Recent content by Todd A

Virtue signaling it is.

If you can provide any evidence that any artists of the 30s and 40s in Germany or elsewhere in Europe were in senior political positions of the Nazi regime and either made decisions that contributed to the Holocaust and war strategy or directly took part in specific crimes, that would open up a...

Saint-Saens once stated "I am not a homosexual but a pederast." He also is reported to have engaged in what would now be called sex tourism during his trips to North Africa.

I’ve yet to amass a even a medium sized Palestrina collection, but I am familiar enough with his work that I thought I ought to go for something big and juicy in the form of the Cantica Salomonis, or the Song of Songs, expressed in twenty-nine motets. Oh yeah! Well, not really. So, the music...

I think separating art from artist is easy. I have nothing to do with any artist, nor do I, nor can I influence what they did or what they might do. I can only assess their art. I listen to compositions by Gesualdo and Wagner and Saint-Saens, all vile dead people. Some German artists and...

Tallis time. I’m of course familiar with Thomas Tallis, and rather dig his Spem in Alium, but I’ve listened to comparatively little of his music. This recording of a Mass for Four Voices and some Motets is basically the anti-Spem. Simple, sparse, clear, this music occupies a different world...

Time for some Tomáš Norbert Koutník! Who? Yeah, I know. I found this for a few bucks and figured it couldn’t hurt to listen to it. The 1970 vintage recording contains two works, the oratorio Kriminalista Nevinný and the Requiem in E Flat Major. Basically, the music sounds like a merging of...

Finally! An American woman has recorded the New Testament. Oh, sure, Tamami Honma was born in Japan, but she moved to the Beehive State while still a young child and has spent many years in the good, old US of A. She has done the competition thing, the touring thing, the teaching thing...

Riccardo Schwartz’s LvB sonata cycle is a milestone. I will just jump to the punchline: this is the worst complete cycle I have ever heard. For years, my fifth tier has contained the same four names: HJ Lim, Rita Bouboulidi, Tatiana Nikolayeva, and Anne Øland, more or less in that order. Mr...

Supraphononline has multiple Sony classical box sets available for download for 199 CZK each. (That's around $8 or £7, I guess.) One example is linked below, the complete Reiner in Chicago box. https://www.supraphonline.cz/album/191663-fritz-reiner-the-complete-chicago-symphony-recordings-on-rca

Back to the Renaissance, and off to jolly old England, with works by Christopher Tye and William Mundy. The 16th Century music is very serious, lovely, and somewhat austere, at least when compared to, say, Spanish composers. While one can enjoy lovely polyphonic writing, much of the music is...

Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini dies at 82

Jumping forward to the classical era, Dmitry Bortniansky makes a first appearance in my collection. This recording starts off with a setting of an anonymous Cherubic Hymn, which sounds aged and serene and lovely, and then things jump into a more identifiably classical era soundworld. Though...

Carlo Gesualdo is my favorite murderous fiend of a composer, and I am very familiar with his Madrigals, having amassed three sets. I also picked up the mammoth Responsoria a decade ago, as recorded by the Glossa folks, so I am familiar with what he does when the subject is religious. Here is his...

My first recording devoted solely to the music of Jacob Obrecht comes next. (I have heard some Obrecht, but in collections only.) A couple Salve Reginas, a Venit ad Petrum, and the forty-five minute Missa Caput make up the disc. It is very lovely and at times affecting. It lacks the mind-bending...