Month: July 2025

As an offshoot to my work compiling the discography of the Louisville Orchestra (see my blog-post of yesterday) and repatriating to Discophage.com my reviews posted on Amazon.com, I also reposted a number of them, not of Louisville recordings, but usually reviews that I quoted in my Louisville reviews:

The 5 CDs of symphonies of Gian Francesco Malipiero by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra under Antonio de Almeida, recorded in 1993 and 1994 by Marco Polo, and I’ve created a Malipiero introductory page, better go there for links to the reviews. At the time, I had, overall, warmly greeted those CDs

Leonardo Balada’s orchestral works, 4 CDs including the two with recordings from Louisville, see my Balada introductory page for the links. In my reviews I enthuiastically call Balada “one of the best-kept secrets of 20th-Century music”.

Two great collections of American contemporary music conducted by James Levine:

Elliott Carter: Variations for Orchestra (1954-5/1966), Gunther Schuller: Spectra (1958), Milton Babbitt: Correspondences for string orchestra and synthesized tape (1967), John Cage: Atlas eclipticalis (1961). Chicago Symphony Orchestra, James Levine. Deutsche Grammophon 431 698-2 (1994)

Elliott Carter: Variations for Orchestra, Charles Wuorinen: Grand Bamboula for String Orchestra, Roger Sessions: Piano Concerto (Robert Taub), Robert Di Domenica: Symphony. Münchner Philharmoniker, James Levine. “Documents of the Munich Years vol. 2”, Oehms OC 502 (2004)

John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. Maro Ajemian 1950. CRI CD 700 (1995), Él ACMEM88CD (2006)

Gerard Schwarz Performs New Music For Trumpet: Henry Brant (Concerto for Trumpet and Nine Instruments, 1941 revised 1970), Elliott Carter (Canon for Three, 1971, version for three trumpets, version with flügelhorn cornet and trumpet), Richard Moryl (Salvos, 1969), Charles Whittenberg (Polyphony, 1965), Stefan Wolpe (Solo Piece, 1966). Phoenix PHCD 115 (1990)

More reposts to come. This is my summer of reposts.

 

 

 

 

 

Huge – I mean, if you are interested in such minuscule minutiae. A small thing leads to another small thing – but they accumulate. A couple of months ago I took what should have been a quick break from my ongoing chronological and critical survey of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, to repost an old Amazon review, no relation to Vivaldi – I don’t even remember what led me to those reposts, and the blog-post I published at the time doesn’t say (link will open new tab). But that led to another repost, which led to the “pre-publication” of a long-in-the-works CD-discography of the Louisville Orchestra, famous for the encyclopedia of 20th-Century music it published the mid-1950s to 1980 on its house label First Edition Records.

When I published the discography, as my blogpost of the next day recounts, there were still a number of things to complete, the most important (and time-consuming) being:

– to import over here all the reviews I had posted on Amazon.com over the years (and especially in 2007/8) of Louisville recordings. Each import is a helluvalot of work, not just copy and paste but modify all the links, gather the accurate information (recording dates and venues, label numbers, barcodes, sources) and front and back cover photos. Times 50, because that’s the number of CDs I had reviewed. Done. Have a look then at my completed Louisville CD-discography.

– to complete the CD-discography with a discography of the First Edition Records LPs and their digital reissues (CDs and downloads/streaming). Done.

I first published the CD-discography on May 26. It took me two months to complete the job.

Now I’ll go shave.