SOSPIRO Music recommendations
HEALTH WARNING - THIS LIST CONTAINS MUSIC THAT PEOPLE FIND CHALLENGING!
GRAZIA
Grazia happens live, - in front of an audience. All these ‘Grazia’ albums are LIVE.
Ellington’s version of ‘Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue’ with Paul Gonzalves breathtaking tenor sax solo will always be remembered as one of the greatest moments in Jazz, as will Benny Goodman’s appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1938, - especially the version of ‘Sing Sing Sing’ at the end of the show.
Phil Minton’s extraordinary contemporary vocal techniques never fail to send shivers down the spine - as in his track ‘Noon’, and Maria Callas’s voice was one of the manifestations of heaven on earth.
Complete at Newport [Live]
Duke Ellington
Label: Sony Jazz
ASIN: B0000250OT
Live at Carnegie Hall: the Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert [Live]
Benny Goodman
Label: Columbia
ASIN: B000026GVY
Songs from a Prison Diary [Live]
Phil Minton and Veryan Weston
Label: Leo
ASIN: B0000281WB
Maria Callas - The Live Recitals
Maria Callas (Artist)
Label: EMI Classics
ASIN: B000I0SGXU
EPIC
Music can depict the monumental - ideas, events and emotions. Harry Birtwistle’s uncompromising ‘Earth Dances’ represents the movement of the tectonic plates of the earth, and Britten’s War Requiem is a passionate anti-war cry. Philip Glass’s ‘Where have you been, asked the doctor’ from 1000 Airplanes on the roof is a sci-fi surrealist nightmare, and the Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem remains a cataclysmic musical depiction of the day of judgement, 140 years after it’s composition.
Birtwistle: Earth Dances
Orchestra: Ensemble Modern Orchestra, Ensemble Modern
Conductor: Pierre Boulez,
Label: Universal Classics
ASIN: B0002ANQWW
Britten: War Requiem [Box set]
Galina Vishnevskaya Peter Pears Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau The Bach Choir London Symphony Chorus The Melos Ensemble Of London London Symphony Orchestra Benjamin Britten (Artist)
Audio CD (15 May 2006)
SPARS Code: ADD
Number of Discs: 2
Format: Box set
Label: Universal Classics
ASIN: B000E6EGXM
Philip Glass: 1000 Airplanes On The Roof CD
Glass, Philip CDS
Label Virgin Classics
CD Universe Part number 1033560
Catalog number 786106
Discs 1
Recording Time 54 minutes
Verdi - Requiem
Giuseppe Verdi (Composer), Leonard Bernstein (Conductor)
Conductor: Leonard Bernstein
Composer: Giuseppe Verdi
Audio CD (24 May 2004)
SPARS Code: DDD
Label: Sony Classical
ASIN: B0001XPY16
COLOUR
Musical colourists are thought to be ‘lighweight’ but here we suggest listening to some music that may change your mind. John Zorn is an American Jazz saxophonist with a music that defies categorisation and is as colourful as New York itself. Debussy’s La Mer is a spectral tone picture of the sea, and Pat Metheney’s “Secret Story’ is a jazz album with beautiful, subtle orchestral colour added by English composer Jeremy Lubbock. Pierre Boulez, grand master of Modernism, shocked the musical world with his ‘Rituel’ where colour is derived from the orchestra being split into several groups, each progressing at at different tempo.
The result is beautiful, disturbing and surprising.
