Guest Post: Classics Today 10/10 Albums

Another guest post from Sam Callahan, who shared some brilliant trumpet playlists earlier this year. It is a collaborative playlist and anyone who are interested can help to update it. I already discovered a fine recording from this playlist and updated my Shostakovich playlist with Pacifica Quartet's recording of Quartet No.5. Thanks, Sam!

-------------------

For years, Classics Today has been my go-to source for classical album reviews because of its enormous breadth and excellent writing. The reviewers rate CDs daily using a dual-number system, the first for "artistic quality" and the second for "sound quality," meaning the top possible rating is a "10/10".

This Spotify playlist is based on Classic Today's list of "Current 10/10 Reviews", which shows all reviews from the past month that received top honors. One track represents each each album on the list, sorted descending by review date. The playlist will be constantly updated to include new additions to the 10/10 list, but older CDs will still remain on the bottom of the playlist. Happy listening!

Playlist: Classics Today: Current 10/10 Reviews

Guest post by Sam Callahan

Benjamin Britten: Complete Chronological Catalogue in One Spotify Playlist

"It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony." - Benjamin Britten

"Benjamin Britten wrote some of the most appealing classical music of the twentieth century. As a boy he began by setting favourite poems to be sung by family and friends. Later, his life partner, Peter Pears, was a singer who provided inspiration for almost four decades. So it is not surprising that Britten is best known for his music for the voice: choral works, songs and song cycles, and - above all - a series of operas among the most engaging ever written. His first success in this genre, Peter Grimes, revived opera in English. Britten was also a master of orchestral writing, as his two most familiar works, the Four Sea Interludes and Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, make clear. He was equally committed to writing music for children and amateur performers as he was for leading soloists of the day such as cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. From the outset, Britten was the modern composer who did not want modern music to be just for 'the cultured few', and aimed always to be 'listenable-to'" - Britten-Pears Foundation

About this playlist: First I put in all the works with opus number (Op. 1-96), which were published almost strictly in the order of completion. Then I added dozens of unnumbered works (see list below), including three unused songs from Les Illuminations, and placed them in their chronological position after Britten-Pears Foundation's Britten Thematic Catalogue, which "will have catalogued all manuscript sources for both the juvenilia and the mature works by Britten's centenary in 2013".

• Quatre Chansons françaises (1928)
• Tit For Tat (1929)
• Untitled Fragment for Strings (1930)
• Quartettino (1930)
• A Hymn to the Virgin (1930, rev. 1934)
• Rondo Concertante (1930)
• String Quartet in D major (1931)
• Double Concerto in B minor (1932)
• Te Deum in C (1934)
• Two Insect Pieces (1935)
• The King's Stamp - Film score (1935)
• Coal Face - Film score (1935)
• Telegrams  - Film score (1935)
• Rossini Suite (The Tocher) - Film score (1935)
• Men Behind The Meters - Film score (1935)
• Negroes - Film score (1935)
• When You're Feeling Like Expressing Your Affection (1935)
• Three Divertimenti (1936)
• Night Mail - Film score (1936)
• Peace Of Britain (1936)
• Russian Funeral (1936)
• Around The Village Green - Film score (1936)
• Love From A Stranger - Film score (1936)
• The Way To The Sea - Film score (1936)
• Advance Democracy (1938)
• A.M.D.G (1939)
• Three unused songs from Les Illuminations (1939)
• Clarinet Concerto (unfinished) (1942)
• Folksong Arrangements, Vol. I "British Isles" (1942)
• Folksong Arrangements, Vol. II "France" (1942)
• Festival Te Deum (1944)
• Prelude and Fugue On A Theme of Vittoria (1946)
• Folksong Arrangements, Vol. III "British Isles" (1946)
• Men of Goodwill (1947)
• A Wedding Anthem (1949)
• Variation On An Elizabethan Theme (1953)
• Three Songs From The Heart of the Matter (1956)
• Folksong Arrangements, Vol. IV "Moore's Irish Melodies" (1957)
• In Memoriam Dennis Brain (1958)
• Folksong Arrangements, Vol. VI "England" (1958)
• Fanfare For St. Edmundsbury (1959)
• Folksong Arrangements, Vol. V "British Isles" (1959)
• Jubilate Deo (1961)
• The Twelve Apostles (1962)
• A Hymn of St. Columba (1962)
• Night Piece (1963)
• Untitled Piece (6 Variations) for Piano (1965)
• Children's Crusade (1969)
• Tema "Sacher" (1976)
• Lachrymae arranged for viola and small string orchestra (1976)
• Eight Folk Song Arrangements For Hight Voice and Harp (1976)

Songs from the six volumes of folksong arrangements were composed on various dates, and I used the completion date of the last song from each volume as the reference, hence Vol. 6 is placed before Vol. 5.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Benjamin Britten: Complete Chronological Catalogue (1071 tracks, total time: 62 hours) Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view. It features many classic performeces by Britten & Pears, as well as other fine new recordings, like the War Requiem by Masur, the Canticles by Ian Bostridge, and Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo by Nicholas Phan. I used recordings that are available both on Spotify UK and USA when possible. See this page for text used in the vocal works.

