wha?

Now spinning: Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Harnoncourt conducting the Mozart-Orchestra of the Opernhaus Zürich

Gorgeous and pitch-perfect, with an especially beautiful Martyr's Aria.

Not that I know anything about opera, but I know what I like.

Had a sequence just now.

Louis Vierne Symphony no.3 in Fminor, op.28
Charles-Marie Widor Symphony no.5 in F minor, op.47/1
David Briggs Improvisation on the bell chime of St Sernin
David Briggs, organ (1888 Cavaille-Coll organ of the Basillica of St Sernin, Toulouse, 23 24/10/2008).

VW Symphony no.3 Pastoral; No.4 in F minor; i)Serenade to Music; Partita; ii) Sinfonia Antartica. i)RLPO Choir; ii) Alison Hargan, soprano; ian tracey, organ, conducted by the late Vernon Handley.

Now Streaming

http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/index.html
The Friday Concert
Anthony Marwood (violin), National Chamber Choir (Ladies' voices), RTE National SO/James MacMillan. Vaughan Williams: Tallis Fantasy. Ades: Violin Concerto. Holst: The Planets.

ps I'm all newfangled having just (15 mins ago) replaced my dial-up with broadband ....

I am simultaneously very intrigued and somewhat frustrated with this listening experience. The latter is a result of the former.

I find myself listening like a composer, imagining, as it goes along, what I myself would want to do at any given time, had I the technical resources and know-how to participate. This sense of involvement is surely what is intended, and I think it's evidence of the success of this work in and of itself. What is then frustrating is to hear particularly evocative and engaging sounds that then disappear into the virtual ether (?) never to return. Makes me want to say this music is TOO rich, but then on some level it doesn't come across that way at all.

Not much of a postscript, now is it?

ps When?

A very fine thing it is too. I've been slogging my way through this clarinet quartet and Hoeprich sets a fine and extremely daunting example.

(If you didn't know that Mozart wrote three clarinet quartets, now you do. Admittedly they were published in 1799 and the arrangement from the original violin sonatas and piano trio is almost certainly by someone else (quite possibly the publisher Johann André, who in 1802 published the quintet as well) but that someone else did a terrific job - indeed one of the things that makes me doubt it was Mozart is that he never wrote quite that adventurously for the clarinet anywhere else. Jean-Claude WLAN* has recorded them all but he tweaked the arrangements to the extent that sometimes you don't get a sense of how good the original publication was.)

* Veilhan