Britten Conducts Britten, And The Silently Growing Classical Catalogue On Spotify

The first search I did in Spotify was The Beatles, as for every online music service I tried, just to check it's legal status, because the Fabs' music hasn't gone digital anywhere. Then, if memory serves me right, I searched "Britten Tenor Horn". I was looking for Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (background info), one of the most heartachingly beautiful pieces of the 20th century. I was glad that I found a couple of recordings, only a wee bit disappointed that the performance conducted by Britten himself and featuring his lifelong lover, tenor Peter Pears, was not available.

From last week on, I sensed that Spotify was adding a lot of classical albums into their library, according to the official blog, 300,000 tracks of all kinds of music were added last week, but the New On Spotify page seems only show a small portion of it. I guess that record labels now even don't bother to promote their newly added classical albums by tagging them '"new". What a shame. I found both Gilels and Arrau's Beethoven piano sonatas box-set appeared on Spotify this week, probably two of the best studio recordings of the New Testament of the piano literature, and the promising debut from the Chinese pianist Yujia Wang, previously not available to the UK listeners. Last month I searched for label:Deutsche-Grammophon, only some 200 albums. Right now, 1222 albums! It's unbelievable to me that neither of Spotify and DG is promoting this update.

OK the good news, and personally the best Spotify news in a long time, is that three out of the four volumes of Britten Conducts Britten are on Spotify now! Here's the Spotify playlist: Britten Conducts Britten (572 tracks, 1.5 days). I also put in Peter Grimes and Albert Herring conducted by Britten, and I will substitute them with Vol.1 when it's available.

Samuel Barber Centenary Playlist On Spotify

Tomorrow is Barber's 100th Birthday. Let's celebrate by listening to one of his works that is NOT the Adagio For Strings.

Some interesting links: The Life And Music Of Samuel Barber on NPR, An Adagio for Strings, and for the Ages on NYT, Out of the Classical Closet: Great Music by Gay Composers on Leonard Link, and the Barber story told by Gay For Today.

The Spotify Playlist: Samuel Barber: Complete Works (198 tracks, 14.4 hours, sorted by opus numbers) For the list of compositions and introductions to his important works, go to this wiki page.

New Release: Thomas Adès – Tevot, Violin concerto, Couperin Dances

"One of the most accomplished and complete musicians of his generation."  - The New York Times on Thomas Adès, June 2005 

Let's take a break from Brahms and breathe some fresh air. Here's a brand new release from EMI Classics, out on this Monday!

 Thomas Ades – Tevot, Violin concerto, Couperin Dances(Spotify Link)

World premiere release of four of Thomas Adès' new works recorded live, partly conducted by the composer himself, and, in the case of Tevot, by Sir Simon Rattle with the BPO.

More details on EMI's official site.

I heard about this release from EMI Classics on Twitter earlier this week then did a search in Spotify, at that time no result, so I listened to Adès' Powder Her Face instead that night... Today I was browsing through Afront's New On Spotify Page and saw this one. Kudos to EMI, for bring the classics as well as exciting contemporary works to music lovers worldwide, and syncing with spotify so efficiently:)

A Sea of Timbres: Higdon's Percussion Concerto

A female composer, a female conductor, and a percussion concerto!

At times it sounds a bit like Béla Bartók's Music For Strings, Percussion & Celesta, but with a shifted emphasis almost recklessly focused on the different timbres of percussion. There are many fascinating  examples of contemporary classical composers' use of percussion, Reich's Drumming, Lachenmann's Interieur I, and Wilco's drummer Glenn Kotche's solo works on Nonesuch is well worth a spin. When fragment of John Adams' Nixon In China begins to play in Sid Meier's Civilization IV, you know for sure that you have entered the modern age.

Here's Higdon's Percussion Concerto on Spotify:

James MacMillan – Macmillan: The Confession Of Isobel Gowdie / Adès: Chamber Symphony / Higdon: Percussion Concerto

Conducted by Marin Alsop, here's her writing on Higdon:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104464863

Happy listening, and I hope someday someone will make another Shining for Higdon's deep yet exciting music:)