Classical Music for Aficionados

Well Len I'm sure The University of Wisconsin was glad to have you as you too seem a very intelligent and worldly chap. Just earlier tonight I was copying some Scottish stuff for my daughter to put on her little personal MP3 player and one of the things was The Corries Strings and Things. This is a very iconic set of recordings and it is showing it's age now but the songs still stir the heart. Two of my favourites from it are Garten Mother's Lulaby and Jock O' Hazeldean and I have never heard those songs bettered by anyone. My wife and I used to go to the Ayr Town Hall every December to see The Corries and we just loved them. The collection of instruments the two of them had was mind blowing and they didn't just doole with them they really could play them and Roy Williamson actually built a lot of them. It was a really sad day for folk music when Williamson died of a brain tumor. Ronnie Brown the other member of the duo just couldn't sing after that which was sad as he had a lovelly tenor voice.

Jeremy,   I am just now getting a chance to listen to the recording of the sixteen year old doing the Paganinni Rhapsody. After a shaky start she has settled down and is really playing the piece for all she's worth. I have to say it is one of my favourite pieces for piano and orchestra and people I have seen live playing it reads like a "who's who" . Vying for top place were an electrifying Ashkenazy, A very skilled Pletnev and in the slightly lower ranks, Osborne,Hough,Lill and Beresovsky.

jim I’ll check the Corries , never heard them .Zenith of my Scottish music was I got to eat dinner across from Andy Steward after a solo concert in Cornwall , Ontario .
Was a very nice and humble guy , we discussed how rotten it was that a Scottish working man could nae fish a Scottish river because some Englishman had the sole rights to . A soft spoken but passionate man .
Thanks for the kind words . I know I ’m not dumb but no more more intelligent than your self . I have many Asian friends and a few Jewish ones , they know the home truth that you either do your home work or
you don’t . You can’t live long enough to know what is and is not without reading .
I don't listen to much Gallic music because it  makes me sad .

Yes Len please do check out the Corries  as you being an adopted Scot they should stir your heart strings . Roy Williamson from the duo actually wrote Flower of Scotland which has become our now adopted national anthem overtaking Scot W'a Hae written by Burns. Still can't sing them without floods of tears. Did you know that your Declaration of Independence was actually written with our Declaration of Arbroath in mind which was set out by Robert the Bruce in 1320 and I have seen the only copy now in existance in The Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh who put it on display for a couple of days in 2014 to celebrate the 700th anniversary of The Battle of Bannockburn which gave us freedom from Englsh tyrrany.Now onto something completely different and this time music as I am really sorry to be taking over the discussion . Has anyone heard the new recording of Beethoven's Septet in E flat Major Op.20 by The OSM Chamber Soloists. It is seriously good and Len and RV it is on the Idagio site with superb sound quallity, just watch the volume as like all rcordings that have French Horns and bassoons in them they do have to be rained in. You guys have a happy and music filled weekend, Jim.

Another recording to suggest to you is a Scriabin disc by Yevgeny Sudbin on the Bis label. It has some of his early stuff and some when he was experimenting with tonallity but thank goodness not atonallty. It also has my all time fovourite Scriabin piece the Sonata Fantasie No2 in G sharp minor Op.19. It has a very dreamy haunting first movement and then all hell breaks loose in the final movement. Have to say that of the new Russian influences pianists I think in my mind anyway he is the best of the lot but with the exception of Volodos . He certainly has a wonderful way with Scriabin and certainly I think better than Hamelin.