Disc of the Day #23 Bruce Springsteen 'Born to Run'

Born to Run

This morning I had a rather odd feeling as the first bars of today's disc kicked in - guilt. I have essentially been unfaithful, for every minute I spent listening to Born to Run I was wishing it was Nebraska instead. I have committed an infidelity (in thought at least).

It's not that I don't like Born to Run - I do. It's just that, while my ears were full of the pomp and swagger of the E Street Band at its finest I wanted nothing more than the gritty, grainy desolation of the later album.

My love for Nebraska dates back to the point in the mid 80s when a friend of my dad's made me a tape of Born in the USA and decided he needed to fill side 2 with more Bruce. As as result I got Nebraska with the song 'The River' at the end (even now I expect that song to come after 'Reason to Believe' every time I hear it).

I just love the sparseness of Nebraska - it's as though Bruce has sonically left space for the holes in society that the people he sings about have slipped through. Not necessarily the best way to prepare your head for the day but then maybe better than the guilty feeling I was left with.

So, today's disc of the day is sort of and sort of not Born to Run

Disc of the Day #22 Kate Rusby - Underneath the Stars

Underneath The Stars

I first heard Kate Rusby when Sleepless was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. Since then I've seen her in concert several times and bought most of her albums. She's an artist I tend to have long breaks from then come back to and remember why I love so much - here's why.

Kate Rusby has one of those properly lovely voices that means you could listen to her sing pretty much anything. That can create a few problems in that everything is so beautifully sung there's no real distinction between anything - no big shifts in vocal colour or dynamic. The great thing about Kate's music is that she's assembled a series of bands that create such a wealth of colour and dynamic it (almost) makes up for it. Revolving around the multi-instrumentalist John McCusker and, more recently Ian Carr (who has to be one of the greatest guitarists on the planet for his general disregard of the boundaries of rhythm, melody and accompaniment as mutually exclusive facets of the instrument), Kate's bands continually drag your ear around with a wilful love of syncopation, gentle harmonic playfulness and endlessly shifting textures. It's incredible stuff.

I do occasionally find myself wishing Kate had a bit more variety to her voice (especially when she's singing those wonderful storytelling lyrics folksong is riddled with) but the way she sings is beautiful and loved my thousands of people so who am I to have any complaints (I'm one of the people who love it after all).

Disc of the Day #21 - James Levine's 25th anniversary gala

James Levine's 25th Anniversary Metropolitan Opera Gala
A few years ago I submitted a question for the Met's live Saturday night broadcast interval quiz - the question had to do with opera characters who are first heard off-stage (Tosca, Mimi, Siegfried etc). It was used during a broadcast and I got an email letting me know that I should expect a package of goodies through the post - it never came. I let them know and another was posted - again, nothing. I think they were about to give up on me but, luckily, decided to try a third time.

A week or two later I received a box containing complete recordings on CD of Met productions of Carmen and Figaro, DVDs of Carmen and Don Giovanni, the Complete Kobbe's Opera Book and several other CDs! This disc was one of them.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to attend the gala - as a collection of singing this disc is unbelievably good (and so it should be, given the list of talent).

We have:

Pearl Fishers duet - Alagna/Terfel
Depuis le Jour (Louise) - Renee Fleming
Act 1 duet from Faust - Domingo/Ramey
Meine Lippen... (Giuditta) - Cotrubas
O Don Fatale (Don Carlos) - Dolora Zajick
Act 2 sextet (Don Giovanni) - Fleming/Te Kanawa/Hei-Kyung Hong/Hadley/Terfel/Julien Robbins
Juliet's Waltz - Ruth Ann Swenson
Watch Duet (Fledermaus) - Mattila/Hagegard
Pourquoi me Reveiller (Werther) - Kraus
Mon Coeur... (Samson et Dalila) - Bumbry
Dich Teure Halle (Tannhauser) - Voigt
Ah quel Diner (La Perichole) - von Stade
Rosenkavalier act 3 trio - Fleming/von Otter/Heidi Grant Murphy

(oh, and a tribute to Jimmy Levine from Birgit Nilsson)

Wonderful stuff!

