Meeting in Music: Angelich N

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Following the guide below you will be able to create the ultimate HQ rip and upload for sharing here at the Meeting in Music Internet Community or on your own blog if you have one.

RIPPING A CD USING EXACT AUDIO COPY (EAC)

1. Start Exact Audio Copy and load the clean and scratchless CD into you drive.
2. Pressing ALT+G will pull track and album info from the FreeDB database if this feature is set up properly.
3. If no info is found the CD is not registered in the database and you will have to type in the info manually.
4. Adjust the Drive Settings according to the model of your drive and enable the ”Create Log-file” option.
5. Adjust the Compression Settings to rip in Flac format at 768 kBit/s. Alternatively rip in the Ape fomat.
6. Rip the CD by pressing Action -> Test & Copy Image & Create CUE Sheet -> Compressed...
7. Check the log-file to see if any ripping errors or AccurateRip inaccuracies were registered.

SCANNING THE COVERS OF THE ALBUM

1. Scans of the front and back covers should be included if available as should the booklet. 300dpi is standard.

COMPRESSING THE FOLDER USING WINRAR

1. Wrap the audio files and images in a folder marked the composer and album name etc.
2. Set Compression method to ”Store” and the volume size to 200000000. Add a 3% recovery record.
3. Compress the folder using a not-too-obvious filename.

UPLOADING TO A FILEHOST AND SHARING WITH THE WORLD

Now all you need to do is to upload the rar-files to a filehost of your choice. Mega.nz is the standard and most stable option but there are many others and some services even feature upload to multiple filehosts. Finally the download links are ready to be presented on your blog.

THE MEDIEVAL ERA (600 - 1450)

At around 500 AD, western civilization began to emerge from the period known as “The Dark Ages”, the time when invading hordes of Vandals, Huns and Visigoths overran Europe and brought an end to the Roman Empire. For the next ten centuries, the newly emerging Christian Church would dominate Europe, administering justice, instigating “Holy” Crusades against the East, establishing universities, and generally dictating the destiny of music, art and literature

During this time, Pope Gregory I is generally believed to have collected and codified the music known as Gregorian Chant, which was the approved music of the Church. Much later, the University at Notre Dame in Paris saw the creation of a new kind of music called organum.

Secular music was sung all over Europe by the troubadours and trouvères of France, and it was during the Middle Ages that western culture saw the arrival of the first great name in music, Guilliame de Machaut.

THE RENAISSANCE ERA (1450 - 1600)

Generally considered to be from c.1420 to 1600, the Renaissance (which literally means “rebirth”) was a time of great cultural awakening and a flowering of the arts, letters, and sciences throughout Europe.

With the rise of humanism, sacred music began for the first time to break free of the confines of the Church, and a school of composers trained in the Netherlands mastered the art of polyphony in their settings of sacred music. One of the early masters of the Flemish style was Josquin des Prez. These polyphonic traditions reached their culmination in the unsurpassed works of Giovanni da Palestrina.

The late Renaissance also saw in England the flourishing of the English madrigal, the best known of which were composed by such masters as John Dowland, William Byrd, Thomas Morley and others.

THE BAROQUE ERA (1600 - 1750)

Named after the popular ornate architectural style of the time, the Baroque period (c.1600 to 1750) saw composers beginning to rebel against the styles that were prevalent during the High Renaissance. Many monarchs employed composers at their courts, where they were little more than servants expected to churn out music for any desired occasions. The greatest composer of the period, Johann Sebastian Bach, was such a servant. Yet the best composers of the time were able to break new musical ground, and in so doing succeeded in creating an entirely new style of music.

The instrumental concerto became a staple of the Baroque era, and found its strongest exponent in the works of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Harpsichord music achieved new heights, due to the works of such masters as Domenico Scarlatti and others. But vocal and choral music still reigned supreme during this age, and culminated in the operas and oratorios of German-born composer George Frideric Handel.

THE CLASSICAL ERA (1750 - 1820)

From roughly 1750 to 1820, artists, architects, and musicians moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque and the Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought reminiscent of Classical Greece.

At this time the Austrian capital of Vienna became the musical centre of Europe, and works of the period are often referred to as being in the Viennese style. Composers came from all over Europe to train in and around Vienna, and gradually they developed and formalized the standard musical forms that were to dominate European musical culture for the next several decades. The Classical period reached its majestic culmination with the masterful symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets by the three great composers of the Viennese school: Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

During the same period, the first voice of the burgeoning Romantic musical ethic can be found in the music of Viennese composer Franz Schubert.

THE ROMANTIC ERA (1820 - 1910)

The earliest Romantic composers were all born within a few years of each other in the early years of the nineteenth century. These include the great German masters Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann; the Polish poet of the piano Frédéric Chopin; the French genius Hector Berlioz; and the greatest pianistic showman in history, the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. The field of Italian opera was dominated by Giuseppe Verdi, while German opera was virtually monopolized by Richard Wagner.

