Welcome to the Cloudland Blue Weekly Playlist No 17...
Sorry this has been temporarily removed to make way for Weekly Playlist No 22 but it will return shortly for streaming - watch this space...
This week, there are 41 tracks included in the two hour programme, one from each acquisition made on my trip to London last weekend and a few from discs which entered the collection prior to and after that...
Many of the pieces are necessarily short - with thirteen under two minutes and the shortest just 27 seconds long - probably less time than it'll take you to read the notes I've set out below for the track...
The jazz element rises this week from two to sixteen while the playlist also includes ten classical pieces...
As ever, it's a varied selection...
Once again, no chat from me (other than the notes below), just the music - hope you enjoy it...
Serge Gainsbourg - Docteur Jekyll et Monsieur Hyde (1:58)
from Serge Gainsbourg Volume 2
Gainsbourg was variously a singer, songwriter, pianist, film composer, poet, painter, screenwriter, writer, actor and director and one of the most important figures in French popular music, renowned for his often provocative and scandalous releases,as well as his diverse artistic output, embodying genres ranging from jazz, mambo, world, chanson, pop and yé-yé, to rock and roll, progressive rock, reggae, electronic, disco and new wave. Here's a strange little song (in the “yé-yé “ style) to open today's proceedings...
Stanley Cowell – Earthly Heavens (6:53)
from Brilliant Circles
Pianist Stanley Cowell played with Roland Kirk while studying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and later with Marion Brown, Max Roach, Bobby Hutcherson, Clifford Jordan, Harold Land, Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz before performing with the Detroit Artist's Workshop Jazz Ensemble in 1965-66. These days he teaches in the Music Department of the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. This track may be a little hard going for some but if you stick with it, it eventually rewards....
David Torn – Ring For Endless Travel (2:24)
from Prezens
The American guitarist, composer and music producer David Torn is known for the organic blending/manipulation of electronic and acoustic instruments and performance techniques that have an atmospheric or textural quality and effect. He is particularly well known for his influence on the development of looping effects, which is on show in this short piece...
John Abercrombie – Soldier's Song (3:02)
from Class Trip
Another American guitarist and composer, Abercrombie's work explores jazz fusion, post bop, free jazz and avant-garde jazz. He studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts and, since his debut, has almost constantly recorded with Manfred Eicher's ECM label. He is known for his spare, understated, and eclectic style, as amply demonstrated by this track, a trio for guitar, strings and percussion...
John Surman – Duet for One (3:31)
from Adventure Playground
Surman, originally from Devon, initially gained recognition playing baritone saxophone in the Mike Westbrook Band in the mid-1960s, and was soon heard regularly playing soprano saxophone and bass clarinet as well. He made the first record under his own name in 1968. By 1972 he had begun experimenting with synthesizers. That year he recorded Westering Home, the first of several solo projects on which he played all parts himself via overdubbing. He's recorded for ECM from the late 1970s to the present, playing bass clarinet, recorders, soprano and baritone saxophones and using synthesisers, both solo with a wide range of other musicians. This track is a solo piece for baritone saxophone...
Krokofant – Ejs (2:42)
from Krokofant
I've featured this young Norwegia semi-improvising power trio before – Tom Hasslan (guitars), Axel Skalstad (drums) and Jørgen Mathisen (saxophone). They typify a new and invigorating movement currently sweeping across the Nordic region: hard boiled improvisation and strong instrumental personalities bolted onto rock beats and driving rhythms. Live, Krokofant pull no punches, sounding off like some unholy three-way marriage of early 70s jazz rock (Mahavishnu Orchestra, Terje Rypdal, Ray Russell), the sprawling progressive odysseys of King Crimson and Henry Cow, and the fierce heat of Peter Brötzmann’s harsh, free jazz ensembles. This one rocks...
Benda - Sinfonia in F 3rd Movement Allegro (1:44)
from Baroque Bohemia and Beyond
Franz Benda (1709 – 1786) was a Bohemian violinist and composer. He worked for much of his life at the court of Frederick the Great at Potsdam and, indeed, died there. He was the founder of a German school of violin playing. In his youth he was a chorister at Prague and afterward in the Chapel Royal at Dresden. At the same time he began to study the violin, and soon joined a company of strolling musicians who attended fetes and fairs. At eighteen, Benda abandoned this wandering life and returned to Prague then on to Vienna, where he pursued his study of the violin under Carl Heinrich Graun, a pupil of Tartini. After two years he was appointed chapel master at Warsaw. In 1732, he entered the service of Frederick the Great, then Prince Royal of Prussia, with whom he remained the rest of his life. A master of all the difficulties of violin playing, the rapidity of his execution and the mellow sweetness of his highest notes were unequalled. He had many pupils and wrote a number of works, chiefly exercises and studies for the violin. This symphony is a good example of his uplifting tuneful style..
