Classical Listening [Archive] - Page 4 - Literature Network Forums

Musicology

05-16-2011, 09:11 AM

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

It helps, of course, if you come from the right bloodlines. But why is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) so famous ? Why does ‘Wikipedia’ describe him as, ‘the supreme genius of modern German literature' ? Well, one good reason is that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘the supreme genius of modern German literature’, came from the right bloodlines, as already said, but also was a prominent member of the Bavarian Illuminati who was prepared (for 30 pieces of silver) to abandon his career in law and to pose in romantic settings - for example, having his portrait painted for the adoring faithful back home during his 2 year journey to Italy (1786-8). We don’t need to go in to the details, do we ? Although details of what he was actually doing in Venice during that second year remain as obscure and unknown today as always. With entire parts of his correspondence (and that of his correspondents) conveniently destroyed.

But, in his defence, Goethe, of course, is author of that well known poem, ’Faust’ and of that most famous novel ’The Sorrows of Young Werther’. Both of which have often been set to music. (Neither of which are recommended for those who enjoy life or who see their glass half full, rather than half empty !). But Goethe, that well known heroic climber of a volcano in Italy, keeper of notes on geological formations, poseur extraordinaire, and a visitor to many ancient architectural sites of ancient Italy during those two formational years could not contain his enthusiasm for what he witnessed in Italy. Which, when its details were read back home, came as real news to the highly cultured Germans, who had obviously never seen the land of Italy. Thus Goethe became even more famous. (Despite Italy's monuments being widely known to everyone including Italians and non-Italians over the last 2000 years across Europe. Some of whom could write themselves).

To be fair, Goethe, touched by ideas of modesty, hoped his life to be remembered more for his theory of colour than for being ’the supreme genius of modern German literature’. Now there's modesty for you, yes ? Illuminati projects included.

And thus he, the ‘supreme genius of modern German literature’ was allowed to be cultivated as an indispensable part of ‘western culture’. Having calling cards to the aristocracy of western Europe (which he never stopped using) and basking in the glory of being 'the supreme genius of modern German literature'. Having friends in high places throughout this period of iconic status. And whose awful fate, as you know, was to become famous - very famous, in fact, for being, well, very famous.

The extreme end of Goethe criticism may even be contained in an infamous statement by Hans Johst -

‘When I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my holster’

But these two extreme views on Goethe and his iconic status are surely balanced by the observation (available to anyone with a brain) that the recognition of ‘genius’ is paying lip service to a wholesale revival of enforceable Babylonian culture, which specialises in and even demands the making of shrunken pantheons with (or without) your consent and the writing of sanitised and civilised versions of cultural history. With our brains stuck firmly in 'neutral'.

Ludwig van Beethoven
Overture
Egmont

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-_qruHlvDM

Emil Miller

05-16-2011, 01:27 PM

LitNetIsGreat

05-16-2011, 01:44 PM

Agreed. :out:

Beethoven, Romance for violin and orchestra, nº2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slh3szggVAw

That was a good suggestion. Listening to that with a left over glass of red which accompanied a spaghetti bolonaise.

I'm in the mood for a little violin tongiht, something, anything, to get me out of this semi-depressive state. Start with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGgrv3jezfY

Then this I think, more Beethoven:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVuyh-Hs9lQ

Edit: isn't that Emil in the front row?

Musicology

05-16-2011, 02:21 PM

You are quite right Emil Miller. Everyone knows von Goethe is (and I quote) 'the supreme genius of modern German literature'. And this is not a matter of discussion. Coz' we have nothing to say in its defence. And we never have. Remember, there will be no whitewash at the white house etc. And we must never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories.

I love that sort of education !!! It's so..... 'illuminated'. So.....'enlightened'.... :icon_bs:

Scam me some more !!

One thing is sure, Austrian/German audiences really appreciate symphonic composers other than their own - as we see here - and we in Britain all love the supreme genius of von Goethe.

Jean Sibelius
7th Symphony
Finale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgXCIlktGsY&feature=fvwrel

Jean Sibelius
5th Symphony
Finale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkzrSZKA4cM&feature=related

'Music, and music so-called, all moves towards Music to be heard'.

Please , oh please Litnetters don't take the bait. After interminable posts on Mozart, it would be very stupid to start it all over again with Goethe. Even if you are outraged at the proposition that he is another fraudulent product of the past machinations of others, don't reply to this post or you run the risk of having screeds of psycho babble disfiguring the forum indefinitely.

Lokasenna

05-16-2011, 03:20 PM

Please , oh please Litnetters don't take the bait. After interminable posts on Mozart, it would be very stupid to start it all over again with Goethe. Even if you are outraged at the proposition that he is another fraudulent product of the past machinations of others, don't reply to this post or you run the risk of having screeds of psycho babble disfiguring the forum indefinitely.

Quite. It would be a shame for this beautiful thread to go down. Musicology, if you want to talk Goethe, by all means start another thread.

I went to a very nice concert the other evening. Quite an eclectic programme of music, but all very enjoyable - even if the promised and much anticipated Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No. 2 was replaced at the last minute (due to illness) by Mozart's much less interesting Piano Concerto No. 14.

One of the items on the programme was something I hadn't heard in a long while, and I'd forgotten just how beautiful it is:

Ravel - Pavane pour une infante défunte (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKkeDqJBlK8)

It's such a wonderful little thing, sweet and sad all at the same time.

Emil Miller

05-16-2011, 05:20 PM

Agreed. :out:

That was a good suggestion. Listening to that with a left over glass of red which accompanied a spaghetti bolonaise.

I'm in the mood for a little violin tongiht, something, anything, to get me out of this semi-depressive state. Edit: isn't that Emil in the front row?

I trust the red wine was Italian. No it isn't me in the front row as I like my violin music to be of a slightly later provenance even if it were originally for the piano.

http://youtu.be/DsRup1iD_ME

Musicology

05-16-2011, 05:38 PM

Yes, you are right. I don't want to talk about Goethe. (He was first mentioned by someone else. And now we have finished talking about Goethe). The thread does not go down merely because he is believed to the greatest literary genius in German history.

Quite. It would be a shame for this beautiful thread to go down. Musicology, if you want to talk Goethe, by all means start another thread.

I went to a very nice concert the other evening. Quite an eclectic programme of music, but all very enjoyable - even if the promised and much anticipated Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No. 2 was replaced at the last minute (due to illness) by Mozart's much less interesting Piano Concerto No. 14.

One of the items on the programme was something I hadn't heard in a long while, and I'd forgotten just how beautiful it is:

Ravel - Pavane pour une infante défunte (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKkeDqJBlK8)

It's such a wonderful little thing, sweet and sad all at the same time.

LitNetIsGreat

05-16-2011, 06:27 PM

I trust the red wine was Italian. No it isn't me in the front row as I like my violin music to be of a slightly later provenance even if it were originally for the piano.

http://youtu.be/DsRup1iD_ME

I wasn't thinking you were there for the violin music specifically...

I enjoyed the link you posted, but now I think I'm going either to watch some more Woody Allen interviews or listen to Chopin piano - a bit of both.

No, the red wasn't Italian, it was (is) Chilian, but I didn't buy it myself anyway, it was bought for me so I'm grateful all the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqdcDGmtJqI&feature=fvst

mal4mac

05-17-2011, 06:51 AM

Beethoven, Symphony 7, Allegretto, mvt 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uOxOgm5jQ4

Something lighter:

Cavalleria Rusticana - Intermezzo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDVFaheqQAg

Mozart uninteresting?! Well sometimes, rarely. But I don't agree that KV 449 is uninteresting. Was it the performance? Try:

M. Uchida plays Mozart Piano Concerto No.14, KV 449 (2/3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hI42K2sMPU

Favourite music website (this week): http://www.spotify.com - an amazing number of free, first-class performances... more 'big hitters' than Naxos music library...

Spotify enabled me to explore Bilson's Mozart set to see if I really needed it to supplement Perahia's - I decided "no" - Bilson/fortepiano doesn't bring enough "feeling" to the slow movements for me.

Music book I'm reading today: "Music for the People" by Gareth Malone - a good beginners guide, and turned me on to Spotify! It's also full of good references to utube - not as good as this thread though...

Musicology

05-17-2011, 07:15 AM

Jacques Loussier Trio
Live in Concert
JS Bach
'Italian' Concerto
Second and Third Movement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqHOcQCT37o&feature=related

Cantata 84/B

Aria
Recitative
Chorale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP5bc8HCQMA&feature=related

mal4mac

05-17-2011, 10:19 AM

Grumiaux - Krebbers - Bach concerto for two violins BWV 1043 - (finale)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz_q4Q5chWE

Musicology

05-17-2011, 10:55 AM

Hi mal4mac,

Wow, Grumiaux has such marvellous tone quality in almost everything I've heard from him. One of the very finest violinists, for sure. I heard his recordings of chamber works and they were wonderful also.

Regards

Grumiaux - Krebbers - Bach concerto for two violins BWV 1043 - (finale)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz_q4Q5chWE

mal4mac

05-18-2011, 07:11 AM

Grumiaux, Mozart concertos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdFOwooVItI

Musicology

05-18-2011, 12:20 PM

Ah, yes. Very nice. You may care to hear the Mozart violin concerto. KV 268. (Known as number 6). It's excruciatingly and really Mozart. Honest ! The score is so bad, so banale, it had to be 'worked on' by the industry before it was publicly released, of course. (You know, expert orchestration to replace what was actually written etc. Cutting out the comic, abrupt, crude writing). Basic, clumsy writing. Don't tell the children. But, hey, it sells CD's.

So here, for discerning ears, is Mozart's real Violin Concerto. (His only one). Repaired, re-orchestrated and newly harmonised. For the faithful. Don't ask about the contents of the actual score.

And here is the 'official' list of Mozart's works (a fairly recent version of the Koechel Catalogue). Note that KV268 is not there. Sorry about that !!!

http://www.mozartforum.com/Koechel%20part%202.htm

Well, well, somebody must have removed it. It's that awful in its original form I guess it can't have been by him. Right ?

W.A. Mozart
Violin Concerto
KV268
1st Movement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_kqL-1tAHU&playnext=1&list=PL4E7A44D77A4B36AF

Grumiaux, Mozart concertos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdFOwooVItI

mal4mac

05-18-2011, 01:51 PM

I think the first movement of KV268 is nice. Not enough to have me running to Amazon to make a purchase though, especially after the disappointment of the second movement! Alfred Einstein believed “the excellent first movement" to be genuine, but "it is not likely that a single note of the obsolete and superficial second movement was written by Mozart”. The Cambridge Mozart Encylopedia doesn't list it at all, not even the first movement - and it's comprehensive, they list fragments of which they are "certain".

Musicology

05-18-2011, 04:53 PM

Hi there mal4mac,

KV268 is something of a joke within studies of 18th century music. I assure you that if you were to hear the manuscript first movement (rather than this heavily sanitised version) you would wonder how the legendary Mozart could possibly have composed such stuff. Ludwig Kochel (whose celebrated catalogue of 'his' music was the product of decades of study) had the fact that the manuscript was definitely in Mozart's hand. Good enough for him. But there are a whole series which had the same fate.

I could mention many examples. Take for example the awful slow introduction to the Symphony KV444 (also deleted from the Mozart catalogue) when it was finally discovered in 1908 ! that only that slow intro was in Mozart's hand. So much for the expertise of Mozart publications, right ? It's such poor stuff. So, as far as the 'experts' were concerned KV444 was a genuine symphony by W.A. Mozart. One of close to 100 'Mozart' symphonies that have been published, sold, eulogised and performed in his name. The survivors numbering far less than 50 today. Even in the most conservative catalogues. Of which hardly one, in fact, is actually by Mozart.

At some point the penny will drop.

Regards

I think the first movement of KV268 is nice. Not enough to have me running to Amazon to make a purchase though, especially after the disappointment of the second movement! Alfred Einstein believed “the excellent first movement" to be genuine, but "it is not likely that a single note of the obsolete and superficial second movement was written by Mozart”. The Cambridge Mozart Encylopedia doesn't list it at all, not even the first movement - and it's comprehensive, they list fragments of which they are "certain".

Emil Miller

05-19-2011, 08:19 AM

Some great playing here.

http://youtu.be/2DFnrdZZj_8

Musicology

05-19-2011, 11:48 AM

Really fine stuff !!!

Some great playing here.

http://youtu.be/2DFnrdZZj_8

Sergi Prokofiev
5th Symphony
Allegro marcato
Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra of Venezuela

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e0c4GRx4So&feature=related

Arturo Márquez
Danzón Nº 2
Simon Bolivar Orchestra
Proms Festival (London)
Gustavo Dudamel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vwZAkfLKK8&feature=related

Mutatis-Mutandis

05-19-2011, 05:35 PM

Tomorrow night I'm seeing a "Classical's Greatest Hits" being performed tomorrow night at Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis with the folks. Here's the setlist (is that what it's called for a symphony?):

WAGNER -- Prelude to Act III from Lohengrin
BIZET -- Selections from Carmen Suite No. 1
SARASATE -- Zigeunerweisen, op. 20
BERLIOZ -- Hungarian March from The Damnation of Faust
DEBUSSY / arr. Caplet -- Clair de lune
DUKAS -- The Sorcerer's Apprentice
MOZART -- The Magic Flute Overture
MOZART -- Allegro from Eine kleine Nachtmusik
J. STRAUSS, JR. -- On the Beautiful Blue Danube
ELGAR -- Nimrod from Enigma Variations
MUSSORGSKY / orch. Ravel -- The Great Gate at Kiev from Pictures at an Exhibition

Once I saw part of Pictures at an Exhibition was being played, I just had to go.

stlukesguild

05-19-2011, 09:38 PM

I had the good luck to see the Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition by the Cleveland Orchestra some years back on one of those nights when their playing was simply transcendent. The climax absolutely sent chills down my spine and left my wife in tears. I believe the orchestra was called back 5 times by the standing ovation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rVci4h8TkM

WyattGwyon

05-19-2011, 11:12 PM

The Musorgsky is wonderful in the Ravel arrangement. (Great in the piano version, too.) There are some other pretty good arrangements too that are worth hearing. The Gortchakov is admired by many who think it sounds more like Musorgsky in the style of its orchestration—raw, unsophisticated, not so heavy on the confectionary department as the Ravel. Vladimir Ashkenazy made an interesting version as well. There are like 30 or more published arrangements apparently . . .

Lokasenna

05-20-2011, 03:31 AM

mal4mac

05-20-2011, 07:25 AM

WAGNER -- Prelude to Act III from Lohengrin
BIZET -- Selections from Carmen Suite No. 1...

I prefer programme or 'play list', 'set list' sounds bit like homework :)

I have a CD of "MUSSORGSKY / orch. Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition" and all of it is well worth a listen, here's part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5r8sa863Ts

I have problems with Wagner 'in bulk', but like his orchestral interludes. My favourite listening from Radio 3 over the last few days has been the prelude to "Master Singers". My 'I hate Wagner' stance put into question again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhcTllJgIY

If you like Claire, try some more of Debussy's piano music. Gordon Fergus Thompson's set is a favourite of mine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIdS0KzZGVU

"The Magic Flute" is a source of endless wonder, has to be heard in full...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGMz8OlunO0

"Nimrod" is the only Enigma variation I like. Maybe I haven't listened to the right set - any recommendations? Elgar's Cello Concerto, though, is not to be missed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5C99JyP2ns

Emil Miller

05-20-2011, 09:54 AM

I"Nimrod" is the only Enigma variation I like. Maybe I haven't listened to the right set - any recommendations? Elgar's Cello Concerto, though, is not to be missed:

Nimrod is obviously one of the great set pieces of English music but as the same, yet to be discovered, tune links each and every variation, they are all connected in a work which is greater than the sum of its parts.
I don't see how anyone interested in music wouldn't like this:

http://youtu.be/59BLe5BQ3ak

mal4mac

05-21-2011, 06:01 AM

Here's the latest BBC Radio 3 BAL winner:

Schubert - Piano Trio Op. 99 - Beaux Arts Trio (II)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12xe2osfq1w

The cellist, Bernard Greenhouse, died last week.

Encore:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12xe2osfq1w

Musicology

05-21-2011, 07:17 AM

NASA abandons expensive programmes in search of aliens and also ditches the Shuttle programme. It also stops broadcasting images of young heroes floating around in space suits - this after a broadcast was unexpectedly received from outer space of a high volume Bach concert -

A small step for man but a giant leap for all mankind.

'When Bach played from his fancy, all
twenty-four keys were within his power; he
did with them what he pleased. He
connected the most remote as easily and as
naturally together as the nearest; the hearer
believed he had modulated with the
compass of a single key. He knew nothing of
harshness in modulation; even his transitions
in the chromatic style were as soft and
flowing as if he had wholly confined himself
to the diatonic scale. His Chromatic Fantasy
may prove what I here state. All his
extempore fantasies are said to have been of
a similar description, but frequently much
more free, brilliant and expressive.' "

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP2o4rBdX-s&feature=related

Gustav Mahler
4th Symphony
Finale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boqy-DzkAdE&feature=related

Mutatis-Mutandis

05-21-2011, 06:30 PM

I'll write a mini review of last night's symphony later tonight ... so look forward to that! Preview: I loved it.

stlukesguild

05-21-2011, 09:39 PM

Vivaldi should never be underestimated. His Four Seasons may be overplayed (through no fault of his own) but there is clearly a reason for this. Contrary to Stravinsky's snide comment that he wrote the same concerto 100 times (Stravinsky should be lucky to survive as long as Vivaldi) his concertos are laden with any number of absolutely marvelous moments. His vocal music, however, has been ignored for far too long. Currently, I'm listening to Juditha Triumphans... one of his best operas. I am especially struck by the aria, Quanto magis generosa... here performed by Magdalena Kozena.:hurray:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH03Ol_DBNk

Some other lovely moments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rub-wLrz_Kg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqfpYO8_j5w

Mutatis-Mutandis

05-22-2011, 01:29 AM

So, my succinct thoughts on the symphony. I'll go piece by piece.

The Wagner was a great way to start the performance. Boisterous and energetic, I really liked it.

The selections from Carmen were awesome, and really continued my enjoyment of the show.

The Sarasate, as I'm sure most of you know featured a solo violinist. A quite young (23, the program said), and pretty attractive if I do say so, woman played it and she was amazing. But, the piece didn't grab me. I've never been a huge solo kind of person, and the song seemed to drag a bit. Still, I enjoyed it, and watching her talent was a great pleasure. She deservedly got a standing ovation.

The Berlioz was very good. I enjoyed it.

Debussy's Claire de Lune was really the surprise highlight of the show. t was just so beautiful. I always enjoyed this song, but never really had any love of it. I do now. Certain parts gave me goosebumps, especially the build-up at 1:52 (in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9inMPQg0DU)). Up until this point, it had been a good, enjoyable show. This song changed that to an amazing show.

The Dukas was a lot of fun to listen to, as almost everyone knows it. It's such a wonderful song with such an amazingly apt name. A great way to rap up the first half of the show before intermission.

To kick off the second half were two pieces by Mozart. I know I speak blasphemy, but I can't get into Mozart, and the performance didn't convert me. It wasn't bad, but it just seemed so boring. Mozart always just seems so safe. I enjoy his operas more than his concertos.

As for the Strauss, I've never liked the Blue Danube. I don't know why, I just don't. It's boring and way too repetitive, and it seemed to drag. At this point I was getting bored.

Thankfully, Elgar's Nimrod brought it back. I found this piece to be just beautiful, just like Claire de Lune was, but this just didn't give me goosebumps like Lune did.

And, the finale was the finale to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which was just AMAZING. Definitely the best song, though I'm definitely biased towards it. It was just so powerful, so grand. I mean, how could one not love the gong? Where Lune gave me goosebumps, this gave me chills. I'd love to see the whole piece performed.

So, there're my thoughts on the songs. Overal it was an awesome experience. But, like Mozart in general, it was too safe for my tastes in classical. I like more of the modern stuff, music that is a bit more out there. Hopefully there'll be some of that next season, because I'm definitely going back. The sound was just amazing. It almost didn't sound real, if that makes sense. That so much sound can come from unamplified music is just amazing to someone who has, up until now, seen almost nothing but amplified concerts, including many an earl-bleeding heavy metal shows.

