Classical Listening

[chrisvia]

And the sweeping, elevated emotion of Schubert's Serenata (975), played by the Royal Schubert Orcestra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olrNo3W1sTU

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61koz4VMlrL._SS500_.jpg

Here at work, staring at yet another electronic surface, I can close my eyes and let this piece transport me back to another time.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Some Glenn Gould and Bach for Christmas (or anytime):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyOf_L4cNHc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGO0wbRdI4Y&feature=related

(Currently listening.)

[stlukesguild]

I have been fond of French mélodies (especially Faure, Debussy, Duparc, etc..) for some time now as several older posts here attest. For whatever reason, I never stumbled upon Berlioz' Les nuits d'été until quite recently. Admittedly, I have long had little or no interest in Berlioz... something that has only recently begun to change. Anyway... sometime earlier this year I got around to playing this disc:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7168/6546920879_b2b36b18d5.jpg

I was absolutely blown away by these orchestral songs. I immediately picked up this:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7156/6546920997_553b88f914.jpg

This disc featured several orchestral song cycles or suites: Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer (an exquisite work), Ravel's Shéhérazade, and Debussy's 5 Poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (arranged by John Adams). I also discovered that may favorite current female French singer, Véronique Gens, had also made a recording of Berlioz' work... thus I had to run out and get this as well:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7145/6546920909_00cc9c0804.jpg

In spite of my love of French mélodies (and I should note I have a good collection of art songs from Russia, England, the US... and even South America... I am profoundly enamored of classical vocal music as a whole) German lieder remain central to my love of "art songs". I must have 7 or so recordings of Schubert's Wintereisse (perhaps my single favorite song cycle), 4 exquisite versions of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, and something like 9 or 10 recordings of Strauss' Four Last Songs. Of course I am an avowed Straussian... in that he is my favorite composer of the 20th century.

[Emil Miller]

http://youtu.be/Vn7UnQWkcjY

[chrisvia]

Tonight I'm going to a local art house theatre to see Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, which makes use of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde!

http://boxset.ru/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/beecham_tristan_und_isolde1937.jpg

[JuniperWoolf]

I find Vivaldi is the best, bar none, listening to help write a paper.

I find that listening to too much Vivaldi makes me feel like a serial killer. All that violin... the same with Paganini. Actually, especially Paganini. He makes me want to hang out in a graveyard like he did, that creeper.

[stlukesguild]

The "problem" with Vivaldi is that the majority of his reputation, until recently, has rested upon his numerous concerti grossi which quite often were lighter music... intended as mere entertainment or dinner music to be performed by the young ladies... orphans of the courtesans/prostitutes of Venice housed within the the Ospedale degli Innocenti where Vivaldi was the maestro di violino.

The majority of the music of the Baroque and earlier was long forgotten and seldom performed. With the growth of the so-called Historically Informed Performance Movement (HIP) there has been a concerted effort to rediscover this vast treasure trove of "Early Music". Two huge caches of Vivaldi's music were only discovered mid-century and are still undergoing transcription and editorial process prior to publication and performance. What has be discovered among operas, choral music, motets, sonatas, etc... suggests that Vivaldi was a far greater composer than initially thought:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFM9WYz6J2s

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XZoW-PaJIM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQx2TWgxX14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zQX2XqAE8c

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSVqDBxM55w

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikHCVWv1uvg

[Emil Miller]

I challenge anyone to find a better performance of this. I'm talking about everything here: Tone, technique, interpretation and whatever else comes to mind.

http://youtu.be/LYi6BQlBCl8

[LitNetIsGreat]

I like Vivaldi too, though I only really know the obvious stuff well, I think.

Still listening to these chaps despite not being religious at all of course:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnKbPj7EhCg

...

Edit: 'currently' listening to Stluke's top Vivaldi link though, and wow.

[chrisvia]

I challenge anyone to find a better performance of this. I'm talking about everything here: Tone, technique, interpretation and whatever else comes to mind.

http://youtu.be/LYi6BQlBCl8

Wow, such beautifully channeled emotion. I'm watching through her YouTube oeuvre now!

