 18:43
The Pejacavic Violin Sonatas recently being discussed (out of context, thanks to me.....) on another thread, have just recently been uploaded to YouTube.......

jerry

I have one of them on a Croatian disc (purchased in Zagreb, as I recall) of Croatian violin sonatas.  I believe it was the First; it's coupled with a sonata by Boris Papandopulo and a couple of other works.  I don't even remember the rest of it, except that I didn't care much for the other three.  But the Pejacevic was a revelation.  I have a piano cycle of hers as well, which I'm not so wild about, and the wonderful CPO symphony release, which I found secondhand and which is a treasure beyond measure.

I didn't see Mabel Wheeler Daniels mentioned, though I may have glossed her - any familiarity?
#14
Suggestions & Problems / Re: Introduce yourself here.....
Wednesday 15 August 2012, 14:53
Quote from: febnyc on Tuesday 14 August 2012, 21:31
(I did, in between stints in Westchester County, reside for eight years on 89th and West End Avenue - where, one day, in front of my apartment building I met the famous Professor Peter Schickele, and I was located two blocks from the building in which Rachmaninoff lived during his years in America.)

Not to get too far off the subject, here, but my father actually used to work with Prof. Schickele's college roommate.  (The "whoever he is" of The Short-Tempered Clavier?  That's the one.)  Lovely fellow, though I have met him but once.

(Speaking of - would one consider Schickele under the revised purview of this forum?  Date-wise, surely not...but he's an absolute neo-Romantic if he's anything, to me.  And far, far less sung than he should be.)
#15
Composers & Music / Re: Awful, but magnificent!
Friday 10 August 2012, 21:11
I suspect I may catch a little flak for this, but: Paderewski's symphony.  Lovely stuff...if only he had excised about twenty minutes of it, if not more.  Also, August Söderman's Mass - I want it to be so much more than it ends up being.

Quote from: MikeW on Monday 06 August 2012, 21:12that awkward musical space between Bernstein and Stalling that didn't need to be filled

This is now one of my favorite capsule reviews.  Right up there with the self-produced rap track described by an acquaintance thus: "It's like a party in my ears, and somebody spiked the punch."