Month: October 2019

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Hymn of the Cherubim (from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, op. 41)

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This YouTube music video has been viewed more than 5 million times (and there have been more than 3,500 comments posted), both of which indicate that people find that this music engages their emotions to a remarkable extent. Of course, I am speaking in the context of a genre (sacred classical music) that is a subset of a genre (classical music) that is, at best, a minority enthusiasm. What is classical music’s market share today? One source pegs classical’s share of “total music album consumption” (whatever that is) for the year 2018 at (drum roll, please): 1%.

In stark contrast, US rock band One Republic’s official YouTube music video for their single “Counting Stars” has had 2.8 BILLION views. Sigh.

I refuse to take heart from the fact that there is a genre that is even less popular than classical music, in part because that poor tattered remnant is what is left of New Age. Point five of one percent (0.5%)! But I am sure that the music on the above video would warm many a New Age heart. I have previously written and said, many times, that Renaissance Polyphony was the original “New Age” music. (I know—the above is not from the Renaissance, and also it doesn’t really contain much in the way of polyphony—what’s going on is more like slow-moving harmonies; but the spirit is the same.)

I think that there are many well-known composers (but of course there are also many exceptions to this little rule of mine) whose best-known work or works are not representative of the majority of their output. Furthermore, I believe that the better-known the most famous work is, the more likely is the case that the famous work doesn’t provide a ghost of a clue to the greatness of that composer’s best works. The poster child for this syndrome (of course) is poor Maurice Ravel, whose Bolero is… what it is… . That said, listening to Bolero, you would never guess that the same guy could write all of Le tombeau de Couperin; Miroirs; Daphnis et Chloé Suite no. 2; and Ravel’s String Quartet.

The same goes for Edward Elgar. “Land of Hope and Glory” is the soundtrack to a kindergarten “graduation” from a Peanuts animated special, which I think is a sly allusion to the number of “real” graduations where it can be heard. But nowhere in evidence in “Land of Hope and Glory” is the greatness of Elgar’s cello concerto, or his violin concerto, or his two symphonies. To say nothing of The Dream of Gerontius.

By now you might have guessed where I have been going with this. Tchaikovsky’s Overture “1812”—and The Nutcracker—almost everyone has to agree, don’t sound like they came from the pen of the chap who wrote the music in the video above. In Tchaikovsky’s “Hymn of the Cherubim” there is no bombast and no sugary cuteness. The entire Liturgy is worth your hearing it. After the jump, I will tell you what I have been able to learn about the recording on this video, and offer buying (or streaming suggestions). Continue Reading →

Steinway & Sons Streaming: An Excellent No-Cost Music Source

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Steinway & Sons’ Spirio Playback Piano.
Image courtesy of Steinway.

I felt a rueful twinge when legendary piano builder Steinway & Sons took itself private and as a result was de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange. My nostalgic or sentimental reason was that Steinway & Sons’ NYSE stock-ticker symbol long had been LVB, an homage to Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven’s piano sonatas are generally regarded as the distilled essence of greatness in piano music.

Apart from that, as far as I can tell, jumping out of the goldfish bowl that is the NYSE has done wonders for Steinway. In 2014, Steinway came out with the Spirio, a piano (available in two sizes) that includes the most sophisticated piano-playback technology (a non-MIDI system) ever to reach commercial critical mass. More recently, Steinway has begun offering a record-and-playback version of the Spirio. Steinway’s biggest challenge at the moment is building enough Spirio pianos to meet the demand. Good for them.

Under New Management, Steinway also launched their own CD label (they have also released a few SACDs). They embarked upon an ambitious recording agenda, for which they built a new, state-of-the-art performance-and-recording hall. So that you can hear the complete recordings before you buy the CDs or download the audio files, Steinway has created a dedicated streaming site that offers commercial-free play of complete albums from Steinway & Sons Recordings. There are also informative reviews posted for many of the albums. Steinway & Sons CDs are available from Amazon; hi-res files, from 24/44.1 to 24/192 (varying by title) are available from HDTracks.

I asked Eric Feidner, Steinway’s VP for Music, Media, and Technology, to tell me about what “getting into the record business” has meant for the 166-year old firm.

At Steinway, our very long history with performing artists goes back to the 1800s, with legendary pianists such as Anton Rubinstein and Ignace Paderewski. In recent decades, the “Steinway Artist” program has been a central part of the company. We started the record label about 10 years ago as a natural outgrowth of our relationships with Steinway Artists.

As we moved into the development of the Steinway Spirio, we faced a critical need to create a catalog of “high resolution” music to embed in the world’s finest player piano—we send our Spirio owners new playlists every month. Because there was no such content available elsewhere, we had to build our own. There are now close to 4,000 works in the Spirio catalog.

The Spirio piano’s development and the Spirio catalog’s development processes inevitably became symbiotic with the record label, as through these, we developed techniques to produce commercial audio recordings with far greater efficiency and with remarkably consistent levels of technical and sonic quality. Making recordings and building pianos are now very closely intertwined at Steinway & Sons.

After the jump, recommendations for a baker’s dozen (13) great CDs that you can hear in their entirety at no cost! Continue Reading →