[Emil Miller]

Wow, such beautifully channeled emotion. I'm watching through her YouTube oeuvre now!

Yes it's very easy to be sniffy about the new generation of oriental performers who are setting new standards of performance, as opposed to those of established virtuosi of the West, but as someone who grew up with Rubenstein, Gilels, Richter etc. etc., I have no hesitation in saying that these people are simply amazing from every standpoint and musically the equal of anyone already committed to either the concert hall or recordings.

[Mr.lucifer]

How well respected is the singer meredith monk?

[stlukesguild]

I challenge anyone to find a better performance of this. I'm talking about everything here: Tone, technique, interpretation and whatever else comes to mind.

Brian... I know you like your young Asian girls (not that this would bias your opinion:rolleyes:) but as good as she is for a 14 year old, I don't find her world class... let alone Rubinstein class.

I find Ami far more stacatto... "jerky" as opposed to the fluidity found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHKS1Bjzpos

Grigory Sokolov is also brilliant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPeZZKh-ye4

Nelson Freire's is quite good... albeit a bit to "French" for my taste:

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

Of course Rubinstein has been and remains the touchstone by which all other recordings of Chopin... and especially recordings of the Nocturnes have been measured. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't have a recording of Rubinstein performing the 20th. Here he is on the magical Op. 9 no. 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGRO05WcNDk

Ami may eventually rise to such a level, but you will notice that no critics are rushing to compare her to the greatest concert pianists of today... or the past. Right now she is a child prodigy. What makes her special is her age, but as I stated before, prodigies are a dime-a-dozen. A vast majority disappear as they reach adulthood.

[Emil Miller]

I challenge anyone to find a better performance of this. I'm talking about everything here: Tone, technique, interpretation and whatever else comes to mind.

Brian... I know you like your young Asian girls (not that this would bias your opinion:rolleyes:) but as good as she is for a 14 year old, I don't find her world class... let alone Rubinstein class.

I find Ami far more stacatto... "jerky" as opposed to the fluidity found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHKS1Bjzpos

Grigory Sokolov is also brilliant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPeZZKh-ye4

Nelson Freire's is quite good... albeit a bit to "French" for my taste:

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

Of course Rubinstein has been and remains the touchstone by which all other recordings of Chopin... and especially recordings of the Nocturnes have been measured. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't have a recording of Rubinstein performing the 20th. Here he is on the magical Op. 9 no. 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGRO05WcNDk

Ami may eventually rise to such a level, but you will notice that no critics are rushing to compare her to the greatest concert pianists of today... or the past. Right now she is a child prodigy. What makes her special is her age, but as I stated before, prodigies are a dime-a-dozen. A vast majority disappear as they reach adulthood.

You see, this is precisely what I mean. The Harasiewicz is too slow and the Sokolov one of the most mannered performances I've heard. Nelson Freire's is a fine performance but does not, in my view, match Kobayashi's.
It's worth mentioning here that the Japanese performance is live and therefore had only one take. As a matter of fact, there have been music critics in Japan and China who are speaking of her with the same reverence that is given to other international pianists. She received a great reception at her Carnegie Hall appearance and also in Russia at St Petersburg. Unfortunately, she doesn't like travelling and that is why the majority of her concerts take place in Japan. Of course I would rather watch beautiful oriental women playing than their male Western counterparts but in the final analysis, it's what I hear that's important.
I have the Rubinstein recording that you have posted and have heard it often, but I'm fairly certain that in due course a performance just as fine will be coming from Asia.

[stlukesguild]

You see, this is precisely what I mean. The Harasiewicz is too slow and the Sokolov one of the most mannered performances I've heard...

Who discerns what is "too slow" (or too mannered) concerning Chopin? Is not Glenn Gould often deemed as "mannered"? I think that common sense would lean toward the interpretation by a masterful Polish pianist as opposed to that of a Japanese child. "Interpretation", of course, involves considering and understanding the intentions of the original artist or composer (Murray Perahia, for example, reads up extensively upon any composer he intends to record... including looking at multiple versions of the original scores). Interpretation also involves imposing one's own artistic ideas. One would suspect that much of the "interpretation" of a 14 year-old girl is owing more to her teachers than anyone else. As for imposing her own artistic vision... this commonly involves having lived a bit beyond middle-school.