Happy 98th birthday.

Edward Elgar: Complete Works With Opus Number

"For thirty years after his death in 1934, his music was considered to be 'out of fashion'. It was said to epitomise the Edwardian era and to have no relevance to a later age. I believe, however, that it is far too great to be tied to one short period of history and that, in any case, it is music of so personal a nature that it can be described accurately not as 'Edwardian' but only as 'Elgarian'." Michael Kennedy - 'Portrait of Elgar'

"Those years had seen change accelerate as never before in human history. His response had been to seek the illumination of time remembered. For all those of his generation and the future who would feel the insight of retrospection, he had made of that evanescence his music." Jerrold Moore - 'Edward Elgar - A Creative Life'

The playlist collects Edward Elgar's complete works with opus number, including the unfinished Pomp And Circumstance March No. 6 and Symphony No.3 (both completed by Anthony Payne), and a few songs without opus number: two teenage songs are placed at the beginning, The Wind at Dawn after Op. 7, and four more songs from Seven Lieder of Edward Elgar are included together Op. 16. The last track of the playlist is a unused fragment from the NMC recording of the complete sketches for the Third Symphony, exactly as the composer left them.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Edward Elgar: Complete Works with Opus Number (390 tracks, total time: 32 hours) Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view. See list of works here.

Richard Wagner: Complete Chronological Catalogue

Richard Wagner was one of the most revolutionary figures in the history of music, a composer who made pivotal contributions to the development of harmony and musical drama that reverberate even today. Indeed, though Wagner occasionally produced successful music written on a relatively modest scale, opera -- the bigger, the better -- was clearly his milieu, and his aesthetic is perhaps the most grandiose that Western music has ever known. - AllMusic


Works in this playlist (operas are in bold):

• WWV 15: Seven Compositions on Goethe's Faust
• WWV 21: Sonata in B flat Major, Op. 1
• WWV 22: Fantasia in F-sharp minor
• WWV 23B: Polonaise for piano, four hands
• WWV 24A: König Enzio, overture for orchestra
• WWV 26: Grand Sonata in A major
• WWV 27: Concert Overture No. 2 in C major
• WWV 29: Symphony in C major
• WWV 32: Die Feen
• WWV 35: Symphony in E major
• WWV 37: Columbus Overture
• WWV 38: Das Liebesverbot
• WWV 39: Polonia. Overture in C major
• WWV 42: Rule Britannia. Overture in D major
• WWV 49: Rienzi
• WWV 50: Der Tannenbaum
• WWV 53: Dors mon enfant
• WWV 54: Extase
• WWV 55: Attente
• WWV 57: Mignonne
• WWV 58: Tout n'est qu'images fugitives
• WWV 59: Eine Faust-Ouvertüre
• WWV 60: Les deux grenadiers
• WWV 61: Adieux de Marie Stuart
• WWV 62: Arrangements from Donizetti's opera La favorite
• WWV 63: Der fliegende Holländer
• WWV 64: Albumblatt für Ernst Benedikt Kietz 
• WWV 68B: Festgesang for men's chorus (& brass)
• WWV 69: Das Liebesmahl der Apostel
• WWV 70: Tannhäuser
• WWV 72: An Webers Grabe, for male chorus
• WWV 73: Trauermusik, for band (based on Weber's Euryanthe)
  
• WWV 75: Lohengrin
• WWV 84: Polka
• WWV 85: Eine Sonate für das Album von Frau MW
• WWV 86A: Das Rheingold
• WWV 86B: Die Walküre
• WWV 86C: Siegfried
• WWV 86D: Götterdämmerung
• WWV 87: Konzertschluß to the Overture to Iphigenie in Aulis
• WWV 88: Züricher Vielliebchen-Walzer
• WWV 90: Tristan und Isolde
• WWV 91: Wesendonck Lieder 
• WWV 94: Albumblatt, In the album of Fürstin M 
• WWV 95: Ankunft bei den schwarzen Schwänen
• WWV 96: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
• WWV 97: Huldigungsmarsch
• WWV 103: Siegfried Idyll
• WWV 104: Kaiser march
• WWV 105: Scherzlied für Louis Kraft, (Kraft-Lied)
• WWV 108: Albumblatt für Frau Betty Schott
• WWV 110: American Centennial March
• WWV 111: Parsifal
• Geburtsangrüß an Cosima, (no catalog number)

(Only one track from WWV 62 the Donizetti arrangements is included)

All operas are available on Spotify UK and USA in their entirety, except for Die Feen (no recording on Spotify USA). For the Ring cycle, I used four recordings for the four parts: three of them are from Bohm, Boulez and Barenboim's complete recording of the cycle, and for Die Walküre I used Furtwangler's only studio recording of the Ring.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Richard Wagner: Complete Chronological Catalogue (669 tracks, total time: 2 days) Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view. Also check out these Wagner audiobooks on Spotify: Opera Explained: The Flying Dutchman from Naxos Educational, and Deryke Cooke's introduction (link 1, 2)  to the Ring.