A couple questions, though. The conductor talked to the crowd every few songs (with a microphone) about what they were playing, giving brief explanations and backgrounds of each piece. Is this normal, or usual? It was a "Classical's Greatest Hits" show, so I think it was geared more towards very casual listeners or people new to classical (like myself), so maybe it was just for that show. In any case, I liked that he did it.

My other question is, is it against decorum to move at all during a performance? Both my dad and me were pretty much bobbing our heads (or sort of swaying them during slower sections) the whole time. It's just how we are--we can't help but move when listening to music. Every time I looked around, people were like statues, which, to me, is weirder than not moving.

mal4mac

05-22-2011, 07:24 AM

To kick off the second half were two pieces by Mozart. I know I speak blasphemy, but I can't get into Mozart, and the performance didn't convert me. It wasn't bad, but it just seemed so boring. Mozart always just seems so safe. I enjoy his operas more than his concertos.

Could it be you are just too familiar with the piece? Also it is a sernade, light music, written on commission. It's not really fair to judge Mozart on this (although I think it's great!)

Anyway, you are contradicting yourself here - you say you enjoy his operas and his concertos, so you can obviously *are* into him.

I find the mature Mozart amazing in all serious forms, here's a Sonata that never fails to blow me away:

Mozart Piano Sonata No.8 (Lesson) Walter Klien
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1-LhYntNbc

-------

I listened to Karajan's 1982 live version of Mahler 9 yesterday It has two slow movements (I and IV), both half an hour long, and both amazingly beautiful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYd5K_0-ae4

BBC Radio 3 broadcast Parsifal complete (in English) yesterday:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011cgmj

The Prelude was superb, though I gave up when the singing started (I'm not doing Mahler 9 and Parsifal back to back!)

As for the Strauss, I've never liked the Blue Danube. I don't know why, I just don't. It's boring and way too repetitive, and it seemed to drag. At this point I was getting bored.

It's just too light and frivolous - just not satisfying if you've just listened to something really moving like Mahler 9.

Claire de Lune is a very interesting piece - it is so simple, why doesn't it seem as light and frivolous as the Blue Danube? Debussy is very special.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0CLYpYKHNY

And, the finale was the finale to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which was just AMAZING. Definitely the best song, though I'm definitely biased towards it. It was just so powerful, so grand. I mean, how could one not love the gong? Where Lune gave me goosebumps, this gave me chills. I'd love to see the whole piece performed.

The conductor talked to the crowd every few songs (with a microphone) about what they were playing, giving brief explanations and backgrounds of each piece. Is this normal, or usual?...

Very unusual!

"The conductor has the advantage of not seeing the audience" - Andre Kostelanetz

My other question is, is it against decorum to move at all during a performance? Both my dad and me were pretty much bobbing our heads (or sort of swaying them during slower sections) the whole time. It's just how we are--we can't help but move when listening to music. Every time I looked around, people were like statues, which, to me, is weirder than not moving.

Simple rule: only do it if the rest of the audience is doing it.

There are some occasions when not moving would be a treasonable offence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cWz9MrHskk

Vivaldi should never be underestimated. His Four Seasons may be overplayed (through no fault of his own) but there is clearly a reason for this. Contrary to Stravinsky's snide comment that he wrote the same concerto 100 times (Stravinsky should be lucky to survive as long as Vivaldi) his concertos are laden with any number of absolutely marvelous moments.

I agree, Stravinsky was the master of *unfair* comments about other composers - he once said that listening to a Vaughan Williams symphony was like staring at a cow for an hour. (Unfair! But funny...)

Vivaldi La Stravaganza Concerto 6 in G minor II - Marriner ASMF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgiA3Vs7DHI

Mutatis-Mutandis

05-22-2011, 03:25 PM

Anyway, you are contradicting yourself here - you say you enjoy his operas and his concertos, so you can obviously *are* into him.
Not really. I can enjoy a piece and not be "into" that particular artist. I enjoy most of what I hear by Mozart, but I don't go out of my way to listen to him. He's just not as great to me as he is to others.

Simple rule: only do it if the rest of the audience is doing it.
Screw that. I'll move my head if the music provokes me. :nod:

Gilliatt Gurgle

05-24-2011, 10:47 PM

Just retruned from my son's(violin) High School orchestra concert. A few selections played included "The Water is Wide" arranged by Robert Sieving, Pirates of the Caribbean arr by Ted Ricketts, a harp solo playing Trois Gymnopedies, a medley from Fiddler on the Roof and the hi-lite of the evening was "Adagio for Strings" by Samual Barber:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV3SHBFyDZM

.

Mutatis-Mutandis

05-25-2011, 09:34 AM

mal4mac

05-25-2011, 12:23 PM

I've been listening to classical for a few months now, mostly through Pandora, and I just realized I haven't heard any organ/pipe organ, an instrument I've always loved the sound of. Any suggestions on names I could put in to hear some?

I'm not usually a great fan of organ music, but I really liked this:

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach — Organ Sonata no.5 W70 no.5
Performer: Marie-Claire Alain (organ)

Heard it on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010nttb

CPE Bach is greatly underated IMHO!

Lokasenna

05-25-2011, 06:35 PM

I've been listening to classical for a few months now, mostly through Pandora, and I just realized I haven't heard any organ/pipe organ, an instrument I've always loved the sound of. Any suggestions on names I could put in to hear some?

Saint-Saëns' Symphony No.3 in C minor is one of my absolute favourite pieces - and it's usually called the 'Organ' symphony because that is exactly what it features in two of its four movements.

It's an absolutely stunning piece, the composer's best - and one of the great masterpieces of Romantic music.

Emil Miller

05-25-2011, 07:16 PM

Saint-Saëns' Symphony No.3 in C minor is one of my absolute favourite pieces - and it's usually called the 'Organ' symphony because that is exactly what it features in two of its four movements.

It's an absolutely stunning piece, the composer's best - and one of the great masterpieces of Romantic music.

Stunning is exactly the word to describe this great work of French romanticism but, before the classists turn up their noses at an organ work that wasn't composed by Bach, just remember this, Bach for all of his obvious greatness would have given his right arm to have had these orchestral forces at his disposal.

http://youtu.be/TCKiZRWyv20

stlukesguild

05-26-2011, 01:03 AM

Obviously J.S. Bach. Look into a collection of his organ works. My favorite would surely be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE8SRkEa4_k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAXqRC78u98&feature=related

Check out G.F. Handel's Organ Concertos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdo8Ai9THGA&feature=related

Dietrich Buxtehude is another name that should not be ignored... a great precursor to J.S. Bach on both organ and in the cantata:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbY5cUYKX2Y

Perhaps one of the most recent masters of the instrument was the composer, Messiaen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS37bQ-SN_4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZfkUgazCtM

Another great Modern composer for the organ is Marcel Dupre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZfkUgazCtM

Musicology

05-27-2011, 07:25 AM

JS Bach
Danse Forlane
Orchestral Suite 1
BWV 1066/4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Owbdoia7_w&feature=related

mal4mac

05-27-2011, 08:50 AM

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Serenade For Winds; K. 361; 3rd Movement 'Gran Partita'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Up4X1JHwqI

Mutatis-Mutandis

05-27-2011, 11:38 PM

Thanks for all the suggestions on the organ music, everyone!

I know you've been on a choral music kick, StLukes, and it's something I've never really gotten into (yet). Though I did hear this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TizMNDdems4) yesterday and I just love it. Dark, ominous, foreboding, sinister. Awesome.

Does anyone have any suggestions to put in for choral classical that is more contemporary? I am playing the choral station on pandora, and they seem to only play Baroque period, maybe classical, but nothing beyond.

Lokasenna

05-28-2011, 03:22 AM

Does anyone have any suggestions to put in for choral classical that is more contemporary? I am playing the choral station on pandora, and they seem to only play Baroque period, maybe classical, but nothing beyond.

Rachmaninov's All-Night Vigil (most commonly, if incorrectly, called Vespers) is a justifiably celebrated 20th century choral piece. They are exclusively a capella (so no orchestra or anything). I really do love them - they almost challenge Piano Concerto No. 2 for the place of my favourite Rachmaninov work.

mal4mac

05-28-2011, 06:41 AM

Ligeti: "Lux aeterna"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnuAaKiX1sg

Musicology

05-28-2011, 10:05 AM

JS Bach
Double Concerto
Second Movement
Soloists - Isaac Stern & Shlomo Mintz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9ZRN5l97O8&feature=related

stlukesguild

05-28-2011, 10:56 AM

Herbert Howells- Requiem aeternam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbINuox-kZ0

John Adams- Harmonium:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpJKsF4JJ8U&feature=related

David Lang- The Little Match Girl Passion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuOi5yIqIAQ

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipxywxCMx_Y

Peteris Vasks- Dona Nobis Pacem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZsenEas8jw

Benjamen Britten- War Requiem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhkbphH8_Ic

Henryck Gorecki- Symphony 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miLV0o4AhE4

John Rutter- Requiem aeternam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAhNDGwMDPQ

John Tavener- New Jerusalem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOCXMi0cyXc&feature=related

Eric Whitacre- Sleep:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhCS7etNEbU

David Briggs- O Lord Support Us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USwqmEdFsos

Krzysztof Penderecki- Utrenja:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mmcq1HylCg

Oliver Messiaen- O sacrum convivium:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieiHHhK_MX0&feature=related

Osvaldo Golijov- La Pasión según San Marcos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvTiWPV2da0

Philip Glass- Itaipu:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PM754CTz5I

Arvo Part- Magnificat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbxnnC22gwY

Kaija Saariaho - Lonh:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrXaWt0UJ5Y

(Saariaho's work is not traditional "choral" is the use of a choir. Rather she employs various electronic and recording techniques to layer voices.)

Gyorgy Ligeti- Lux aeterna:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnuAaKiX1sg&feature=related

Samuel Barber- Agnus Dei:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6ilqJW3fV8

Mutatis-Mutandis

05-28-2011, 03:57 PM

Thanks Lok, and especially thanks StLukes. That'll keep me occupied for a while, for sure.

mal4mac

05-29-2011, 07:23 AM

Bach, J.S. - "Air" Orchestral Suite N° 3 in D Major BWV 1068
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlT8yeEYbMs

Bach - Concerto for 2 Harpsichords in C Minor BWV 1062 - 2/3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4bueaFp7JI&feature=related

Musicology

05-29-2011, 02:45 PM

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
'Karelia Suite'
Opening

*****

Tampere Filharmonia
Tuomas Ollila (1998)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYoJ4fhMlC0&feature=related

mal4mac

05-30-2011, 06:51 AM

Emil Miller

05-30-2011, 08:41 AM

Just listened to Handel's royal fireworks music by Marriner and wondered why I bought it :( Far too smooth and slow.

Need to fix this.

Any suggestions?

I like this version by Pinnock:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-yHmIObOXQ

Any other Handel performances that might fix my situation?

If you want something that is full-blooded and not the prissy performance that this work is often given, then you could try this one. Nobody goes to sleep when Stokowski conducts.

http://youtu.be/IzSQZveguUQ

Emil Miller

05-30-2011, 09:19 AM

mal4mac

05-30-2011, 09:53 AM

If you want something that is full-blooded and not the prissy performance that this work is often given, then you could try this one. Nobody goes to sleep when Stokowski conducts.

http://youtu.be/IzSQZveguUQ

Thanks - that was fun. Real fireworks! "Third Ear" says Stokowski used "more winds than Handel and an enlarged body of strings for a total of 125 players." He gets a top recommendation there, but that's along with 9 other disks (!)

Prissy - that describes Marriner's Decca version exactly (though his earlier Argos version is supposedly better...)

Anyway, my taste (today) is PI, so I've plumped for Norrington - here's a beautiful, but not prissy, clip from Water Music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNRc8EBbDbs

stlukesguild

05-30-2011, 10:16 AM

The Water Music and the Royal Fireworks Music are not my favorite works by Handel. They reek a bit too much of all that is worst in English music: pomposity, pretension, Brian's noted "prissy-ness", and a lack of real elegance. His Italian cantatas, operas... or for his later English music, his Alexander's Feast the Coronation Anthems, and of course the great oratorios (ummm... The Messiah?) are stunning.

Nevertheless, I agree that in this case it may be the conductor. Sir Neville Mariner is not bad. I still hold a soft spot for his Mozart recordings... simply because it was he who really sold me on Mozart through the recordings used in Amadeus. But like Leonhardt and Harnoncourt,,, two other early HIP (Historically Informed Performance) conductors, his performances often seem tame by today's standards. Interestingly enough, he would have been criticized for his excessive speed years ago when all music... Classical and even Baroque... was played as if Mahler had written it: orchestras of 150 instruments, lush layers of strings, slow, stately performances laden with gravitas... or treacle... and no thought whatsoever given to the original orchestration and instruments used. Stokowski is always fun to listen to... but in almost every instance you get more of Stokowski than you do of Handel or Bach. Pinnock seems closer to my ideal... but I like Jordi Savall: a full balls to the wind HIP performance!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsTq46JK7EU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOSnaswpdc0&feature=related

mal4mac

05-30-2011, 10:21 AM

I have been trying to play a piano arrangement of this as it's a particular favourite piece of mine but the rendition here is nothing less than superb.
Really beautiful playing that won't be bettered.

http://youtu.be/7ERK1S_BJdU

Maybe equalled? I caught this last week on Radio 3:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011cjt4/Radio_3_Lunchtime_Concert_Ebene_Quartet/

Their Ravel/Debussy/Faure disk is a worthy Grammy winner IMHO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2Hywiv8jXU

Emil Miller

05-31-2011, 02:03 PM

Maybe equalled? I caught this last week on Radio 3:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011cjt4/Radio_3_Lunchtime_Concert_Ebene_Quartet/

Their Ravel/Debussy/Faure disk is a worthy Grammy winner IMHO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2Hywiv8jXU

Agreed, they really work at what they do and it shows in the performance.
If they stay together, they have a great future. I didn't go for the pop music videos on display but in serious music they know what they are about.

Musicology

06-01-2011, 08:38 AM

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Solveig's Song - Norway
Peer Gynt
Soloist - Barbara Bonney

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHbI2vn6phg&feature=related

''She played Bach. I do not know the names of the pieces, but I recognized in them the stiff ceremonial of the Frenchified little German courts and the sober, thrifty comfort of the burghers, and the dancing on the village green, the green trees that looked like Christmas trees, and the sunlight on the wide German country, and a tender cosiness -

And in my nostrils there was a warm scent of the soil - and I was conscious of a sturdy strength that seemed to have its roots deep in mother earth, and of an elemental power that was timeless and had no home in space''.

(W. Somerset Maugham)

Magnificat
BWV 243/1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUEFsxDkGVE&feature=related

Emil Miller

06-01-2011, 12:18 PM

''She played Bach. I do not know the names of the pieces, but I recognized in them the stiff ceremonial of the Frenchified little German courts and the sober, thrifty comfort of the burghers, and the dancing on the village green, the green trees that looked like Christmas trees, and the sunlight on the wide German country, and a tender cosiness -

And in my nostrils there was a warm scent of the soil - and I was conscious of a sturdy strength that seemed to have its roots deep in mother earth, and of an elemental power that was timeless and had no home in space''.

(W. Somerset Maugham)

Magnificat
BWV 243/1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUEFsxDkGVE&feature=related

The quote is from Maugham's short story 'The Alien Corn' but in the film version, she plays a Schubert impromptu although I don't remember which one.

Musicology

06-01-2011, 05:50 PM

Ah, yes, there is the film industry for you !

The quote is from Maugham's short story 'The Alien Corn' but in the film version, she plays a Schubert impromptu although I don't remember which one.

Emil Miller

06-01-2011, 06:11 PM

Ah, yes, there is the film industry for you !

Well it was part of a quartet of Maugham's stories in one film and Eileen Joyce played the piano, although it was Francoise Rosay who played the pianist. This is the introduction to it: quite something to see Maugham on film.

http://youtu.be/WmERUgyjmWc

Musicology

06-02-2011, 06:15 AM

'An elemental power that was timeless and had no home in space'.

Mmm !!

Something like this meets that description. This music even brings to mind that famous verse -

'The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof'. (Psalm 24)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bem-aWFns4c&feature=related

Patrick_Bateman

06-03-2011, 12:13 PM

Emil Miller

06-03-2011, 04:34 PM

I would like the opportunity to be boring and mundane about a work that is already revered for the brilliant piece that it is.

Ladies and Gentleman here is (something you all know well) the most beautiful and moving piece of ART ever composed. The euphony of the strings in harmony with the gentle piano play moves me literally to tears every time it embraces my ear. The music penetrates the atmosphere like no other sound you will ever hear as even the air is inspired to twirl in a slow, melancholic waltz in awe of the beauty that surrounds it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY3W22uu0iM

This recording is very well known and was for many years considered one of the best in the catalogue. It is a work of chrystaline beauty and of course very moving, as shown by its use in David Lean's great British film Brief Encounter.

http://youtu.be/hubyFqSUaGA

TacoButt

06-03-2011, 11:16 PM

Here's some music that has stuck with me for some odd reason...

Robert Helps "Hommage a Faure'" (1972)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBfxCHRtmwQ

Emil Miller

06-05-2011, 06:33 PM

Musicology

06-06-2011, 07:30 AM

Oboe Concerto
BWV 1053/1

''The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul'' (J.S. Bach)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYGpPHxGIHk&feature=related

Patrick_Bateman

06-06-2011, 08:22 AM

While we are on Rachmaninov, here's his great Paganini variations, truly one of the greatest works written for the piano with orchestral accompaniment. When the Dies Irae kicks in at the very end, it simply leaves the listener staggered.

http://youtu.be/TJ2dY5wRfm4

Going to London Philharmonic at the end of June to listen to Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto #3 as well as Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony.

I can't go to this Thursday's performance of Rach 2. Which is devastating.

Emil Miller

06-06-2011, 09:29 AM

Going to London Philharmonic at the end of June to listen to Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto #3 as well as Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony.

I can't go to this Thursday's performance of Rach 2. Which is devastating.

Presumably you will be seeing it at the Royal Festival Hall if you are in London.
I don't think you will be disappointed with the third concerto which, to my mind, is even better than the second. Rachmaninoff had one of the greatest musical minds of any century and it takes, not only a musical sensibility but also a prodigious technique to play him. Who is the soloist on June 6th?
Tchaikovsky's 6th is another great work in the Russian repertoire but it ends in a somewhat a negative way. Strangely, it's the one that conductors seem to prefer as it's the most frequently performed but I think that the last movement is too much of a change after this very typical Bernstein performance with the NYSO, at which the audience applauded before the last movement was played.

http://youtu.be/EbEGSbipAA8

Patrick_Bateman

06-06-2011, 10:06 AM

Presumably you will be seeing it at the Royal Festival Hall if you are in London.
I don't think you will be disappointed with the third concerto which, to my mind, is even better than the second. Rachmaninoff had one of the greatest musical minds of any century and it takes, not only a musical sensibility but also a prodigious technique to play him. Who is the soloist on June 6th?
Tchaikovsky's 6th is another great work in the Russian repertoire but it ends in a somewhat a negative way. Strangely, it's the one that conductors seem to prefer as it's the most frequently performed but I think that the last movement is too much of a change after this very typical Bernstein performance with the NYSO, at which the audience applauded before the last movement was played.

http://youtu.be/EbEGSbipAA8

I've always thought the same with regard to the 3rd. But the 2nd movement of the 2nd concerto moves me like no other piece for piano and it must be such a transcendent experience to hear it live in concert. I enjoy Tchaikovsky's 6th and it will be a fantastic warm up prior to the 1812 Overture at Highclere Castle in July (complete with 200 live cannon and fireworks.)

Yes it will be at the HUGE Festival Hall on the Southbank. Looking forward to the Saison Poetry room as well that is housed within the Hall.

Emil Miller

06-06-2011, 10:46 AM

I've always thought the same with regard to the 3rd. But the 2nd movement of the 2nd concerto moves me like no other piece for piano and it must be such a transcendent experience to hear it live in concert. I enjoy Tchaikovsky's 6th and it will be a fantastic warm up prior to the 1812 Overture at Highclere Castle in July (complete with 200 live cannon and fireworks.)