C P Stamitz – Symphony for 2 Oboes, 2 Horns & String Orchestra, 4th Mvmt Presto (1:56)
from Musica Bohemica
Carl Philipp Stamitz (1745 – 1801) was a German composer of partial Czech ancestry. The eldest son of Johann Stamitz, he was the most prominent representative of the second generation of the Mannheim School. As a youth, Stamitz was employed as a violinist in the court orchestra at Mannheim. In 1770, he began travelling as a virtuoso, accepting short-term engagements, but never managing to gain a permanent position. He visited a number of European cities, living for a time in Strasbourg and London. In 1794, he gave up travelling and moved with his family to Jena in central Germany, but his circumstances deteriorated and he descended into debt and poverty, dying in 1801...
Rubbra - String Quartet No.2 Op.73: 2 Scherzo Polimetrico (Vivace Assai) (2:46)
from The Four String Quartets
Edmund Rubbra (1901 – 1986) was a British composer, greatly esteemed by fellow musicians, who reached the peak of his fame in the mid-20th Century. The most famous of his pieces are his eleven symphonies. Although he was active at a time when many people wrote twelve-tone music, he decided not to write in this idiom himself. Instead he devised his own distinctive style. His later works were not as popular with the concert-going public as his previous ones had been, although he never lost the respect of his colleagues. Therefore his output as a whole, is less celebrated today than would have been expected from its sheer merit and from his early popularity. His compositions are full of drama, often with an improvisatory element. This comes from the same quartet featured in last week's playlist...
The Samuel Jackson Five – What Floats Her Boat (2:10)
from The Samuel Jackson Five
More Norwegians, this comes from the self-titled fourth album by instrumental specialists "The Samuel Jackson Five", their first to feature vocals. Put together in the middle of Oslo, the album includes a number of urban soundtracks like “Mockba”, written in the Russian capital and featuring noise from Berlin at night. On this LP the band moves away from its post-rock roots, delivering a thoughtfully arranged set of songs – only two of them clocking in at over 5 minutes. This short guitar and echoplex instrumental piece is one of my favourites...
Frànçois And The Atlas Mountains - La vérité (3:03)
from Piano Ombre
This band is led by Bristol-based French musician François Marry, who is also a touring member of Camera Obscura. After growing up in Saintes, and studying at La Rochelle, Marry relocated to Bristol in 2003. The band's first album was the mostly live The People To Forget, released in 2006. Their second, Plaine Inondable, was released in 2009 on Fence Records in the UK to critical acclaim. The band's third album, E Volo Love, was released in 2012, and was also positively received. Marry has also released several lo-fi tapes and records but this comes from his latest work, which is just out...
Sophie Hunger – Holy Hells (2:46)
from The Danger of Light
Hunger plays guitar, blues harp, piano and composes her songs in English, French, Swiss German, German and Swiss Italian. In 2006, in a few days, she home-recorded her solo début album, Sketches on Sea. She has since played the Montreux Jazz Festival and the John Peel stage at Glastonbury Festival, the first Swiss artist to do so. This is one of the best tracks from her latest LP...
Scelsi - Cinque Incantesimi, III. Agitato (1:18)
from Chamber Works for Flute and Piano
Giacinto Scelsi (1905 – 1988) was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French.
He is best known for writing music based around only one pitch, altered in all manners through microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, and changes in timbre and dynamics, as paradigmatically exemplified in his revolutionary Quattro Pezzi su una nota sola ("Four Pieces on a single note", 1959). His musical output, which encompassed all Western classical genres except scenic music, remained largely undiscovered even within contemporary musical circles during most of his life. He's one of my favourite contemporary music composers...
Goldstein – Etude for Cello No 1 (0:56)
from Cyclorama
This track comes from Jonathan Goldstein's 2012 debut classical album, Cyclorama, performed by the Balanescu Quartet and an ensemble of distinguished soloists, mixing contemporary classical idioms. The album is choc full of beautiful tuneful contemporary classical music like this very short piece – as opposed to the tuneless contemporary classical music (like Scelsi) which I usually enjoy...
