Scelsi's rather grunty piece for bass voice and mostly low instruments: Yama[ho]on.

(Klangers with Roland Hermann, Hans Zender at the helm.)

Is it?!

The Walton Violin Concerto is one of my favourite pieces, btw!

"(See note)..."   

Indeed, Anty. Children in Need on the box is almost as bad as New Year's Eve TV, so spinning and MB-ing for me.

Filles de Kilimanjaro by Miles Davis. My US import sleeve note helpfully tells me that means Girls of Kilimanjaro and also that Mademoiselle Mabry ( another track title ) really means Miss Mabry.

For the last few days I have been enjoying:
Khachaturian Triumphal Poem;
Ippolitov-Ivanov Caucasian Sketches
Khatchurian Syhmphony No. 3

Chandos - BBC Philharmonic

At r's request: three versions of Steve Reich's Tehilim: I remember now why the new one (Alarm Will Sound/Ossia under Pierson) didn't get my unqualified backing before: it may be precise, but there's a horrible gear change in the first movement when the four voices arrive for the first time (in rather close canon): it's as if a drogue chute has been opened; there's a corresponding accelerando at the end of the section to get back to the original speed. In neither of the other recordings is this anything like as pronounced, though it's obvious that the thickening of the texture here is a really difficult moment, and both of the other versions do something similar, though in a less pronounced fashion, at other moments where the texure is rendered more complex by quadruple canon. The de Leeuw isn't as far behind the other two as you might think: the decision to go for the sound of a real acoustic space rather than an electronic sonic collage makes the balance trickier, and because it's quite a live space, it also slows things down slightly: it's just not quite as incisive.

None of the three is perfect: in each case there's either a problem with the blend of the voices (where one has a recognisably different quality to the others) or the required range (Pierson's high soprano is in her element at the end, but weaker in the lower passages earlier). But conversely, none of the three is unlistenable, despite occasional niggles. The de Leeuw, incidentally, seems to display no more rhythmic instability than the other two, though the live accoustic means that the performance is a tad more expansive. Final choice might come down to coupling: the ECM has none, and less than half an hour's music on a CD isn't good value: the de Leeuw comes with MTT's recording of the Three Movements for Orchestra, which I'm guessing most people wouldn't consider as essential Reich, whereas the Pierson has the chamber version of The Desert Music, which for me at least is core Reich repertoire, and offers a rather different perspective to the excellent full-forces original recording. On the other hand, that drogue-chute gear-change is the only moment which really irked me over all three performances.