Again, she is masterful for her age, but whether she continues to develop and eventually join the ratified ranks of the leading concert pianists... this is a question that will still be decided. The percentage of child prodigies who evolve into leading adult performers is rare. Itzahk Perlman comes immediately to mind.

I have the Rubinstein recording that you have posted and have heard it often, but I'm fairly certain that in due course a performance just as fine will be coming from Asia.

Art is not something that evolves or develops in the same manner as science. Any medical student today knows more about the human body and illnesses than the greatest doctors of the Renaissance. No one alive today (that we know of) composes as brilliantly as Mozart or can draw as well as Michelangelo.

The challenge facing the next generation of performers is something that the leading younger performers are already mastering... and that is uncovering and mastering a body of music that goes beyond the usual core repertoire. At some point yet another pianist who can play Chopin or Tchaikovsky brilliantly becomes irrelevant when we can always access Rubinstein. Why do we need a new cycle of Beethoven's symphonies when Karajan's unrivaled 1963 recording is readily available... and sounds better than even? We don't... unless like John Eliot Gardiner we are offered a radically new historically informed interpretation. Both Hillary Hahn and Anne-Sophie Mutter have risen to the top of the ranks of living violinists as a result of their willingness... their insistence on making recordings of less-well-known repertoire that rivals the finest made of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, etc... I think that for
Kobayashi to enter the leading ranks of concert pianists she will also need to bring something new to the dialog.

Admittedly where your opinions are biased by the appearance of the young Asian women, mine are biased by a suspicion of the promotional machinery behind the current crop of Asian "superstars" (such as Lang Lang) promoted with an intention of cashing in on the huge audiences of China, Korea, and Japan.

[Emil Miller]

You see, this is precisely what I mean. The Harasiewicz is too slow and the Sokolov one of the most mannered performances I've heard...

Who discerns what is "too slow" (or too mannered) concerning Chopin? Is not Glenn Gould often deemed as "mannered"? I think that common sense would lean toward the interpretation by a masterful Polish pianist as opposed to that of a Japanese child. "Interpretation", of course, involves considering and understanding the intentions of the original artist or composer (Murray Perahia, for example, reads up extensively upon any composer he intends to record... including looking at multiple versions of the original scores). Interpretation also involves imposing one's own artistic ideas. One would suspect that much of the "interpretation" of a 14 year-old girl is owing more to her teachers than anyone else. As for imposing her own artistic vision... this commonly involves having lived a bit beyond middle-school.

Again, she is masterful for her age, but whether she continues to develop and eventually join the ratified ranks of the leading concert pianists... this is a question that will still be decided. The percentage of child prodigies who evolve into leading adult performers is rare. Itzahk Perlman comes immediately to mind.

I have the Rubinstein recording that you have posted and have heard it often, but I'm fairly certain that in due course a performance just as fine will be coming from Asia.

Art is not something that evolves or develops in the same manner as science. Any medical student today knows more about the human body and illnesses than the greatest doctors of the Renaissance. No one alive today (that we know of) composes as brilliantly as Mozart or can draw as well as Michelangelo.

The challenge facing the next generation of performers is something that the leading younger performers are already mastering... and that is uncovering and mastering a body of music that goes beyond the usual core repertoire. At some point yet another pianist who can play Chopin or Tchaikovsky brilliantly becomes irrelevant when we can always access Rubinstein. Why do we need a new cycle of Beethoven's symphonies when Karajan's unrivaled 1963 recording is readily available... and sounds better than even? We don't... unless like John Eliot Gardiner we are offered a radically new historically informed interpretation. Both Hillary Hahn and Anne-Sophie Mutter have risen to the top of the ranks of living violinists as a result of their willingness... their insistence on making recordings of less-well-known repertoire that rivals the finest made of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, etc... I think that for
Kobayashi to enter the leading ranks of concert pianists she will also need to bring something new to the dialog.