Turina - Trio #2 for piano, violin and cello Opus 76 Molto Vivace (2:32)
from Piano Trios
Turina was born in Seville but his origins were in northern Italy (between Verona, Brescia and Mantova). He studied in Seville as well as in Madrid and lived in Paris from 1905 to 1914, where he took composition lessons from Vincent d'Indy at his Schola Cantorum de Paris, and studied the piano under Moritz Moszkowski. Like his countryman and friend, Manuel de Falla, while there, he got to know the impressionist composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy. Along with de Falla, he returned to Madrid in 1914, working as a composer, teacher and critic. In 1931 he was made professor of composition at the Madrid Royal Conservatory. He died in Madrid...
Digital Mystikz – Thief in the Night (2:46)
from Soul Jazz Singles 2008-2009
Digital Mystikz are a dubstep production duo (consisting of Mala and Coki - when the two started making music together as teenagers they were known as Malibu and Coke) from the South London suburb of Norwood. Along with Loefah and Sgt. Pokes, they operate the DMZ record label and host the influential bimonthly nightclub DMZ, held at the Mass club complex in Brixton, London. John Peel was an early supporter of Digital Mystikz, eventually putting them in his annual 2004 Top 50 list at #29. They are among the scene's most famous producers...
Machine Mass Trio – Palitana Mood (3:06)
from As Real As Thinking
Originally born as a side-project of douBt, this new trio led by Tony Bianco (on drums and loops) and Michel Delville (on guitar, bouzouki and live effects) also includes emerging Belgian talent Jordi Grognard on saxophones, bass clarinet and flute. The music is meaningfully condensed and consistently powerful without being overwhelming, a cross between progressive jazz, world music and rock...
Alexi Tuomarila Trio – Miss (3:53)
from Seven Hills
Following numerous first prize awards at various international jazz competitions throughout 2003 Finnish pianist / composer, Alexi Tuomarila signed to Warner Jazz France, releasing two albums that brought worldwide attention and critical acclaim. Without warning Warner Jazz stopped their jazz and classical output, leaving Tuomarila, almost overnight, without management or career direction. There followed a period of self-discovery, growth in his confidence and, eventually, a realisation that playing this music was his ultimate goal. Playing with a soft and delicate touch that moves deftly from sombre passages to exciting, joyous, up-tempo pieces, Alexi Tuomarila is a musician who continues to make a huge impact both on CD (this is his latest) and in concert...
Justin Rutledge – I'm Gonna Die (One Sunny Day) (4:04)
from The Devil On A Bench In Stanley Park
Rutledge was born and grew up in the Junction neighbourhood in Toronto, a working class community centered around an intersection of four railway lines. He was raised in an Irish-Catholic family and had aspirations of becoming a writer. To that end he studied English literature, with a major in modern poetry, at the University of Toronto but dropped out after three years of school as his musical career got in the way. This, his second album, released in 2006 was actually Rutledge's second attempt at a sophomore album; he spent a year recording his first attempt, tentatively titled In the Fall, before he scrapped it. In order to challenge himself and create the album he wanted, Rutledge wrote a new batch of songs and recorded them in eight days with his band, opting for a more live recording style...
Bruno Heinen – Taurus (2:18)
from Stockhausen Tierkreis
Bruno Heinen is a London based contemporary pianist, composer and bandleader. He studied classical piano at the Royal College of music and took his Jazz masters at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He now teaches Jazz harmony to the classical piano students at the Guildhall every year as well as leading small bands made up of Jazz Undergraduates. As a composer, Bruno has written for groups ranging from sextet to two pianos and percussion, and from big band to classical string trio. In 2008 Bruno arranged Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ‘Tierkreis’ for Jazz sextet. The piece was originally written for twelve music boxes, one for each sign of the zodiac. Four of the original music boxes have been in Heinen’s family since he was born, which started the fascination with the piece. Incorporating the boxes in the performance, he premiered the arrangement at the Vortex Jazz Club. Last week, I featured an orchestral recording of the same piece, this version was recorded in 2012 and released last year...
