This is a compilation of the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Berstein’s performances of the middle symphonies and The Unanswered Question, originally a piece paired with another but one that has found a lot of attention as a standalone.
Tag: 1908
Gustav Holst: Vedic Hymns, Four Songs for Voice and Violin, Humbert Wolfe Songs, etc. [English Song Series 6] (2003) by Various Artists
This is a scattershot collection of 33 of Holst’s approximately 70 lieder, performed by various people from various times.
Georges Melies: First Wizard of Cinema 1896-1913 (2009)
This is a collection of many – but hardly a majority or all – of George Melies’ short films from when he got into cinema shortly after the invention of the medium until 1913, when his various personal problems consumed him and he stopped making films. (Note that many of Melies’ films have been lost …
Faure: Complete Piano Works (2006 compilation) performed by Jean-Philippe Collard
Faure’s music seems to my uneducated ears to be the missing link between composers like Chopin and Liszt and composers like Debussy and Satie. That’s really the best way I can size it up: this music often possesses the technical demands of Chopin, Debussy or Liszt, but it also often possesses the sense of momentness, …
Elgar: Sympyhonies 1 & 2 (1968, 2007) by London Philharmonic Orchestra, Adrian Boult
I guess Elgar gets his rep because he was perhaps the first really notable British composer in some time – or up until that point, I don’t really know. But I think that reputation is inflated – at least based on my earliest listens to his music – by the general Anglophilia that is a …
Debussy: the Complete works for Piano (1995 compilation) by Walter Gieseking
Debussy’s piano music is as significant as Satie’s, even if it isn’t always as obviously revolutionary. Debussy eventually became very mainstream and so his music had much more currency. And it’s been absorbed so much it’s sometimes hard to tell how exactly he was breaking away (but other times it is very obvious). As someone …
Satie Piano Works (1987, 2003, 2012) performed by Aldo Ciccolini
Erik Satie’s piano music changed the way many people thought about music. It’s hard to imagine John Cage, cool jazz, ambient, post rock and a bunch of other things without this. It’s also really cool to hear the ragtime stuff.