Admittedly where your opinions are biased by the appearance of the young Asian women, mine are biased by a suspicion of the promotional machinery behind the current crop of Asian "superstars" (such as Lang Lang) promoted with an intention of cashing in on the huge audiences of China, Korea, and Japan.

We all decide which performances we prefer by listening to various recordings and if one stands out as being too slow or mannered, then we say so.
I listen regularly to the BBC music channel which makes comparisons of recordings of the same work, and the presenters are constantly making such references. Music is subjective and it's impossible not to have personal preferences, as you demonstrate by your preference for Rubinstein who, while he is a great performer of Chopin, is not notable for his Tchaikovsky 1st whereas Van Cliburn's is to my mind the definitive performance: although, once again, it's a personal choice. Moreover I have a recording of Rubinstein playing both Chopin concertos with Barbirolli which I don't think as good as that played by Zimmerman and Giulini. As for Karajan's Beethoven symphonies, he recorded the cycle four times during his career. Once with the Philharmonia Orchestra for EMI and subsequently with the BPO on Deutsche Grammophon. So why did he need to re-record them twice after the first set that you mention as being unrivalled? As a matter of fact, I have that set myself.
I do not share your opinion that a prodigy of 14-years-of-age doesn't have the experience to play Chopin at the highest level, a teenage girl is probably at the stage where she will feel the music as perhaps she never will as an adult and her keyboard technique speaks for itself. It's also worth remembering that Mozart was a child prodigy who received the highest praise whether playing in Vienna, Prague, Paris or London.
The promotional machinery applied to Lang Lang and other concert pianists may well be intended to cash in on the oriental market but his record company, namely Deutsche Grammophon, were experts at cashing in on the western market as witness their promotion of the Berlin Philharmonic when Karajan arrived on the Berlin scene post WW11.

[stlukesguild]

Music is subjective and it's impossible not to have personal preferences, as you demonstrate by your preference for Rubinstein who, while he is a great performer of Chopin, is not notable for his Tchaikovsky 1st whereas Van Cliburn's is to my mind the definitive performance: although, once again, it's a personal choice. Moreover I have a recording of Rubinstein playing both Chopin concertos with Barbirolli which I don't think as good as that played by Zimmerman and Giulini.

Yes. Zimerman is another favored performer as Chopin... along with Martha Argerich. Honestly Chopin is not one of those composers who I am so enamored of that I am likely to purchase several interpretations of each work where I might live with such variations and make in-depth comparisons. I love Dinu Lupatti's classic recordings of Chopin. I have Ashkenazy's, which are solid... but don't jump out at me in any way. I have a good number of Martha's Chopin recordings and have heard Zimerman's and both are impressive... but note strike me as sensitive to the nuances as Rubinstein... especially with the Nocturne's.

Now you are certainly right that no performer is an all-around master of every composer. I would turn to Van Cliburn as well for Tchaikovsky's 1st. For Mozart there are numerous contenders, but Perahia is seemingly the standard-bearer. Beethoven? For the concertos Fleisher/Szell, Serkin/Bernstein, Brendel/Levine, Barenboim/Klemperer, Perahia/Haitink... anyone is great. In other instances there is but a single definitive recording... as isn the work I am currently listening to:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7155/6586043497_d7df18a49b.jpg

The promotional machinery applied to Lang Lang and other concert pianists may well be intended to cash in on the oriental market but his record company, namely Deutsche Grammophon, were experts at cashing in on the western market as witness their promotion of the Berlin Philharmonic when Karajan arrived on the Berlin scene post WW11.

But then Karajan lived up to the hype (as the disc above illustrates) where Lang Lang is a bit more questionable.

