A pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas

Buckle up, baybee.

If you like electronic music, I'd recommend Walter/Wendy Carlos's (he/she had a sex change somewhere in there and I no longer remember from what to what) "Switched-On Bach" from the 1970s and "Switched-On Bach 2000". Really clean, EXCELLENT keyboard, many of the Inventions and the Brandenburg concertos. Which, if you haven't heard the 2 and 3 Part Inventions, you're really missing out. Glenn Gould does a rendition of the Inventions that would be the most stunning thing on the planet IF ONLY Gould wasn't humming along. Grrr. I will have to see which recording of the Brandenburgs we have, but in general if you find a Red Seal recording, you should snag it. Those are good. And if you find Neville Marriner conducting The Academy of St. Martin In the Fields, you should snag that, too, because Marriner insists on clean, sharp strings and it's WONDERFUL.

If you like Bach's organ music, find recordings by Ton Koopman (or find a time when the two of us can meet up and I'll share or I'll send Pony Express via

crab_caution or something OR! Come to the shop and Meet The Cat!).

Other baroquies to check out...
Scarlatti but stay away from the harpsichord renditions
Vivaldi -- You've certainly heard The Four Seasons but other Vivaldi concertos are wonderful.
Albinoni -- find the organ adagio and die happy.
Handel -- I love his cliched "Water Music" but also his Largo from Xerxes
Arcangelo Corelli -- you won't find a lot, but it's good

AND! For something completely different, THIS.

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Woops. Albinoni. Sorry... :-) It's just that I LOVE THAT ADAGIO SO MUCH.

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Eeee! Thank you for the recommendations. I do generally enjoy the performances by Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, especially conducted by Neville Marriner, and I noticed Amazon has the Brandenburg Concertos recordings by them on the cheap (only $6.98! Wotta bargain!). On the other hand, the Tafelmusik recording looks soooo very tempting as well, as does the Boston Baroque version, though both are a bit more expensive. Hmmm.

I do need to visit your bookstore soon, so we can be horrendously geeky about books and classical music. It's just that my weeks are so CRAZY nowadays. I'm going out every night this week, and a good deal of next week is going to be occupied, too, and then it's CHRISTMAS (wheeyay!) and after that will be New Year's and a houseguest, and then the week after that is a roadtrip to LA with friends to see The Price is Right before Bob Barker retires.

*pantpant*

Maybe when

konomaigo is visiting me during the New Year's weekend, I'll drag him with me to your bookstore and we can all be gloriously dorky together.

I've listened to quite a few of Vivaldi's concertos, but they tend to blur together after a while. I did enjoy one of violin concertos quite a bit--I believe it was in A major? It's been almost ten years since I've listened to it, but I can still remember the theme.

Thanks for reminding me of Corelli.

I find Handel's most famous pieces quite boring, actually, including Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks, though his Arrival of the Queen of Sheba is good, clean fun.

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Happy to help!

You do know Everyday Music has a classical store just west of The Big Powells on Burnside, right?

'tis death to go in there, for me. *clunk*

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Oh, no kidding.

I do enjoy browsing for classical music on Amazon.com, though--the eviews tend to be quite erudite, with people commenting on tempi, whether the instruments used are authentic to the period, whether the sound is too bright, etc.

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browse.livejournal.com

FWIW, Wendy Carlos is a MtoF transexual. Ahh, the trivia that gets snared in my head.

Just this evening I'm listening to Bradford Marsalis' "Romances For Saxophone"; really good stuff!

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Drat, the library doesn't seem to have this one. Will have to acquire it some other way. Thanks for the tip!

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i enjoy but don't listen to enough to recommend (beyond to say much love for the pdq). oh the sigh.

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Hey, stranger! Nice to see you pop your head up.

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-waves- hey, you wanna do some of that food sort of thing sometime in the near future? i seem to recall word of your schedule breathing a bit after the thanksgiving not-breathing, but i may be forgetting what was actually said...

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Hey, yes! I have free days next week, if that'd work for you. Saturday (the 23rd) I'm driving to Seattle, but so far the rest of the week has been unclaimed.

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heh, i got my dates mixed up at first and thought that the 23rd was tomorrow, and was wondering if your plans involved getting back...

monday and friday i am busy; how's say wednesday? ooh! how does sushi sound, sushi-takahashi-train style? or i've heard that sushiville is really good too. (or, you know, a sushi place where there isn't some form of conveyor belt, or perhaps not sushi at all if you've got another idea. witness my decisiveness in action!)

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Wednesday would work perfectly, actually. I like Sushiville quite a bit; not sure I've been to Sushi Takahashi. Either would work, because sushi = WIN.

So, how 'bout I pick you up at 7 on Wednesday, eh? And then we can play catch-up, because it's been forever since we've seen each other.

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rock. do you remember where my place is?

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I remember where it is approximately, but I'll need a reminder of the exact address. How 'bout I call you on Wednesday?

Sushi sushi WHEEE!

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spiff!