Keith Tippett and the Elysian String Quartet – Linuckia (edit) (5:00)
from Live at the London Jazz Festival
Tippett formed his first jazz band called The KT7 whilst still at school and they performed numbers popular at the time by The Temperance Seven. In the late 1960s, he led a sextet featuring Elton Dean on saxophone, Mark Charig on trumpet and Nick Evans on trombone. Tippett married singer Julie Driscoll and wrote scores for TV. In the early 1970s, his big band Centipede brought together much of a generation of young British jazz and rock musicians. As well as performing some concerts (limited economically by the size of the band), they recorded one double-album, Septober Energy. He contributed piano to several King Crimson records including Cat Food (and even appearing with them on Top of the Pops). His own groups, such as Ovary Lodge tended towards a more contemplative form of European free improvisation. He continues to perform with the improvising ensemble Mujician and more recently Work in Progress. Tippett has appeared and recorded in a wide variety of settings, including a duet with Stan Tracey (also at the London Jazz Festival), duets with his wife Julie Tippetts, solo performances, and his work with the Crims. On this piece, from a live concert broadcast on Radio 3, he is accompanied by the Elysian Quartet on a piece titled for his children...
The Necks – Ventricle (edit) (4:00)
from Live at the Vortex
The Necks are one of the great cult bands of Australia. Chris Abrahams (piano), Tony Buck (drums), and Lloyd Swanton (bass) conjure a chemistry together that defies description in orthodox terms. Featuring lengthy pieces which slowly unravel in the most mesmerising fashion, frequently underpinned by an insistent deep groove, their albums stand up to re-listening time and time again. The deceptive simplicity of their music throws forth new charms on each hearing. Not entirely avant-garde, nor minimalist, nor ambient, nor jazz, the music of The Necks is possibly unique in the world today. This is the opening of the piece created in concert at the Vortex club recorded for Radio 3 in 2009...
Jonsi – Animal Arithmetic (3:23)
from Go
Jón "Jónsi" Þór Birgisson is the guitarist and vocalist for the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. Apart from Sigur Rós, Jónsi also performs together with his partner Alex Somers as an art collaboration called Jónsi & Alex. They released their self-titled first book in November 2006, along with their first album, Riceboy Sleeps, in July 2009. Go was released in 2010. You'll find that this particular track is just a little bit faster than the majority of Sigur Ros' output...
Ulrich Schnauss – Nothing Happens in June
from Far Away Trains Passing By (6:12)
Ulrich Schnauss is a German producer of ethereal electronic music, who had this (originally a mini) album, "Far Away Trains Passing By" released as his debut in 2001. A sleeper hit, the album was subsequently released with a bonus CD of extra tracks, of which this is one. Schnauss' uplifting music has been used in countless ads around the world and he is a much sought after collaborator and remix artist. One of my favourite performers at last week's Denovali Swingfest (so named because the Nazis really hated swing music)...
Keith Emerson – Roll'n Jelly (1:14)
from Emerson Plays Emerson
This is the album that longtime fans of Keith Emerson have dreamed of. For most of the hour long set, Emerson sticks exclusively to grand piano, eschewing the bank of synthesizers (and Hammond organ) that can tend at times to distract from his abilities as a keyboardist. Due to the wide range of musical styles included, I can't say that this bluesy salute to jazz great Jelly Roll Morton is typical of the LP as a whole but I can say that for anyone who is/was a fan of ELP, this is a must have album...
Carsten Dahl – Effata #13 (1:31)
from Efatta
Dahl began playing the drums at age 9. By 14 years old, he was already a professional drummer/ studio musician and at 19 he entered the Rhythmic Music Conservatory. After two years of being taught by legendary jazz drummers Ed Thigpen and Alex Riel, he put drums aside in favour of the piano (an instrument he had never been taught in his life) and applied again at the conservatory. He earned a reputation for fiery live performances and reunited with his old teacher and drum mentor Ed Thigpen and his trio, including Joe Lovano. They made three recordings together. In 2013 he premiered his first piano concerto, played by the Odense Symphony Orchestra with Marianna Shiviyuan as the soloist. Recently his career has been divided between solo piano and the Carsten Dahl Experience. With an uncompromising approach to jazz, he has created music that transcends boundaries and explores new territories. In 2011 he also returned to his drumming roots with the The Crazy Constellation Trio, with Hugo Rasmussen on bass and Søren Kristiansen on piano. The solo pieces on this LP are particularly enthralling and it's an album to which I'm sure I'll return...