Disc of the Day #20 - Le Nozze di Figaro ROH

Mozart - Le Nozze Di Figaro [DVD] [2006]
Disc of the Day #20 is odd for two reasons: it's two discs not one and, more importantly, it's a DVD.

This particular Figaro is the Royal Opera House's current David McVicar production and is quite possibly the most complete realisation of an opera I've ever seen (I saw it at Covent Garden three times but it works just as well on DVD). The drama is full of comedy, wit and - vitally - humanity.

Our cast, which is uniformly excellent both vocally and dramatically, is:

Figaro - Erwin Schrott
Susanna - Miah Persson
Count Almaviva - Gerald Finley
Countess - Dorothea Roschmann
Cherubino - Rinat Shaham

the ROH forces are conducted by Antonio Pappano.

Schrott is a vigorous, passionate Figaro who gets the balance just right between being nobody's fool yet not quite the brains of the operation. That role goes to Susanna, who is delightfully played by Miah Persson. She combines a delicate sweetness with a clear love for both Figaro and the Countess without falling into the trap of over-sweetness (she is, after all, the central figure in this opera, no matter what the title tells us).

Gerald Finley's count is an intelligent, dark character who knows exactly what he's doing. The age-old question of whether he truly repents at the end is answered (as it always is) by the orchestra - Mozart's sublime, human melody leaves no room for anything other than true humility and repentance on the part of the Count. Whether he feels the same way in the morning is another matter...that's life though, just because you feel something to the exclusion of anything else one day doesn't mean that's how things will be in perpetuity. My guess is that he's off chasing the ladies again by the end of the run.

Opera directors dealing with 18th (and 19th century) repertoire face a similar dilemma to their theatrical counterparts when faced with Shakespeare; with so many years of performance history out there should they do something new and thought-provoking or rely on the traditional? Happily McVicar manages the perfect balance here, highlighting the inner workings of the drama within a traditional production and adding a whole host of deft touches that help the text sparkle anew. This DVD is a wonderful document of a brilliant production and the perfect argument to counter all those who would have us believe that opera is no longer relevant or necessary. It is both and so much more.

Disc of the Day #19 - Dvorak - Russalka

Dvorák - Rusalka
I've had a copy of this knocking about for ages now and never got round to listening to it so, as a result, all I really knew of the opera was the famous 'Song to the Moon'. I've got a soft spot for folksy and/or myth-related opera anyway (e.g. Der Freischutz, Smetana's Bartered Bride, Hansel und Gretel, Tristan..., Orff's Der Mond and so on) so it should be up my street.

I have to say I'm loving it so far (on first couple of listens). There's something about the old state-run labels (Melodiya, Hungaroton and, in this case, Supraphon) that often means you get a great recording complete with good singing and an overall air of authenticity that results in a fantastic first experience of an opera written in the language native to the country in question. There's also a really strong tie-in to the themes of the second novel I'm writing but I'll say no more about that at this point as I have no idea where it's going to end up yet (my first started as a story about a group of five kids who make up their own mythology and ended up as nothing of the sort).

Anyway, I'll keep listening. I suspect I'll only have a better idea of just how much I like the opera once I get a chance to see it in the theatre so here's hoping that chance comes sooner rather than later.

#18 Juan Diego Florez - The Tenor

The Tenor
I used to belong to one of those CD clubs where you start by getting half a dozen things you want really cheap and end up paying £14 each for a load of things you don't want just because you're too lazy to go to the post office or too disorganised to return the slip that says 'no thanks'.

This was one of the discs I didn't order but arrived anyway - luckily I liked the look of it.

Juan Diego Florez seems to be one of those singers (like Cecelia Bartoli) who polarizes people. I know a few people who can't stand his voice. Like it or not, however, his singing is incredible on a technical level. I happen to like it, although I need to be in the right mood. At least, that's true on disc, I'm always in the mood to hear him sing live. I've seen him a couple of times at Covent Garden: once in The Barber of Seville with the incredible Joyce Di Donato and once in Fille Du Regiment with Natalie Dessay, probably the most perfect opera experience I've ever had in the theatre.

I did make the mistake of listening to this on the way to work today - JDF has the kind of voice that my ears might need to wake up a little more to fully appreciate, especially in a disc of arias where there's a higher density of top notes than you'd get in an evening in an opera house (you'd also get other voices in the opera house).

