I think I might have to get that Roy Hart recording too. I was listening to the Julius Eastman one the other day and found the piece had somehow transformed itself into a "meh" kind of experience. I do have Roy Hart in Henze's Essay on Pigs which does a lot of the same things that Max's piece does, ie. that subset of Roy Hart techniques that you can more or less write in notation.

And as for Miss Donnithorne's Maggot that seems to me one chamber-theatre-piece too many.

Now it's time to find something for bedtime spinning because I need an early night. I could however be up half the night trying to think of something in my current state of indecision. I feel that Wagner may be calling to me though.

Goodnight all.

I reckon it is, because comedy can readily have a subtle undertow of the sinister and the unsettling just below the surface-I'd argue (as an occasional hack) that it should if its doing its job, dealing with it, healing it, holding it up fleetingly to the light. This is in the material rather than the delivery, but there is the inalienable fact that comedy is born of pain and dislocation, whether of a milieu or a nation ...or an individual .If you read for example Roger Lewis' long, long book on Peter Sellers you may find there's something of the Mad King archetype in how he paced the battlements of the burgeoning modern media.

At long last the Everest recording of RVW's Job is in my possession on CD, a long awaited moment. Just released, and the blasted thing's faulty: there's a two second gap in the middle of a climactic musical where the first track leads into the second, an elementary programming error, which many here who burn discs using recording software will recognise. How nobody spotted it I can't imagine: it's very obvious if you play the disc through from start to end. Fortunately it's something I can do a temporary fix on, but even so....

And between 7 and 8 as well.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr

Just to return to Jolivet: the French EMI box at Berkshire Record Outlet now appears to have sold out - though there is one winging Doughwards, and when I last looked, it was also still available via Amazon. The Warner/Erato box has just arrived, and will have a wee spin later: the Concerto pour ondes Martenot et orchestre and the Heptade pour trompette et percussion appear particularly inviting.

 In the end, I decided to play the whole disc, Bryn: both trumpet concerti as well as the ondes: a disconcerting jump in sonic terms as well as musical. The trumpet works are recorded up (very) close, the ondes concerto decidedly more distantly (at the far end of a large hangar, maybe*). It sounds a wee bit like Roussel meets early Messiaen and Koechlin on a movie sound-stage at first audition, whereas the trumpet pair are perhaps more Milhaud goes American - the second perhaps even on a journey to meet Miles. It's all very engaging though, with a Gallic briskness and insouciance never far away, except in the ondes's valedictory final movement.

Back to in-yer-face recording for Heptade. Trumpet and one percussionist: virtuoso requirements throughout from both (including microtones for the trumpet - here, as in the concerti, the flawless Maurice André.) Jeanne Loriod is the Marteniste: where there is a conductor, it's the composer.

Go on, Bryn, dig the box out and give disc 2 a spin: I think you'll have a rather enjoyable time.   

* The book confirms it was recorded in a church; much of the rest was taped at the studios of ORTF.

I was tempted by the harp concerto, too: a cooler work, not helped by being recorded in that church again. (In 1966, apparently, but sounds as if it were at least a decade earlier).

 I'll return to the box in the next couple of days. It looks as if only the only duplication in the EMI set is the earlier trumpet concerto, incidentally.

What was the Trumpet Concerto of Jolivet like then Ron D? Worth investigating?

Rach's Paganini Rhap, in  that classic Decca recording with Ashkenazy/LSO/Previn. The trumpet playing is first class on this recording, as always. I believe was it the partnership of Willie Lang, Howard Snell and Maurice Murphy??

NS, Totus Tuus Sum, Maria.  In Honour of Our Lady.  The choir of the London Oratory.  Courtesy of The Catholic Herald of course.

Am I playing this because I am putting a joint of lamb in the oven?  Agnes Dei?  Anyone?

Yours, resignedly,

Dismally Failed Catholic of Llandrindod Wells.

That actually reminds me of Frank Zappa's "The rejected Mexican Pope leaves the stage"  I think I may have a Zappa evening, well, anything would be better than Eurovision wouldn't it?