Update: added the Paris version of Tannhäuser (partially available on Spotify USA).

Josquin des Prez: A Spotify Playlist

Josquin des Prez (c. 1450 to 1455 –1521), often referred to simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was the most famous European composer between Guillaume Dufay and Palestrina, and is usually considered to be the central figure of the Franco-Flemish School. Josquin is widely considered by music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music that was emerging during his lifetime. - Wikipedia

Spotify launched in Belgium and Switzerland today, on this occasion I did a playlist for the greatest sixteenth century composer Josquin, who was (probably) born in Hainaut, Belgium. This playlist includes all the decent recordings of Josquin's works on Spotify, sorted by genres: masses, motets, chansons and instrumental compositions. Most recordings of the masses also have some motets or others works in it, and I kept the full albums. So this playlist starts with Josquin's most famous work Ave Maria ... virgo serena ("The whole 'perfected art' of sixteenth century sacred music, it sometimes seems, was formed on the example ofthis one supreme masterpieces - Richard Taruskin). At the end of the playlist there are two laments on Josquin's death by his contemporaries: Jheronimus Vinders's O mors inevitabilis and Nicolas Gombert's Musae Jovis, and two wonderful transcriptions  by Charles Wuorinen: Ave Christe for piano and Josquiniana for string quartet.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Josquin des Prez: Complete Works (322 tracks, total time: 21 hours) Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view.

Giacomo Puccini: Complete Operas and Other Works on Spotify

Shostakovich: "What do you think of Puccini?'" Britten: "I think his operas are dreadful.'" Shostakovich: "No, Ben, you are wrong. He wrote marvellous operas but dreadful music!" - An overgrown joke.

Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire. Some of his arias, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi, "Che gelida manina" from La bohème, and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, have become part of popular culture. - Wikipedia

This playlist collects Puccini's complete operas, sorted in chronological order, as well as small scale works for string quartet and orchestra, songs for voice and piano, and sacred music including Messa di Gloria. See list below for conductor/star cast/label info. Every opera is linked to Wikipedia, where you can find links for synopsis and libretto. For the most famous operas, I also put in a highlights album with different casts after the complete recording. La bohème is from the 11-CD Puccini Edition (Decca), Tosca is from the 17-CD Puccini: The Operas (EMI), and Suor Angelica is from the 15-CD Puccini: The Great Operas (Decca), so you can also find all these great collections in this playlist.

1. Le Villi, José Cura, Nuova Era
2. Edgar, Domingo, DG
3. Manon Lescaut, Callas, EMI
4. La bohème, Pavarotti, Decca
5. Tosca, Levine, EMI
6. Madama Butterfly, Barbirolli, EMI
7. La fanciulla del West, Matačić, EMI
8. La rondine, Pannano, EMI
9. Il tabarro, Pannano, EMI
10. Suor Angelica, Tebaldi, Decca
11. Gianni Schicchi, Gobbi, EMI
12. Turandot, Karajan, DG

The 2nd part of the playlist consists of non-opera works and two albums of rarities: Chailly's Puccini Discoveries (including Luciano Berio's 2001 completion of Turandot), and Domingo's Puccini ritrovato (including original or alternative versions of famous arias).

Here's the Spotify playlist: Giacomo Puccini: Complete Operas and Other Works (530 tracks, total time: 1 day) Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view. All operas are available on Spotify UK and USA in their entirety. You can also find four excellent introductory audiobooks for Puccini's operas on Spotify, from Naxos Educational.

