I know it’s not Epiphany yet, but with the more intense part of the holiday season now behind us, it looks as if I’ve managed to survive another year. I hope yours have been good ones.
Unfortunately, as previously reported, my laptop was the last casualty of 2024. I’ll have a replacement under my fingers today, but retrieving the old files is an ongoing challenge. For the time being, I’d like to share with you a few of my Christmas gifts.
Yes, I am still very much into physical media. If it doesn’t exist on compact disc or vinyl, it may as well be a live performance in a concert hall, because I’ll probably never listen to it again. Also, compact discs are extremely handy for the kind of work that I do. But enough with the apologies. I like what I like.
For one thing, I happen to be a nut for Franz Liszt’s rarely-heard “Christmas Tree Suite.” Liszt dedicated the work to his granddaughter, Daniela von Bülow, the daughter of Cosima Liszt and conductor Hans von Bülow. Some of the early movements are reflections on familiar carols, but as the suite progresses, the movements become dreamier and more introspective. The work was first performed on Christmas Day in 1881, the day Daniela’s birthday was always observed, though she was actually born on Christmas Eve. I have many recordings of the piece, but this is probably the most recently available, issued on the Naxos label. I have to say, having listened to it only once, it’s not likely to become a personal favorite. I’ll certainly go back and give it another chance, but I feel like Wojciech Waleczek is a little too soporific in his interpretation, especially in the earlier movements, in which the more familiar carols mosey a little more than would be desirable. This is only a first impression, and I may revise my opinion with increased exposure. Certainly, there is plenty of space for interpretive subjectivity as the work becomes more ruminative in the later movements.
The Charles Ives Anniversary Edition is one of the happy tie-ins with the 2024 Ives sesquicentennial celebrations. The five-CD box, released by Sony, and which I haven’t taken out of the shrink wrap yet, contains coveted reissues of plenty of Ives rarities and curios, including an album of the composer performing his own music at the keyboard.
Stefan Jackiw and Jeremy Denk gave an unforgettable concert of the Ives Violin Sonatas here in Princeton, on Ives’ birthday, October 20, in 2020. I didn’t know they had recorded the pieces, but lo and behold, here they are, on a recent Nonesuch release that also includes both of Ives’ piano sonatas. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I am very much looking forward to it.
The book is about the cellist Beatrice Harrison, long familiar to me from her classic recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto, but only recently did I learn of her worldwide fame in connection with a nightingale in her garden with whom she performed impromptu duets over the radio, captivating millions around the world. 2024 marked the centenary of the first of those broadcasts. I wrote a little more about it here before.
Not a bad haul, if I do say so myself. I must have been a good boy, after all. Now that the New Year’s festivities have passed, I am looking forward to being back in my burrow until spring.