I love this disc - it's also great to see a couple of non-operatic pieces (Amapola and Granada) that mix things up without feeling the need to go all crossover and sing something wildly inappropriate just to generate a few sales. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against crossover as such, I just think sometimes people chase sales at the expense of producing quality. Not here.

#17 Britten - Peter Grimes (Davis/Vickers)

Britten: Peter Grimes

I love Peter Grimes, love it - in the way Kevin Keegan would have loved it if Newcastle had beaten Manchester United (probably more so).

The first recording I owned was the Britten/Pears one and I loved it - still do. A couple of years later my wife bought me the John Vickers/Colin Davis recording on vinyl but, vinyl not being so portable, I ended up not listening to it as much. I finally got round to getting the CD a while ago and have spent the past few days listening to pretty much nothing else other than this (although I did watch the ENO Philip Langridge DVDyesterday).

It's wonderful to have more than one outstanding recording of any opera to listen to and it's especially great when the versions bring out very different sides of the drama as is the case here. Vickers' singing is much more muscular and brutal than Pears' and Davis conducts the score with an equal amount of conviction. The standout scene for me is Grimes' first entry after the Passacaglia ('Go there...') which hits you with the force of a gale and leaves you reeling.

Grimes features as a (relatively small) reference in the novel I'm currently writing, which is one of the reasons I've been listening to it so much - more on that later though.

#16 Radiohead - The Bends

Radiohead - The Bends
When I was at university everyone banged on about this album and I bought it thinking 'they can't all be wrong'. I listened to it a fair bit at the time but it never really got under my skin in the way I was expecting it to.

I have roughly the same relationship with Radiohead as I have with U2 - I can see why what they do is good, why it's important, why it's unique and why people love it. I just don't - love it that is. I think with U2 I know why that is. The band, Bono in particular, have spent so long creating a kind of post-modern rock-god-for-the-masses image that it actually gets in the way of me seeing them as real people singing about real stuff. Radiohead aren't the same though - they're pretty much as real as it gets.

All that said - I do love Fake Plastic Trees and High and Dry. I guess that's part of the problem with this album for me - after Fake Plastic Trees it's basically peaked for me and the rest seems like a let down.

I've got OK Computer as well and it hasn't bowled me over either. I reckon it's a bit like mushrooms or rhubarb though - eventually you have to stop trying and concede it's just not for you. There's so much music I love in this world I don't have enough time to listen to music I don't. I do still feel like it's my error though and there's something I'm missing.

#15 The Beatles - Please Please Me

Please Please Me

I love this album. Everybody bangs on about how Sgt Pepper is the best Beatles album - it's not. Neither is the white album or even Rubber Soul (much as I love them all...well...Sgt pepper not so much...)

From the count-in to 'I Saw Her Standing There' to the final ragged yelps of 'Twist & Shout', Please Please Me did as much to kick pop music up the arse as anything before or since. It set the standard for future bands and made it the norm for bands to sing well, play well, have personality, write their own songs, push the boundaries of recording blah, blah, blah...

People get tired of The Beatles as they've been round so long but this album is like a cotton bud for tired ears & heads - it shifts the accumulated crap and lets you hear clearly again. Works for me.

Plus...George's solo on 'Boys' is brilliant.

#14 Punch Brothers - Antifogmatic

Antifogmatic
For those not in the know Punch Brothers are the band formed by former Nickel Creek mandolinist Chris Thile - for those of you who don't know who Nickel Creek were, they were the band that Punch Brothers' frontman Chris Thile used to be in. All clear? Good.

Almost 4 years ago when I left my job in music publishing to work for a mate's website, I was bought a mandolin as a leaving present. Good present. I slowly taught myself to play it and started looking around for mandolin players and mandolin-related stuff to listen to. I came across Chris Thile courtesy of the splendid Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour podcast. Turns out he was promoting his new album How to Grow a Woman From the Ground so I hunted round and bought a copy. The band on that album turned into The Tensions Mountain Boys but nobody got the joke so they became Punch Brothers.