Yes it will be at the HUGE Festival Hall on the Southbank. Looking forward to the Saison Poetry room as well that is housed within the Hall.

If the cannon aren't kept at some distance from the orchestra, they might well drown them out at the end , but everyone should see the 1812 played at some time in their life. It may seem hackneyed but the audience response is always amazing.

I've just checked out the pianist for your concert and here he is playing the final part of the Rachmaninoff 3rd, I don't know the orchestra but the conductor is Lorin Maazel.

http://youtu.be/GjRGip5aNhs

Emil Miller

06-07-2011, 05:11 AM

Some years ago I was with a friend driving along the rocky north coast of Devon just after a terrific rainstorm and we were ploughing through huge pools of water. She switched on the radio and this music was playing, which perfectly caught the mood of the moment.

http://youtu.be/2-F5dmRV5Bc

Musicology

06-07-2011, 09:02 AM

"The organist Bach has previously played here rather too long, but after his attention was called to it by the Superintendent, he has at once fallen into the other extreme and has made it too short."

J.S. Bach
"Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild"
Cantata
BWV 79/1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmio2ZdUm_A&feature=related

yanni

06-07-2011, 11:54 AM

More from JSBach's extensive biography:

In 1722 he left Prince Leopold's services to become cantor at St Thomas's church in Leipzig, an important post offering a higher salary which was becoming increasingly necessary for the support and education of his large and growing family. Bach's stay in Leipzig was not particularly happy for him, being marred by constant conflict with the authorities. His attempts to obtain a new position failed, and in 1750 he died of a stroke following a disastrous operation intended to improve his failing eyesight.

:iagree:

Emil Miller

06-11-2011, 03:15 PM

Here's something from a brilliant Vietnamese virtuoso. Check out his other videos to see what piano playing should be.

http://youtu.be/drQe8ER57uE

Lokasenna

06-13-2011, 02:33 PM

While working today, I listened through the entirety of Die tote Stadt. What a stunning opera - a Korngold fanboy I may be, but it cannot be denied that this holds up well against any of its Straussian predecessors. It really is a masterpiece.

And this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lolPTlQX84w&feature=related) is, quite possibly, my favourite baritone aria of them all...

LitNetIsGreat

06-17-2011, 02:29 PM

I might watch the Royal Opera House production of Le nozze di Figaro tonight. We'll see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF655YJolQI

Lokasenna

06-18-2011, 04:36 AM

I might watch the Royal Opera House production of Le nozze di Figaro tonight. We'll see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF655YJolQI

I have it on DVD - it's a great production. Dorothea Roshmann's Countess is particularly brilliant.

LitNetIsGreat

06-18-2011, 05:39 PM

I have it on DVD - it's a great production. Dorothea Roshmann's Countess is particularly brilliant.

Yes it's a good one. I went through a Figaro thing last year where I kept playing this version and another one. I also saw two productions of it, one in Sheffield and the other at the Royal Opera House itself (with some of the same cast as in the DVD). This was one of my rare visits to London.

Edit: Jesus, I've just seen one of the adverts above; Classical Music Dating Site (or something) isn't the internet unreal at times?

Too late

06-21-2011, 07:16 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94HYEe1bOFU&feature=related

Emil Miller

06-22-2011, 08:55 AM

Here are those fiery Venezuelan kids again playing it better than anyone else.

http://youtu.be/RcAGFgPCigw

Lokasenna

06-24-2011, 04:59 AM

Here are those fiery Venezuelan kids again playing it better than anyone else.

http://youtu.be/RcAGFgPCigw

That really is stunning - I think that's the best performance of the Bacchanalle that I've heard.

Vonny

06-24-2011, 03:58 PM

Here are those fiery Venezuelan kids again playing it better than anyone else.

http://youtu.be/RcAGFgPCigw

This is beautiful. The ending is so powerful.

It sure beats rock, rap, or whatever they call that noise.

stlukesguild

06-24-2011, 10:28 PM

I've been listening to Mahler again after a rather lengthy interval (I've been focusing upon broadening my grasp... and my collection... of the Baroque). Today I listened once again to the young Simon Rattle's iconic recording of Symphony no. 2 "The Resurrection" and was blown away once again.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3072/5867854961_3db150b1fe.jpg

Here is a brief outtake of Valery Giergev's performance with the LSO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGyvl9McMGs

**************

In other classical news, I just made what must be the greatest bargain purchase yet this year. This 15 disc set:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3039/5867863971_48f78d1160.jpg

This set consists of 15 discs by Paul Van Nevel and the Huelgas Ensemble, a brilliant vocal and instrumental group specializing in the performance of "early" music (especially medieval and Renaissance). Each of these discs was already released independently and most are still in print. I already owned two of the discs in this set as well as several other discs by the Huelgas Ensemble, but at a price of just over $30 US for more than a dozen highly regarded discs of medieval and Renaissance music... with a sizable catalog and beautiful packaging... I could not turn this one by.

Now if only they would offer Solti's "Ring" or Keilberth's "Ring" at such a reasonable price, I'd be in heaven.:yesnod::smash:

Lokasenna

07-19-2011, 06:04 AM

Vonny

07-20-2011, 02:35 AM

Well, the weather outside might be gloomy, but after my travels it is nice to be back in England.

So, I'm currently contemplating the pile of books in my 'to read' corner, mulling over a cup of tea, and enjoying some wonderful Vaughan Williams (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hpnRAs0mp4)...

This is a lovely folk song and video. I've often wondered what it would feel like to be in a 1000 year-old cathedral or castle.

Since finding this website I've become aware of a few things that I was completely oblivious to before. Maybe not oblivious. I knew that something was off. We're sorely lacking that "wealth of tradition." And we've raised the "cheap compromise" to an art form.

When I used that word "lovely" in my first sentence, I actually felt inhibited. (Yes, we have our inhibitions; we lack the English sexual license.) I didn't know there was anyone in the world today who used the word lovely. That word isn't used where I live. Men, and even women, would feel more comfortable taking a gunshot wound to the head than using that word.

There's something in the language. People can't think too well without words, and so when the words are lost, the people revert to Neanderthals. They say it isn't possible to "devolve," but I wonder.

You've got Jane Austen. Sandpoint here is very proud to be the birthplace of Sarah Palin. Apparently, Sarah attended North Idaho College for a couple of semesters. The library of NIC is amazing in that it has practically new 8-year old history, literature and science books on its shelves. I mean, someone dusts them. But you can see that the books are never touched. If a book is 5 years old, it may have been checked out once or twice 5 years ago, and not since. And they get new books that are hardly touched... Our only culture is the NRA.

oh, ignore me! I'm always in my own world and have no idea what the thread is about!

Emil Miller

07-21-2011, 06:29 AM

oh, ignore me! I'm always in my own world and have no idea what the thread is about!

I was wondering that as well.

kasie

07-22-2011, 01:58 AM

Emil Miller

07-22-2011, 02:40 PM

I think Vonny was trying to express the envy she feels for people who are comfortable with 'Culture with a Capital C' and have a heritage of which they are proud and unashamed.

However we have our share of 'Neanderthals' too, Vonny!

Agreed, it will take another couple of millenia before the US are able to think in terms of culture in the European way despite examples of early peoples having lived there in the distant past. When it comes to Neanderthals, although there may be significant numbers of them in what are sometimes referred to as the 'flyover states' of America, you would have to go along way to find examples as numerous as in London, where tattoos and piercings abound and a general air of primitivism makes London an ideal place for students of anthropology.

stlukesguild

07-22-2011, 04:47 PM

This is a lovely folk song and video. I've often wondered what it would feel like to be in a 1000 year-old cathedral or castle.

Since finding this website I've become aware of a few things that I was completely oblivious to before. Maybe not oblivious. I knew that something was off. We're sorely lacking that "wealth of tradition." And we've raised the "cheap compromise" to an art form.

Obviously Europe and Asia have a far greater history of culture which has led to our building primarily upon those traditions... and to a good extent, to that of Africa as well. The Australian art critic (ironically in connection with his view of the dominance of American culture) speaks of the "cultural cringe"... the feeling that one's native culture is crude and provincial in contrast to the culture of another cultural center.

This comment reminds me of Emerson's question as to whether it would be better to live in a nation lacking a great cultural history... but one that is in the ascendant (I believe he uses the early Roman Republic as an example) or a nation at its peak, which has a great history and culture... but is probably facing slow decline (here the late Roman Empire is the model). Emerson clearly leans toward the former... embracing the nobility and even heroism of defining a new nation. Myself... I would prefer the latter... but ultimately the choice of where and when we are born is not ours.

Having said this much... and noting that I am far from a champion of chauvinistic nationalism... indeed I will freely admit to being far more infatuated with the cultural history of Europe, the Middle-East, India, and Japan than I am with that of the United States... I will nevertheless state that I believe you underestimate America's cultural contributions. For a nation barely 200 years old, the US has produced any number of major literary figures. Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, and T.S. Eliot are certainly as influential as any foreign counterparts of the same period of time. To these three we might add Melville, Dickinson, Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Hart Crane, Henry James, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Nathaniel West, Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthleme, John Barth, and quite a few more as being among the leading writers of the last 100 years.

American contributions to music is even greater considering the innovations of jazz, blues, and rock-n-roll. Most popular music today... whether American, European, or even Asian... is deeply rooted in these American musical forms. While America has not produced a classical composer to rival Richard Strauss or Stravinsky (let alone Beethoven) they have been among the leaders in post-WWII music where we find composers such as Howard Hanson, Virgil Thompson, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Alan Hovhaness, Walter Piston, Morton Feldman, Morten Lauridsen, Erik Whitacre, George Rochberg, George Crumb, David Lang, Steve Reich, John Adams, Philip Glass, Peter Lieberson, Joseph Schwantner, John Cage, Harry Partch, and a great many more.

The same may be said of the visual arts. Among the most memorable images of the last century, a great many were created by American photographers. The US is certainly the leading producer of film and television... including more than a few directors that will surely survive among the great artists of the 20th century. In the field of the traditional visual arts, New York has ruled the art market since the 1940s when the Abstract Expressionists became the first America artists who were leading the Europeans. Since then most of the major art movements have begun in the US: Pop Art, Color Field Painting, Conceptualism, Minimalism, Pattern Painting, Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo, Photo-Realism, etc... This doesn't even touch upon architecture and the American innovations of Skyscrapers and superhighways.

Again... America has yet to produce a Goethe or Dante or Shakespeare or Picasso or Mozart... but for a nation that has only really come out of the the period of colonization and the construction of modern functioning cities, American culture is not as provincial and crude as you may imagine.

When I used that word "lovely" in my first sentence, I actually felt inhibited. (Yes, we have our inhibitions; we lack the English sexual license.)

Who is "we"? Seriously, in spite of the US history of Puritanism (inherited from Britain one might do well to remember) and certain highly vocal Puritans active in American politics, I've never thought of the British as more licentious than Americans. Now the French on the other hand... :hand:

I didn't know there was anyone in the world today who used the word lovely. That word isn't used where I live. Men, and even women, would feel more comfortable taking a gunshot wound to the head than using that word.

There's something in the language. People can't think too well without words, and so when the words are lost, the people revert to Neanderthals. They say it isn't possible to "devolve," but I wonder.

You've got Jane Austen. Sandpoint here is very proud to be the birthplace of Sarah Palin. Apparently, Sarah attended North Idaho College for a couple of semesters. The library of NIC is amazing in that it has practically new 8-year old history, literature and science books on its shelves. I mean, someone dusts them. But you can see that the books are never touched. If a book is 5 years old, it may have been checked out once or twice 5 years ago, and not since. And they get new books that are hardly touched... Our only culture is the NRA.

Where exactly are you living? I mean if you are frequenting biker bars, fly-fishing tournaments, gun shows or certain rural communities in Alabama and Mississippi you might feel that the culture as a whole were populated by Neanderthals out of Deliverance... but I would assume that one might find such communities... cut off from progress and evolution... everywhere in the world. Personally, I use the word "lovely" from time to time (sometimes even ironically!:yikes:) and I have also been know to employ "marvelous", "sensuous"... and even "lush". But then again... I'm an artist... so I must be gay.:rolleyes5::sosp::ack2:

Emil Miller

07-22-2011, 05:42 PM

stlukesguild

07-22-2011, 09:12 PM

Sorry to see that you missed Scott Fitzgerald from the writers StLukes, I hope he's included in the leading others referred to.
Now I am expecting delivery of a couple of tee shirts from New York: a present from an insistent friend. I asked her to send plain ones only, because I'm thinking of ironing on this transfer of an iconic symbol of American music, although obviously I didn't tell her that.

Well... I undoubtedly missed a few others beyond Fitzgerald... but as a result of having spent too long in the excessive heat (nearly 100-degrees f.) over the last few days, I was just too damn lazy to get out of my seat and go to the shelf of American Lit.

I must say you will surely cut a dashing figure in your Dolly T-shirt and will fit right in in any of those above-mentioned biker bars... or upon your next vist to Dollywood:

http://www.dollywood.com/

I shall repay your compliment to American culture with a tip of the hat to a jaunty little British tune in honor of HRH:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA34XC08xHo&feature=fvst

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6005/5965781228_81a29957b7.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6025/5965781242_292c789f61.jpg

:rofl:

Vonny

07-23-2011, 06:25 AM

I didn't realize that what I said was discussed. I won't say too much because I don't know much about Classical music.

It's really a good thing that American men don't attempt to use the word "lovely" very much, because boy, would it ever fall flat!

I'm sure there are multitudes of horrible people in London. I just clashed with one a few hours ago, in fact.

Neanderthal was not the best choice of word, I suppose.

I don't know what the difference is, but there's just something I can't describe. Take Lokasenna, for instance. There's no way this country could have ever produced him. Now, I'm sure there's only one Lokasenna in England or Wales or wherever, but still he had to be born there.

If there's one man in this country who has refinement like Lokasenna, please tell me who he is. Tell me of one that is in any way on the same order.

Emil Miller

07-23-2011, 09:50 AM

Ah yes, prime examples of UK neanderthals prior to the tattooing fetish.

[QUOTE=Vonny;1055093] I don't know what the difference is, but there's just something I can't describe. Take Lokasenna, for instance. There's no way this country could have ever produced him. Now, I'm sure there's only one Lokasenna in England or Wales or wherever, but still he had to be born there.

If there's one man in this country who has refinement like Lokasenna, please tell me who he is. Tell me of one that is in any way on the same order.

Now here's a very well known American and one that Lokasenna may resemble when he is older.

http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/9254/wolfeh.jpg

stlukesguild

07-23-2011, 11:18 AM

Ah yes, prime examples of UK neanderthals prior to the tattooing fetish.

Tattoos are not wholly without their merits:drool5:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6131/5966666127_23db440c56.jpg

Actually, I'm surprised at your response to tattoos considering your love of all things Asian.

Now here's a very well known American and one that Lokasenna may resemble when he is older.

Something to look forward to. Actually, I quite like this portrait:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6020/5967219818_64a7b62e24_b.jpg

I don't know what the difference is, but there's just something I can't describe. Take Lokasenna, for instance. There's no way this country could have ever produced him.

Seriously, I don't know what you are trying to say. Not to question the unique aspects of Lokasenna... or even the fact that undoubtedly he is a product of his culture... but I really think you need to get about more if you have such a jaded view of American culture. There are alternatives to the Neanderthals.

stlukesguild

07-23-2011, 12:25 PM

Returning to the raison d'etre for this thread, I have been doing a lot of listening lately to Shostakovitch. AS a result of the glowing reviews of the Naxos recordings of Shosty's symphonies conducted by Vasily Petrenko:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6014/5966714463_683618b6dc.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6133/5966714323_45b85b1eaa.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6027/5959896036_895fb79de8.jpg

I've long had mixed feelings about Shostakovitch. I loved certain works... but then found others pandered to much to the composer's Soviet masters. At times he struck me as the dutiful worker, squirreling away with one eye looking over his shoulder... rarely ever as audacious as Stravinsky. But for less than $5 US per disc I thought "what can I lose".

My prejudice against Shostakovitch, for one thing. These performances are marvelous... the 5th and 11th especially. (I didn't pick up Petrenko's 10th because nothing I've read in the reviews has led me to believe he has come close to surpassing or rivaling Herbert von Karajan's classic, fiery recording:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5159/5879849378_275b7ec719.jpg

In tandem with the Petrenko recordings, I gave another listen to this disc, and what can I say...? "Lovely". :D Actually the right words would probably be something closer to dynamic, explosive, fiery... And one might use the same terms for the 11th.

Beside Shostakovitch, I've been listening a lot to Verdi's La Traviata. This was the first complete opera I ever watched... on cable television in the classic Zeffirelli film featuring Teresa Stratas and a young Placido Domingo. I listened to it again in the classic Giulini recording...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6030/5967330972_91d042f413.jpg

... featuring that diva among divas...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6002/5928584246_fc1a3cfb54_z.jpg

... and Giuseppe di Stefano. I was so blown away I spent the next hour of so scouring YouTube and watching videos of the classic scenes:

Kristine Opolais performance is particularly... "hot":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTAYNoZSQTA

While I love Anna Netrebko, I simply hate the minimalist stage sets of her recent performance... her performance, however, is stunning as usual.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1ELC9RBsqM&feature=related

After watching this, however, I think just what might have been... how this opera could have been staged to capture the glitter and opulence of the final days of the Fin de siècle. Certainly no production comes near Zeffirelli's classic film... and both Stratas and Domingo are brilliant. Stratas is as magnificent here as she is in her performance of Strauss' Salome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcKdnkGBSgA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc-PjPf-uIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5QHoksdErk

And this one is just cute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDhHxIz83Ic

I ended up watching and listening to this opera so much that for days after I kept singing "Misterioso, Misterioso altero..." from Un dì, felice, eterea... although it's doubtful that my singing might seduce Violetta.:nonod:

Vonny

07-23-2011, 01:35 PM

A final response on the subject.

Here is the only American who can hold a candle. And this man is a strong competitor, because there is a lot to him that doesn't appear in his photo. It's not that important, but he has a fantastic body, as well, even though he's about 60. He makes me feel better every time I think of him.

http://www.hcnw.org/Hanson.asp

I have to edit this because, after sitting in meditation for a bit, I realized that "holds a candle" is not correct. This one has a light. He's wonderful. ...Also, I've done some research on this forum, and read the "heroes" thread, so I know who people's heroes are. Heroes are who make them who they are. ...I have never heard this man use the word lovely, but it doesn't matter because he would never display a disrespectful picture of his young colleague's hero in his office.

And also, he wears beautiful silk shirts, and looks better without the suit.

Emil Miller

07-23-2011, 06:19 PM

Vonny, I have just had a look at your favourite doctor on the web and by all accounts he is an extremely intelligent man. However, his penchant for silk shirts is something I doubt that Lokasenna shares. Now it is axiomatic that young women have an inexplicable attraction to medicos of all kinds but, while I have never been able to discover why this is, I would suggest that you might find it more interesting if you widen your scope; think of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Tom Cruise for example. That's the extent of my knowledge of the current crop of film stars but there are obviously others.

Vonny

07-23-2011, 09:05 PM

However, his penchant for silk shirts is something I doubt that Lokasenna shares.

Oh, if you click back on LitNet in about 40 years (or sooner) you'll see that he'll have a PhD wife about 10 years younger than he is putting silk shirts on him, and he'll grow to tolerate them, which is the case with the most handsome American doc, (well, except his wife is an M.D.)... (oh how discouraging.)

Now it is axiomatic that young women have an inexplicable attraction to medicos of all kinds but, while I have never been able to discover why this is,

It's true. I don't know why either! Especially when they're very tall, can sail, and have a lovely sailboat. I'm kidding about this, honestly! But you added a couple of new words to my vocabulary here, Emil.

I would suggest that you might find it more interesting if you widen your scope; think of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Tom Cruise for example. That's the extent of my knowledge of the current crop of film stars but there are obviously others.