Boyd Lee Dunlop – First Drops of Rain (1:05)
from The Lake Reflections
Dunlop was born in North Carolina but music brought him to Buffalo, New York, where he lived for the rest of his life. Dunlop found his first piano on the street corner, outside his house, discarded and with only half the keys working. His younger brother, whom he taught to play drums, went on to find fame playing with Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Lionel Hampton, and many other jazz greats, recording nearly one hundred sides during his career, while until 2011, Boyd Lee Dunlop could only be found on one record, a blowsy rhythm and blues session from the late 1950s by Big Jay McNeely. For years Dunlop worked in Buffalo’s steel mills and rail yards, yet his calling was the piano and he played in the clubs around Buffalo. It wasn't until December 2011 that he released his debut album, Boyd's Blues. In October 2012 Dunlop and his brother were inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of fame. Dunlop played a concert that evening in front of fellow inductees past and present, enjoying this career resurgence after being "rediscovered" in a Buffalo nursing home at age 85. Just after this performance, he suffered a cardiac arrest, his heart stopping for close to six minutes. However, he recovered and returned to his home where, quickly restored to health, he announced that he wanted to make a second record. This track comes from that solo album of piano improvisations. Dunlop subsequently died in Buffalo in December last year, aged 87. Judging by this release, his wilderness years were a criminal waste of talent...
Orquestra Popular de Camara - Vinheta Espanha Ou Do Agreste? (0:39)
from 10 Years
This band combines native instruments like bandolim, bamboo flute and a variety of percussion instruments with the less conventional cello and viola, create an intriguing blend of textures that is refreshingly different while, at the same time, maintaining complete authenticity. While the ensemble numbers thirteen players, it is rare that everyone is in the pool at once. The overall ambience of Orquestra Popular de Camara is one of folk-like elegance. Individual players are given brief opportunities to solo, often-times in the form of a dialogue with another instrument, sometimes combining in ways that blur the boundaries between them. They manage to bring a vital new slant to the popular Brazilian folk form. Not quite folk, not quite jazz, not quite classical, it is difficult to pigeon-hole, but in the final analysis its sheer elegance and deep expression make the band well worth investigating. This track is the opener on a 3CD set celebrating 10 years of the innovative Brazilian label, Adventure Music...
The David Rees-Williams Trio – Scarlatti's Sonata in D Minor (3:22)
from Thinking Allowed
Formed in 1988 the trio features David Rees-Williams (piano), Neil Francis (bass guitar) and Phil Laslett (drums). Based in Canterbury, they perform all over the world and specialise in a programme that unites the best of classical and jazz. David's arrangement of Purcell's When I Am Laid In Earth from their CD Classically Minded was first played on Radio 3 during the summer of 2001. The response was extraordinary, resulting in the BBC being inundated with enquiries, and subsequently inviting them to record a commercial disc on their new Late Junction label. Since then the band has gone from strength to strength, recording their arrangements of Purcell, Bach, Grieg, Fauré, Franck, Debussy, Ravel, Chopin, Stanford, Buxtehude, Elgar, Warlock and Bossi amongst others. This track comes from their 2007 release, Thinking Allowed and features the music of Scarlatti...
Mark Wingfield/Kevin Kastning – Into Equilibrium Hesitation (1:45)
from Walked into the Silver Darkness
This music came about following electric guitarist Wingfield contacting acoustic guitarist Kastning on spec, asking if he'd be interested in recording an album together. The music they've created is an eclectic type of jazz with a unique voice. No clichés or thinly-disguised work of other guitarists masquerading as their own. Just masterful control of their instruments without flashy technique for its own sake. The pieces were completely improvised yet they sound composed. Since recording this debut, the duo have gone on to release a further two albums...
Eyal Maoz's Edom – Rocks (4:00)
from Hope and Destruction
I was particularly pleased to have found this album in the basement of Harold Moore's in London. Eyal Maoz (born 1969, Haifa) is an Israeli-born American guitarist, bandleader, solo performer and composer. His music is described as a synthesis of rock, jazz and avant-garde, tinged with deep electronic and radical Jewish-middle-eastern music. He leads a number of original music ensembles including Edom, Dimyon, and Crazy Slavic Band. He also co-leads the Maoz-Sirkis Duet, the Maoz-Masaoka Duet (with koto player Miya Masaoka) and Hypercolor (with Lukas Ligetiand and James Ilgenfritz), and is a guest member of John Zorn’s Cobra. He started to explore jazz, rock and avant-garde music at an early age. He led the highly celebrated Lemon Juice Quartet - one of my all time favourite jazz combos – with far too little recorded output, which includes “Peasant Songs,” wild jazz versions of tunes by Bela Bartok and Eric Satie. “Hope and Destruction,” was his second CD on with his ensemble “Edom” from 2009. A bit more “rocky” than the LJQ but I love it nonetheless...