In 2008 I was reviewing CDs for americana-uk as a bit of a sideline and wanted to review Punch Brothers first album Punch. Despite requesting a review copy (twice) it never came so I downloaded the album from iTunes and reviewed it from that - it was one of only two 10/10 reviews I gave - the other may well be Disc of the Day at some point. Read the review here

Anyhow, here we are with Antifogmatic - if I could I'd give this 11/10 but I can't as that would be mathematically incorrect (plus I don't write reviews any more). This album has almost all the things that I love about classical music and opera and miss from time to time in popular music (for want of a better phrase to cover everything from Hank Williams to Iron Maiden - ie non-classical music). It has stunning variety of texture, colour, dynamic and touch of playing. Plus the songs are also incredibly, incredibly good.

There's nothing I don't like about this album and Missy has possibly the best instrumental break ever (courtesy of Gabe Witcher on fiddle).

Punch Brothers are my favourite band currently in existence on the planet.

#13 Fairport Convention - Liege & Lief

Liege And Lief

This album regularly tops the polls of best folk and folk-rock albums of all time and for very good reason. Liege and Lief set the standard for so many of the elements of folk rock that we now expect and marks the arrival not only of Sandy Denny as one of the UK's finest voices but also of Richard Thompson as a true innovator on the guitar. Add to that a cracking rhythm section and some inspired fiddling and you get a band that's capable of everything from the taught, menacing thump of Tam Lin to the gentle washes of sound that underpin the sublime Reynardine.

Listening to the guitar solos on the longer tracks reminded me of recent disc of the Day #9 - Televisions Marquee Moon. You could drop the needle (so to speak - we are on CD here after all) at a random point in the solos to title track Marquee Moon and swear you're hearing Richard Thompson.

Brilliant stuff.

#12 (re-visited) Messiaen - Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps (Barenboim)

Oliver Messiaen: Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps (Quartet for the End of Time) (1940).

OK, I promised to listen to this again post-hangover so here we go (not that it's taken this long to get rid of the hangover).

I really enjoyed this second time round. As I often find with more tonally challenging music I found the slower movements easier at first. I guess it's down to being able to hear the harmonies unfold rather than being hit with them all in one go, as you often are in the faster sections.

My favourite track at this point is 5 - Louange a l'Eternite de Jesus - but there's clearly plenty in the work as a whole that will unfold as my ears get used to it and hear past the 'easier' bits.

Glad I came back to it. There will be a new disc later today

#12 Messiaen - Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps (Barenboim)

Oliver Messiaen: Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps (Quartet for the End of Time) (1940).

I bought this after reading Alex Ross's wonderful The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century


In truth I did what I always do with music books that are well written - I blast through and don't take time to listen to the music the author is talking about at the time. I did this with Humphrey Carpenter's Britten biography amongst (many) others.

I listened to it on headphones at 10 in the morning at work with a hangover so I have no idea whether I liked it or not. Judgement is reserved but I will revisit this in another post when my brain is capable of listening properly.

In the meantime I will endeavour to get back to the book from the beginning and do some extensive listening after I read each chapter. May take some time but that's fine by me.

#11 Verdi - Rigoletto (Bruson/Gruberova/Shicoff/Sinopoli)

Verdi - Rigoletto
Rigoletto is the first opera I listened to, and I didn't really expect to like it. Ever since I was a child I hated opera singing or, to be more accurate, I hated big wobbly soprano voices (which is what I thought all opera singing was). I bought a few discs of orchestral excerpts from Wagner operas as a teenager but didn't go in for all the hoyotoho-ing of the full versions.

Skip forward several years to 2000. I started a job at a music publishing company administering royalties - part of my job was processing royalties for Ricordi, one of the biggest opera publishers of all time. I asked my boss if she'd lend me some opera to listen to as I thought I might as well know what I was dealing with and, in simple terms, I fell in love.

I love this recording of the opera. Bruson is a fine Rigoletto and I've always liked what I've heard of Niel Shicoff, who seems to have suffered from being a great tenor at a time when there were 3 much more famous tenors around. Maybe he wasn't quite in the same league but he's not far off.

The best thing about this recording for me though is Edita Gruberova's Gilda. Some people aren't too keen on her voice, saying it lacks warmth. However, we're not dealing with a worldly-wise Violetta here (although I believe her recording of Traviata is also excellent - I haven't heard it). Gilda is young and innocent and the cleanliness of Gruberova's voice is a great fit. Her Caro Nome is simply beautiful.