Composers like Antonin Dvorak began looking for ways in which they could express the musical soul of their homelands. Legends were therefore used as plots for operas, and folk melodies and dance rhythms were frequently used as inspiration for symphonies and instrumental music.

With the continued enhancement of instruments, plus the invention of new ones, the late Romantic composers of the second half of the nineteenth-century created richer and ever larger symphonies, ballets, and concertos. Two of the giants of this period are the German-born Johannes Brahms and the great Russian melodist Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY ERA (1910 - 1960)

In the early part of the twentieth century music became either outwardly expressive (as in the early symphonic poems of Richard Strauss, the huge symphonies of Gustav Mahler, or the operas of Giacomo Puccini), or more introverted (as in the so-called “impressionist” music of Claude Debussy). The previous century’s tide of Nationalism found a twentieth century advocate in the Hungarian Béla Bartók.

In a time of deepening psychological awareness, the expressionistic music of Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples germinated and flourished for a time.

Twentieth-century music has seen a great coming and going of various movements, among them post-romanticism, serialism and neo-classicism in the earlier years of the century, all of which were practiced at one time or another by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

Many of the greatest and best-known composers of the century, including Russian composers Sergei Rachmaninov, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich along with British composers William Walton and Benjamin Britten were those who wrote music directly descended from the approved models of the past, while investing these forms with a style and modernistic tone of their own.

THE LATE 20TH CENTURY ERA (1940 - 2000)

Composers of this era sought to free music from its rigidity, placing the performance above the composition. Similarly, many composers sought to break from traditional performance rituals by incorporating theatre and multimedia into their compositions, going beyond sound itself to achieve their artistic goals. In some cases the line is difficult to draw between genres. Composers were quick to adopt developing electronic technology. As early as the 1940s, composers such as Olivier Messiaen incorporated electronic instruments into live performance. Recording technology was used to produce art music, as well.

The musique concrète of the late 1940s and ’50s was produced by editing together natural and industrial sounds. Steve Reich created music by manipulating tape recordings of people speaking, and later went on to compose process music for traditional instruments based on such recordings. Other notable pioneers of electronic music include Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, and Krzysztof Penderecki.

As more electronic technology matured, so did the music. In the 1950s aleatoric music was first championed by American composer John Cage. Early minimalist compositions of the 1960s such as those by Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass stemmed from aleatoric and electronic music.

THE CONTEMPORARY ERA (from 1975)

In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being written in the present day. In the context of classical music the term has been applied to music written in the last quarter century or so, particularly works post-1975. Minimalism was practiced heavily throughout the latter half of the century and has carried over into the 21st century, with composers like Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and John Tavener working in the more popular “mystic minimalism” variant.

Recently there has been increasing stylistic variety, with far too many schools of composition to name or label. However, in general, there are three broad trends. The first is the continuation of modern avant-garde traditions, including musical experimentalism. The second are schools which sought to revitalize a tonal style based on previous common practice. The third focuses on non-functional triadic harmony, exemplified by composers working in the minimalist and related traditions.

1/14/2012

Brahms: Klavierstuecke Op.116-119 - Angelich

Johannes Brahms:
Klavierstuecke Op.116-119
Nicholas Angelich
Virgin Classics CD
.flac + .cue + .log

I didn't have time to find a suitable review. Although maybe not the very best, it is indeed pretty good.
Update: Rana provided a review (she actually provided three of them, but I only post the most enthusiastic among them hehehe!)
Update 2: the Maestro Sank has also provided another review

BBC Music Magazine, 03/2007, performance: *****, sound: *****
"Steering a balanced course between imaginative vitality and warmth on one side and resigned melancholy on the other can be difficult, but Nicholas Angelich manages it with a kind of panache. He takes you to the brink of inconsolable sadness one moment, only to put a refreshing spring in the step of a dance movement the next. The balancing extends in other directions. Brahms's piano writing can sound thrick and heavy-booted on modern pianos, but Angelich manages to keep the melody lines fluid and shapely, and brings light to the textures without emasculating that rich bass sound so typical of Brahms. The climax of the E flat minor Intermezzo (No. 6 of op. 118) sounds as deep and sonorous as Rachmaninov, yet how quickly Angelich recovers the piece's original delicacy in the music that follows - beautiful pedalling, too. For all his respect for tone weight, Angelich can also make Brahms sound deliciously light and transparent; the E major Intermezzo (No. 4 of op. 116) is virtually a sustained demonstration of this 'gossamer' Brahms, yet at no point does it feel as though Angelich has imposed a partisan view on the music - the colours and textures all seem to emerge quite naturally from the printed notes. The recording is round-toned and very clear, full and ripe in fortissimos, and just attentive enough to lead the ear inside the most fragile pianissimo. Very impressive all round."
- Stephen Johnson