Roger Eno – Amukidi (1:20)
from Little Things Left Behind
The younger brother of Brian, Roger Eno is known primarily as an ambient music composer. Like me, he was born in 1959 and, like me, he started out playing the euphonium. Unlike me, he studied music - at Colchester College. He ran a music therapy course at a local hospital for the mentally handicapped. His first recording experience was in 1983 on Eno's Apollo album at Dan Lanois’ Grant Avenue Studios in Canada. His first solo album, Voices, was released in 1985. He's also a keen singer, as demonstrated in the backwards vocals on this short piece, which is taken from the 2CD anthology from late last year entitled “Little Things Left Behind”...
Piano Interrupted – Two Or ThreeThings (3:25)
from The Unified Field
Piano Interrupted is the brainchild of London-based pianist and composer Tom Hodge and French electronic producer Franz Kirmann. Coming from two very different musical worlds (electronica, pop and techno for Franz; classical and minimalism for Tom), the two musicians had been friends for a long time before deciding to make music together. This piece comes from their second LP, The Unified Field, recorded in London in the first half of 2013. On it they are joined by Greg Hall on cello and Tim Fairhall on double bass. Their core music-making methodology is to draw upon multiple, varied styles and influences and bring them into one coherent unifying whole. The album offers dense arrangements of fragile piano, colourful cinematic soundscapes, organic rhythmic textures and rich, warm strings which provoke a diverse range of emotions. One of the highlights for me of last weekend's Denovali Swingfest...
Justin Rutledge – Year of Jubilo (1:37)
from No Never Alone
Second track from Mr Rutledge – a short banjo based piece – not may most favourite instrument but good nonetheless - “No Never Alone” was his debut album. In order to pay for the recording, he worked as a bartender. It was only after receiving critical aclaim in the UK that No Never Alone was finally released in Rutledge's native Canada....
Reimann – Theme (0:27)
from Complete Piano Works
At just 27 seconds, it may take you longer to read this than listen to the piece. But I'm sure Reimann will be featured again. He was born in Berlin and, after studying composition, counterpoint and piano at the Berlin University of the Arts, he took a job as a repetiteur at the Deutsche Oper. His first appearances as a pianist and accompanist were towards the end of the 1960s. In the early 1970s, he became a member of the Akademie der Künste and held a professorship in contemporary song at the Hochschule der Künste from 1983 to 1998. His reputation as a composer has increased greatly with several great literary operas, including Lear and Das Schloss (The Castle). Besides these, he has written chamber music, orchestral works and songs. He has been honoured repeatedly, including the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Order of Merit of Berlin. In 2011 he was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize "for his life's work". Another recent new discovery for Mr CBQ...
J Stamitz - Concerto in C major for Violin and String-Orchestra 2. Adagio (3:58)
from Konzerte der Mannheimer Schule
Stamitz's family came from Marburg (today Maribor in Slovenia). He 1734–1735 at the University of Prague, leaving after just one year to pursue a career as a violin virtuoso. His activities during the six-year period between his departure from the university in 1735 and his appointment in Mannheim around 1741 are not precisely known. He was appointed by the Mannheim court in 1741 or 1742. Most likely, his engagement there resulted from contacts made during the Bohemian campaign and coronation of Carl Albert (Karl VII) of Bavaria, a close ally of the Elector Palatine. In January 1742, Stamitz performed before the Mannheim court as part of the festivities surrounding the marriage of Karl Theodor, who succeeded his uncle Karl Philipp as Elector Palatine less than a year later; Carl Albert was among the wedding guests. Stamitz married Maria Antonia Luneborn on July 1, 1744. Three of their five children survived infancy, Carl Philipp (whose music was featured earlier in this playlist), Maria and Anton. In the late summer of 1754, Stamitz started a year long visit to Paris, which induced him to publish his Orchestral Trios, Op. 1 (actually symphonies for string orchestra). He probably returned to Mannheim around the autumn of 1755. He died there in spring 1757, less than two years later, at the age of just 39. The entry of his death reads: “March 30, 1757. Buried, Jo’es Stainmiz, director of court music, so expert in his art that his equal will hardly be found. Rite provided”. Indeed...
