The Well-Tempered Ear
The new Apple Music Classical app is now available for Android users
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By Jacob Stockinger
The new Apple Music Classical app (logo is below) — before now available exclusively for Apple Music subscribers and the Apple OS operating system — is now available for Android operating systems and PCs through the Google Play store.
The streaming app, which costs about $10 a month (you need just a subscription to one of the music apps to get both), has been generally praised and highly rated by both professional critics and ordinary consumers. Most point out the wide variety of repertoire, performers and recordings, both current and historic or out-of-print; the quality of the sound; and the use of background documents about the music, the composers and the performers.
Here are links to two stories about Apple Music Classical for Android.
The first one, from TechCrunch, is the more general and comprehensive article.
The second story, briefer and written more for audiophiles, is from The Verge and contains more specific background information and technical specifications.
The Ear uses both Apple Music and Apple Music Classical, and will share his reactions to them in a future posting.
In the meantime, he wants to know:
Do you subscribe to Apple Music or Apple Music Classical?
Do you like it?
Dislike it?
Why?
Would you recommend Apple Music Classical or Apple Music to other listeners?
What do you think of other classical music apps such as Spotify, Amazon Music, Tidal, Idagio, Presto — if you use them?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: ECM Records finally streams its entire catalogue of award-winning artists and recordings
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By Jacob Stockinger
The critically acclaimed and award-winning independent label ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) was founded in Munich, Germany, in 1969 by the Grammy-winning producer Manfred Eicher (below).
Known for its penchant for the contemporary and even avant-garde, Eicher’s label was nonetheless a conservative hold-out when it came to the newer technology of digital streaming.
The old technology has its points besides superior sound quality. When you got an ECM CD, you usually also got one of their terrific black-and-white photographs, often a square-format landscape, as a cover. (ECM even published a book of its photographic covers.)
But as of this past Friday, ECM finally gave into the inevitable and streamed its entire catalogue. Its rationale was that it was more important for its music and musicians to be heard than to remain loyal to certain platforms.
ECM also cited the pressure from unauthorized uploads to YouTube and bootleg versions of its recordings as the reason for the decision.
So as of yesterday, ECM, which has won many awards for individual titles and artists, will be available on Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, Deezer, Tidal and other streaming services.
ECM is known for its popular and critically acclaimed jazz artists including pianist Keith Jarrett (below, of “The Köln Concert” or The Cologne Concert) and saxophonist Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble (“Officium”). But it also included classical chamber music groups such as the Keller Quartet, the Trio Medieval, the Danish Quartet and others.
ECM is also known for championing contemporary classical composers (Arvo Pärt, below, who is the most performed contemporary composer, as well as Tigur Mansurian, Lera Auerbach, Gyorgy Kurtag and Valentin Silvestrov among others) and some outstanding crossover classical musicians, including Jarrett, a jazz great who has also recorded Bach, Handel and Shostakovich on both piano and harpsichord.
The Ear especially likes violist Kim Kashkashian and Harvard pianist Robert Levin (a frequent performer at the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival) in sonatas of Brahms. He is also fond of Alexei Lubimov in various piano recitals as well as the many recordings of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Janacek and Robert Schumann by the superb pianist Andras Schiff (below). In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear Schiff in a live performance of the Gigue from Bach’s Keyboard Partita No. 3.)
And there are many, many more artists and recordings worth your attention. Here is a link to an extensive sampler on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ECMRecordsChannel
Who are your favorite ECM artists?
What are your favorite ECM recordings?
What ECM downloads do you recommend?
The Ear wants to hear.
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