Vasks Flute Concerto
Anyone who fancies hearing the Vasks Flute Concerto should check out the comments on this blog entry. Thanks Zoltan!
Free Symphonies!
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (or the RCO to their cool friends) are offering 10 free symphonies to download in honor of their 120th birthday. They are adding a new one each day until the 24th of October. Here’s the list:
Franz Schubert – Symphony no. 8 ‘Unfinished’ (15-10-08)
Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony no. 2 (16-10-08)
Felix Mendelssohn – Symphony no. 4 ‘Italian’ (17-10-08)
César Franck – Symphony in D minor (18-10-08)
Gustav Mahler – Symphony no. 1 (19-10-08)
Antonin Dvorák – Symphony no. 8 (20-10-08)
Camille Saint-Saëns – Symphony no. 3 ‘Organ’ (21-10-08)
Jean Sibelius – Symphony no. 2 (22-10-08)
Anton Bruckner – Symphony no. 8 23-10-08
Johannes Brahms – Symphony no. 2 (24-10-08)
You can download them here.
Lossless Classical Music, We Have Arrived!
Finally! DRM free, lossless classical music downloads are here! Today Passionato, an online classical music download store was launched in the UK. They are offering music from Universal Music and EMI Classics, as well as Naxos, Chandos, etc. In other words their catalog is frickin’ huge. You can download either in high quality 320kbps MP3 (like the DG store) or lossless FLAC. The latter is identical to a CD.
This means that you can instantly download and then burn an exact duplicate of what you would purchase in a store. You previous quality naysayers should now be satisfied.
Currently they have only launched in the UK, so you have to pay in pounds. Also, they seem to be a tad more popular then anticipated: the site frequently is spitting out “too many users” type messages at the moment. This means you might have to wait until late-at-night GMT before being able to explore and download stuff properly.
Despite these initial hiccups, this is great news for the classical music world.
UPDATE: it looks likes you get a whole bunch of free music just for signing up, although most of these tracks are individual movements it includes a complete performance of Saint-Saens symphony No. 3.
Awesome Beethoven Transcriptions
Guys! After all of the mentions of transcriptions in the last week, and JonJ and Yvonne commenting that there is a well established history of transcripting stuff, I got off my internet arse and discovered several very joyous things. Firstly, the clavier-wunderkind Liszt did piano transcriptions of all of Beethoven’s symphonies — this is probably exceptionally common knowledge to all the seasoned classical listeners out there, but news to me. Secondly, there is a box-set of these available on Naxos, which is itself available on eMusic (see: cheap, good quality, DRM-free MP3s). Hooray!
So far I have listened to the ones I know the best: 6, 5, 9, 7. Only once each so far, as it all just got downloaded about an hour or two ago. Aside from noticing a bunch of stuff which apparently had been completely obscured by my ears during the myriad previous symphonic listens (key changes and modulations seem way more obvious, for example), it’s striking how similar certain sections sound to the (Beethoven) piano sonatas. I don’t yet know if that’s due to Liszt deliberately orchestrating them like that, or if it’s pure Beethoven shining through… or if it’s me trying to be clever. I’ll try and keep you posted on that one. Hopefully it’s the middle one.
Rearranged
Well, we’re starting to get back into music again over here, despite having had a bit of a down few weeks. Sometimes your brain needs a break — everything’s all cyclical, right? A musical rediscovery which is right now dominating the highly in demand speaker-time is this guy:
Which contains, beyond the very sexy cover photo, the 15th symphony of Shostakovich arranged for six musicians, three of whom are percussionists. Kick arse. Here’s an example from the cheerfully sly third movement, first a Haitink conducted rendition of the orchestral version:
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And here is the same section performed by the sextet:
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They particularly seem to relish those impudent little glissandi at the end.
I love hearing pieces arranged for completely different instruments: aside from letting you distinguish all kinds of things that are either masked or you are accustomed to in the original versions, there is something purely delightful about listening to a familiar piece played in an unfamiliar way. Although, you purists out there might disagree…
You can buy the CD online over at DG, if you’re interested.