10 years on and I'm a huge opera fan - who'd have thought.

#10 Wagner - Tristan und Isolde (Domingo/Stemme/Pappano - EMI)

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
I bough this on a whim second hand a few months ago (in its original release rather than the new version with e-libretto) for about £4 as it was missing the booklet and box.

I love Domingo but my main reason for buying this was Nina Stemme as I saw her as Isolde at Covent Garden recently and she was simply jaw-droppingly good (even with Ben Heppner walking the role of Tristan as - I think - Lars Cleveman sang it from the wings). She doesn't disappoint in this set either, although with a few more years (and a few more performances of Isolde under her belt) she's even better now than in 2005 when this set was released.

So, you get Nina Stemme and Domingo, who else? Rene Pape as King Marke, Olaf Bar as Kurwenal, Ian Bostridge as the shepherd and Matthew Rose (who I very much like) as the steersman (oh, and some bloke called Villazon as the young seaman). Not bad for £4 I don't think!

Admittedly I would pick the Bohm/Nilsson/Windgassen 1966 Bayreuth recording over this if you forced me to choose but you wouldn't do that...would you?

#9 Television - Marquee Moon

Marquee Moon: Remastered & Expanded
About 15 years ago I went through a New York Punk phase. Armed with Clinton Helyin's wonderful From the Velvets to the Voidoids: The Birth of American Punk RockI trawled my way through the CBGBs era bands and beyond. Much of it I don't listen to any more (and probably won't) but there are a few albums that have become firm favourites and this (along with Patti Smith's Horses) is definitely one of them.

Much is always made of the guitar interplay between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd on this album (and rightly so). However, listening to it again, it's the rhythm section that really stands out, particularly Billy Ficca's wonderful drumming that manages to be taught, supportive and solid yet always inventive and interesting.

I'd forgotten just how lost I can get in the title track and just how much I love the rest of the album. Now I want the remastered expanded version so I get the bonus tracks....

#8 Gorecki - Symphony No3

Górecki - Symphony No 3; Olden Style Pieces
Having got the day of to a meditative start with DotD #7 it gets even slower with #8. Any symphony whose 3 movements are:

1. Lento
2. Lento e largo
3. Lento

is never going to thunder at you like Mahler and the sustained, in a way minimalist, quality of the writing definitely gives the whole piece a cinematic feel. Everything unfolds slowly and gently, like a long reflective novel and the addition of a soprano (in this case Zofia Kilanowicz) adds an element of lyrical sadness but, ultimately, the 3rd movement ends on a note of hope.

I'd forgotten I even had this disc until I found it on a shelf at work this morning!

#7 Miles Davis - In a Silent Way

In a Silent Way
I did find my copy of Miles Davis' Porgy & Bess but then found this and went with that instead. Bit of a weird choice for my walk to work through the City of London but a great meditative start to the day.

The mix of electric (keyboards/guitar) and acoustic (trumpet/drums/bass) gives the music an ethereal yet solid feel that always seems on the verge of something (rather like a much shorter Tristan und Isolde) til things finally get going part way through It's About That Time.

Seems like the Miles Davis fusion album you're supposed to love is Bitches Brew but give me this any day or, preferebly, late in any evening.

#6 Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong - Porgy & Bess

Porgy And Bess

This CD has to contain some of the most beautiful jazz singing on record - Ella is on amazing form. Not having heard it for a couple of years it also reminds me how endlessly fascinating Gershwin was as a composer. In every track some harmony, melody or counter melody tugs your ear and sounds modern yet classic at the same time. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. Now, where's my CD of Miles Davis' Porgy and Bess...

#5 Lehar - Die Lustige Witwe

Lehár: Die Lustige Witwe

The first Disc of the Day that hasn't been dug out of a cupboard or drawer. I bought this for a couple of pounds from Ebay the other day as I don't know it at all and this particular recording has had rave reviews pretty much everywhere over the years.

On first listen I love it - packed full of melody and with some delightful singing (especially from Cheryl Studer). Definitely something I will be returning to again and a pleasant surprise for me to hear John Eliot Gardiner in repertoire from this period.