Tune Surfing - February 2011
Charlotte Smith
Friday, January 7, 2011
Music lovers stateside have a fine new destination for downloading their music – and temptingly it offers music from a very broad selection of about 50 record labels, with majors and independents well balanced. Ariama (ariama.com) has been created by Sony but it lives as an independent entity, separate from its parent company (so no special treatment for Sony artists!).
The design is clean, it’s easy to navigate and the environment feels right for classical music – and the editorialising is informed and well written (you can find a fair number of Gramophone reviews on the site and we are an Ariama media partner, so we must declare an interest). There’s also a genuine sense of a shared passion for classical music and its world throughout the site (a large listing of Grammy Award nominees was posted very soon after details were released, for example).
Downloads are offered either as 320kbps MP3 files or as lossless FLAC. The site has a handy download manager which makes the process pretty easy, although you can still download individual files.
The FAQs are clear and easy to follow, and the whole site feels as if it has been put together by a group of people who have experience of acquiring their music digitally, who have a nice sense of design and who realise that downloads are different from CDs (a fault committed by quite a few digital stores with their obession with labels and sub-labels). You can also buy CDs and SACDs from the site – so even if you’re not into downloading, it’s worth exploring.
A European launch is not far off, so I’ll let non-US readers know when it’s available to explore (currently, the rest of the world can browse but not purchase).
Another good excuse to plan a quick holiday to the States is the news that the Los Angeles Philharmonic has signed a deal with NCM Fathom to offer three performances from its new season in selected cinemas across the US. Via high-definition cameras and 5.1 digital surround sound, music lovers will be able to watch the LAPO’s charismatic young music director Gustavo Dudamel in action in a trio of concerts starting on January 9 (music by Adams, Bernstein and Beethoven). The concerts are all supplemented by live interviews with Gustavo Dudamel, soloists and LA Phil musicians, rehearsal footage of preparation for the concert and a live post-concert question-and-answer session with Dudamel. The concerts take place at 2pm West Coast time, which means that East Coast audiences will be able to watch them live at 5pm. The other two concerts are on March 13 (an all-Tchaikovsky programme with a Shakespearean theme) and on June 5 (Brahms’s Fourth Symphony and Double Concerto, with brothers Renaud and Gautier Capuçon). More details on the LAPO’s website (laphil.com).
European audiences, incidentally, have the chance to see and hear the LAPO in the flesh this January and February, as Dudamel leads the orchestra on a seven-city tour (London’s Barbican plays host on January 27 and 28).
Should you be interested in the Specialist Classical Chart – and weekly updates
are carried online at gramophone.co.uk – you can listen again to the weekly
coverage of the Chart on BBC Radio 3’s Breakfast. Rob Cowan and Sara Mohr-Pietsch dip into the risers and fallers each Tuesday after 8am – but now you can download a podcast of that segment of the programme and listen at your convenience. Just go to
bbc.co.uk/podcasts.
I was at a recording session recently and, rather late in the day, it was suggested to the pianist in question that as a bonus to the two large Schumann works on the menu, “Träumerei” from Kinderszenen might make a nice bonus for iTunes. The music was not to hand and a series of frantic phone-calls resulted in a faxed copy and – finally – a rather lovely performance. Well, a website called Piano Street could have solved the matter rather more swiftly! It contains thousands of piano scores that are easily downloadable and printable. I thought I’d try out “Träumerei” and within a minute it was sitting on my printer ready to be played. If you play the piano, it’s a resource well worth exploring: just visit pianostreet.com and register as a Silver member to access three free downloads. The site works on a subscription basis.
There are all sorts of editorial features, forums and extras on the site. I particularly enjoyed revisiting the NVC Arts documentary, The Art of Piano: Great Pianists of the 20th Century, which contains footage of many of the piano legends, including Horowitz, Rubinstein (a wonderful Chopin Heroic Polonaise), Rachmaninov, Gould, Cortot, Paderewski and Cziffra – to select just a few of the 18 pianists featured. I found Dame Myra Hess in the first movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata (clearly filmed in wartime, with half the audience in uniform) quite extraordinary – a rock-solid technique and an ability to invest the music with colossal power that is simply breathtaking.
The anointing by Gramophone of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s superb Monteverdi Choir as the “World’s Greatest” calls for a download playlist (left), and though the period covered is necessarily wide (he founded the choir in 1964), the consistency down the years is quite remarkable. I have to include one of the albums from the 2000 Bach Cantata Pilgrimage and have opted for the disc which took Recording of the Year in 2005 – music-making caught on the wing during one of the most ambitious and rewarding projects ever undertaken. As a devoted Brahmsian, I await his new German Requiem with impatience, but as consolation have put in the disc that includes the wonderful Begräbnisgesang, a piece that draws on a similar language. From his DG years, musts are Haydn’s The Creation and the Gramophone Award-winning Beethoven Missa solemnis. The disc that couples Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms with works by Lili Boulanger finds the francophile Gardiner and his choir on top form – and in that vein the Philips disc of Fauré’s Requiem is quite wonderful too. The Award-winning Percy Grainger disc is another favourite, and the Verdi Requiem is surely one of the work’s great recordings. From the operatic catalogue – and to demonstrate further the Monteverdi Choir’s adaptability – I’d add Lehár’s The Merry Widow and Mozart’s Così fan tutte.
The Essential Download Playlist No 38 - Monteverdi Choir
Bach Cantatas Vol 1 EBS /Gardiner (SDG) IT, eM, A, CO
Beethoven Missa solemnis EBS /Gardiner (Archiv) DG, iT, A
L Boulanger. Stravinsky LSO /Gardiner (DG) DG, iT, A
Brahms Begräbnisgesang etc ORR /Gardiner (SDG) IT, eM, A, CO
Fauré Requiem ORR /Gardiner (Philips) DG, iT, A
Grainger Choral works English Country Gardiner Orch /Gardiner (Philips) DG, iT, A
Haydn Die Schöpfung EBS /Gardiner (Archiv) DG, iT, A
Lehár Die lustige Witwe VPO /Gardiner (DG) DG, iT, A
Mozart Così fan tutte EBS /Gardiner (Archiv) DG, iT, A
Verdi Requiem ORR /Gardiner (Philips) DG, iT, A
eM = eMusic DG = DG Webshop iT = iTunes A = Ariama (US & Canada only) CO = Classics Online
James Jolly