For Stefan Wolpe by Morton Feldman

First time I've heard it and I liked it.

It can be heard here  http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/piece.pl?pid=104

Oliver, I too picked up the Rattle/BPO 6th a few weeks ago (after your recommendation), and agree it's very fine. Indeed, I much prefer it to both his CBSO reading (very tame in comparison) and R3 broadcast from a few years ago with combined VPO/BPO forces (though that had a number of things going for it).



Alison, nice to see you over here (then again, I'm wondering if you're another Alison, since you just said something nice about Rattle ).

If I were you I wouldn't pick up the CBSO, I expect you'll find it disappointing.

But, as you say, the Berlin reading is the real thing. Actually, I've been listening through all his Mahler over the last month or so (well, nearly all, I've got to 9) and this disc is in many ways the highlight, and once again makes me question why we don't have more properly live discs (rather than edited live). His CBSO first is also 'live', but they whole thing seems like everyone was half-asleep, so much so that I really question whether the 'live' badge on the CD case was a mistake.

I've been revisiting some of the Gubaidulina pieces played during January - dipped my toe in earlier this week - and today listened to all of the string quartets, all of the Triptych Nadeyka, Introitus, and Offertorium. It has impressed me much more than at the time - particularly the quartets (especially no. 4) and the triptych, which comes across to me as very accomplished and with an engaging magisterial naivity (a bit like Messiaen). On listening to several pieces together, however, the same tropes and motifs appear again and again, which does detract a little from the experience. I may well listen to the rest of the pieces tomorrow. Deleting John Tusa's booming commentary has also helped.

I also found time for some of the Cecil Taylor Feel Trio's 2 T's for a Lovely T boxset - highly recommended - and I hope that their date with Anthony Braxton in July will prove rewarding.

Richard Emsley's disc on Metier. A key and vital disc, the only problem is I go straight to playing 'The Juniper Tree' more often than not.

I do believe I might have said as much out there in the real world at some point, Richard...

But yes, you should at the very least hear it. Not going to be in Köln in the next couple of weeks are you?

I do often find myself thinking that the topic of temperament is something where period performance hasn't quite got its act together. I've mentioned a couple of exceptions repeatedly here and wouldn't want to bore people even more than I usually do but they look like this:



The left-hand one has music by Gesualdo and friends performed in just intonation which points up just how much we're still missing in vocal performance of these pieces; the right-hand one has pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in scrumptious mean-tone temperament.

Period instrument performances often use modern compromise temperaments which have no real historical basis. They also very often have instruments which are differently laid out from the actual historical models - in the case of woodwinds, not only putting the holes in slightly different places but making ubiquitous the double holes found on a rather small percentage of historical instruments.

Oops, sorry, I've ended up on one of my hobby horses. Happens to the best of us. Time for me to set something else on its 500-200 rpm whirl. Maybe Telemann again, on one of those trumpets which is supposedly Baroque but has those little holes drilled in it to make the intonation acceptable to modern blah blah blah....

(moves to anorak wardrobe, disappears inside it)

Damn! I just trashed my considered reply by mistake, so here's an unconsidered one instead.You didn't mention all that juicy stuff about intonation and the instruments, though, I think.

I must second Oliver's recommendation of those two discs illustrated in his last post, which are at least as good as he says they are - and he didn't mention the John Bull In nomine on the right-hand one which is in 11/4 time throughout.