Back to the chocolate teapot factory today, whereupon I discovered that an awful lot of teapot lids had gone astray while I was on holiday. To soothe my poor frayed nerves, I listened to some thoroughly traumatic music:

• Stefan Wolpe – String Quartet
• Earle Brown – String Quartet (1965)
• Cage – String Quartet in Four Parts (1951)
• Leon Kirchner – Quartet no. 3 for String Quartet and Electronic Tape (1967)
• Christian Wolff – Summer (1961)
• George Crumb – Black Angels (1970)
• Shostakovich – Symphony no. 13 (Järvi/Gothenburg SO)
• Shostakovich – Symphony no. 15 (Järvi/Gothenburg SO)

Järvi’s Shostakovich 7 is a recording I’ve long admired, and the two I listened to today don’t disappoint either. 13 contrasts fascinatingly with Ashkenazy’s reading – Järvi only takes a couple of minutes more, but manages to sound controlled and taut where Ashkenazy brings about a rushed mess. And although Järvi’s scherzo in the 15th is a little lumpy for my liking, the balance between the percussion instruments at the very end of the finale is one of the best I’ve heard, and utterly electrifying.

In the car, I’ve had on the Sarah Records Air Balloon Road compilation.

“Will Beckett’s March (Reprise)” from the album Mother’s Thinking Bath is receiving an airing on the very marvellous Bob Osborne’s Salford City Radio programme “Reformation” tomorrow night, between 9pm and 10pm.

This week’s playlist, apparently, is comprised mostly of artists associated with Invisible Girl Records – which is where the Mother’s Thinking Bath track comes in, as it was, of course, featured on the Invisible Girl Records compilation A Place In Space.

Salford City Radio is on 94.4FM or you can listen online.

Another day of heavy-duty reading. Today it’s been Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (conclusion), Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, and Jack Kerouac’s Wake Up. However, I got my ears around a fair amount of stuff this evening:

• Public Image Ltd. – Flowers of Romance (again)
• John Tavener - Ex Maria Virgine
• Sunn 0))) – Monoliths and Dimensions
• The Von Bondies – Lack of Communication
• Morton Feldman – Journey to the End of Night (1949)
• Morton Feldman – Between Categories (1969)
• Morton Feldman – Three Clarinets, Cello and Piano (1971)
• Morton Feldman – Four Songs to e.e. cummings (1951)
• Morton Feldman – Four Instruments (1965)
• The Insect Guide – 6ft in Love
• Alex Woolf – Piano Concerto, 1st Mvt.
• Echo & The Bunnymen – Think I Need It Too (new single on MySpace)
• Lily Allen – It’s Not Me, It’s You (yes, really)

And so to bed.

Another day of limited listening – I’ve only had a few things on today, as I’ve been immersed in reading Dashiell Hammett’s The Red Harvest and Walpole’s very silly gothic romance The Castle of Otranto. So, the only sounds to enter my lug-holes today have been:

• Cecilia Bartoli – The Salieri Album
• Tom Johnson – An Hour For Piano (from the Brilliant Classics “Minimal Piano Collection” box, Jeroen Van Veen)
• Public Image Ltd. – The Flowers of Romance – twice. It’s a mysterious and troubling record, this. Very Krautrock-y, but also with an unmistakable Eastern influence on the opening track, in which John Lydon impersonates an Islamic call to prayer accompanied by heavily gated drums and a ticking watch. All very odd, and perhaps not as consistent as it’s predecessor, Metal Box, but an LP I’m tremendously fond of, nevertheless.
• Shostakovich, 24 Preludes & Fugues op.87 (Tatiana Nikolayeva – better than Ashkenazy by a country mile)

Another day’s holiday from the chocolate teapot factory, another day of reading. Hence, not so much listening.

• Rachmaninov – Symphony no. 2 (Edward Downes) – I’m not entirely sure how this ended up on my iPod, especially as I don’t own it on CD. After looking for the Nikolai Lugansky recordings of the concerti and failing to find them I settled for the symphony. I abandoned it as unbearably schmaltzy in the third movement, although I enjoyed the first movement very much. If anyone would care to recommend a particularly stellar recording then I’ll give it another chance.

In the car while shuttling myself between my house and my folks’, and Winterbourne Botanical Gardens:

• The Fall – The Infotainment Scan
• CD86 compilation

This evening I’ve been brutalising the piano with my attempts at taming Carter’s Caténaires (about which more later) and making a mess of pieces I really ought to be able to play without thinking about them such as the Bartók Sonatina and Allegro Barbaro. So, no listening yet tonight either. I’m now off to bed with Cecilia Bartoli’s Salieri album – and am looking forward enormously to her forthcoming Sacrificium release.

A weekend of no updates. Well, some lapses were, I suppose, inevitable. And, of course, I haven’t quite the detailed recollection I’d hope for. But still. Much of the weekend’s listening was the BBC Music Magazine cover disc – Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture and the first piano concerto. I rather like both readings, but contacts on Twitter didn’t agree. In addition there were randomly selected Haydn baryton trios, some Jesus & Mary Chain vinyl, and various other bits and bobs that elude my memory.

Today has been a reading day – Bukowski’s Hollywood devoured in an afternoon – and hence I’ve not had music on for much of the time, but have listened to the Brahms again (I still like it) and the first Public Image Limited album. PiL were always so much more “punk” than the Sex Pistols ever managed to be. Hard to imagine that even “Annalisa” and “Public Image” the group were just gearing up to the majestic contents of Metal Box.