Schwarzenegger is a politician in California. I was reading in a magazine about how beautiful California was at one time, with loads of wildflowers, and those very deep beaches with powdery, warm sand - before people went there and ruined it. A lot of films I don't watch, so I haven't seen Tom, but I wouldn't turn down his cast-off Nicole Kidman. :lol: Oh god, I know better than to come near this place on my drinking night. I'm honestly kidding about Nicole! She's Australian and much too tall, about 8 inches taller than I am... No, I am kidding - Really!

I don't want to be off topic, so let me say that I appreciate Vaughan Williams. Vaughan is quite exotic, and would've been better than my screen name that I put no thought into whatsoever, but that's how it is when you've had little exposure to British Culture.

And I don't think Lokasenna will look like that portrait above, whoever that is. He'll look like his other hero, his scientist father, in a silk shirt.

Have to edit once more: What the doc has going for him is he's a 1 in 10 million doctor and man.

Vonny

07-24-2011, 02:49 AM

Returning to the raison d'etre for this thread, I have been doing a lot of listening lately to Shostakovitch. AS a result of the glowing reviews of the Naxos recordings of Shosty's symphonies conducted by Vasily Petrenko:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6014/5966714463_683618b6dc.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6133/5966714323_45b85b1eaa.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6027/5959896036_895fb79de8.jpg

I've long had mixed feelings about Shostakovitch. I loved certain works... but then found others pandered to much to the composer's Soviet masters. At times he struck me as the dutiful worker, squirreling away with one eye looking over his shoulder... rarely ever as audacious as Stravinsky. But for less than $5 US per disc I thought "what can I lose".

My prejudice against Shostakovitch, for one thing. These performances are marvelous... the 5th and 11th especially. (I didn't pick up Petrenko's 10th because nothing I've read in the reviews has led me to believe he has come close to surpassing or rivaling Herbert von Karajan's classic, fiery recording:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5159/5879849378_275b7ec719.jpg

In tandem with the Petrenko recordings, I gave another listen to this disc, and what can I say...? "Lovely". :D Actually the right words would probably be something closer to dynamic, explosive, fiery... And one might use the same terms for the 11th.

Beside Shostakovitch, I've been listening a lot to Verdi's La Traviata. This was the first complete opera I ever watched... on cable television in the classic Zeffirelli film featuring Teresa Stratas and a young Placido Domingo. I listened to it again in the classic Giulini recording...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6030/5967330972_91d042f413.jpg

... featuring that diva among divas...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6002/5928584246_fc1a3cfb54_z.jpg

... and Giuseppe di Stefano. I was so blown away I spent the next hour of so scouring YouTube and watching videos of the classic scenes:

Kristine Opolais performance is particularly... "hot":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Qtxm8ljsc

While I love Anna Netrebko, I simply hate the minimalist stage sets of her recent performance... her performance, however, is stunning as usual.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1ELC9RBsqM&feature=related

After watching this, however, I think just what might have been... how this opera could have been staged to capture the glitter and opulence of the final days of the Fin de siècle. Certainly no production comes near Zeffirelli's classic film... and both Stratas and Domingo are brilliant. Stratas is as magnificent here as she is in her performance of Strauss' Salome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcKdnkGBSgA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc-PjPf-uIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5QHoksdErk

And this one is just cute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDhHxIz83Ic

I ended up watching and listening to this opera so much that for days after I kept singing "Misterioso, Misterioso altero..." from Un dì, felice, eterea... although it's doubtful that my singing might seduce Violetta.:nonod:

I just clicked that last link, and it is really sweet :)

Then I watched the top, "hot" one. I like it. But I was wondering, as the others who reviewed it, how she could sing in all of those positions.

Emil Miller

07-24-2011, 11:00 AM

I was playing this on the piano this afternoon and just checked out this kid's version. I believe it's what is sometimes called a mannered performance and the look at the end is priceless.

http://youtu.be/7tgMBuQRW_g

stlukesguild

07-24-2011, 02:12 PM

Then I watched the top, "hot" one. I like it. But I was wondering, as the others who reviewed it, how she could sing in all of those positions.

I would suggest that what that commentator doesn't seem to grasp is that there are great singers and there are great opera singers. Some great singers have the voice to sing the most challenging repertoire, but they can't act and they can't move about the stage. The great opera singer is both a great singer and an actor/actress. One of the greatest voices in the whole of opera... perhaps THE greatest... Joan Sutherland, was a mediocre actress, visually fit the stereotype of the broad, matronly singer (not the sort of woman that mean are going to fall head over heels in love... or at least lust with as they do in many operas) and was notorious for her poor pronunciation of the non-English repertoire. Maria Callas, the stunning diva in the photo above, did not have Sutherland's vocal abilities, but what she did have was the ability to wrench every possible ounce of emotion out of even the most inane roles. Anna Netrebko, the current Russian opera star in the second video above has a decidedly good voice... perhaps even great. But she also has the look and the ability to carry herself on stage. She can convey deep emotions... or she can vamp it up in a manner that seduces the audience and endears them to her. Here, for example, she is with two other great opera singers all with endearing stage presence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa58TdbRGJ4

Placido Domingo, by the way, will certainly go down in history as one of the greatest singers ever. He is currently still performing... at over 70 years of age. At the time of this recording he was already in his mid-to late 60s!!:hurray:

mortalterror

07-24-2011, 03:21 PM

The great opera singer is both a great singer and an actor/actress.

Ah yes, operatic acting. How else would we know how you felt without the dramatic flailing and running about the stage? Why, we'd have to fall back on the words you are screaming at the top of your lungs or something. These people act like silent movie stars. There are no Katharine Hepburns or Marlon Brandos in the world of opera.

stlukesguild

07-24-2011, 03:31 PM

And I don't think Lokasenna will look like that portrait above, whoever that is...

The portraits above, by the way, are of Tom Wolfe, the American writer known for his novels, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff (about the American Space program), and Bonfire of the Vanities, as well as his somewhat reactionary critical writings such as his book From Bauhaus to Our House. Wolfe models himself as the Southern gentleman, always dressed in a white sit, hat, and walking stick and is equally notorious for his conservative, reactionary political beliefs as well.

Emil Miller

07-24-2011, 03:46 PM

Spent most of today watching YouTube videos of piano pieces. This one is simply delicious. Someone points out in the comments that at 2.29 it's just magical. I'd say that if it doesn't break your heart it's probably because you don't have one.

http://youtu.be/F_jJ5dsjoEU

stlukesguild

07-24-2011, 05:59 PM

And Mortalterror knows all about stage presence when it comes to singers... having based his ideals upon Metallica and AC/DC.:D

mortalterror

07-24-2011, 06:40 PM

And Mortalterror knows all about stage presence when it comes to singers... having based his ideals upon Metallica and AC/DC.:D

I did not say that they were bad singers. I said they were bad actors. I doubt that James Hetfield could handle a serious dramatic role either, but then he doesn't pretend to be an actor. Meryl Streep is an actress. Daniel Day-Lewis is an actor. Most opera singers are just comical by comparison.

kasie

07-25-2011, 05:30 AM

I often wonder whether film/tv is the right medium for opera - it's too close. I know opera singers have to take deep breaths and open their mouths wide to get those amazing results but I'm not sure I want to see them doing so in close-up. Similarly with the 'acting' - on stage the rather mannered movements are not so apparent, in screen they are all too obvious. Still, I suppose film gives me a chance to see Callas, for example, who had ceased performing long before I began to attend live performances.

Vonny

07-25-2011, 09:01 PM

Yes it's a good one. I went through a Figaro thing last year where I kept playing this version and another one. I also saw two productions of it, one in Sheffield and the other at the Royal Opera House itself (with some of the same cast as in the DVD). This was one of my rare visits to London.

Edit: Jesus, I've just seen one of the adverts above; Classical Music Dating Site (or something) isn't the internet unreal at times?

You know what I realized about you, Neely? The lady of your life is 3 years-old right now, or possibly will be born in the next 2 years. So now you feel 100, but later, after you get your kids well raised, you'll feel 20 again!

Emil Miller

07-26-2011, 07:03 AM

Edit: Jesus, I've just seen one of the adverts above; Classical Music Dating Site (or something) isn't the internet unreal at times?

Actually it's not such a bad idea, at least you would have something in common with the selected date. There are few things more dispiriting than spending time and effort pursuing some attractive female only to discover that she watches Footballers Wives and listens to guitar strumming neanderthals.

LitNetIsGreat

07-26-2011, 08:15 AM

Actually it's not such a bad idea, at least you would have something in common with the selected date. There are few things more dispiriting than spending time and effort pursuing some attractive female only to discover that she watches Footballers Wives and listens to guitar strumming neanderthals.

Oh sure, it wasn't a criticism it's just that there is a market for everything it seems.

I've now lost my connection to Naxos online having had my uni account severed. Never mind. There's still youtube. It will also encourage me to buy more CDs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6yuR8efotI

Emil Miller

07-26-2011, 10:03 AM

I've now lost my connection to Naxos online having had my uni account severed. Never mind. There's still youtube. It will also encourage me to buy more CDs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6yuR8efotI

I've found that since discovering YouTube, I seldom listen to CDs, because the range of its music is so vast. In the past I used to hear a piece on the radio and if I liked it I wouild buy the CD but all the while I would be wondering what other recordings were like. Now, I am able to check out numerous performances of a given piece and also see the performers in action. To my mind, YouTube is one of the greatest ideas of the new technological age. It's important to have decent sound quality though but fortunately I had a couple of decent speakers left over from my last computer and if I use headphones, the sound is even better.

This one went straight to my favourites box: apparently, it wasn't originally posted on YouTube but on a Chinese site. She was 11 years old when it was made.

http://youtu.be/PjEEFQLJTkU

stlukesguild

07-26-2011, 10:43 AM

Emil Miller

07-26-2011, 11:04 AM

YouTube is great... but the sound quality is limited... and can be quite crappy at times. However, you can find some truly interesting stuff if you dig around. I've presently stopped all CD purchases and I'm focused upon opera DVDs and exploring Spotify which just opened in the US. It has a rather impressive catalog of music to listen to for next to nothing ($5 US per month) but the focus is currently far more upon popular music and the younger audience. I've heard good things about Naxos but have yet to try them out. They are far more expensive at $25 US per month or $225 US per year. Perhaps I'll need to give it a month's try in the summer when I can take advantage of it.

Someone I know in Switzerland is a big buyer of Naxos and he told me that they have a very extensive catalogue which enables him to build up his CD collection. They started out recording little known pieces of the repertoire and were much cheaper than the major record companies but eventually became a major force in their own right. I have seen Spotify mentioned in some of the comments attached to posted YouTube videos.

LitNetIsGreat

07-26-2011, 02:51 PM

Yes I've listened to a few things off spotifiy, a few free clips and so, but I don't know the full use of it. Quite true youtube is a great thing - if you want to listen to something it is virtually there.

Free Naxos was great but often I still used youtube. Naxos was good to get the full CD and to check out what was available. I wouldn't pay for it though because youtube and what I've got is enough for me at present.

The wang clip is incredible. Listen to it without watching the video and there is no way that a young girl is playing this music. Unreal.

Lokasenna

07-26-2011, 03:46 PM

Returning to the subject of divas, I thought I'd share some videos of my favourite diva of all time: the peerless Jessye Norman. My goodness, what a voice that woman has. Ignore some of the slightly loopy videos, and just revel in sublime quality of her voice. She also, I should point out, has the acting capability to carry off her roles!

Purcell - Dido's Lament (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOIAi2XwuWo&feature=related)

Shubert - Ave Maria (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do5ZmQQM8AE)

Wagner - 'Dich teure Halle' from Tannhauser (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-dnIc0bp88)

Bizet - 'Habanera' from Carmen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03d65OOIQoQ)

R. Strauss - Zueignung (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMLa_sW9jMo)

And finally, my absolute favourite:

Wagner - 'Liebestod' from Tristan und Isolde (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5_r33sCLYY&feature=fvwrel)

It is a very, very great shame that she never did Brünnhilde.

stlukesguild

07-26-2011, 11:01 PM

Divas!!! Divas!!!

That could be fun. Who are some of your favorites? As a sworn Wagnerian, my first vote must go with Kirsten Flagstad:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6141/5979613547_897d766ea3.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6022/5980170986_dbfc3dfe66.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6149/5979613359_6b44db3382.jpg

Most critics agree that there has never been a greater female Wagnerian soprano. Born in 1895, Flagstad reached her peak as a singer in the 1920s-1930s... but continued to perform in public brilliantly until the early 1950s and to make recording until 1958.

One of Flagstad's finest performances was surely that of the highlights from Tristan und Isolde with the San Francisco Opera, dating from 1939 and featuring Lauritz Melchoir, himself one of the greatest Wagnerian tenors ever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch3o0qV6TiA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkrGhpKZN6o&feature=related

She was equally brilliant at Covent Garden in 1936

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dfbZ6S6DU4&feature=related

Amazingly, her voice hardly seems to have diminished in the least by the time she made the classic Tristan und Isolde recording with Wilhelm Furtwangler... in spite of the fact that she was nearly 60 years old!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp2q7iFFhvc&feature=related

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-27-2011, 10:34 PM

Lokasenna

07-28-2011, 03:56 AM

Man, I just bought all of Sibelius's symphonies from Amazon for a measly 8 bucks from Amazon, and I gotta say I love his stuff. I could see him become my favorite composer. He just has a way with melody and emotion, and all of his stuff just sounds so full. Really digging it.

And, Neely, I've never used Naxos, but have access to it through my university. What can you all do with it?

Was that by any chance the Simon Rattle boxset? They're excellent recordings...

As for Naxos, I use it all the time through my university connection - you can instantly stream any CD that Naxos have ever published through their website. That's a hell of a lot of music, and some of it is really rare!

LitNetIsGreat

07-28-2011, 04:55 AM

And, Neely, I've never used Naxos, but have access to it through my university. What can you all do with it?

Yes that is how I had it. Well it gives you access to over 54 thousand classical CDs with new ones being added daily. You have to pick your way through them though as some recordings are better than others. I used it to look for full works I was interested in, usually after listening to snippets online, and then do a general search. I would also browse the new releases which is on the homepage if something caught my eye. It was a valuable resource and I am sorry to have lost it but I'm unlikely to pay to subscribe to it. I might, however, do a little sneaky 10 credit course next year on something then I would have full access to this for a year and all the other benefits which come with being a student; from access to the libraries, other online resources to discounts on anything from clothes, bus journeys and theatre tickets etc.

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-28-2011, 09:15 AM

Cool, I'll definitely have to play around with Naxos.

And, Lok, this (http://www.amazon.com/Sibelius-Complete-Symphonies-Lemmink%C3%A4inen-Concerto/dp/B004Z4ZN4A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1311858791&sr=8-2) is the set I bought. Now, I'm far from being an expert of classical recordings, but these sound beautiful to me.

laymonite

07-28-2011, 09:26 AM

Anybody here listen to Alfred Schnittke? I just discovered him on Last.fm. His piano quintet (lamenting the loss of his mother) is among the moodiest of moody Russian music (is moody Russian redundant?). It is painful beauty.

Here are videos of the 1st and 3rd movements; the latter video having some nice pieces of art:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwKgR7eIKCk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8neNuW19JM

My favorite moment in the 3rd movement (aside from the opening dissonance) is around 3:26, when the escalating terror (not unlike a horror-movie musical sting) breaks into a gentle ebb of relief.

stlukesguild

07-28-2011, 12:02 PM

I don't know about the relative merits of the Sibelius set that you picked up, although ultimately all that matters is that you like it. I personally have several "classic" older recordings with Sir Thomas Beecham:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6143/5984986994_3001bbd941.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6028/5984422837_2f015a81d3.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6014/5984986950_2e3f4d9725.jpg

You can't beat Heifitz on violin... but the set with the 7th and several tone poems is the one that really turned me onto Sibelius. I picked up his late symphonies with Karajan:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6023/5984987098_b862e63f41.jpg

These were among the highest rated by various classical music guides. Eventually I picked up a box set of the complete symphonies and tone poems by Nemee Jarvi... perhaps the best Sibelius interpreter.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6015/5984422881_7475919f1b.jpg

I also have a few of Collin Davis' great live recordings...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6133/5984422941_5c5e07e8d5.jpg

... and I know that Naxos' new Sibelius recordings with the New Zealand Symphony have been highly regarded... but how many recordings do you need by a single composer whose not Bach or Mozart?

I spent last night listening to one of Sibelius' Finnish heirs, Kalevi Aho, who studied directly under another great Finnish composer, Einojuhani Rautavaara.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6023/5983148827_6c03327cf5.jpg

Powerful stuff! I'll be looking into more of his work in the near future.

stlukesguild

07-28-2011, 12:14 PM

I have a few things by Schnittke...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6122/5985044246_254e07fa95.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6016/5984480307_92ab38c19c.jpg

... and I've heard good things about this one...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6131/5985044328_425e19e5e4.jpg

But I must admit that I haven't listened enough to have formed much of an opinion one way or the other.

lawpark

07-28-2011, 12:32 PM

Such a long post ... some of my favorites:

Schubert's late Piano Sonatas (love Schnabel's playing of D959)
Beethoven's Bagatelle Op.119 for Piano (especially Serkin's version)
Haydn's Piano Sonatas (not many choices, my complete set is McCabe's)
Mozart Piano Concertos (especially Serkin's for No. 21 and 23)
The disc I always listen to on my car is a Heifetz' disc for Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5, a Violin Sonata and String Quintet K516

Lokasenna

07-28-2011, 01:07 PM

billl

07-28-2011, 01:22 PM

I've heard maybe 4 or 5 takes on Sibelius's 5th, and the Karajan (Deutsche Grammophone of a performance from the 70's or 80's? I can't find the cover art for the single disc version on the web, but it's probably the one on St. Luke's collection) is probably my favorite. I don't own it, at the moment, though, and haven't heard it in more than ten years (I once had a cassette recording off of a library disc). But I'm perfectly content with one I do have by Simon Rattle w/The City Of Birmingham Orchestra.

The only things by Sibelius that I've stuck with are the 5th Symphony and the Violin Concerto, but they are probably my favorite two classical things to listen to (well, top 5 anyhow).

stlukesguild

07-28-2011, 10:13 PM

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6026/5986518856_25148cfe90.jpg

Currently listening to this collection of Norwegian folk songs from the Middle-Ages onward. The singers are a trio of young women perform these songs a capella in a manner not far removed from the Anonymous Four. A lovely collection.

stlukesguild

07-28-2011, 10:52 PM

A first listen to this:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6137/5986568168_85041b9e30.jpg

Karl Ignaz Weigl (Vienna 2 February 1881 – 11 August 1949) was one of the many composers whose career was truncated by the rise of the Nazis. Weigl's father was a Jewish banker and keen amateur musician. The composer studied under Alexander Zemlinsky. He continued studies at the Vienna Music Academy and the University of Vienna. His classmates includes Anton Webern. At the age of 23 he was appointed by Mahler as his rehearsal conductor. His circle of friends included Zemlinsky, Mahler, Schoenberg, and Webern. In 1903 the Vereinigung scaffender Tonkunstler was founded by Zemlinsky, Schönberg and Weigl under the patronage of Mahler, and was programmed much ‘new’ music, including works by Mahler, Richard Strauss, Zemlinsky, Schönberg , Pfitzner, Reger and Bruno Walter, as well Weigl’s own compositions.

In 1906 Weigl left the Vienna Opera to concentrate on composing, and his chromatic harmonies and imaginative orchestration, which did not follow the musical path of his friend Schönberg, achieved considerable success. His Phantastisches Intermezzo, was performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Furtwängler, and the Rose Quartet premiered several of his chamber works. Other champions of his work included George Szell and the Busch Quartet. In 1929 joined the music department of the University of Vienna, and his students included Hanns Eisler, Erich Korngold and Kurt Adler.

In 1933 the political, and cultural, map of Europe started to change. The rise to power of the Nazis saw the start of discrimination against non-Aryan musicians and music. After Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938 Weigl’s music was removed from publisher’s catalogues, and exile became inevitable. In October 1938 he arrived in New York with the conductor Kurt Adler and the cellist Emanuel Feuerman. His letters of recommendation from Schönberg, Richard Strauss and Bruno Walter cut little ice in America, and Weigl struggled to survive giving private lessons. Later he held several teaching posts on the East Coast, but these were a far cry from the post in Vienna that he had left. Karl Weigl died after a prolonged illness in August 1949, eleven years after he had arrived in New York.