Don't get me wrong. I don't underestimate the Asian performers. Suzuki's recordings of Bach are among the finest available:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7146/6586134889_0db5ee5ef5.jpg

Mitsuko Uchida has been masterfully recording and performing Mozart across the world. Her recordings of Schubert's piano sonatas have reawakened interest in this genre and stand second only (perhaps) to Wilhelm Kempff.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7003/6586134927_9ec83b56eb.jpg

Yet for all here masterful, elegant touch and classical reserve, she has been equally instrumental in unveiling the splendours of some more knotty Modernist works including Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, works by Berg and Webern, and Debussy's Etudes:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7157/6586134977_0cf385d39c.jpg

Myung-Whun Chung is especially adept within the French repertoire. His damnation of Faust by Berlioz is one of the finest and these two discs are essential recordings:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7162/6586135003_1c760fb260.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7162/6586135061_56f830ca19.jpg

Sumi Jo has proven herself as a brilliant operatic singer. This collection of French songs has been repeatedly re-released... a sign of classic status:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7164/6586135117_0c079f1864.jpg

And we cannot forget this recording with Solti:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7014/6586135167_ee8671ae03.jpg

And what of Hei-Kyung Hong? This collection of Korean "classics" largely unknown in the West is an example of an artist exploring the less-well-traveled turf:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7004/6586135189_6871e165b2.jpg

And then of course there's the Asian with the biggest name in classical music... in spite of the actual brevity of his name. Yo-Yo Ma has proven himself in performances of the most challenging classical repertoire:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7003/6586205367_78ae97a141.jpg

... often working in tandem with any number of equally talented virtuoso:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7159/6586205451_53b69be6e1.jpg

But he has also explored a broad array of music... from the lush film music of Morricone:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7021/6586205411_6e8763d5c0.jpg

... to the tangos of Astor Piazzolla:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7003/6586205489_e2c96c67bf.jpg

... to American folk music:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7007/6586205555_019ffc59f2.jpg

... and the traditional music of Asia and the Middle-East:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7147/6586205705_3ddd57ca4a.jpg

Classical music is truly that word which you so despise: MULTICULTURAL.:D

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=stlukesguild;1101789Classical music is truly that word which you so despise: MULTICULTURAL.:D[/QUOTE]

My preference would be for the standard description of music being the INTERNATIONAL language.

[Emil Miller]

I fell for this work when I was very young and I still love it. The harp glissandi at 9.41 used to make the hairs on my neck stand on end.
It is difficult to get the dynamics right because of its cyclical form but here Bernstein in a typically energetic performance succeeds where so many others have failed. The little gesture with his fist after its stunning conclusion is saying "I nailed it."

http://youtu.be/5GbZGJ6uEXA

[Charles Darnay]

(not too sure if this was previously posted here....)

For me, great accompaniment for a cold-yet-sunny afternoon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbcuteYm-EA

[Climacus]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61BG563ZDTL._SS500_.jpg

My favourite recording of one of my favourite works. Absolutely delicious. The orchestration here is lush and luxuriant. (Writing an orchestration text was one of Schoenberg's unrealised projects. :bawling:)

[Climacus]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61n9s0v%2Bl1L._SS400_.jpg
String Quartet No. 3 . . . Shostakovich was at his best when he was being sarcastic.

[stlukesguild]

My favourite recording of one of my favourite works. Absolutely delicious. The orchestration here is lush and luxuriant. (Writing an orchestration text was one of Schoenberg's unrealised projects.

Yes... too bad he did not spent more effort there and less effort in attempting to throw out traditional tonality with the aim of replacing it with a entirely new musical language. Certainly, one can appreciate the ambition... but despise the pretension. An acquaintance recently suggested that he wished Schoenberg had never existed so that he might have experienced what Berg and Webern might have achieved within a more traditional tonality.

[Climacus]

Yes... too bad he did not spent more effort there and less effort in attempting to throw out traditional tonality with the aim of replacing it with a entirely new musical language. Certainly, one can appreciate the ambition... but despise the pretension.
Yes, I know what you mean. He himself said: "There is still plenty of good music to be written in C Major." To be fair, he did spend a lot of time and effort on practical theoretical works. (And they've been an immense help to me, as a musician - teacher, performer, and would-be composer - by trade. He was a great teacher.) Of course, he would have vehemently disagreed with your rhetoric too (all that talk about "throwing out" traditional tonality).