Musicweb-International
Nicholas Angelich pulled a fast one on Virgin here. Or rather, a slow one. Let me explain. Brahms’s wonderful farewell to the piano, the twenty pieces making up his opp.116-119, were too long for a single disc in the LP era, but on CD the habit has grown of grouping them all together. A record purporting to be by Joyce Hatto takes a comfortable 72:40. A few minor repeats are omitted, but I doubt if they’d have added more than a couple of minutes to the length. On Brilliant, the slightly more expansive Håkon Austbø nevertheless comes in at 77:09 (see review). I have the famous Julius Katchen performances on LP, but his opp.117-119 take about ten minutes less than Angelich’s so there is plenty of space left for op.116 on CD. I note that DG have issued Wilhelm Kempff’s performances of all twenty pieces on a single disc. So when Virgin booked Angelich to record the series, no doubt they reckoned on getting a CD’s worth. The trouble is, his performances spread to 85 minutes …

Their solution is to issue a “twofer”, in which the short CD dedicated to just op.116 is described as a “bonus disc”. This brings the issue in line with other full price single-disc competitors. The trouble is, from Brilliant you get another “twofer”, with opp.116-119 on one disc and the other containing opp.10, 76 and 79. However, for reasons I will explain later, I personally wouldn’t consider Austbø acceptable at any price.

There’s always the risk, when a disc presents unusual features, of “reviewing” it before hearing it. When requesting these records from our Webmaster I added some such phrase as “with misgivings about the two CDs since one should be enough if the music is played at the proper tempo”. But of course, you can’t really pre-review musical performances in accordance with some mathematical principle. My misgivings were pretty well allayed as soon as the record started playing – I started from op.117, by the way. It’s true that in virtually every case Angelich opts for the slowest possible interpretation of Brahms’s directions. But only the slowest possible one. I found no case where he actually goes below the bottom line. By this I mean that there is no case where his tempo is so slow that his combination of clear phrasing and naturally warm tone cannot hold the listener. The music never falls apart, as it sometimes could in Glenn Gould’s curious takes on a selection of these pieces. He came closest to losing me in the F major Romance (op.118/5), but several of his competitors are rather heavy here too. I heard some appallingly personalized Brahms from Alexander Mogilevsky a while back (EMI CDM 5 67934 2) and was a little afraid I might be getting more of the same. But in terms of phrasing and dynamics these performances are generally faithful to the score and free of exaggerations.

What the cumulative effect of Angelich’s slowish tempi does do is to explore quite specifically – but never sentimentally – the more melancholy, tragic aspects of the slower pieces, and the more stoic aspects of the faster ones. If you turn to “Joyce Hatto” you will find in opp.117-119 a warmer-hearted, more equably tempered Brahms. One can imagine that this is how Clara Schumann might have illustrated these pieces to her pupils. In a centrally satisfying way, the pianist concerned plays these pieces rather as Sir Adrian Boult conducted the symphonies. As basic Brahms, you can hardly go wrong.

I should perhaps say that I began this review some time ago since I was sent a white label advance copy of the records. The Hatto scandal had not yet burst. I was partially tempted to expunge all references to this recording – which you will obviously not be able to obtain in that form – from the present review. On the other hand, when the pianist has been identified the comparisons will remain valid (see review). Note that I say opp.117-119, though. Listening to op.116, I get the idea it’s a composite version. No. 5 receives just about the most exquisitely poised performance you can imagine, sheer perfection. No.6 is out of line with the rest of the disc in being extraordinarily slow – slower than Angelich, though there is a rugged conviction to it. No.7 is tossed off almighty fast, and all three have a different acoustic. Rereading my original review was a little disconcerting. I find that I had duly noted all these signals, yet was unable or unwilling to see where they led.

To take up the threads from the paragraph above, just as I recognize that there are some listeners for whom Boult’s search for an ideal architectural balance swept some of the composer’s more troubled aspects under the carpet, so there will be listeners who find “Hatto” too comfortable. They might turn to Julius Katchen for a riveting exploration of Brahms’s exposed nerve-ends. When I first heard these performances years ago I resisted them, feeling they were so personalized as to be almost anarchic. In general, strongly personalized performances tend to lose their spell with repeated hearings, but in this case I have shifted my ground over the years. Every time I hear these performances I marvel anew at the way Katchen seemingly invents the works on the spot, while at the same time displaying such total sympathy with Brahms’s world that what would be aberrations in other hands sound like pure magic.