After this denouement it would be pleasing to report a revival of interest in Weigl’s music, but sadly this has not been the case. Stokowski gave the premiere of the Fifth Symphony Apokalyptische in New York, and other performers including Richard Goode have performed his compositions. Admirably BIS have recorded his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies together with the Phantastisches Intermezzo. Both the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies were composed by Karl Weigl in America, and the poignant sub-title of the Fifth says it all - Apocalyptic.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6144/5986619184_4a56824da9.jpg

http://www.overgrownpath.com/2007/01/mahlers-forgotten-assistant.html

laymonite

07-29-2011, 09:34 AM

I travel frequently to Gothenburg, Sweden, and it seems the orchestra there (GSO) really favors Schnittke. Hopefully I'll find time to check out a live performance in the next few months!

Mutatis-Mutandis

08-04-2011, 10:13 AM

Patrick_Bateman

08-05-2011, 02:40 PM

WyattGwyon

08-09-2011, 06:37 PM

I think Frank Zappa may be one of the most under-appreciated artists of our time. It was wonderful that he got a chance to hear his orchestral stuff performed before he died. This is the last recording of any Zappa music before his death.

Enjoy. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr3y2MUdq7U&feature=related)

Zappa under-appreciated? He had heard much of his orchestral work performed long before any illness overtook him. In fact, he had the problem of fighting off requests to perform his works. He simply didn't trust that symphony orchestras would give the music enough rehearsal time to produce credible performances. You should read his autobiography for his take on dealing with orchestras and their performances of his work.

IMO, much of his best art music isn't the "serious" classical stuff anyway. Get the album Studio Tan for some of the best cases in point.

LitNetIsGreat

08-14-2011, 08:48 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OvsVSWB4TI&feature=related

After watching Raging Bull, yes.

stlukesguild

08-15-2011, 12:11 AM

Yes... Listening to Modernism with all its angst-laden Expressionism and the "abstraction" or atonality, serialism, and non-traditional tonality can be a much needed tonic at times... but returning to works of the older composers laden with such beauty leaves you absolutely speechless at times and doubting whether Modernism represented an improvement?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b906XTHUJOI&feature=related

Undoubtedly the greatest loss in the history of music... Franz Schubert dead at 31.

Emil Miller

08-15-2011, 11:58 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OvsVSWB4TI&feature=related

After watching Raging Bull, yes.

Probably among the 10 most famous pieces ever composed. I went to a concert where it was played and when the main theme came in, a woman sitting with a man next to me started crying and he put his arm around her. It does that to a lot of people judging by some of the comments on the video.

lawpark

08-16-2011, 06:41 PM

Lokasenna

08-19-2011, 08:10 AM

I've recently been introduced to the rather underrated Bohuslav Martinů - though his time, I think, is coming upon us quickly.

His symphonies in particular are so vibrant, colourful and passionate - I'm really quite bowled over by them. I've always had a love of powerful, rousing, emotional, joyful music - and he fits the bill perfectly.

Here's my current favourite, the 5th Symphony:

Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUH0XmpqQNY)

Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb6y00ind3g&feature=related)

Part 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7mlVrYXzAI&feature=related)

Part 4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3G_XUyivpQ&feature=related)

Mutatis-Mutandis

09-05-2011, 10:30 PM

StLukes, you said something in another thread that I'd like some more explanation on. You said:

Throughout much of the 20th century, Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel represented the farthest reaches of classical music to the era. In many cases, even these composers were heard swathed in the tradition of the great Romantic orchestras. It wasn't until the Historically Informed Performance (HIP) movement in the 1980s that the great Baroque composers began to be heard played on appropriate instruments and in the appropriate manner.
So, what was different from the romantic performances and the HIP performances. What were the different instruments? How were they performed different?

lawpark

09-05-2011, 10:31 PM

Like playing harpsicord or cembalo for keyboard rather than using pianoforte ... using smaller ensemble vs. bigger ones ...

stlukesguild

09-06-2011, 12:13 AM

StLukes, you said something in another thread that I'd like some more explanation on. You said:

Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Throughout much of the 20th century, Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel represented the farthest reaches of classical music to the era. In many cases, even these composers were heard swathed in the tradition of the great Romantic orchestras. It wasn't until the Historically Informed Performance (HIP) movement in the 1980s that the great Baroque composers began to be heard played on appropriate instruments and in the appropriate manner.

So, what was different from the romantic performances and the HIP performances. What were the different instruments? How were they performed different?

Here is Bach as orchestrated by Stokowski:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnEI22XlxhY

Here is the original as played on organ:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVJD3dL4diY

and for violin... which may indeed have been the first incarnation of the work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNfox7ORW1Q

This is an extreme example... but essentially what lawpark states is correct. The HIP or Historically Informed Movement led toward conductors and performers approaching older works of music with an understanding and use of original instruments, orchestration, and performance styles. By the late 19th century the Romantic orchestra had expanded until it comprised of quite often 100+ instrument. Their manner of playing was often slow and languorous. There is nothing wrong with this if such was the original intent of the composer... but quite often with early music the result was to strip away the energy and layer it in a ponderous, deadening sound. Mozart, for example, often employed an orchestra of 30 or 40 musicians.

Here for example in a recording by the great old English conductor, Thomas Beechham, of the last two movements of Mozart's 41st Symphony. Note how slow and reserved it is...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bxD-rIAS9w

especially in comparison to the performance by Sir Charles Mackerras. In spite of fewer instruments, Mackerras is rock-n-roll by comparison. There is an openness and clarity of space that comes from removing excess instruments. There is also a greater muscularity to the manner of performance that is closer to the truth of Mozart than the effete and non-offensive manner that has long deadened his music.

Now check out the energy-level on a number of recent HIP performances:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKvd4tMkFHc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-XQv2TnjpM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYELAu9hqdU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxBT1pfVAKQ

Now don't get me wrong. I am not calling for the end of the great classical orchestras... but largely now most performances of Bach, Handel, Mozart... even Beethoven and Brahms employ an orchestration and instrumentation that is appropriate to the composer's intentions. As such... if you want Wagner of Bruckner or Beethoven or Mahler you might turn to the Berlin Philharmonic or the Chicago, or London, or Vienna, or Cleveland Orchestras. If you want Bach you turn to John Eliot Gardiner and the English Chamber Orchestra or Jordi Savall or Masaaki Suzuki or Philippe Herreweghe. In other words the musical scenes is becoming more specialized. The same holds true of vocalists. There are now singers who specialize in Baroque and earlier music, just as we have long had singers who specialized in bel canto or heavy heroic opera (ala Wagner and Richard Strauss

Mutatis-Mutandis

09-06-2011, 09:27 AM

Interesting. When I attended the symphony a few months ago, they were doing small pieces from all sorts of composers, mostly late romantic to early modern, but they also did a couple Mozart pieces, which a good chunk of the orchestra left for.

Emil Miller

09-06-2011, 09:34 AM

lawpark

09-06-2011, 11:29 AM

I think the interesting question is for Schubert's symphonies - how big should the orchestra be?

Emil Miller

09-06-2011, 01:58 PM

I think the interesting question is for Schubert's symphonies - how big should the orchestra be?

Well Schubert's symphonies are not very often performed in concert, except 5, 8 and 9, although it's possible to find most of them on disc where smaller ensembles are often used, except for 8 and 9 which require a larger orchestra.

stlukesguild

09-06-2011, 09:57 PM

I am in general agreement with the smaller sized orchestra scenario when it comes to symphonic music pre Beethoven where music begins to move away from the 'classical' period, but this puts Beethoven's symphonies in an equivocal position regarding the number of musicians required. It is worth remembering that both Mozart and Beethoven's orchestral works were played by orchestra's cobbled together from freelance musicians and therefore may not have matched the composers intentions.

Personally, I'm no purist. I prefer the voice of a female singer in Bach to the countertenor or choirboy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJcL-dSn5zo

And certainly I prefer the masterful English Chamber orchestra or the Bach Collegium Japan to the less-than-professional musicians that Bach had available.

As for Handel... well I doubt we'll being seeing castrati any time soon so I'll stick with the countertenors and female vocalists:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsbYGdCQsgk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M-QHWlF-20

I agree that there are a number of problems facing the HIP purist. In many instances I agree with Sir Thomas Beecham that the sound of the harpsichord is as of "two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm."
This owes much to the recording technologies and placement of the microphones as well. This recent recording of Bach's Sonata in G major, BWV 968 by Andreas Staier on harpsichord is quite warm and wonderful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyUcDb651JE

Still my favorite performances of Bach's keyboard works are on piano: Glenn Gould...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJkaw_Vwz0Y

as well as Angela Hewitt, András Schiff, Murray Perahia, etc...

In most instances I get around the question of period performance vs modern by having an exemplary version of each. With regard to Beethoven, for example, I have the grandiose Berlin Philharmonic with Herbert Karajan and the unsurpassed carlos Kleiber...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqsT00B0ttI&feature=related

but I also have a HIP recording such as that of John Eliot Gardiner with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx827bYPBNw

(Unfortunately I couldn't find Gardiner's 5th so you might see a direct comparison)

By the same token, I have Mozart on grand piano... and on piano forte with the smaller orchestra. Beethoven, I must admit, I have not been able to stomach on the piano forte... his music seems to call for the grand piano. Brahms has only recently undergone some powerful recordings by John Eliot Gardiner employing the proper orchestration and layout of the orchestra as per Brahms notes etc... Schubert, I have yet to have heard in HIP. I have the traditional romantics with the large orchestras: Karajan, Furtwangler, Bohm, Kleiber... although looking on Amazon I find Charles Mackerras has made a recording that I will need to explore.

...when we arrive at the romantic period, the orchestral forces at a composer's disposal are greatly improved and by the time of Brahms's symphonies the colossal nature of their content requires a very large orchestra to illustrate their greatness.

One of the criticisms directed toward Brahms has long been that his symphonic work is far too dense or ponderous... unlike his chamber work, the brilliance of which is unquestioned. Recent studies of his notes and records of performances of his symphonies have led to a somewhat pared-down orchestra that shows an increased muscularity and clarity of the individual instruments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbFETUlSm34

By the time we get to the end of the romantic period, nothing but the stupendous power of 120 musicians is able to express the gigantic vision of Richard Strauss.

In short, it would be wrong to start scaling back on the great works, symphonic or otherwise, of the romantic period just for the sake of experimentation

I haven't heard of any such effort to strip down Strauss... or Wagner or Mahler for that matter... although Schoenberg did produce a fascinating chamber score of Mahler's Song of the Earth which is avaliable in a magnificent recording with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Fritz Wunderlich as vocalists.

Emil Miller

09-07-2011, 02:39 PM

[COLOR="DarkRed"] One of the criticisms directed toward Brahms has long been that his symphonic work is far too dense or ponderous... unlike his chamber work, the brilliance of which is unquestioned. Recent studies of his notes and records of performances of his symphonies have led to a somewhat pared-down orchestra that shows an increased muscularity and clarity of the individual instruments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbFETUlSm34

It's an interesting performance and it does point up certain parts of the work which generally remain submerged. The problem is that Brahms's intellect was such that there is often a great deal going on in his large scale works and it requires a lot of skill on the part of the conductor and also a good recording balance to bring out the best in his original scores. It took him twenty years to produce the first symphony but it immediately established him as the heir to Beethoven.
I was watching the interview that Yuja Wang gave recently in Paris where she said that the Brahms/Paganini variations are ten times harder to play than the Rachmaninov, and Sahra Chang says that the Brahms violin concerto is one of the most difficult to play, so it seems that Brahms had a natural tendency in some of his work to require a lot of attention from the musicians and the conductor if the work was going to succeed on all levels.

I was listening today to recording on the radio of Weber's Euryanthe Overture by a small orchestra called the Tapiola Sinfonietta and although it was probably about the same sized orchestra that Weber would have had when he composed the opera, it sounds distinctly underpowered by modern standards when it sounds so much better like this.

http://youtu.be/hjngjUhk9so

Emil Miller

09-14-2011, 06:13 PM

Here's Rachmaninov's take on Arnold Böcklin's painting Isle of the Dead.
Böcklin painted several versions of this subject and Rachmaninov was inspired to write a musical version after seeing one of them. I saw a version of it in Berlin many years ago and another in Basle more recently. I was shown the house where the artist lived in Zurich by a friend who had lived close by.

http://youtu.be/N10YZ2Sk3Kg

stlukesguild

09-15-2011, 12:25 AM

Emil Miller

09-15-2011, 07:06 AM

One of the most spine-chilling choruses in the whole of music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mADk_bqsr6M&feature=feedrec_grec_index

By the way, Brian... your sweetie, Yuja played here two weeks ago. Had I known ahead of time I might have gone.

Yes that's the trouble, she doesn't hang around. I was recently looking at her schedules for this year and next and it's difficult to imagine how she's in Barcelona one day and in Tokyo a few days later and then in various cities right around the globe. Anyhow, she's appearing in London next May so I shall try to get a ticket.

WyattGwyon

09-15-2011, 11:08 AM

Thanks to St. Luke for a good summary of Romantic versus historically informed performance practices and for providing excellent musical examples in illustrating his points. For another view on some of these issues: Richard Taruskin, in an article in the New York Times years ago, argued that in many respects the HIP movement was an attempt to impose a modern (Stravinskian) sound ideal on older music; not that the practitioners were historically inaccurate per se—more like they arbitrarily decided any ambiguous or murky issues in favor of the modern ideal. Moreover, he thought that this arbitrary imposition of a foreign sound ideal was good because it was a vital and original approach that threw tradition to the wind. Provocative and worth reading—if it can be located.

Mutatis-Mutandis

09-15-2011, 02:21 PM

LitNetIsGreat

09-19-2011, 05:29 PM

cl154576

09-19-2011, 06:04 PM

Mozart violin concerto no.5:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpzvuaNbfCI&feature=related

I like the second movement the best I think; just been listening to that with a beer and no one (awake) in the house, fantastic.

I'm listening to this right now ...

i'm not sure if anyone has already mentioned this, but – one of my longtime favorites: Elgar Cello Concerto (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVTe8Zm1Xrk)

stlukesguild

09-19-2011, 08:48 PM

Listening to Wagner again. For all his reputation for bombast, he is able to write music as exquisite as this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPn3JV3GHRE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zkKxIoBJBM&feature=related

I was just looking at how Wagner "frames" the Ring des Nibelungens. The droning sound of the beginning of Das Rheingold is like nothing before:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1zsSaLiD7Q&feature=related

And then the close of the Gotterdammerung... absolutely the most chilling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0PpTPvbr-4

cl154576

09-23-2011, 03:58 PM

Mutatis-Mutandis

09-23-2011, 05:09 PM

I've been working my way through Beethoven's symphonies. I've listened to one, two, three, and four. So far three is my favorite.

Lokasenna

09-23-2011, 05:55 PM

I've been working my way through Beethoven's symphonies. I've listened to one, two, three, and four. So far three is my favorite.

They're all wonderful, but seven and nine are my favourites. I can never decide which one I like best - I always swear it is the one I'm listening to, but then change my mind when I hear the other.

Wagner termed the seventh the 'apotheosis of dance' - and he isn't wrong. It's nearly impossible to stop your body moving of its own accord, so infectiously joyful is the music. The last movement comprises of eight of the most riotous minutes in all music - divine.

The ninth is the one people always remember, and with good reason. It is an absolute statement of joy. To be honest, Beethoven doesn't really do voices well, but somehow you forget that as you are caught up in that fantastic choral finale. There is a purity of expression that permeates the whole thing.

I'm glad you like the third as well - though it isn't as toe-tapping as the others, the intensity of its feeling is remarkable, and that wonderful, melancholic second movement is most affecting.

Just out of interest, whose recordings are you listening to? I can recommend Günter Wand and the NDR Symphony Orchestra. I think they are the most consistently wonderful recordings I've found.

Emil Miller

09-23-2011, 05:58 PM

Bach Chaccone (violin) – Henryk Szeryng
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgE2ZeU1AxI&feature=related

Has anyone else listened to this? If so, which interpretations do you like (for piano as well as violin)? So far, my favorite piano version is Michelangeli's.

It doesn't surprise me that Michelangeli's performance is your favourite piano version; he was an exceptional virtuoso. Szerying was also a brilliant performer and the version you have posted is about as good as it gets.

Mutatis-Mutandis

09-23-2011, 06:06 PM

They're all wonderful, but seven and nine are my favourites. I can never decide which one I like best - I always swear it is the one I'm listening to, but then change my mind when I hear the other.

Wagner termed the seventh the 'apotheosis of dance' - and he isn't wrong. It's nearly impossible to stop your body moving of its own accord, so infectiously joyful is the music. The last movement comprises of eight of the most riotous minutes in all music - divine.

The ninth is the one people always remember, and with good reason. It is an absolute statement of joy. To be honest, Beethoven doesn't really do voices well, but somehow you forget that as you are caught up in that fantastic choral finale. There is a purity of expression that permeates the whole thing.

I'm glad you like the third as well - though it isn't as toe-tapping as the others, the intensity of its feeling is remarkable, and that wonderful, melancholic second movement is most affecting.

Just out of interest, whose recordings are you listening to? I can recommend Günter Wand and the NDR Symphony Orchestra. I think they are the most consistently wonderful recordings I've found.
I'm listening to this (http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-The-Complete-Symphony-Collection/dp/B001NBIYAS/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1316815401&sr=8-3), because it was so cheep. I think it's recording from the 60s remastered, and they sound pretty dang good considering. I'll probably get better recordings of what I like best.

It's odd, because I always thought Beethoven's symphonies were really dark, just based on some of his sonatas and the 5th symphony.

Vonny

09-23-2011, 08:26 PM

I'm listening to this (http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-The-Complete-Symphony-Collection/dp/B001NBIYAS/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1316815401&sr=8-3), because it was so cheep. I think it's recording from the 60s remastered, and they sound pretty dang good considering. I'll probably get better recordings of what I like best.

It's odd, because I always thought Beethoven's symphonies were really dark, just based on some of his sonatas and the 5th symphony.

Mutatis, classical is more fun :) than metal, that is if you preserve some of your hearing!

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6026/5986518856_25148cfe90.jpg

Currently listening to this collection of Norwegian folk songs from the Middle-Ages onward. The singers are a trio of young women perform these songs a capella in a manner not far removed from the Anonymous Four. A lovely collection.

I got this Luke. It's really nice.

Gladys

09-23-2011, 09:44 PM

To be honest, Beethoven doesn't really do voices well...

Why is it then, from the moment I stumbled upon classical music, that Beethoven songs and the voices in Fidelio rise high above the classical crowd?

My first and long-standing choral favourite was his Mass in C, Op. 86? That and Handel's Acis and Galatea.

stlukesguild

09-23-2011, 10:07 PM

Has anyone else listened to this? If so, which interpretations do you like (for piano as well as violin)? So far, my favorite piano version is Michelangeli's.

I don't think I have any piano transcriptions of the sonatas and partitas for solo violin... unless there are one or two selections on one of the recital discs I have. At present I own the recordings of this oeuvre by both Henryk Szeryng and Emil Gilels... I've heard good things about Gidon Kremer's recordings as well, and have placed them upon my "wish list".

stlukesguild

09-23-2011, 10:42 PM

Just out of interest, whose recordings are you listening to? I can recommend Günter Wand and the NDR Symphony Orchestra. I think they are the most consistently wonderful recordings I've found.

I'm listening to this, because it was so cheep. I think it's recording from the 60s remastered, and they sound pretty dang good considering. I'll probably get better recordings of what I like best.

No need to rush out and get a better recording. The Joseph Krips set is one of the best. If I were to recommend alternatives, I would suggest that Karajan's set from the 1960s is absolutely iconic among older recordings, and Carlos Kleiber's recording of the 5th has never been equaled. Among newer recordings, I'd recommend John Eliot Gardiner for Historicaly Informed Performances. His 3rd is especially powerful.

To be honest, Beethoven doesn't really do voices well...