Naked City
John Zorn (Artist)
Audio CD (30 April 1990)
Label: Warner
ASIN: B000005J08
Debussy: Images; Prelude a l'apres; Midi d'un Faune; La Mer [Import]
Claude Debussy (Composer), Esa-Pekka Salonen (Conductor), Janet Ferguson (Flute)
Audio CD (14 Jan 1997)
SPARS Code: DDD
Label: Sony
ASIN: B0000029R5
Secret Story: Remastered & Expanded
Pat Metheny (Artist)
Audio CD (24 Sep 2007)
Number of Discs: 2
Label: Nonesuch
ASIN: B000UCEJCI
Boulez: Rituel/Eclat/Multiples [Import]
Pierre Boulez (Composer), BBC Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Ensemble InterContemporain (Orchestra)
Composer: Pierre Boulez
Audio CD (14 Jan 1991)
SPARS Code: ADD
Label: Sony
ASIN: B00000270
STRUCTURE
Daniel Barenboim’s performance of Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata is a marvel of how to capture an audience. His obsession with ‘correct tempo’ being organic with the harmonic structure of music, and his awareness of how this affects the audiences perception of ‘progress’ through and abstract ‘story’ makes this truly different to any other performance. ‘If I could’ from Pat Metheney’s ‘First Circle’ is a perfect example of the ‘Golden Section’ being used within ‘time’. Harry Birtwisle’s ‘Panic’, which caused such a furore at the Last Night of the Proms, is based on the Greek epic poem structure the ‘dithyramb’’. The first movement of Bach’s 1st Violin Sonata is a marvel of structure - pure music, mathematics, emotion and science connecting.
Beethoven: The Piano Sonatas [Box set]
Ludwig van Beethoven (Composer), Daniel Barenboim (Performer)
SPARS Code: DDD
Number of Discs: 9
Format: Box set
Label: Universal Classics
ASIN: B00002DEH0
First Circle
Pat Metheny (Artist)
Audio CD (1 Jul 1988)
Number of Discs: 1
Label: ECM
ASIN: B0000261UH
Birtwistle: Panic [Import]
Sir Harrison Birtwistle (Composer), Sir Andrew Davis (Conductor), Christoph von Dohnányi (Conductor), BBC Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Cleveland Orchestra (Orchestra), et al.
Performer: John Harle, Paul Clarvis
SPARS Code: DDD
Label: Argo
ASIN: B00000B2BQ
Bach - Sonatas Nos 1 & 2; Partita No 1, for Solo Violin
Johann Sebastian Bach (Composer)
Label: Red Line
ASIN: B00004R7W1
EXCITEMENT
The opening bars of Gil Evan’s arrangement of ‘Porgy and Bess’ for Miles Davis is one of the most exciting moments in Jazz, and ‘Faces’ by Earth Wind and Fire is the excitement of truly human rhythm - always moving, fallible and engaging. ‘Prashanti’ from ‘Passages’ by Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar is the meeting of two energised virtuosi, and the last movement of Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony takes one’s breath away with it’s torrent of notes and heroic defiance of fate.
Porgy and Bess
Miles Davis (Artist)
Audio CD (7 April 1997)
Label: Sony Jazz
ASIN: B000024F6M
Faces
Earth Wind & Fire (Artist)
Audio CD (11 April 2003)
Label: Sony Budget
ASIN: B000025HNZ
Passages [Import]
Ravi Shankar (Artist), Philip Glass (Artist)
Format: Import
Label: Private
ASIN: B0000000K4
Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos.4, 5 & 6 "Pathetique" [Box set]
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra Jewgenij Mrawinskij (Artist)
SPARS Code: ADD
Label: Universal Classics
ASIN: B000E0W24S
MELODY
‘Yesterday’ from ‘Help’, is an indestructible musical and melodic evergreen, whilst the Adagio from Rachmanninoff’s Second Symphony expresses the beauty of pattern and emotion combined into a tearful wail. The counter-tenor soloist in Bernstein’s ‘Chichester Psalms’ plays with major and minor keys in contrast, to create a music that is melodically neither sad or happy - just beautiful and androgynous, whilst ‘My Friends’ and ‘Pretty Women’ from Sondheim’s ‘Sweeney Todd’ display all that is best about music theatre - robust melody and plot development hand-in-hand.
