Re: What are you listening to right now?

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jason from volo wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 5:52 pm Back to my Dad's LPs: Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony (as performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Hugo Rignold, 1961)

There was one of those dumb memes / questions going around Facebook the other day - would you give up listening to rock music for 10 million dollars?, or something like that. Yeah, for that amount, I probably could deal, and I guarantee I would start listening to more of this. And would sell all of my band equipment in favor of playing trumpet again, too.
If you like that one, you should check out the 1995 recording by Rafael Kubelik with the Vienna Phil on DGG. Excellent recording and performance all around.

If you like Dvorak, his later string quartets are probably the best 19th century chamber music since Beethoven's five late quartets and Grosse Fuge were written. Start with the #12 quartet (The American), and then listen to Opus 105 and 106. The second string quintet was also written along with the #12 quartet during the summer he spent in the Czech community of Spillville, Iowa, after leaving NYC and stopping in Chicago to witness the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Both pieces drip with the feeling of a hot humid summer in the upper Mississippi River valley, evoking a great combination of Americana and Czech folk idioms. The widely available recordings from the Panocha Quartet are great, as well as the Stamitz Quartet's cycle.

Dvorak's true mastery was writing for chamber ensembles. All his Piano Trios, Piano Quartets, Piano and String Quintets, String Quartets (at least #1 and #8-#14) and his Sextet are fantastic pieces, with little bits of inspiration from Schubert's and Mendelssohn's chamber output hinted at throughout.

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