Why is it then, from the moment I stumbled upon classical music, that Beethoven songs and the voices in Fidelio rise high above the classical crowd?

Personal opinion? Seriously, I must agree with Lokasenna. The central core of Beethoven's oeuvre is found among the symphonies, the piano sonatas, the string quartets... and maybe the piano concertos (although Mozart really owns this genre). His vocal works are of secondary interest. Fidelio would be even less popular and less performed than it already is were it not by Beethoven. Mozart has at least 6 operas that far surpass this, Handel probably a dozen, Wagner virtually his entire oeuvre, and any number of composers who are less illustrious than Beethoven have at least one opera that far outstrip Fidelio: Rossini (The Barber of Seville, Cerentolla), Bellini ( I Capuleti ed i Montecchi, La sonnambula, Norma, and I puritani), Puccini (Manon Lascaut, La Boheme, Tosca, Mme Butterfly...), Verdi (Les Traviata, Il Trovatore, MacBeth, Aida, Rigoletto, Don Carlos...), Richard Strauss (Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Die Frau ohne Schatten...) Tchaikovsky (Eugene Onegin), Mussorgsky (Boris Godunov), Wilibald Gluck (Orfeo ed Euridice, Alceste, Iphigénie en Aulide, Iphigénie en Tauride...) and might argue operas by Monteverdi, Rameau, Lully, Hasse, Vivaldi, etc...

Beethoven's lieder are good... but as with Mozart's and Haydn's they pale before Schubert who raised to form to the same extent that Beethoven raised the piano sonata. Schumann, Wolf, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Mussorgsky, Ravel, Debussy, Ned Rorem and many more achieved far more than Beethoven within the realm of the "art song"

This leaves us with the choral works. Here, Beethoven has one undisputed masterpiece, the Missa Solemnis... but there are few (outside of Beethoven fanatics) who would suggest that the Missa Solemnis rises high above Mozart's Great Mass or Requiem, Haydn's Creation or other masses, Handel's Messiah, Solomon, Esther, the Coronation Anthems, as well as the 100+ cantatas and 20+ other oratorios, Brahms' German Requiem, Faure's Requiem. This doesn't even begin to look at the Bach... or much of the "golden age" of choral music: the middle ages through the Baroque period.

I love Beethoven... and absolutely thrill to the choral passages of the 9th... but I would never begin to think of Beethoven as a major composer of vocal music... and I am an unquestionably fanatic of classical vocal music.

stlukesguild

09-23-2011, 10:56 PM

I got this Luke. It's really nice.

Glad you enjoy it. You may wish to check out other music in a similar genre:

The all-girl group, the Anonymous 4 are particularly spectacular:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6170/6176427651_7b923b9919.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6157/6176427673_d8f87bfdf1.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6170/6176955440_394d19b1b4.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6169/6176955452_0838eed477.jpg

Sequentia, the Gothic Voices, and the Hilliard Ensemble are equally masterful in performing early vocal music:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6175/6176427747_169c600163.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6151/6176955470_742ef75c53.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6161/6176967724_733f470e3e.jpg

Mutatis-Mutandis

09-23-2011, 11:08 PM

Mutatis, classical is more fun :) than metal, that is if you preserve some of your hearing!

Classical is more sophisticated, classier, intricate, and many-other-adjectives-I-can-think-of than metal. But fun? Sorry, can't agree with that one. As someone who's been to the symphony and metal concerts, metal is waaaayyyyyyyyyy more fun. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7w7m4lb2ok) :nod:

Vonny

09-24-2011, 02:59 AM

Classical is more sophisticated, classier, intricate, and many-other-adjectives-I-can-think-of than metal. But fun? Sorry, can't agree with that one. As someone who's been to the symphony and metal concerts, metal is waaaayyyyyyyyyy more fun. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7w7m4lb2ok) :nod:

Okay, I watched that Mutatis. I can see all the riotous joy and divinity there :crazy:, but the area where metal falls short to me is that it's just difficult to dance to!

At least I'm glad to know that you're not slated to end up blind as well as deaf :nonod: - For a while I was envisioning a male Helen Keller scenario. :lol:

Thanks Luke, I'll check out those other suggestions you gave me!

Lokasenna

09-24-2011, 04:07 AM

Why is it then, from the moment I stumbled upon classical music, that Beethoven songs and the voices in Fidelio rise high above the classical crowd?

My first and long-standing choral favourite was his Mass in C, Op. 86? That and Handel's Acis and Galatea.

Luke got there before I did, but I'll give my two cents anyway. I'm a very great lover of Beethoven, but it really is impossible think of him as a great user of voices. Fidelio, his only opera, isn't a bad piece by any means, but it pales in comparison to those of his contemporaries. He, famously, was never satisfied with it either.

Nor are Beethoven's vocal works enjoyed much by their performers - they all have a reputation, Fidelio included, for being overly taxing. I've been told that even Missa Solemnis is unperformable in its original form, needing significant modern editing to be actually match the upper limits of the human voice.

This is not to say that the works are bad - merely that other, lesser composers achieve more with the voice as an instrument than Beethoven does.

LitNetIsGreat

09-24-2011, 04:50 AM

Lokasenna

09-24-2011, 05:21 AM

stlukesguild

09-24-2011, 01:59 PM

Vonny

09-24-2011, 03:42 PM

Jesus. I only got the the second shot - the scene out of a mad zombie film and had to turn it off! (It's no way to start a Saturday morning.) It doesn't seem like fun to me!:brickwall

Yep... about as much fun as a Nuremberg rally.

That's a nightmare! :lol: I just didn't want to be the first to say it. But we'll let Mutatis be who he is and love him anyway, as long as he's into classical too. I just don't want to go to any of his parties!

Emil Miller

09-24-2011, 04:11 PM

Jesus. I only got the the second shot - the scene out of a mad zombie film and had to turn it off! (It's no way to start a Saturday morning.) It doesn't seem like fun to me!

Yep... about as much fun as a Nuremberg rally.

Plus ça change...

The flag may be different but the message is the same.

I still think the Germans did it better.

http://youtu.be/vHZmxlhuQVM

Emil Miller

09-24-2011, 06:46 PM

Just been checking around You Tube and came across this stupendous finale to the Mussorgsky/ Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition, which uses Ravel's orchestration but adds a choir to magical effect.

http://youtu.be/JwrqAipON2w

Mutatis-Mutandis

09-24-2011, 08:03 PM

Comparisons to Nazi Germany, eh? If only there was an emoticon that gave the middle finger. I posted that as a joke, though the energy at metal concerts, and positive vibe (and it is positive, no matter what you may think) is unequaled by anything else.

Still, making fun of something just because you don't understand it is completely ignorant--you'd think this forum would be free os such folly.

Just been checking around You Tube and came across this stupendous finale to the Mussorgsky/ Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition, which uses Ravel's orchestration but adds a choir to magical effect.

http://youtu.be/JwrqAipON2w
Now that is quite a unique performance. Never heard a choir with it. Do you know where one can get the whole suite (if they indeed record all of it)?

Gladys

09-24-2011, 11:38 PM

Beethoven's lieder are good... but...

This doesn't even begin to look at the Bach... or much of the "golden age" of choral music: the middle ages through the Baroque period.

I love Beethoven... and absolutely thrill to the choral passages of the 9th... but I would never begin to think of Beethoven as a major composer of vocal music...

My praise of Beethoven vocal music was more in the context of the Classical Period, and with an appreciation of how little he wrote for voice. Certainly, such Baroque composers as Purcell, Bach, Pergolesi, Rameau wrote magnificently for voice. And for me, the Bach Cantatas have long reigned supreme.

Luke got there before I did, but I'll give my two cents anyway. I'm a very great lover of Beethoven, but it really is impossible think of him as a great user of voices. Fidelio, his only opera, isn't a bad piece by any means, but it pales in comparison to those of his contemporaries. He, famously, was never satisfied with it either.

Nor are Beethoven's vocal works enjoyed much by their performers - they all have a reputation, Fidelio included, for being overly taxing. I've been told that even Missa Solemnis is unperformable in its original form, needing significant modern editing to be actually match the upper limits of the human voice.

What Beethoven did write for voice is radically different from both predecessors and successors alike and, like Bach, he seems to use voice as an orchestral instrument - one capable of meeting extreme demands. I get the impression when listening to voice in Fidelio that each singer is asked to compliment, or compete with, the ferocious complexities of orchestral backing. Such raw symphonic complexities (best illustrated by his third attempt at an overture in the gargantuan Leonora No. 3) are rarely found in a more benign vocal music of Haydn, Mozart of Schubert. Is such ferocity bad?

Over the decades, nothing on radio more rivets my attention than Beethoven songs or excerpts from Fidelio. In vocal music as elsewhere, Beethoven's disdain of the dictum moderation in all things is the essence of his enduring appeal.

Emil Miller

09-25-2011, 07:44 AM

Now that is quite a unique performance. Never heard a choir with it. Do you know where one can get the whole suite (if they indeed record all of it)?

Douglas Gamley was an Australian composer and arranger who worked with some of the greatest and also some of the not so great musicians during the thirty years he spent in England: mostly in films. His use of choir and organ in this piece is inspired and greatly enhances the power and ambience of the music. There is reference to his having rearranged the whole work but I haven't been able to trace a recording of it:

Mussorgsky "The Great Gate of Kiev" - Douglas Gamley's orchestration video
Douglas Gamley conducts his own orchestration of the finale from "Pictures at an Exhibition," with the New Symphony Orchestra, the Men's Chorus of the Ambrosian Singers, and the organ of Kingsway Hall, London. From the Readers Digest 10-LP set "Music for You," produced by Charles Gerhardt (published 1968).

Gilliatt Gurgle

09-25-2011, 06:36 PM

...Mussorgsky "The Great Gate of Kiev" - Douglas Gamley's orchestration video
Douglas Gamley conducts his own orchestration of the finale from "Pictures at an Exhibition," with the New Symphony Orchestra, the Men's Chorus of the Ambrosian Singers, and the organ of Kingsway Hall, London. From the Readers Digest 10-LP set "Music for You," produced by Charles Gerhardt (published 1968).

Lately I have taken interest in Mussorgsky since we first touched on his music in the painting thread. Since then I can't seem to get enough of "The Old Castle".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ssfDQirqVk

I went ahead and purchased Valery Gergiev and the Wiener Philharmoniker performance of Pictures at an Exhibition

.

Emil Miller

09-26-2011, 10:43 AM

Lately I have taken interest in Mussorgsky since we first touched on his music in the painting thread. Since then I can't seem to get enough of "The Old Castle".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ssfDQirqVk

I went ahead and purchased Valery Gergiev and the Wiener Philharmoniker performance of Pictures at an Exhibition

.

Yes, it's very atmospheric, as are all the musical 'pictures' in the original piano score. The amazing thing is that Ravel was able to capture their essence so brilliantly in his orchestration. I don't think even Mussorgsky would have done it better.

cl154576

09-26-2011, 03:47 PM

Plus ça change...

The flag may be different but the message is the same.

I still think the Germans did it better.

http://youtu.be/vHZmxlhuQVM

Utterly hilarious ...

Just been checking around You Tube and came across this stupendous finale to the Mussorgsky/ Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition, which uses Ravel's orchestration but adds a choir to magical effect.

http://youtu.be/JwrqAipON2w

Thank you for posting the link; I have listened to the Pictures twice in live concert, but the addition of the choir was very powerful.

cl154576

09-26-2011, 06:32 PM

I love this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIp9hcMwY6o), after all the initial coughing (which is unfortunately in too many videos).

Mutatis-Mutandis

09-26-2011, 06:37 PM

Utterly hilarious ...

I'm failing to see the joke in Emil's vid. Not because it's supposedly making fun of my vid . . . I'm just not finding the correlation.

Emil Miller

09-26-2011, 06:42 PM

Utterly hilarious ...

Thank you for posting the link; I have listened to the Pictures twice in live concert, but the addition of the choir was very powerful.

I'm glad you find it hilarious but I don't think the Pentagon are very amused. If the UK had paid a little more attention to what was happening in Germany during the pre-war period, it might not have had to face many of the problems that emerged when they eventually declared war on Germany.

http://youtu.be/Hkt7Nw0PE2E

As for the Mussorgsky, the opening with the bell at fff is brilliant, and the deep sound at 1,56 just before the choir comes in is masterly. The accentuation of bells throughout underlines the Russian nature of the work. The use of the organ at 6.01 and 6.08 adds to the notion of holy Russia and I'm surprised that Leopold Stokowski didn't think of these changes first.

cl154576

09-26-2011, 06:49 PM

I'm failing to see the joke in Emil's vid. Not because it's supposedly making fun of my vid . . . I'm just not finding the correlation.

I'm glad you find it hilarious but I don't think the Pentagon are very amused. If the UK had paid a little more attention to what was happening in Germany during the pre-war period, it might not have had to face many of the problems that emerged when they eventually declared war on Germany.

I meant the speech, not the army.

Mutatis-Mutandis

09-26-2011, 06:55 PM

I'm confused.

Emil Miller

09-26-2011, 07:10 PM

I meant the speech, not the army.

Perhaps you should have made that clear, seeing as how most members don't speak Mandarin Chinese.

cl154576

09-26-2011, 07:18 PM

Perhaps you should have made that clear, seeing as how most members don't speak Mandarin Chinese.

Sorry. I forget where I am sometimes ... I can translate later if I finish my work, but it's mostly the tone.

Mutatis-Mutandis

09-26-2011, 07:37 PM

To maybe bring this back on track, a little.

This is still one of my all time fave vids on YT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tGA6bpscj8

stlukesguild

09-26-2011, 11:46 PM

Last year the best purchase I made was of the box set of J.S. Bach's Sacred Materpieces/Cantatas performed by John Eliot Gardiner with the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6157/6187169189_e275631189.jpg

This box set was produced rather cheaply. The box (as can be seen from the picture) is rather poorly constructed from lightweight cardboard and the discs contained in paper sleeves... as with old LPs. The accompanying booklet is minimal (at best) with little information beyond the identification of each track on the discs and a link to an online site where one might download the texts. On the other hand, for little more than $30 US you get 22 discs of the finest recordings of Bach's St. Matthew and St. John Passions, the Mass in B-minor, the Magnificat, the Christmas Oratorio, and 11 discs of the many of Bach's finest cantatas. I should also note that when I say 22 discs of the "finest" recordings... I am not exaggerating. Gardiner's recordings of any of these individual works are commonly considered to be the standard against which all others are measured... and purchased separately, the St. Matthew Passion alone can run nearly as much as this entire set.

This year, once again it has been a box set that has been perhaps my greatest purchase of the year. Sony re-released the first 15 discs of classic recordings by the Huelgas Ensemble, the Belgian-based choral group of around 20 unaccompanied singers, specialising in Early Music (Middle Ages to Renaissance), many written by obscure or little-known composers such as Agricola, Riquafort and Ciprio de Rore.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6154/6187689962_38aed0f59d.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6163/6187689680_c72a51f164.jpg

Once again the set runs around $30-$35 US for the 15 disc boxed set... but in this instance Sony has pulled out all the stops in packaging. The box itself is beautiful... great graphics and produced of heavy stock cardboard with a second heavy cardboard liner that can be removed to allow for ease of access (in case you plan on playing all the discs one after the other). Each individual disc is housed in a lighter-weight cardboard case designed to allow easy removal of the disc by simply squeezing. The set is capped of by a 200+ page booklet which includes the texts of the works in the original Latin (in most instances) as well as in French, German, and English translation. The only possible complaints is that the original cover art is lost (although this wasn't always the finest)... reduced to an image the size of a postage stamp reproduced on the back of each individual disc liner. Neither are the original liner notes reproduced... although one might surely look up the individual composers on the internet. For example, I'm currently listening to the 15th century Franco-Flemish composer, Alexander Agricola, and I find there is plenty about him available on the net.

Once again, as in the Bach box set, any shortcomings... even less in this instance... are more than compensated for by the quality of performance and wealth of music at a bargain price. This set is ideal for anyone wishing to delve deeper into the realm of "Early Music".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naap4CWanv0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk_pPTiyUDs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL40Zxi1IFo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGUjyFqQ1aI

http://brandnewmoods.blogspot.com/2010/11/425-huelgas-ensemble.html

stlukesguild

10-01-2011, 07:47 PM

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6169/6201416927_3e325d5b63.jpg

Where I have always struggled with Schoenberg and found him too "lumpen" and leaden... like Brahms at his worst without the tonality... this is not so of Berg. And once again I find I immediately warm to Berg's work. I already have another version of the Lyric Suite, but I find this one "special" on several accounts. Surely the Kronos Quartet plays this music in a manner at once deft... sensuous... fluid... and lyrical.

The work was famously an expression of Berg's tragic love for Hanna Fuchs-Robbetin. Berg had already been married some 14 years, but he was overwhelmed with a grande passion for Hanna, the sister of the Austrian novelist Franz Werfel, the wife of a Prague industrialist and mother of two. Divorce for either was unthinkable and only rarely, through missives sent via trusted confidants count the two communicate or arrange the rare clandestine meetings. The affair was impossible and heart-breaking for both. Hanna broke down in tears at seeing Berg at an opera house. Berg drunkenly wandered the streets for hours and ending standing beneath his beloved's window in a silent parody of the ritual of courtly love.. The two resigned themselves to a silent suffering of this love that could not be.

Berg's Lyric Suite was laden with symbolic expressions of this love which were only later (1977) deciphered by the musical scholar George Perle who had access to the original annotated copy of the score sent by Berg to Hanna. With this, Perle discovered that the suite originally concluded with a setting for quartet and soprano of Baudelaire's poem, De profundis clamavi in the German translation by the German Symbolist, Stephan George. This concept of transcending the inarticulate expression of the instrumental with song was of course born of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in which the bass soloist suddenly silences the orchestra to announce the song of brotherhood. Berg's mentor, Schoenberg, adapted the idea to his string quartet, the final movements of which adapt Stephan George's poems, Litany and Transport.
Berg must have suspected that the performance of the suite with the original intended vocal finale would have resulted in a too obvious comparison with Schoenberg... but also... considering the lyrics of the chosen text by Baudelaire:

To you, you sole dear one, my cry rises
Out of the deepest abyss in which my heart has fallen.
There the landscape is dead, the air like lead
And in the dark, curse and terror well up...

I envy the lot of the most common animal
Which can plunge into the dizziness of a senseless sleep...
So slowly does the spindle of time unwind.

it would have led to unwanted speculation among the scandal-mongering Viennese, and so once again Berg resigned himself to silence, and the melody composed for Baudelaire's words was dispersed among the instruments of the quartet. This melody was reconstructed by Perle. By placing this melody once again before the quartet, the shattering finale draws clearer thematic connections to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, itself a masterpiece of love and suffering in silence. In Berg's setting the voice ends before the quartet, conveying, perhaps, that there are no longer any words fitting to such suffering. Each instrument of the quartet then equally dies away... losing its voice in silence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GOu6GxZVW0

Emil Miller

10-07-2011, 04:11 PM

Gorgeous women and great music go together.

http://youtu.be/_-xwx-Z3ijc

stlukesguild

10-07-2011, 11:07 PM

Indeed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQR0LQskL4E

:smile5:

Vonny

10-09-2011, 02:34 PM

Yes, really gorgeous women and music there Emil, Luke. :) Watching Yu-Na, I found it interesting the role of her coach in her life who has taught her all that he knows and she is capable of magic.

Emil Miller

10-10-2011, 12:31 PM

Yes, really gorgeous women and music there Emil, Luke. :) Watching Yu-Na, I found it interesting the role of her coach in her life who has taught her all that he knows and she is capable of magic.

