Today is my last full day in San Luis Obispo; by this time tomorrow, I’ll be back home in Pasadena. Just in time to catch Sunday afternoon’s Los Angeles Philharmonic concert: Thomas Adès conducting his own music and that of other composers, with soloist Yuja Wang dropping in. Among the works on the program will be William Marsey’s Man with Limp Wrist, an eight-movement work inspired by the art of Salman Toor. You can read my interview with the composer here.

While up here, I also enjoyed a wide-ranging phone interview with William Henry Curry, the music director of the Durham Symphony Orchestra, and indefatigable Roy Harris booster. His National Symphony performance of Harris’ Third Symphony on September 6, 1979, on a program that included music by Adolphus Hailstork and George Walker, was confirmed by the Roy Harris Archive to be the last during the composer’s lifetime. An essay on Harris’ ill-fated “Bicentennial Symphony”, with Curry’s invaluable insights, will be posted in the next couple of weeks, timed for the 50th anniversary of the symphony’s premiere. In the meantime, I recommend watching this fascinating video of Curry discussing his origins and initial conducting efforts.

Back to the Central Coast: my dive into the aisles at Boo Boo Records yesterday apparently wasn’t enough. (Can you blame me? I only have around 35,000 CDs in my collection.) So I returned earlier this evening. The picks this time were:

Holst’s The Planets conducted by Ozawa (Philips) and Maazel (CBS): For a lot of listeners, Holst’s suite is an entry-level work, a splashy introduction to classical music. I never paid it serious attention until a couple of years ago, and even then only because I was first captivated by Holst’s Egdon Heath. Now I’ve become a bit of a completist for recordings of The Planets.
Slatkin conducts Piston: I had a rip of this on one of my hard drives, but wanted a physical copy.
David Alan Miller conducts Harris’ and Gould’s Second symphonies: You can guess why I grabbed this CD. On top of that, I’m a great admirer of the protean Gould.
Andrew Litton playing and conducting piano concertos by Ravel and Gershwin: Scratches my itch for Litton and original Virgin CDs.
Edo de Waart conducting Respighi in San Francisco: I like de Waart’s discography in the Bay Area and Minnesota.
Edward Gardner’s first volume of his Janáček series for Chandos: I already have the other two discs in this series. Now my set is complete.
Annie Fischer playing piano concertos with the NHK Symphony: It’s been a decade since I started collecting King Records’ NHK series. This was a real surprise to find; the price was right too — and the obi was tucked inside the booklet.
Fujieda Mamoru’s Patterns of Plants, played by Sarah Cahill: Not too familiar with Fujieda’s music; haven’t heard it in about a decade. Mainly bought it because I’ve enjoyed Cahill’s recordings since her New Albion days.

I’m already dreaming of my next visit to this lovely town. For now, though, I have lots of listening to catch up on this week.

My wife and I are here in San Luis Obispo for the next few days. We come up here two or three times a year. Everything here is generally so idyllic, the traffic so comparatively light (non-existent, actually), the surrounding area so gorgeous, that I wonder if people here are aware of how lucky they are to live here. (Well, Pasadena isn’t so bad either.)

One of the things I love checking here (and, really, anywhere I visit) are the local record stores and thrift shops. One of my most rewarding finds here was a private press CD issued by the San Luis Obispo Symphony Orchestra of recordings of orchestral music by Joseph Clokey, better known as a composer of sacred music and as the stepfather of Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby.

What I turned up this time was less exotic, but still interesting enough to pry open my wallet.

One of the discs I decided to get was Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s Conversations with Bill Evans album from the late 1990s, one of the last in his long series of recordings for Decca. I turned my nose up at this sort of “crossover” in years past, but my tastes have turned less puritanical with each passing year.

Another disc I picked up was an Andrew Litton album with the Bournemouth Symphony that featured Bernstein’s Second Symphony. Two reasons. First, the excellence of Litton’s Prokofiev and Shostakovich recordings for BIS prompted me to reevaluate the conductor’s discography. (I’ve also been fond of collecting original pressings of Virgin Classics CDs recently.) Then there’s Jeffrey Kahane as the soloist in “The Age of Anxiety”. His leadership of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra lingers fondly in my memory. Even more so is a solo recital he played in Disney Hall about a decade ago, with the most gorgeously shaded and nuanced performance of Bach’s French Suite No. 5 I’ve ever heard.

Christoph Eschenbach is another conductor I’ve been reevaluating in recent years. Especially his discography with the Houston Symphony; he made some truly superb recordings of Prokofiev’s and Shostakovich’s respective Fifth symphonies for the orchestra’s house label. For some reason, his recordings with the same orchestra of music by the Second Viennese School are a little harder to find, at least in the wild. This is the second disc in the series I’ve acquired.

One of the CDs I bought mostly based on my good will for the label than the music itself. To be honest, I’m not very familiar with Nikolai Kapustin’s music. The few times I’ve heard it, it left a lukewarm impression. Sort of interesting, especially given from where it came from, but also with a strong whiff of kitsch. More than anything, it seemed like “piano nerd” music: repertoire beloved mostly by pianists and pianophiles, than by non-specialist listeners. More than a decade has passed since I last listened to any Kapustin, but maybe this Boheme release played by the composer himself will change my mind.

The Harris CD speaks for itself as the latest evidence of my rapidly developing love of this composer’s very humane music.

Most of these discs were in the dollar bin at Boo Boo Records on Monterey Street; none were more than $4. Good finds. I may go back tomorrow.