Tippett – Piano Sonata No 1, Presto (3:49)
from Piano Sonatas Nos 1 - 3
Tippett (1905 – 1998) was an English composer who rose to prominence during and immediately after the Second World War. In his lifetime he was considered to rank with his contemporary Benjamin Britten as one of the leading British composers of the 20th century. Tippett's talent developed slowly. He withdrew or destroyed his earliest compositions, and was 30 before any of his works were published. Until the mid-to-late 1950s his music was broadly lyrical in character, before changing to a more astringent and experimental style, an example of which is the present piece. New influences, including those of jazz and blues after his first visit to America in 1965, became increasingly evident in his compositions. While Tippett's stature with the public continued to grow, not all critics approved of these changes in style, some believing that the quality of his work suffered as a consequence. From around 1976 Tippett's late works began to reflect the works of his youth through a return to lyricism. Although he was much honoured in his lifetime, critical judgement on Tippett's legacy has been uneven, the greatest praise being generally reserved for his earlier works. His centenary in 2005 was a muted affair; apart from the few best-known works, performances of his music have been infrequent in the 21st Century...
Richter - String Quartet In B Flat, Op. 5/2 - 3. Fugato Presto (2:35)
from Music at the Court of Mannheim
Hearing the string quartets of Richter was what started off my recent acquisition of several of the pieces heard in this playlist. Franz Xavier, František Xaver or François Xavier Richter (1709 – 1789) was an Austro-Moravian singer, violinist, composer, conductor and music theoretician who spent most of his life first in Austria and later in Mannheim and in Strasbourg, where he was music director of the cathedral. From 1783 on, Haydn’s favourite pupil Ignaz Pleyel, was his deputy at the cathedral. The most traditional of the first generation composers of the Mannheim school, he was highly regarded in his day as a contrapuntist. As a composer he was equally at home in the concerto and the strict church style. Mozart heard a mass by Richter on his journey back from Paris to Salzburg in 1778 and called it charmingly written. He is one of the first conductors to actually have conducted with a music sheet roll in his hand. He wrote chiefly symphonies, concertos for woodwinds, trumpet, chamber and church music, his masses receiving special praise. He was a man of a transitional period, and his symphonies in a way constitute one of the missing links between the generation of Bach and Handel and the Viennese classicists. Although sometimes contrapuntal in a learned way, Richter’s orchestral works nevertheless exhibit considerable drive and verve. Until a few years ago Richter "survived" only with recordings of his trumpet concerto in D major but, recently, a number of chamber orchestras and ensembles have taken many of his pieces, particularly symphonies and concertos, in their repertoire. But I particlarly enjoy his string quartets...
Taketi Uloomu – Shilded in Shadow (2:56)
from The Fifth Season
This comes from the new twelve track record from the New York based composer Kyo Hiraki. Recorded in London and New York during 2013, it has a more pop-electronica feel than her previous releases, without abandoning her brooding, ambient and experimental qualities. The music's filmic nature reflects an obsession with science fiction, mystery and horror films and collages retro and contemporary, analogue and digital to create atmospheric sound worlds which also reference the influences of soundtrack composition, krautrock, electro and hip hop...
Thomas Köner – Des Rives (7:55)
from Zyklop
Köner is a German multimedia artist whose main interest lies in combining visual and auditory experiences. He's been noted for his use of low frequencies and he works between installation, sound art and ambient music as well as being one half of the Porter Ricks dub techno duo. The track featured here is taken from a collection of five installation productions dating from 1998-2002 - long, quiet stretches of carefully textured ambience created for museum exhibits. It's music which rewards repeated listening and Köner has definitely become one of my favourite artists over the last 12 months...
Cloudland Blue Quartet - SS SQ XIX 4th Movement (alt version) (10:00)
Currently Unreleased
Closing off this week's playlist is a track recorded in January this year using spoken word and computer software. However, it's not the finished article
described in this blog entry, rather it's a couple of actions back from that - the inclusion of this early version was an accident on my part but I've decided to leave it be - a bit of a rarity for the future perhaps, or perhaps not...
Hope you enjoy the podcast and will pop by again next week...