Help! [Soundtrack]
The Beatles (Artist)
Label: Parlophone/EMI
ASIN: B000002UAL
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphony No.2/Isle Of The Dead [Import]
Sergey Rachmaninov (Composer), Eugene Ormandy (Conductor), Fritz Reiner (Conductor), Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Philadelphia Orchestra (Orchestra)
Format: Import
Label: RCA
ASIN: B000003FT3
Bernstein: Chichester Psalms/Symphonies Nos 1 & 2
Leonard Bernstein (Composer)
SPARS Code: A-D
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
ASIN: B000031WYI
Sweeney Todd (Sondheim) [Soundtrack]
Original Cast Recording (Artist)
Label: Nonesuch
ASIN: B000CRR3P6
RHYTHM
Steve Reich, master American minimalist, builds a rhythmic intensity through ‘Drumming’ that is hypnotic, so that in Part 4 the groove takes on a life of it’s own, and harmony seems unnecessary. Thelonius Monk’s Evidence is sparse and jagged, but compulsive, whilst ‘The Black Page’ by Frank Zappa is rhythmic complication in the extreme - surprising, virtuosic and shocking. The Rite of Spring ballet music by Stravinsky was originally thought to be undanceable, but it’s primitive propulsions soon became part of the
vocabulary of musicians and ballet companies everywhere.
Reich: Drumming [Box set]
Steve Reich and Musicians (Artist)
Label: Universal Classics
ASIN: B0000D7Z63
Thelonious: Fred Hersch Plays Monk
Thelonious Monk (Composer), Fred Hersch (Performer)
SPARS Code: DDD
Label: Nonesuch
ASIN: B000005J4R
Zappa in New York [Live]
Frank Zappa (Artist)
Audio CD (1 April 2002)
Label: Rykodisc
ASIN: B0000009SS
Stravinsky - Rite of Spring; Firebird - Suite
Igor Stravinsky (Composer), Leonard Bernstein (Conductor), New York Philharmonic Orchestra (Orchestra)
SPARS Code: A-D
Label: Sony Classics
ASIN: B00002470E
HARMONY
Antonio Lotti’s ‘Crucifixus’ is a never-ending series of harmonic suspensions. Always moving forward, the harmony pleads for a final resolution. Jazz pianist Keith Jarret’s recording of Bach’s ‘Well-Tempered Klavier’ adds new insight to Bach’s epic keyboard journey in the use of the sustaining pedal and unusual choice of accents in the middle harmonic developments.
‘Music For Biscuits’ is simply nostalgic fun. From a time (the 60’s) when advertising music was always ‘bespoke’ to product, this famous ‘close harmony’ group are a delight. This is a rare and unusual CD - get it whilst you can!
Stravinsky’s ‘Gloria’ from his Mass is an unnerving vision of contemporary harmony. It seems to be modern, yet simultaneously sounds like medievalism. Other-worldly.
Voices of Ascension - Chant to Renaissance/Lotti - Crucifixus
Abbess Hildegard of Bingen (Composer), Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (Composer), William Byrd (Composer), Heinrich Isaac (Composer), Dennis Keene (Conductor), et al.
Orchestra: Voices of Ascension
SPARS Code: DDD
Label: Delos
ASIN: B0000006ZX
Bach - the Well Tempered Clavier Book Vol.2
Keith Jarrett (Artist)
Audio CD (15 Jul 1991)
Label: Ecm
ASIN: B000025XGF
Music For Biscuits: Lost Advertising & Rare Film Sounds
Mike Sammes (Artist)
Audio CD (25 Sep 2006)
Label: Trunk Records
ASIN: B000HWXGE8
Stravinsky - Vocal Works
Igor Stravinsky (Composer), Leonard Bernstein (Conductor), English Bach Festival Chorus (Orchestra), English Bach Festival Percussion Ensemble (Orchestra), Trinity Boys' Choir (Orchestra), et al.
Performer: Anny Mory,Patricia Parker, John Mitchinson, Paul Hudson, Martha Argerich, et al.
Orchestra: English Bach Festival Chorus, English Bach Festival Percussion Ensemble, Trinity Boys' Choir, English Bach Festival Orchestra
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
ASIN: B000001G8Y