While ironing:

• Gubaidulina – Duo Sonata for two bassoons
• Sun Ra – Cymbals

Today I grabbed a 2CD compilation that I haven’t listened to for years for this morning’s listening on the way to the chocolate teapot factory – The Very Best of Sun Rockabilly, which features gems by the likes of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, early Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash, plus many long-forgotten one-not-quite-hit wonders like Billy Riley & His Little Green Men doing “Flying Saucers Rock ‘n’ Roll”. Marvellous stuff. Almost enough to make you want to grow a quiff.

While at the chocolate teapot factory I listened to:

• The Stooges’ Jukebox – a Mojo magazine giveaway. The opening track on this was The Trashmen’s Surfin’ Bird. I listened to it four times before I could get past it to the rest of the album…
• Echo and the Bunnymen – Siberia
• Inspiral Carpets featuring Mark E. Smith – I Want You (CD single) – “The ‘ole fuckin’, errr, kitchen sink-ah!”
• Morton Feldman – Voices and Instruments (Barton Workshop/Fulkerson) – includes Journey to the End of Night (1941), Between Categories (1969), Intervals (1961), Three Clarinets, Cello and Piano (1971), Four Songs to e.e. cummings (1951), Four Instruments (1965) and The O’Hara Songs (1962). A fantastic disc of some very varied Feldman works.
• Inch featuring Mark E. Smith – Inch (CD single) – priceless phone call recording of conversation between MES and Kier Stewart (producer) at the beginning of this. “What yer best gettin’ ‘im to do, Kier, is fuckin’ gerrim to sit at a fuckin’ table, an’ play the fuckin’ drumbeat.”
• D.O.S.E. featuring Mark E. Smith – Plug Myself In (CD single) – the best of the non-Fall MES 90s collaborations, for my money. I seem to remember D.O.S.E. being described fleetingly as “hardfloor” dance music. Whether that was a real genre or not, I have no idea. It pounds along nicely though. Droplets-ah! Space-bag!

I then had to go and unbung one of the chocolate teapot manufacturing machines, and as a consequence listened to nothing further until I was in the car driving home, for which my chosen sonic accompaniment was, once again, The Infotainment Scan by The Fall. It’s hard to believe that that album is now 16 years old – strangely, for something with such a large amount of programmed electronics, it still sounds remarkably fresh to these ears. And, of course, it hails from a time when Mark E. Smith was still writing lyrics that were laugh-out-loud funny – “Balti and vimto and spangles were always crap/regardless of the look-back bores…”

Just a quick summary, as I’m completing this a day overdue:

The La’s – The La’s
Morton Feldman – Something Wild: Music For Film (Ensemble Recherce on Kairos)
Sibelius 6 (Karajan)
Electrafixion – Electrafixion
Electrafixion – Sister Pain (single – CD2 and CD3 – live, inc Holy Grail)
The Fall – The Infotainment Scan
Morton Feldman – Something Wild: Music For Film (again)
Morton Feldman – Piece for Four Pianos
Edgar Varèse – Amériques (arranged for two pianos)
Morton Feldman – Five Pianos

Today has been less active listening-wise due to a slight crisis at the chocolate teapot factory.

However, in the car on the way in, at an ungodly hour which I never usually see, I listened to (the horror!) Rio by Duran Duran. It’s the first time I’ve heard it in at least ten years, and it’s still quite enjoyable. I really rate Simon Le Bon as a singer, and whichever of the Taylors (John?) it was that played bass. And unlike so many of their contemporaries, they still managed to sound like a live band on record, most of the time. The arbitrary sax solo in the song “Rio” itself is an abomination though.

Once problems at the CTF were in hand, I rattled through This Nation’s Saving Grace and Are You Are Missing Winner by The Fall. The former is a masterpiece. The latter isn’t.

This evening, it’s been wall-to-wall Shostakovich – Symphonies 13, 14, 9, and 4 – the last conducted by Rostropovich with an amazing sense of rhythmic unity and structural logic, and the others by Haitink.

A mixed day’s listening today. Prior to departure for the chocolate teapot factory:

• Shostakovich Symphony no 13 (Ashkenazy) – mvts III-V
• Haydn Symphony no 50
• Haydn Symphony no 51 – with its amazing horn part in the slow movement. This must surely have caused hospitalisation of more than one intrepid horn player…

In the car:

• Kate Bush – Never for Ever – Kate gears up for the weirdness of The Dreaming
• Kate Bush – The Sensual World

At my desk:

• Brahms – String Quartet no 1, on Radio 3 streaming over the iPhone – didn’t catch who the performers were
• Purcell – Faerie Queen (Harry Christophers/The Sixteen)
• Suicide – Suicide – “Ghost rider, motorcycle hero…” – such a rock’n'roll record for a duo with just cheap electronics
• Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Flaunt It! – gave up at Rockit Miss USA. I’ve always loved the idea of Sputnik, but ultimately find the records themselves a bit of a trial.
• Sigue Sigue Sputnik – The First Generation - just for the un-tampered-with “Love Missile F1-11″
• Ornette Coleman – Ornette on Tenor
• Sun Ra – Space Is The Place (on Impulse!) – crazed space-chant greatness!

In the car on the way back from the CTF:

Ensconced at home I put on the Shostakovich 13 from the Ashkenazy box of the complete symphonies. I was getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of drama in this reading, and finally worked out why after checking timings against my other recordings. Rostropovich takes a respectable 62+ minutes over it, Haitink a slightly more stately 64+ minutes, whereas Ashkenazy belts through it in ten minutes less! I’m intrigued as to why – I wonder if he takes Shostakovich’s occasionally rather daft metronome markings rather too literally.

The Ashkenazy recording, as I type, has been replaced with Haitink and the Concertgebouw. Bliss.

I’m interested to know if anyone has any other favourite Shost. 13 recordings, though – I believe the Kondrashin set is very highly thought-of. Do I need four boxes of the Shostakovich Symphonies? Probably…