# Recordings combining the old with the new



## Janspe (Nov 10, 2012)

I've recently been very fascinated by Jennifer Koh's 'Bach and Beyond' project. Her goal was to combine Bach's music for solo violin (the sonatas and partitas we all know so well) with the music of later composers - and the result was two stunning CD's in which Bach's classics were coupled with music by Bartók, Saariaho, Ysaÿe and Mazzoli. The whole thing is a wonderful effort - warmly recommended to anyone - and now I'm asking you:

What are your favourite recordings combining standard repertoire with more modern - or even better, contemporary - music? Stuff like this is so interesting, I love hearing pieces I know well in a new context. Quite frankly, I'm quite tired of hearing everything in a 'complete set' of this or that... All instrumental forces (solo, chamber, orchestral, vocal) are welcome!


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I'm familiar with Koh's project. It is the type of program I avoid.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Not sure if this qualifies for what you are looking for, but Jan Garbarek, Norwegian sax player, did several great albums with the early music vocal group, the Hilliard Ensemble.

The first from 1994 is called "Officium".

They followed it up a few years late with "Mnemosyne", then "Officium Novum" in 2010.

One reviewer accurately describes it, "Recorded in a heavily reverberant Austrian monastery, the voices sometimes develop in overwhelming waves, and Garbarek rides their crest, his soprano saxophone soaring in the monastery acoustic, or he underscores the voices almost unobtrusively, echoing the voices, finding ample room to move around the modal harmonies yet applying his sound sparingly."

Really nice stuff.


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## Janspe (Nov 10, 2012)

Yeah, not exactly what I'm looking for - but sounds interesting nevertheless, I'll give it a listen!


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## jailhouse (Sep 2, 2016)

Jeremy Denk did a pretty cool contrast between Ligeti's etudes and Beethoven's piano sonata 32..plays the first book of etudes, then the beethoven, then the second book. Works, surprisingly.
https://www.amazon.com/Ligeti-Beethoven-Jeremy-Denk/dp/B007SUW26A


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Gidon Kremer - "Eight Seasons" Vivaldi and Piazzolla


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

This is an interesting experiment. Monteverdi's "L'incoronazione di Poppea", with an orchestration by the Belgian composer Philippe Boesmans.


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