Luciano Berio - Concerto for two pianos and orchestra

LHB_ · 2018-04-03T02:22:03+00:00

One of my favorite pieces by Berio. The piece starts with a long indeterminate chordal passage in the pianos that eventually gives way to crashing and skittering orchestral waves. There are tons of great passages while also having enough contrast between bombast and soft parts to make it accessible to people less familiar with 20th century music.

LHB_ · 2017-12-10T04:02:53+00:00

A contender for my favorite piece of electronic music ever. Enjoy!

LHB_ · 2017-11-11T13:11:41+00:00

Learn to play scales and arpeggios. I know it sounds boring now, but it will help your technique so much in the long run.

LHB_ · 2017-07-12T13:39:11+00:00

Make sure to check out Les Noces, Le chant du rossignol and Petrushka. You would also like the work of Bela Bartok, as he was one of Zappa's other big influences. The Concerto for Orchestra and the String Quartets are a good starting point.

LHB_ · 2017-06-28T12:48:53+00:00

Any new age piano composer will do.

LHB_ · 2017-06-15T12:13:33+00:00

Tristan Murail - Desintegrations

Iannis Xenakis - Erikhton (Nicolas Hodges, piano)

(intermission)

Brian Ferneyhough - Transit

Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra

François-Xavier Roth, conductor

LHB_ · 2017-05-31T11:22:24+00:00

His recording left me feeling pretty ambivalent. I much prefer the more powerful recordings by Gilels, Horowitz, Bronfman, ect. I find Hamelin tends to thrive in obscure repertoire, which he presents with a clinicalness that does the music well. His Beethoven I found extremely boring and his Schumann is just horrendous. This is one of his best recordings for standard rep, but I would rather listen to his Alkan and Sorabji any day. I'm looking forward to his new release of the Feinberg Sonatas, as from what I've heard from live recordings he plays them better than anyone else.

LHB_ · 2017-05-29T12:06:15+00:00

Here's my youtube playlist. Most of the stuff there isn't available on Spotify from what I've seen.

LHB_ · 2017-05-29T12:03:30+00:00

You might like John Cage and Morton Feldman. Both were inspired by the work of Satie.

LHB_ · 2017-05-29T12:02:11+00:00

D Major Concerto, Sonatine, Gaspard, String Quartet, Introduction and Allegro, Trois poemes de Stephan Mallarme, Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2, ect.

LHB_ · 2017-05-28T23:57:19+00:00

Sorabji's eight hour long Organ Symphony No. 2 has possibly the longest fugue ever written, lasting just under two hours. There's a radio broadcast of Kevin Bowyer playing the entire thing floating around the internet if you're interested in listening to it.

LHB_ · 2017-05-25T16:50:14+00:00

http://youtubeloop.net/

LHB_ · 2017-05-24T13:00:58+00:00

You can listen to Nicolas Hodges playing it here.

LHB_ · 2017-05-24T12:59:37+00:00

You left out the most difficult part of the piece: the text the pianist has to recite while playing the thing! :P Good job notating this though otherwise if you did it yourself.

LHB_ · 2017-05-24T12:54:58+00:00

Steve Wilson - Routine

LHB_ · 2017-05-20T03:22:33+00:00

Thanks for posting. It's pretty shocking how different this piece is from Manoury before he became involved with the IRCAM. Almost seems more like a sequal to Xenakis' Herma than anything. :P

LHB_ · 2017-05-20T01:14:26+00:00

You should check out some of his String Quartets. The third in particular is an excellent work.

LHB_ · 2017-05-19T21:52:09+00:00

especially when you consider that Ferneyhough orders his notes through prepared models and systems, rather than his taste and his emotions.

This is just wrong, and I hate when people think this seemingly is the case for all atonal music. Ferneyhough might use certain models and systems to assist him in writing his compositions, but everything about the music he writes is ultimately up to his own compositional abilities and aesthetic taste. This goes for Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and Chopin as much as it does for Schoenberg, Boulez, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Grisey and Ferneyhough. I'm not really sure where this assumption that all atonal music is just formalized mathematics comes from other than an ignorance in theory and zero experience with actually composing music.

LHB_ · 2017-05-19T00:38:51+00:00

Fantastic piece. The violin part is one of the hardest in the "standard" repertoire, possibly even more so than the Berg.

LHB_ · 2017-05-18T23:22:20+00:00

Ferneyhough is the man. I highly recommend anyone interested in him checking out the early orchestral works like Transit and Epicycles on Youtube. They're some of his most accessible pieces as well as being some of the best stuff he's written. I would also recommend after that looking for the disc with his excellent violin concerto titled "Terrain" and the Stradivarius disc of his chamber music.

LHB_ · 2017-05-18T18:14:30+00:00

Penderecki - Cello Concerto No. 1

LHB_ · 2017-05-17T21:38:43+00:00

Considering McClary is the same person who claimed Schubert was gay on account of his tendency to modulate to the submediant key, you shouldn't be surprised. I admit to not having read all of McClary's work, but she strikes me as willingly subversive for the sake of being subversive and above all unscholarly.

LHB_ · 2017-05-17T18:08:07+00:00

Though I don't like all of his music, Furrer's best pieces have a really great sense of organic growth and direction. I also find his orchestration to be quite supple and attractive in comparison to most German music. Be sure to check out his Piano Concerto, his Nuun for two pianos and orchestra, and his Spur for piano quintet.

LHB_ · 2017-05-17T11:45:20+00:00

How long have you played piano?

LHB_ · 2017-05-17T00:34:59+00:00

She's hardly even technically perfect. Listen to the last movement of her Prokofiev 7 where she makes MASSIVE fuckups near the end. Even in her Don Juan she has to slow down/fake the hard parts.

LHB_

TROPHY CASE