Aaron Copland: Complete Chronological Catalogue

"You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down... some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today." - Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers". He is best known to the public for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 40s in a deliberately more accessible style than his earlier pieces, including the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Rodeo and his Fanfare for the Common Man. The open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are archetypical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. However, he wrote music in different styles at different periods of his life: his early works incorporated jazz or avant-garde elements whereas his later music incorporated serial techniques. - Wikipedia

This playlist collects the complete compositions of Copland, sorted in chronological order after this list. The first track is a conversation from 30 years ago today, on Copland's 81st birthday, in which the composer talked about how did he find the name Appalachian Spring (or really the other way around). Both the original version and suites of the ballets are included (the original Appalachian Spring for 13 instruments is a must hear). I used lots of recordings conducted by Copland himself but also digested many other fine performances. The Clarinet Concerto is played by Benny Goodman, and the Piano Concerto features Leonard Bernstein on the bench.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Aaron Copland: Complete Chronological Catalogue (279 tracks, total time: 21 hours) Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view.  Seven tracks are currently not available on Spotify USA, including, unfortunately, a 17 minutes Copland Rehearses Appalachian Spring at the end of the playlist. Find more about this great composer on Keeping Score: In Search Of An American Sound, and The Aaron Copland Collection on LoC. Also give the recently unearthed original version of Quiet City a listen on NPR, hope it will be on Spotify soon. Lastly, I recommend Copland's book What To Listen For In Music to everyone who ever wondered about that question.

Happy 111th birthday.

Question: How to Add Multilevel Drop Down Menu in Blogger?

As the number of playlists on this blog keeps growing, a navigation function is becoming more and more in need. I managed to add a single level menu, but after hours of googling and experimenting, I couldn't make a multilevel menu work properly. I don't know if the tutorial I used (1, 2) are outdated, or incompatible with my template.

If you know how these things work, would you please give me a few tips on how to add multilevel drop down menu to my Blogger template, or point me to a reliable tutorial? I hope to create the menu with pure CSS so the visitors don't have to load Java scripts from 3rd party sites. If you can help, please leave a comment or email me. Thank you.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Complete Works

"To regret the past, to hope in the future, and never to be satisfied with the present: that is what I spend my whole life doing."  - Tchaikovsky's letter to his younger brother Anatolii, 1878.

"I am made up of contradictions, and I have reached a very mature age without resting upon anything positive, without having calmed my restless spirit either by religion or philosophy. Undoubtedly I should have gone mad but for music. Music is indeed the most beautiful of all Heaven's gifts to humanity wandering in the darkness. Alone it calms, enlightens, and stills our souls. It is not the straw to which the drowning man clings; but a true friend, refuge, and comforter, for whose sake life is worth living"  - Letter to Nadezhda von Meck, 1877

Tchaikovsky is among the very few composers who can write music that sounds sweet, bombastic, and soul-cleansing at the same time. Schoenberg and Stockhausen lack the sweetness. Mahler comes close, but to me, his fascination with metaphysical motifs sometimes makes his music less consistent and direct than Tchaikovsky, whose works are always filled with emotions rooted in personal relationships, and driven by such longing to "express something fully" (what Tchaikovsky thought Brahms failed to deliver). In my early 20s I loved Mahler zealously and thought Tchaikovsky was for the fainthearted. As I grow older I still adore Mahler, but also start to find more strength in Tchaikovsky.

This playlists collects Tchaikovsky's Op.1-80, with notable (i.e. findable on Spotify) works without opus number, the latter includes a student work for flute and strings, an early string quartet, Overture in F, Coronation March, two versions of the Romeo and Juliet Overture, operas: The Oprichnik, The Maid of Orleans, Mazepa, and The Enchantress. All suites from the ballets are also included. Unnumbered works are inserted to their approximate chronological positions, but Op. 1-80 were not published in the order of completion, so this playlist is not strictly chronological. Unauthentic works like Symphony No.7 or Leopold Auer's version of the Violin Concerto are not included, except for Kreisler's 1904 recording of his arrangement of Souvenir de Hapsal.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky: Complete Works (736 tracks, total time: 2 days) Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view. Only a handful of tracks are not available on Spotify USA. You can hear Bernstein discuss Pathétique from his Music Lectures, and find out more about the Life And Works of Tchaikovsky from Naxos Educational.

Antonín Dvořák: Complete Chronological Catalogue

"Perhaps to have composed the Stabat Mater, is rather better, after all, than to understand Latin."  Antonín Dvořák reflects on his stay in Cambridge, where he received an honorary Doctoral degree.

Among composers not specialized in opera, Dvorak is perhaps the finest tunesmith since Schubert. If I were a pop songwriter and found myself in a uninspired mood, I would put on this playlist on shuffle and copy all the catchy themes crowded in even the least known works. I'd have to write so fast that couldn't even find a moment to stop and wonder how did this man turn his head into a fountain of ravishing melodies.

Dvorak's pieces were not published in the order he wrote them, and his publisher gave his works opus numbers corresponding to publishing date. This playlist was compiled after an authoritative chronological catalog of his œuvre, sorted by Burghauser number. The only addition is an arrangement of the A major Piano Quintet recorded by Windscape and Jeremy Denk. All tracks except for a few early works are available on Spotify USA.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Antonín Dvořák: Complete Chronological Catalogue (680 tracks, total time: 2 days) Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view. Also check out the excellent Naxos Educational audiobooks, Life And Works: Dvorak and Classisc Explained: New World Symphony.