It's unfortunate that she and her coach have since broken up. I don't know anything about skating but, checking her out on Google, there was an acrimonious parting of the ways for reasons that are not at all clear.
She has made a fabulous amount of money since becoming an olympic and also world champion in womens' skating but she owes it all to her Canadian coach who was himself a former champion skater. The professional life of a skater is very short but at least we have the video footage of her performances in which she is simply ethereal. I posted this some time ago in another thread but here she is again winning the 2010 olympic championship. Beauty personified.

http://youtu.be/yc35PYNEQMk

Vonny

10-11-2011, 04:32 AM

It's unfortunate that she and her coach have since broken up. I don't know anything about skating but, checking her out on Google, there was an acrimonious parting of the ways for reasons that are not at all clear.
She has made a fabulous amount of money since becoming an olympic and also world champion in womens' skating but she owes it all to her Canadian coach who was himself a former champion skater. The professional life of a skater is very short but at least we have the video footage of her performances in which she is simply ethereal. I posted this some time ago in another thread but here she is again winning the 2010 olympic championship. Beauty personified.

http://youtu.be/yc35PYNEQMk

Thanks for this Emil. I hadn't seen her before. I'm sure she had natural talent and practiced very hard, but it's true she would have gotten no where on her own.

The commentaries on the videos are very interesting. She is a mixture of shyness and competitiveness, (which can make food for vultures.) Her coach protected her, they say. Protecting a girl is not something society respects because it keeps girls from "growing." But it seems Yu-Na developed her full potential and her unique self. I don't know what the coach protected her from, but maybe from other girls that he didn't want her to emulate, maybe from criticism, or from believing that being different equaled inadequate and unacceptable.

I understand about people seeking the best education, but I still wonder why she left her coach. It happened after she had fully succeeded, not before, which makes me think she did drop him. How disillusioning. How sad for him.

stlukesguild

10-21-2011, 11:58 PM

My personal preference has long been for music of the German/Austrian tradition (Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, Schumann, Strauss, Mahler, etc...) followed by the Italians and the French. I have not necessarily disliked the Russians... but rather they have simply not been my favorite... at least not since I was a teenager and the gushing emotions spoke to me.

Recently, I have begun to rediscover a lot of Russian music. Russian operas are intriguing in their predominant use of bass and baritone singers... although the general scarcity of lead female characters is less than endearing. The French long embraced the ballet... dance... even in their operas, and 19th century Russia's love of all things French resulted in a great tradition of Russian ballet which continued into the 20th century. I've been exploring any number of the classic Russian ballets:

Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet is quite fabulous... at once drop-dead gorgeous... and yet laden with enough of a tinge of the dark and sinister... the dissonant... to not make it seem but a pastiche in the 20th century:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB0PVzhIllQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB3sd2BAxys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrJQiGCdTFk

Looking through videos of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, I came across the performance of the Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe of China who are every bit as brilliant athletes as anyone I've seen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gLDGAU09JM&feature=related

Mutatis-Mutandis

10-26-2011, 06:00 PM

I'm interested to hear what some of you classical buffs think of this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsIk4eghl1Y).

Emil Miller

10-27-2011, 03:05 PM

The longest fingers you ever did see, the face of an angel and fabulous artistry and control. This is definitely one of my favourite performances and at 2.05 I'm somewhere else.

http://youtu.be/p0L_pAqLAi0

tonywalt

11-03-2011, 12:07 AM

Suo Gan - Empire of the Sun soundtrack. Brilliant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To8vbhCG2DY&feature=related

Emil Miller

11-03-2011, 08:05 PM

Seeing is believing.

http://youtu.be/R_WBdb4Hu_Y

tonywalt

11-04-2011, 01:00 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOA-2hl1Vbc

Pachelbel's Canon in D. One of the best classic pieces ever.

also John Barry's "Out of Africa" brilliant modern piece. Stunning cinematography.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DANTm...eature=related
__________________

Emil Miller

11-04-2011, 04:30 PM

In the previous video she was four-years-old now here she is three years later.

http://youtu.be/LwED9gYIa0o

Charles Darnay

11-04-2011, 04:44 PM

I just picked up a record of JS Bach's cello suites, which I'm listening to now - so good!

swannbeam

11-04-2011, 05:51 PM

I''m addicted to Rameau at the moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-QzU9EZUXE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0kidZRGKJw

Emil Miller

11-05-2011, 11:43 AM

Here's Aimi Kobayashi at 14 playing Beethoven's Waldstein sonata.
This girl is destined to be one of the greatest pianists of all time. I doubt that Beethoven could have played it better.

http://youtu.be/hoTdKWOVGVs

David Lurie

11-05-2011, 01:12 PM

I''m addicted to Rameau at the moment.

It's not an addiction, it's good taste in music :coolgleamA:

Emil Miller

11-07-2011, 04:22 PM

stlukesguild

11-07-2011, 10:06 PM

I'm interested to hear what some of you classical buffs think of this.

I have little use for the tradition concept of "classical music" as a style of music. The very term, excepting its use to describe the period of Mozart, Haydn, Boccherini, Gluck, etc... had nothing to do with defining a style and everything with suggesting aesthetic merit: the term was intended as a means to define the great music of the upper classes as inherently superior from the music of popular/mass culture as popular music began to assert itself as a result of recording technology.

What is "classical music?" It is impossible to define because we are speaking of dozens of musical forms, genre, and styles... everything from Byzantine chants:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFH8abHmO-o

to Sephardic songs and dances:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGAsvJvebwI&feature=fvst

to Plainchant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taanHO13WXE

to the Troubadors, Trouveres, and Minnesänger:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG7prWBWC_E

to Polyphony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLwMEBlBBB4

to the Renaissance Madrigal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxcMZl6YwNs

to the Concerti-Grosso:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-dYNttdgl0

to the Cantata:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJcL-dSn5zo

to Opera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK1_vm0FMAU

to the quartets and quintets and chamber music as a whole:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtN1scGYJKA

to the symphony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6K_IuBsRM4

to the lieder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx3yior5CQM

to the operetta:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4hs7vW8SV0

to the Requiem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RSMcgQfM9E

continued............

stlukesguild

11-07-2011, 10:12 PM

to the Ballet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gZbMOq_Ge8

to Gershwin's jazz-infused opera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIDOEsQL7lA

to Minimalist Film scores:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jjLMm7C2EY

And all this barely scrapes the surface. The reality is that the term "classical music" is meaningless... or rather a misnomer. What the term intends to define is that music which has survived and continues to resonate with an audience. As such it might be better termed "Classic Music" because in all reality it doesn't define any single form or style or genre or tradition but rather that which has survived because of a perceived artistic merit. In all likelihood this will survive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyE9IN7JSVU

and this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faJE92phKzI&feature=related

and this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqNTltOGh5c&ob=av2n

and even this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGufQk9QOdM

this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5IOou6qN1o

and this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiAqGliq_pE

will outlast a hell of a lot of the music that is currently thought of as the "classical music" of today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXt4K6-cIHg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13D1YY_BvWU

Having said this... I can certainly imagine that some of what Pat Metheny achieved... whether we call it "jazz" or "fusion" or whatever may certainly have the potential to survive and become a musical "classic". Having said this... I have long argued that 90%+ of all music is mediocre at best... and it is quite likely that that percentage is actually low when dealing with popular music. A great majority of it is cliche, uninspired, repetitive, and juvenile... but as is the case when we are arguing about any contemporary art, be it literature, film, painting, or music, we are all likely to differ in our opinions as to which artists and artworks fall within those few percentage points that represent artistic endeavors of real merit.

stlukesguild

11-07-2011, 10:21 PM

I'm addicted to Rameau at the moment.

I love Rameau myself... although I lean toward his operas and choral music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOlX-RF5sh4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKvd4tMkFHc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9_93xtKup4

stlukesguild

11-07-2011, 10:54 PM

Mr.lucifer

11-07-2011, 11:26 PM

Who is a good artist to start with for a newbie for classical music?

stlukesguild

11-07-2011, 11:27 PM

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6058/6324844814_e2be8481df.jpg

This set showed up on Spotify so I had to give it a listen. Absolutely f***in' fantastic!! An essential collection for anyone with a love of "early" (ie. medieval) music... such as myself.

The editorial review in Amazon.com states:

Catharism was the name given to a Christian religious sect that appeared in the Languedoc region of what is now southern France and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Cathars saw matter as intrinsically evil. They denied that Jesus could become incarnate and still be the son of God and thus, the Catholic Church regarded the sect as dangerously heretical. Faced with what they saw as a rapidly spreading cancer, the Church called for a crusade, which was carried out by knights from Northern France and Germany and was known as the Albigensian Crusade. This campaign, and the inquisition that followed it, eradicated the Cathars completely. It also had the effect of weakening the semi- independent southern principalities in the area, ultimately bringing them under direct control of the King of France. Occitania, once a crossroads of many cultures, was one of the victims of the Albigensian Crusade. Occitania s refined culture culminated in the troubadour tradition, which subsequently spread to Italy, Spain and Greece. Related movements sprang up throughout Europe: the Minnesingers in Germany, trovadorismo in Galicia and Portugal and the trouvères in northern France. On this album, Jordi Savall not only explores the classical period of the troubadour school from around the turn of the 13th century, but also provides us with a comprehensive historical and artistic background of this Golden Age. It is time we remembered this forgotten kingdom where much of what we call Western culture was incubated.

The music of this lost culture is not only brilliantly explored through Savall's performances... but also in the form of the lavish illustrated book that accompanies this set of discs. I will be certainly looking forward to purchasing this in the not-so-distant future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veJlRlZy9xQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9VewmkNe7M&feature=related

This culture should be of interest to those enamored of European history and literature. Occatania or Aquitania was key in the spread of the tradition of lyrical poetry from Islamic Spain into France and Italy. This was the culture of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-More, and Chrétien de Troyes. The literary conventions of lyrical poetry and courtly love begun at her Palace of Poitiers were further refined by Bertrand de Born and Bernard de Ventadour, both of whom were admired by Dante and the poets of the Florentine Renaissance. Aquitaine would later become the birthplace to one of France' greatest writers, Michel de Montaigne.

stlukesguild

11-07-2011, 11:28 PM

Who is a good artist to start with for a newbie for classical music?

It depends upon what sort of musical background you are coming from and what sort of music you currently prefer.

Mr.lucifer

11-07-2011, 11:50 PM

Who is a good artist to start with for a newbie for classical music?

It depends upon what sort of musical background you are coming from and what sort of music you currently prefer.

That's a bit complicated. I listen to different genres of popular music. I'm for something that's easy to get into to prepare me for what is considered the more difficult stuff.

swannbeam

11-08-2011, 01:10 AM

Who is a good artist to start with for a newbie for classical music?
I suggest you find a list of eminent composers and sample each on Youtube. This way you may realize your own tastes and find music that will inspire you to inquire further. There is no ideal place for everyone to start.

stlukesguild

11-08-2011, 01:28 AM

What you must recognize is that the larger (or extended) forms of "classical music" (symphonies, sonatas, concertos) are quite removed from the structure of the usual popular song which is built upon a simple repeated melody and perhaps a second counter melody. The extended forms of classical music may employ a melody or tune... but then this may be explored through a series of increasingly complex variations or developments of this motif or theme. You might think of a popular song as being like a simple and easy to grasp literary form like a sonnet or ballad (and most pop songs are rooted in simple poetic forms like the ballad going back to the troubadours- see the post on Occitania/Aquitaine above). The larger extended forms of classical music are closer in form and development to an epic poem... or novel.

Perhaps the "easiest" works of classical music to first get into are the Baroque concerti grossi. These are commonly built upon a 4/4 beat (like most pop music) or at least a steady dance rhythm. The movements tend to be short and built upon an easy to grasp melody or motif. Among the most popular are Vivaldi's Four Seasons, J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, G.F. Handel's Water Music, Vivaldi's Mandolin Concertos, etc... You might also explore the shorter works of later eras. I would recommend Chopin's Nocturnes...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6222/6324238255_bfdc36a591.jpg

and Schumann's works for piano:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6057/6324238315_00f8a5281f.jpg

You might also do well to select a key work from every era and major genre just to get a feel for what you like.

From the Baroque... beyond Bach's Brandenburg Concertos

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6059/6324309907_8f5069e157.jpg

Vivaldi's Four Seasons...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6106/6324315023_eba577405e.jpg

and Handel's Water Music/Royal Fireworks

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6211/6325063750_444c6f2717.jpg

I would also suggest J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6036/6325051170_d85982768d.jpg

and Handel's Messiah...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6093/6324297325_a2546086e6.jpg

From the "Classical Period" you should look into Haydn's string quartets as an introduction to chamber music...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6115/6325051670_774b119412.jpg

and from Mozart, the last two symphonies:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6234/6324297833_82da39063e.jpg

the late piano concertos:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6042/6324309937_080ec20e1f.jpg

and the Requiem:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6037/6324297853_c9016098a5.jpg

From Beethoven, the 5th symphony:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6047/6324297391_e8343eaf97.jpg

and the most popular piano sonatas:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6060/6324297751_4dee13b857.jpg

continued...

stlukesguild

11-08-2011, 01:34 AM

From Schubert, the last two symphonies:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6100/6324297805_879663cce8.jpg

and the Impromptus:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6228/6325100226_ef2dd60e6f.jpg

With Wagner, look into the Orchestral "highlights":

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6033/6325051814_fbfac8e52e.jpg

Brahms is best come at first for his chamber music. His clarinet works are among his finest:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6226/6324297893_9a305765e9.jpg

Dvorak's last symphonies give you a good idea of the late 19th century symphony... and also establish a tradition for subsequent American classical music:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6093/6324297935_5c854626b8.jpg

Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff composed some of the most popular piano concertos... played stunningly here:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6049/6324297949_c0caa6f820.jpg

Another key Romantic masterpiece that is easy to love is Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (and the Night on Bald Mountain):

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6238/6324297975_d64a6eacf1.jpg

Debussy's Impressionism points the way toward the 20th century:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6240/6324298027_405b47f6e6.jpg

Into the 20th century, the icon of Modernism was surely Stravinsky's Rite of Spring:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6221/6324298001_d8b10cf3bf.jpg

Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra, however, is perhaps the most recognized work of music of the century:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6033/6325051998_7a4974e8ff.jpg

The other two giants of 20th century Russian music are Prokofiev and Shostakovitch. It's actually hard to select a single icon work that best represents Prokofiev (unless it's Peter and the Wolf) but with Shostakovitch there are several to pick. Ultimately, I'd go with his 10th symphony:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6037/6324298087_18067775e9.jpg

Bartok pushes you into Modernism and even atonality:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6049/6325051986_8bfe1063d3.jpg

The last selection I would include is this disc which includes Barber's famous Adagio for Strings... a great American Masterpiece... as well as Mahler's great adagio from his 5th symphony, and a couple examples of the great English tradition of pastoral music:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6108/6324385713_e40cc57873.jpg

These recommendations are almost all available at a budget price... and every last one of them is among the finest recorded version available... a great many the best possible version IMO (Beethoven's 5th, the Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Royal Fireworks, Impromptus, Rite of Spring, Mozart 40-41, etc...)

I would also highly recommend a good book to introduce you to classical music, the forms, history, etc... I personally like this one:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6038/6325151148_311c6d5cde.jpg

I suggest you find a list of eminent composers and sample each on Youtube. This way you may realize your own tastes and find music that will inspire you to inquire further. There is no ideal place for everyone to start.

I agree that YouTube offers a great source at which to sample music... but I don't think sampling classical music in 5-minute snippets is necessarily the best way to explore it. It reduces it, in a sense, to a collection of highlights of favorite tunes, rather than leading the individual to explore the whole of these works.

David Lurie

11-08-2011, 06:45 AM

Who is a good artist to start with for a newbie for classical music?

There is no answer.
Grab every chance you have of listening to classical music and then go to explore deeply the artist(s) who caught your attention, BBC Radio 3 has this synoptic programme (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014r87y) running from Monday to Friday every week which I think it's a very useful learning/exploring tool for newbies.

Emil Miller

11-08-2011, 07:16 AM

And here she is at age 15.
I would love to see her play in London but I keep forgetting she is so young and will not be taking on the concert circuit until she is a little older. Although she has performed in New York and St. Petersburg, most of her engagements are in Japan. There are many brilliant young musicians coming out of Asia but this one borders on the supernatural.

She is phenomenal for her age... but you know as well as I do that such prodigy is meaningless. There are endless other pianists as good or better than her and only a few will ever have the passion and drive and talent to make it into the realm of the virtuoso performer. One thing she will need is the intelligence to broaden her repertoire beyond the usual warhorses that have been repeatedly recorded by pianists far, far greater. She will need to bring something original and unique. Many of the finest performers in classical music today are exploring repertoire that has long been ignored (think of Marc-Andre Hamelin recording Alkan and Scriabin) others have entered into the world of HIP (Historically Informed Performances) performing of period instruments (piano-forte or harpsichord). Competing in the usual realm of Romantic piano concertos (Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, etc...) truly limits the possibility that a performer will have any chance of success. The question every performer like your young prodigy must face is "Why on earth would I want to listen to her when I can listen to:

Claudio Arau
Martha Argerich
Vladimir Ashkenazy
Emanuel Ax
Glenn Gould
Murray Perahia
Angela Hewitt
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli
Alfred Brendel
Leon Fleisher
Walter Gieseking
Marc-André Hamelin
Vladimir Horowitz
Wilhelm Kempff
Stephen Kovacevich
Van Cliburn
Mikhail Pletnev
Ivo Pogorelić
Maurizio Pollini
Sviatoslav Richter
Pascal Rogé
Arthur Rubinstein
Rudolf Serkin
Artur Schnabel
Vladimir Sofronitsky
Yevgeny Svetlanov
Jean-Yves Thibaudet
Rosalyn Tureck
Mitsuko Uchida
Alexis Weissenberg
Krystian Zimerman
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet

and these are but a few of the great pianists who have already recorded much of the standard repertoire.

Looking at your list of performers, I note that many of them figure in my own collection but I doubt that many of them were able to perform as creditably as Aimi Kobayashi at the age of four. I agree that child prodigies have littered the pianistic scene since Mozart and will continue to do so but it is worth remembering that it is also littered with many great names of the past who have now been forgotten. Obviously, with the advent of recording, the possibility to hear various performances from the past is there but, in the final analysis, music is subjective and ones choice remains personal. It is true that the standard repertoire has been repeatedly recorded throughout the last century and beyond but that was generally for the benefit of the western world. Now the the focus is moving East there will be many, if not more, people who will prefer to listen to the brilliant performances of the likes of Yundi Li, Sahra Chang, Juja Wang, Aimi Kobayasahi etc etc. All of whom have gone through the mill at competition level and been acclaimed by critics in the West as well as their own countries. I see no reason to doubt that some of the musicians from the East will go on to match their western counterparts in achieving the highest levels of performance as, in some cases, they are already doing.

tonywalt

11-08-2011, 08:42 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm5pbLMn8j8

Stillness of the Mind - Abel Korzeniowski from A Single Man (directed by Tom Ford)

stlukesguild

11-08-2011, 10:07 PM

Now the the focus is moving East there will be many, if not more, people who will prefer to listen to the brilliant performances of the likes of Yundi Li, Sahra Chang, Juja Wang, Aimi Kobayasahi etc etc. All of whom have gone through the mill at competition level and been acclaimed by critics in the West as well as their own countries. I see no reason to doubt that some of the musicians from the East will go on to match their western counterparts in achieving the highest levels of performance as, in some cases, they are already doing.

I think you overestimate the shift of power and culture to the East. We've been hearing the same thing for 40+ years since Japan came into its own again after the war. Obviously more countries... including those in the East (India, Japan, China, Korea) are becoming major players on the economic and cultural stage. Unlike you, I don't see this as inherently resulting in a great decline of other nations. It would seem to me that the quality of living in Britain, France, Germany... most of Europe... has not nosedived since the United States and the USSR took the lead as the great world powers.

Having said this much, I agree that more and more Asian performers are going to make their way into the world of Western "classical music". Mitsuko Uchida has already proven herself, along with Yo Yo Ma, Seiji Ozawa, Sumi Jo, Myung-whun Chung, Sarah Chang, and perhaps finest of all Masaaki Suzuki and his brilliant Bach Collegium Japan. Can any of these performers stand up to comparison with the very best. Uchida and Suzuki can. Yo Yo Ma is surely one of the best living cellists, but I don't know if he can rival Rostropovitch, Casals, Pierre Fournier, or Janos Starker. Ozawa was an OK conductor... but no Szell, Karajan, Furtwangler, Barbirolli, etc... Still I certainly agree that with time we will undoubtedly get more great performers from Asia... and Australia, and South America, etc... and your little Aimi Kobayasahi may indeed be one of them.

lawpark

11-09-2011, 07:05 PM

I personally subscribe to the sociological theory that great master are generated in Generations 0-2 of a new institutional structure. The known masters nowadays are all beneficiaries of the new institutions of recorded music - thus personally I believe that unless something fundamental changes, it would be very difficult for later generations to attain the master status on the same footing as Rubinstein, Heifetz, etc. So emerging Asian artists' only hope to achieve true greatness lies in the opportunity that new technologies fundamentally change classical music consumption patterns.