Other listeners again may well find Angelich’s deeply considered, expansive but not indulgent, performances their own point of entry into the world of late Brahms. At present the “Hatto” only proves that there are some more fine performances out there when we’ve found them. So Angelich can be warmly recommended, especially to those looking for sound a bit more modern than Katchen’s – or Kempff’s – early analogue stereo. I picked up the Austbø, encouraged by the very low price and also thinking, well you never know, it might be …. but it isn’t. Unfortunately he has a habit of playing chords slightly arpeggiated which I found quite intolerable. Its not just a question of left-hand-before-right, as many pianists of the old school used to do, quite often he seems to be playing a banjo not a piano. I didn’t get used to this as the disc went on, indeed, I found myself just waiting for each chord and asking “will he arpeggiate it or will he play it together?”. After a while, since I was not expected to review the disc, I gave up and just sampled here and there. If you don’t think this mannerism will worry you, his tempi and colouring are usually well chosen, though I did note a fast and rather insensitive op.116/6. And I must say I noted a few pieces, such as op.118/4, which perhaps do not lend themselves to his particular mannerism except occasionally, and emerge rather impressively.

I would like to offer now a few fairly random considerations.

I have already mentioned the beautiful “Hatto” performance of op.116/5. In op.118/4 the pianist attains a towering passion on the last page which I find unmatched elsewhere. His/her fierce steadiness in op.118/3 is also exceptional and I would rate him/her supreme in these three pieces.

In op.118/5 Julius Katchen attains a transparency of voicing and a liquid beauty which makes all the others sound a little lumpy. This Romance seems to belong to him alone.

In op.116/7 it is Angelich’s turn to stand above the others - but I haven’t heard Katchen in op.116 - with a massive, black, seething passion. He makes a real epic out of it and I hope to hear him in the op.79 Rhapsodies before too long.

Sviatoslav Richter’s op.119 is as intensely personal as Katchen’s, yet is achieved without the noddings and nudgings which make Katchen an acquired taste. If Katchen is exploratory, I would describe Richter as visionary. As ever, he is an artist of extremes, slower than anybody in nos. 1 and 3, faster than anybody in 2 and 4. The Richter recorded legacy of these three Brahms sets is the usual mix of abundance and frustration. Op.117 seems not to have interested him at all; scattered performances, some more official than others, exist of op.118 nos. 1, 3 and 6, plus all of op.119, usually singly, occasionally as a group. I personally listened to op.119 in an off-air taping of a broadcast recital he gave in Milan in 1965. This does not appear to have been published – maybe one of the several companies interested in Richter should be negotiating with RAI. The recital brings nothing new to the Richter discography – the other items are Beethoven op.31/3, Ravel Miroirs 2 and 3 and the Prokofiev 2nd Sonata – but neither of the other two complete performances of op.119 known to exist, both also from 1965, is available at the moment so it would fill a gap.

Staying with the Russians, Gilels’ op.116 (DGG) is famous, but I know his interpretation only from an off-the-air version of a live performance he gave in Milan at about the same time as the recording. Assuming the interpretation remained broadly similar, he has a noble simplicity in the first four which leaves all the others standing, but I am a little puzzled by his treatment of the remaining three.

The young Hélène Grimaud’s op.118 (Brilliant 92117 – 5 CDs but cheap ones - see review) is not wholly outclassed by all this competition. Basically hers is a homely approach closest to “Hatto” - it isn’t the “Hatto” in case anybody’s wondering - with occasional hints that she has been listening to Katchen. Surprisingly I liked her more than anybody in no.6 – surprisingly because such an intensely introspective piece would logically be furthest from the grasp of a teenager. I hope she will return to this repertoire on disc ere long.

One of my own teachers, Ilonka Deckers-Küszler, trained in an early 20th century Central Europe where Brahms was still a living memory. She would have the Rhapsodie op.119/4 go no faster than Angelich’s broadly majestic account. This may provide some authority for his tempo. On the other hand, she had the op.119/3 Intermezzo skip along in a way none of the pianists discussed so far do. Interestingly, this interpretation is provided by two other pianists whose roots went back at least as far. Moiseiwitsch makes a real charmer of the piece. If he seems too capricious for Brahms, Kempff’s Schubertian lilt is less easily dismissed and for me his is the outstanding interpretation of this particular intermezzo. I am speaking now about a BBC Legends release which includes this and op.119/1. Unfortunately I don’t know his DG recording which, on this showing, ought to have a great deal to offer. In op.119/1 he is alone among the pianists here to believe that, since the time signature is 3/8 not 3/4, Brahms’s Adagio refers to the bar not the single three beats within it. He therefore provides a more free-flowing version, and logically he is right.

The debate on how to perform these inexhaustible pieces could go on for ever. No performance can embrace everything that is in this music but it should be clear by now that anyone seeking a version in fine modern sound will find in Angelich a consistent and powerful interpreter. By emphasizing the bleak, tragic aspects of the music he causes it to look forward towards Mahler rather backwards towards Schubert. A distinctive achievement.

Christopher Howell READ MORE...