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inventionsleeps.livejournal.com

I second the Scarlatti and Correli in particular.

Also there is an album of Mexican baroque which is worth a listen. lots of stuff contemporary to the Euro troop but but"new world"folks. I'll get the details if you like.

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Yeah, sure, that'd be marvy.

Who are you, by the way? I notice you've added me to your friendslist, but I don't recognize you or any of the other people on your friendslist.

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Me again. Am home with the music collection.

Dieterich Buxtehude is an organist who predates Bach. I love his slow Sarabandes and some of his Sonatas. Skip the vocal music, though. Wiki has him... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieterich_Buxtehude
I can recommend an RCA Victor disk, "Authentic Organs" called Niederlande, but I couldn't readily find it on Amazon.

Mouret (you know him as the Masterpiece Theatah Theme Guy) did some nice brass work. His stuff is VERY hard to find. I mostly remember it from music lessons as a kid.

I have Bob James doing "The Scarlatti Dialogues" -- Bob James is a blues pianist, and man is he GOOD doing those little exercises of Scarlatti's.

Vivaldi--I recommend the mandolin concertos if you don't mind plucked strings.

Boccherini, a concerto for cello and orchestra in B-flat major. The version I have is Yo Yo Ma, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Pinchas Zukerman directing AND playing the violin.

We've got a really interesting Bach Cello suites performed on double bass by Edgar Meyer.

Our versions of the Brandenburgs are all pretty generic BMG/Angel/EMI recordings, nobody special. I may go after that Marriner version myself!

I will second Marsalis's "Romances for Saxophone" BTW. His rendition of Faure's "Pavane for a Dead Princess" is to die for. Not really a baroque collection, but oh, so beautiful.

And now I promise I'll shut up!

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I have never heard of Buxtehude. I do, however, remember Mouret. Heh.

A blues pianist interpreting Scarlatti sounds like a lot of fun.

Also, have never listened to any of Vivaldi's mandolin concertos. Will have to look this up.

The library has four volumes of Bocherrini's concertos on order. I've put the first volume on hold.

Also, cello suites performed on double bass = WOW, AND THE LIBRARY HAS IT! WOO! Placing that motherfucker on hold.

Obviously, we need to get together soon and totally geek out on classical music recordings in general, and baroque music in particular. ROCK!

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I love pronouncing "Buxtehude" as if I were the Swedish Chef on the Muppets.

And I meant to say "jazz pianist". *headbonkety*

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Dammit, Bob James's take on The Scarlatti Dialogues seems to be out of print, and the library doesn't have it. Will have to acquire in some other way.

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heyokish.livejournal.com

I am, on the whole, clueless about music, but the Bach chello stuff makes my socks roll up and down. (Also, there's a version of the sontatas and partitas played on a chello that do the same). But The Art of the Fugue makes my brain do weird things. I can't even read while listening to it, because that music takes over and gets in the way of which ever other brain bits I need. It doesn't turn it off, it just takes it over. How about a spot of Henry Purcell? Or, Handel's Zadok the Priest does weird things to my insides, and the Fireworks music is really best heard outside accompanied by loud bangs and pretty lights.

For true sock-rolling effect, and even more so, though, see if you can get your hands on a copy of Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium. If you've not heard it before, oh boy! A 40 voice motet, from the late 1570s. So it's not baroque, it's the wrong period, and it's church music, but damn.

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heyokish.livejournal.com

Oh, another reliable float-and-skin-burst thing is Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem. Out of the period you're looking for, though.

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You know, I haven't listened to nearly enough Brahms. Brahms and Schubert. Hmm. Well, once I stop obsessing over Bach and the baroque period, I will move on to these two, hee.

Thanks for reminding me of Purcell.

I have not listened Zadok the Priest, but I have a friend who's an absolute fiend for Handel, and I'm sure he'll be able to hook me up.

Am looking up the Thomas Tallis piece. Screw not being baroque--it sounds interesting, and it makes your socks roll up and down.

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li-kao.livejournal.com

Generally speaking, Elgar doesn't do much for me (I'm not a marching kinda fella), but his Cello Concerto in E Minor does THINGS for me; either the Yo-Yo Ma or du Pré recordings work. I sometimes think that if I were objective I'd think my favorite passages were a bit too saccharin, but I don't let that stop me.

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Hmmm, am not familiar with that particular Elgar concerto (which isn't saying much, because I'm not much a fan of Elgar in general, though I played one of his pieces for one of my music exams). But thank you or the recommendation--given that we seem to overlap quite a bit in terms of musical preferences, I'll definitely check this piece out.

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linettasky.livejournal.com

I was going to recommend lots of stuff, particularly Bach cello music and keyboard music (if you don't like harpsichords, there are lots of other recordings -- Glenn Gould is great, if you don't mind the, um, extra accompaniment). If you want to branch out a bit from Baroque, check out some CPE Bach -- if you can find it. CPE took his dad's ideas and ran with them. The music is weird and deliciously good, but it's not as widely available as JS's.

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