Emil Miller

11-09-2011, 07:51 PM

[QUOTE=stlukesguild;1087627Having said this much, I agree that more and more Asian performers are going to make their way into the world of Western "classical music". Mitsuko Uchida has already proven herself, along with Yo Yo Ma, Seiji Ozawa, Sumi Jo, Myung-whun Chung, Sarah Chang, and perhaps finest of all Masaaki Suzuki and his brilliant Bach Collegium Japan. Can any of these performers stand up to comparison with the very best. Uchida and Suzuki can. Yo Yo Ma is surely one of the best living cellists, but I don't know if he can rival Rostropovitch, Casals, Pierre Fournier, or Janos Starker. Ozawa was an OK conductor... but no Szell, Karajan, Furtwangler, Barbirolli, etc... Still I certainly agree that with time we will undoubtedly get more great performers from Asia... and Australia, and South America, etc... and your little Aimi Kobayasahi may indeed be one of them.[/QUOTE]

But, once again, all of the artists you name are familiar to me and have been for many years. Over decades of listening to great music I must rely on my ear and experience. In my view, it's not only Asian soloists but orchestral musicians in general who are demonstrating standards of performance that are the equal of those currently given by western musicians.
It is true that solo cellists and individual conductors have yet to emerge onto the international stage but I don't doubt that it will happen.
As for great piano playing, this Russian audience appears to be in agreement:

http://youtu.be/PX57r1l5W3U

Chris1991

11-19-2011, 06:31 PM

Medieval music,Church music are my favorites
Theatre of Voices,The early music consort of London,Millenarium,
Acantus

http://pixhost.me/avaxhome/2007-02-15/Cover_255.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BNZpzVFc9iM/Te9_fZRdt7I/AAAAAAAACjY/6gLzLPqwWk0/s1600/music%2Bder%2Brenaissance%2Bitalien.JPG

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/cc4355d18288d181ea06ca7525f696d5/3202797.jpg

LitNetIsGreat

11-20-2011, 07:21 AM

To help restore a little sanity and peace, I have once again found myself returning to those heavenly monks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5p_U8J0iRQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK5AohCMX0U&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=VTdJTRlaXqw

Few things have such a restful effect on me than Gregorian Chant. It's enough to make me drop it all and run off to join a monastery, beautiful. (I could get a job hoeing the earth and changing the candles perhaps?)

It gives me a great appreciation for Latin as well.

kasie

11-20-2011, 08:49 AM

Anyone watching the programmes about the Symphony on BBC4? I'm finding them enjoyable and informative and friend who claims to be non-musical says she is finding them a revelation, not least because she didn't realise how many symphonies she knew!

LitNetIsGreat

11-20-2011, 09:04 AM

No, I did see a clip about them but I never got around to watching.

Emil Miller

11-20-2011, 10:34 AM

I haven't seen it, I think that the subject requires more than the four programmes allotted to it but I was listening to Simon Russell Beale presenting a programme about Russian music on radio 3 yesterday and he certainly has a good grasp of the subject and a very unobtrusive but informative style of presentation.

stlukesguild

11-20-2011, 05:54 PM

To help restore a little sanity and peace, I have once again found myself returning to those heavenly monks...

Few things have such a restful effect on me than Gregorian Chant.

I know what you mean, Neely... but for me this always comes about from a return to Bach. I recently picked up this disc:

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6223/6371630215_70bf56b1ab.jpg

I hadn't listened to the Musikalisches Opfer in years. Indeed, I only had a single copy of the work which fleshed out a 2-disc set of the Art of Fugue. For whatever reason the piece never grabbed me, and so I rarely ever listened to it. But this recording by Jordi Savall... much like the majority of his recordings... really opens up your ears to an oeuvre that is much better than I used to think. I had the same experience with his performance of Handel's Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music... and his Brandenburgs are top-notch. I'll take them over Suzuki.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQWsOG7IJA0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPqdBWWiHyE

Of course, far from relaxing would be an actual analysis of the amazing structure of Bach's music... including the awe-inspiring "crab canon" which is constructed of the same music played forward, backward, and interwoven in a manner virtually beyond comprehension:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IN_FyhmY8U

:eek:

lawpark

11-20-2011, 09:39 PM

The B-A-C-H theme that was made famous in the classic science popular work Escher, Godel and Bach (I might have the order wrong), did that refer to the Musical Offering of the Art of Fugue?

stlukesguild

11-21-2011, 12:17 AM

In the German system of key spellings, the lettering runs from A through H, rather than A through G. Our B-flat is the German B, and B is denoted H. This allows one to spell the name B-A-C-H on the keys, thus:

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6111/6374267291_f759fbdf05.jpg

Bach himself was well aware of this, and used it in the final, unfinished contrapunctus of The Art of the Fugue.

The theme of the Musical Offering came about as follows:

The Musical Offering (German title Musikalisches Opfer or Das Musikalische Opfer), BWV 1079, is a collection of canons and fugues and other pieces of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, all based on a single musical theme given to him by Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great), to whom they are dedicated. The Ricercar, a six-voice fugue which is the highpoint of the entire work, was put forward by the musicologist Charles Rosen as the most significant piano composition in history. This Ricercar is also occasionally called the Prussian Fugue, a name used by Bach himself.

The collection has its roots in a meeting between Bach and Frederick II on May 7, 1747. The meeting, taking place at the King's residence in Potsdam, came about because Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel was employed there as court musician. Frederick wanted to show the elder Bach a novelty, the piano, which had been invented some years earlier. The King owned several of the experimental instruments being developed by Gottfried Silbermann. During his anticipated visit to Frederick's palace in Potsdam, Bach, who was well known for his skill at improvising, received from Frederick a long and complex musical theme on which to improvise a three-voice fugue. He did so, but Frederick then challenged him to improvise a six-voice fugue on the same theme. The public present thought that just a malicious caprice by the King, intent upon humiliating philosophers and artists. Bach answered that he would need to work the score and send it to the King afterwards. He then returned to Leipzig to write out the Thema Regium ("theme of the king").

Two months after the meeting, Bach published a set of pieces based on this theme which we now know as The Musical Offering. Bach inscribed the piece "Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta" (the theme given by the king, with additions, resolved in the canonic style), the first letters of which spell out the word ricercar, a well-known genre of the time.
The "thema regium" appears as the theme for the first and last movements of the 7th Sonata in D Minor by Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, written in about 1788, and also as the theme for elaborate variations by Giovanni Paisiello in his "Les Adieux de la Grande Duchesse ds Russies," written in about 1784, upon his departure from the court of Catherine the Great.

Humphrey F. Sassoon has compared the theme issued by Frederick II to the theme of an A minor fugue (HWV 609) by George Frideric Handel, published in Six fugues or voluntarys for organ or harpsichord. Sassoon notes that "Handel's theme is much shorter than the King's, but its musical 'architecture' is uncannily similar: jumps followed by a descending chromatic scale." He also elaborates on their additional similarities, which lead Sassoon to suggest that Bach used Handel's A minor fugue as a structural model or guide for the Musical Offering's Ricercar a 6, and that its musical concepts may also have influenced Bach's development of the Ricercar. Nevertheless, the Ricercar is longer and incomparably more complex than Handel's fugue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Musical_Offering

LitNetIsGreat

11-26-2011, 09:52 PM

I agree with Stlukes. It is either the monk fellows or Bach for me as the bottom line. At this moment the monks are winning, but Bach is never far behind.

I have a couple of Benedictine recordings on CD and saved to my PC, but there is so much beautiful stuff out there on the likes of You Tube, that you can come across so many restful pieces all the time. Take this one almost at random:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ela-Z7HqqS8

I can all but see myself hoeing the veg patch and changing the candles for my more devoted brethren. It I wasn't directed to be an atheist by my own mind then this sort of stuff would instantly have me converted to the Catholic faith...

I think if I did believe in past lives, which I don't, then I think I would have been a monk in one of them at least.

Green beans anyone?

Edit: also this stuff has directly made me much happier and saner over the last couple of weeks. I think it has helped to rescue me somewhat actually, so thanks!

stlukesguild

11-27-2011, 01:51 AM

Ironically, one of my girlfriends from college used to tell me that she could easily imagine me as a medieval monk. In part this was due to my love of the "classics" in art, music and literature. In part this was due to the nature of my own artwork which built, in many ways, upon Baroque, Renaissance, and pre-Renaissance elements. I many ways this was due to my nature as a bibliophile... nay bibliomaniac... who was never to be seen without a stack of books... including several journals and sketchbooks in which I was forever scrawling obsessively. "Not to worry," she would assure me, "I don't think of you as the lonely, celebate, monk cloistered away in some dank, dark monastery." Rather, she declared, I reminded her of the sort of Friar Tuck type: brawling, wenching, and drinking (only the best Trappist Ale I should hope) while holding a book in one hand or reciting poetry ala José Ferrer's Cyrano de Bergerac.:cheers2::smash::ladysman: That's an image I could live with.

As for Gregorian (and other forms of chant) as well as Bach. I currently had 3 more volumes of Bach's cantatas performed by John Eliot Gardiner, the English Baroque Soloists, the Monteverdi Choir and soloists arrive in the mail. I'm slowly working toward the complete set. I also put in an order for this:

http://www.amazon.com/Sequentia-Hildegard-Von-Bingen/dp/B0056K4VX6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322372322&sr=8-1

8 discs of the music of Hildegard of Bingen (plainchant and other musical forms) by Sequentia, an excellent group of "early music" specialists. The set includes two discs I already have... but for the price of a single new pop album, I get 8 wonderfully atmospheric and calming discs of the divine Hildegard. I also (madly) sent away for 3 more discs of Bach's Art of Fugue. I have 4 or 5 versions already, but I was absolutely blown away hearing Jordi Savall's on Spotify:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7028/6409593823_1089be7e43.jpg

At the same time I had to pick up Helmut Walcha's classic version on organ...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7154/6403308589_bd954e0592.jpg

...which was the first recording of Art of Fugue I knew. I used to sit in the basement with the lights all off and listen to this hypnotic music over and over until I could almost grasp the mathematical structure like a Gothic Cathedral, and understand the medieval concept of the "music of the spheres".

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7007/6403308627_d1eeef92a5.jpg

The last version I purchased on a whim. Not only were the reviews good... but I was fascinated with the unique instrumentation: Oboe, clarinet, alto clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon.

Emil Miller

11-29-2011, 11:09 AM

Here's another piece from the period that sought to break free from the straight laced constraints of classicism and reach beyond to the heroic.

http://youtu.be/p_TFvoSnx88

stlukesguild

12-03-2011, 10:43 PM

"The World is a book
and those who do not travel
read only one page."
-St. Augustine of Hippo 5th c.

The conductor whose efforts I have been listening to the most recently is surely Jordi Savall. Savall is known for his performances of "early music": the Baroque and earlier... much of it "forgotten" to the mainstream "classical" repertoire. He is also a leading figure in exploring music which crosses the boundaries of East and West.

Jordi Savall's The Road to the Orient, released in 2006, presented a musical portrait of Francisco Javier and his remarkable trip from Spain to Japan. During his own travels for research and preparation for this new set, Savall met a group of talented Japanese musicians who soon became friends and with whom he performed in many concerts around the world. Repackaged following the catastrophes in Japan, Savall's Hispania & Japan: Dialogues is a specially priced album that features the most significant pieces from the musical dialogue between Spain and Japan. Alia Vox's deluxe packaging includes the usual comprehensive, richly illustrated and highly informative hardcover book plus a special bonus a miniature fold-out Japanese screen replica depicting the arrival of the first Europeans in Japan. Alia Vox is donating all profits from the sale of this set to the Japanese Red Cross.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7007/6449951767_cb9b45a3a2.jpg

Francisco Javier (Xavier) was born in 1506 in the Kingdom of Navarre. He was a pioneering Roman Catholic missionary and a co-founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). He studied under St. Ignatius of Loyola and led an extensive mission into Asia, mainly in the Portuguese Empire of the time. He was influential in the spreading and upkeep of Catholicism most notably in India, Japan, and Borneo. Javier was known for singing psalms, much to the fascination of the native people, as he strode about through the islands of Japan. People traveled far to see the distinguished Jesuit. In 1605, some 50 years after Javier's death, a publisher in Nagasaki brought out an edition of Javier's psalms and other religious songs in a text entitled, Manuale ad Sacramenta. These 19 songs, including the Gloriosa Domina represent the first influx of Western music in Japan. While Christianity was officially banned in Japan in 1613, its practice (and the music) continued clandestinely in certain island communities near Nagasaki.

The music here presents the interweaving's of Eastern and Western traditions. The disc as a whole is held together by a series of improvisations upon the Shakuhachi flute of the well-known Gregorian Chant, Gloriosa Domina. The disc as a whole conveys a marriage of the spiritual musical traditions of the east and the West.

chrisvia

12-08-2011, 12:41 PM

I'm listening to the final songs of Schubert, his Schwanengesang cycle. It was brought to my attention by this NPR article:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2011/12/06/143197747/schwanengesang-the-final-songs-of-franz-schubert?ft=1&f=10003

And this recording (cited in the article) is available on Spotify! Need to listen to it when I'm not at work, but so far it sounds as beautiful as Winterreise.

Emil Miller

12-12-2011, 06:34 PM

A luminous performance from a Russian orchestra of a very German work.

http://youtu.be/LHmb5CT11EY

chrisvia

12-13-2011, 10:59 AM

A luminous performance from a Russian orchestra of a very German work.

http://youtu.be/LHmb5CT11EY

Thanks for sharing! That was a pleasure to listen to in the midst of my hectic morning here at the office.

Charles Darnay

12-13-2011, 11:18 AM

chrisvia

12-13-2011, 11:36 AM

I love Schubert's song cycles. I've been listening to Winterreise on repeat for a while now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7-jtRKl94

Schubert's songs are so beautifully done! I recently bought his Goethe-Lieder:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FcG-0kOuL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

stlukesguild

12-13-2011, 10:44 PM

Schubert's songs are so beautifully done! I recently bought his Goethe-Lieder:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FcG-0kOuL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

This is a great disc... but then again, did Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau make many duds?

I'm intrigued to see a certain degree of fondness for the German lied here... and I am a a great lover of such myself. I wonder, however, about who shares a similar like for French melodies?:confused:

stlukesguild

12-13-2011, 10:59 PM

I've been listening to a broad array of music over the last day and an half.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7006/6490300041_5970714dcf.jpg

Handel's Esther is an absolutely marvelous oratorio written to be performed under more intimate conditions than many of the composer's oratorios. As a result, Handel employed various chamber-like groupings of instruments in a manner not unlike that employed by Bach in many of his cantatas. The use of the delicate harp in the aria "Praise the Lord with Cheerful Noise" is especially delicious, but the work as a whole is laden with beautiful arias and choruses. The performance by The Sixteen with Harry Christophers is brilliant as always.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7172/6503118757_63b791f847.jpg

After having been introduced to Hoffmeister by member of a music site that I frequent I checked him out on Spotify and was immediately enthralled by what I heard. As a result I placed an immediate order for this disc. While waiting for it to arrive in the mail I ended up listening to it twice on Spotify. Sunday I listened again... this time to the actual disc. These clarinet quartets are absolutely delightful... delicious... worthy of being placed along-side Mozart. Highly Recommended!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7154/6503122521_f8dfa63bd1.jpg

I've always had a special love of the clarinet. The instrument conveys a sensuality reminiscent of chocolate, and considering what many composers have achieved with the instrument (Mozart, Brahms, Weber, Berg, Schumann, Copland, Stammitz, etc...) I am not alone in my love for this instrument. Indeed, while I am not a huge chamber-music buff, I do tend to be on the lookout for chamber works employing the clarinet. This collection of clarinet works by modern composers (Astor Piazolla, John Harbison, Gunter Schuller, Evan Ziporyn, etc...) is a lovely collection of chamber works featuring the clarinet. As in most instances, my response to chamber music is something that slowly evolves... something that demands several hearings. What I have heard surely suggests that the effort will be worth it.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7003/6503122575_bec6d9aab1.jpg

I have been exploring The Art of the Fugue through several different recordings and in several different incarnations recently. This recording, by Jordi Savall and Hesperion XX may just be my favorite. As Bach composed the work without specifying a specific instrumentation or orchestration some critics have suggested the work was never even intended for performance, but solely as abstract theory to be experienced only through the score. Savall fully rejects this notion and elects to employ an instrumentation using viola da gamba and wind instruments in the manner of a number of other contrapuntal compositions of the Baroque, including works by Purcell, Orlando Gibbons, and William Byrd. The resulting work captures a liveliness without losing the sense of the internal structure. Again, Highly Recommended.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7151/6503122629_a4f2d4802b.jpg

I gave this one a spin again. Weigl was a leading figure in the Viennese symphonic tradition following Mahler, Bruckner, etc... While close with Schoenberg, who spoke kindly of him, Weigl continued to explore the symphony within traditional tonality. The "Apocalyptic" Symphony begins with the structure growing slowly out of a cacophonous wall of chaos. The symphony evolves very much within the German symphonic tradition yet brings a unique voice that is very much worth exploration.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7032/6503122683_76b712d930.jpg

This is one of the most impressive discs I have come across recently. I have a number of other recordings of music by Michael Daugherty and greatly enjoyed them all, but put off buying this disc because of doubts about the very idea of a symphony in homage to Superman. I now wish I had bought this disc as soon as I came across it... especially considering all the positive critical response it had garnered. The work is truly spectacular. I would heartily recommend it to anyone interested in exploring contemporary music within the "classical" tradition, yet turned off by a lot of the more atonal and avant garde strains of such music. This music is at one modern and accessible... indeed... dare I say it? It is actually "fun".

The central composition, the Metropolitan Symphony is not actually a traditional "symphony" but rather a suite of orchestral movements in homage of Superman and the ambiguities, paradoxes, and energies of this American myth.

The opening movement, entitled "Lex" employs police whistle, suggestive of the usual comic-book police chases involving Superman's arch-rival, Lex Luther. The music is sheer energy suggestive of the chase through the crowded city streets of Metropolis.

"Kryton" employs a dark churning glissandi and firebells creating a tonal painting of the apocalyptic last days of Kryton, the planet of Superman's birth.

"MXYZPTLK" is the mischievous imp from the 5th dimension that wreaks havoc throughout Metropolis. This movement is the scherzo of the work, bright and playful.

"Oh, Lois!" is composed with a tempo marked "faster than a speeding bullet". This rapid movement laden with various percussive elements suggests the rapid motion scenes of chases, screams, crashes, etc... of the comic-book tradition.

"Red Cape tango" the final movement of the symphony, is the most fascinating. Daugherty employs a dark tango to evoke the red-caped superhero's fight to the death with Doomsday as something akin to a death tango in the bullfight ring. The movement employs the melody of the same Dies Irae employed by Berlioz in his Symphonie Fantastique. The effect is quite fitting, as the work, according to the music critic of the London Times, is surely a worthy Symphonie Fantastique of our times.

I absolutely loved this piece... yet in all honesty I found the second work, Deus Ex Machina, a three-movement suite for piano and orchestra no less enthralling. Deus Ex Machina or God in the Machine explores the great trains of the past. The first movement... laden with elements of atonality and cubistic fracture... was inspired by the Futurist triptych, States of Mind by Umberto Boccioni. The second movement, Train of Tears, alludes to the "lonesome train on a lonesome track" with "seven coaches painted black" that carried Lincoln to his home for burial after his assassination. The beautiful comber movement is repeatedly pierced by the sound of the "Taps". The final movement... apocalyptic and elegiac... speaks of the final days of the great steam trains as captured in a series of photographs by O. Winston Link.