After last night’s Pascal Rogé fun, as promised I searched for the other recordings of his that I have. The disc with the violin sonata took some time to find. It was literally the last place I looked in the back row of discs, at the bottom of a shelf. Didn’t find the piano trio disc yet though. Along the way, came across his Debussy London two disc set. And I also saw (by other artists) a number of Ravel chamber music discs, piano concertos, and scattered about, a number of Mahler symphony recordings. So I grabbed those for tonight as well.

The Rogé discs are on the speakers tonight though, in more ways then one. Celia wanted some different music for her room, and when I told her about ‘Mother Goose Suite’ she was open to Ravel. So the second disc of that set has been beaming through the house over her room monitor. The high notes are represented quite well. I ripped the disc with the violin sonatas first, and that has been on for a bit already. The disc features Chantal Juillet on violin, and Truls Mørk joins in for the violin and cello sonata. I forgot about the recording of ‘Tzigane’ on this disc which features a kind of prepared piano – the ‘piano luthiel’, which consists of an attachment to the harp of the piano that makes it sound like a cimbalom. Very cool. When this disc came out originally it was only available on Decca which, at the time, wasn’t available in the US. It’s presence was revealed to me by one of Tower’s regular customers named Richard who really knew his classical music (there will be a second Richard story probably tomorrow night… another disc I associate with him was in my ‘ooohhh… look what I found’ stack tonight). Richard regularly bought then returned discs to keep his library rotating, and since he usually bought more then he returned, we didn’t have too much of a problem with this at the Berkeley store. For me, the stuff her returned was always quite good, so from my point of view, we had good music to play once he brought it back. Anyways – Richard picked the disc up during a trip to Europe (I believe for a ‘Ring’ cycle) and let me borrow it. I brought it back to him a week later and was visibly sad to give it up again… but I imagined that since it was on Decca, at some point it would be released here in the states on London. About a week later  I saw the release of it announced, but it wouldn’t be coming for another six months! I told Richard about it and that I was excited it would eventually be coming in, and about a week later he brought it back to the store with a post-it note on the disc saying ‘Don’t postpone the pleasure! I’ll get another soon for myself.” I still have the post-it note in the liner notes… it really was a very nice thing to do, and it is still one of my favorite discs that was ever given to me.

The Rogé Debussy is quite well done, and just playing a few tracks tonight was fun.  The other discs were a couple of Klemperer Mahler symphonies. The Mahler 2nd (a live recording) is just damn amazing. And the recording of the 9th is still one of my favorite recordings of that symphony. The beginning is just about perfect… pulsing and dying at the same time, until finally the spring of life finally comes out of the strings playing the first melody. Just beautiful. Also in the stack is the soundtrack to ‘Un Coeur en Hiver’ featuring all Ravel chamber music. And for a soundtrack, the performances of the pieces on the disc (the trio, violin sonata and violin and cello duo) are great. It might actually be my favorite recording of the trio and IS my favorite recording of the duo.

More tomorrow as I keep working through the stack of fun…