I want to draw your attention to a fantastic new recording of Miklós Rózsa’s film score El Cid. This lavish complete edition – spread across three CDs – is performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus and conducted by Nic Raine.
El Cid is possibly Rózsa’s greatest score for an historical epic, which means it is among the great film scores in Hollywood history. There have been a number of (incomplete) recordings issued since the film’s premiere in 1961, but nothing on the scale of this new album. I applaud the philanthropic efforts of James Fitzpatrick, of Tadlow Music, who is responsible for realising this ambitious project.
See the Tadlow Music website for MP3 clips and ordering details (Tadlow is offering free shipping anywhere in the world).
Back in January I reviewed Brian Wilson’s new song cycle, That Lucky Old Sun, which was performed in full at the Sydney Festival. The album recording, taped in the months after the festival performance, is already out on 180 gram vinyl (CD to follow in a couple of weeks). The entire recording is currently accessible in free online streaming audio at a host of newspaper websites including USA Today.
The extent of Wilson’s composing collaboration with Scott Bennett and Van Dyke Parks is still to be determined: certainly this is not the one-man-show of the Pet Sounds era. Still, I stand by my claim back in January that this new song cycle is “probably the most important piece of (mostly) new Brian Wilson music since The Beach Boys Love You back in 1978.” The album fulfills all the promise of the live performance and the demo bootleg which has been floating around the internet for the last year. It is great to hear Wilson (& Co?) orchestrating his music again with his characteristic panache and idiosyncrasies. No more trend-chasing production that has marred Wilson’s previous solo LPs. While Brian Wilson will always sound like 1988 and Imagination will always sound like 1998, That Lucky Old Sun should sound as timeless as Pet Sounds, Smile and Friends.
I was pleased to learn that one of my short stories, ‘Gut Bucket Blues’, has won second prize in the Australian National Jazz Writing Competition 2008. The winners were announced at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival on Saturday 23 August.
The story will be published in the first issue of a new journal called Extempore. This is to be launched at the end of October at the Wangaratta Jazz Festival and will be available at selected bookshops and online from 1 November.
The title of my story is borrowed from Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five’s classic tune recorded 12 November 1925 in Chicago. Here is an offsite link to an MP3.
It’s low and high brow all at once at Honey for the Bears.
In addition to my taste for Bondsploitation flicks, I have had a long affection for the works of Mozart. His music was particularly useful back when I was a director of student theatre and short films. I once used excerpts from the A major Clarinet Quintet (KV 581) and a horn arrangement of his Adagio and Fugue in C minor (KV 546) as incidental music in a play. My own piano reduction of the Serenade No. 11 for Wind Instruments (KV 375) provided the score for one of my short films.
Recently I was given Mozart’s Complete Works in a set of 170 compact discs. This is a product of a Dutch label, Brilliant Classics, who have created similar complete sets for Bach and Beethoven. Whereas the Mozart box from Philips (now part of the Vivendi-Universal conglomerate) costs something comparable to an air ticket from Sydney to London, the Brilliant Classics box was on special at Amazon France for forty-two euros plus fifteen euros postage to Australia. I like that democratic spirit. It is as good a buy as this German 40 CD box set of Duke Ellington’s 1924-1947 recordings which I bought in Sydney for AU$50.
The Mozart collection is about as big as a shoebox, with paper sleeves for each of the CDs. There is no booklet, but instead a CD-ROM containing extensive notes in English with libretti in the original language (unfortunately without English translation). These liner notes in PDF format are easily searched but not necessarily convenient. I may eventually supplement the box with a copy of the well-respected Compleat Mozart edited by Neal Zaslaw and William Cowdery (and a copy, if I can find it, of Nico Castel’s two volume Libretti of Mozart’s Completed Operas).
Brilliant Classics originally released this project across 26 separate categorised boxes of varying size. To simplify things, the complete box is divided into 9 colour-coded volumes or categories: 1) symphonies; 2) concertos; 3) serenades, divertimenti, & dances; 4) chamber music including violin sonatas; 5) works for small string ensembles; 6) keyboard works; 7) sacred works; 8) concert arias, songs & canons; and 9) operas. The box contains both new recordings (generally by Dutch performers) and recent recordings licensed from other labels. The emphasis appears to be on performances with period instruments.
I have been long familiar with Mozart’s major works as well as a few of the more obscure pieces. I decided to begin by revisiting some favourites. I tried the Concerto for Flute, Harp & Orchestra in C major (KV 299) as performed by Marc Grauwels (fl) and Giselle Herbert (hp) with Bernard Lebadie conducting Les Violons du Roy. I’m a sucker for the sensual qualities of orchestration, and the combined timbre of the two solo instruments is delightful. This recording features clearly articulated readings by the flute and harp. The andantino movement is handled with gorgeous delicacy. The orchestra is well-balanced and betrays no low-budget carelessness. I hope that this level of performance is consistent throughout the set. The indications are good. Reviews have been generally very favourable. MusicWeb International reviewed individual volumes of the collection in its original 26 box configuration. Many of the reviews turn up in MusicWeb’s search function.
Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker in 2006 about transferring the Philips Mozart edition onto an Ipod as MP3 files (it demanded 9.77GB, so I presume Ross encoded at a low-quality 128kbs). I estimate, averaging an hour per CD, the Brilliant Classics Mozart box would take about fifteen gigabytes if encoded at a more listenable 192kbs (or 25GB at 320kbs).
Of course close to two hundred hours of music is daunting. This box is a long-term prospect. I suspect I will never get to many of the minor works. But I am happy to have all the operas and symphonies and string quartets in easy digital form to complement the secondhand LPs I’ve collected over the years.
Posted by matthewasprey 
Back in January 
Posted by matthewasprey 
Posted by matthewasprey 