[stlukesguild]

I see Schoenberg's shift toward atonality as analogous to the shift toward abstraction in painting/the visual arts. Wagner, Debussy, Scriabin and others were already pushing the limitations of traditional tonality and these efforts opened up a new world of expressive possibilities... just as the "abstractions" and "distortions" of drawing, space, and color wrought an entire new world of possibilities for painters. In each instance it took someone to take the ultimate logical step toward a complete abandonment of figuration or traditional tonality. In either instance, the strongest artists did not immediately follow suit. Picasso refused to have anything to do with total abstraction. Paul Klee straddles the line between abstraction and figuration. Beckmann and Matisse and Bonnard had little use for the abandonment of figuration. Within the realm of music, Richard Strauss, Benjamen Britten Prokofiev, Shostakovitch... and even Stravinsky prior to his later works... refused to follow where Schoenberg had taken music. In both music and painting abstraction/atonality eventually became the dominant language until critics could speak of the "triumph" of abstraction, and suggest (as Greenberg in Art and Boulez and Wuorinen could in music) that figurative art/traditional tonality was "dead". In both instances I feel that there has been a shift among later artists toward a more moderate positions... a recognition of the expressive possibilities wrought by pushing the limits of tonality and "realism", an acceptance that some will continue to explore the possibilities of pure abstraction or atonality, and a realization that to many later artists the entire either/or dispute is a non-issue as they freely employ both figuration and abstraction/traditional tonality and atonality... as well as building upon sources greatly removed from either side of the debate (popular art/music, non-Western art/music, etc...)

**********

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7170/6601752571_6a1fc2fc45.jpg

Unfortunately, Górecki is known almost exclusively for his 3rd Symphony. He did compose a number of other marvelous works as well... as brilliant as the 3rd is. The Beatus Vir and Second Symphony magnificently performed here by Antoni Wit are both worthy of serious attention )as are his string quartets). Górecki, feeling trapped between the conservative limitations proscribed by the Soviet Communists and the Western Avant Garde extremists who initially embraced his early work but who (in his eyes) insisted upon continual formal experimentation for the sake of experimentation initiated a shift in style with these works. He consciously sought to engage a larger audience without sacrificing his aesthetic standards. The music was intentionally public... openly challenging Communist control and its atheistic, anti-religion position at a period in which the Catholic Church represented a serious challenge to the Communist control in Poland. Ironically, while Górecki was taken to task by Western critics as having "sold out" and "taken the safe route" he was in reality taking a heroic stance in facing very real dangers completely unknown to the Western academic safe in their university enclaves.

The style of music Górecki developed became known (often derisively) as Holy Minimalism. Like the Minimalism of American composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams, etc...) Górecki's music returns to a music largely based upon traditional tonality. The simplicity or Minimalism of this music is often rooted in older musical forms such as medieval chants and the tolling of bells. I personally found both of these works highly effective... strikingly emotional... and deeply evocative of a sense of spirituality. I would strongly recommend this recording to anyone already fond of Górecki's 3rd Symphony.

[stlukesguild]

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/5a/12/f93ceb6709a044f0ec6f3110.L.jpg

I picked up this disc a year ago but for whatever reason never got around to playing it over the holiday season... when its seemed most relevant. I finally got around to it this year. The Fantasia on Christmas Carols is just one of Vaughan-Williams' marvelous settings of folk and choral music... in this instance a setting of 4 well-known Christmas carols. Hodie: A Christmas Cantata, however, is the centerpiece of this disc. This work, written when Vaughan-Williams was into his eighties, shows no sign of waning energies. The piece was dedicated to fellow British composer, Herbert Howells, known especially for his choral work. The work is distinctly English... building upon the English traditions of choral music and anthems. The music also reveals the various aspects of Vaughan-Williams' own work... with elements of the pastoral and the dynamic anthems and lush orchestration.

[Climacus]

Wagner, Debussy, Scriabin and others were already pushing the limitations of traditional tonality and these efforts opened up a new world of expressive possibilities . . . In each instance it took someone to take the ultimate logical step toward a complete abandonment of figuration or traditional tonality.
The logical step? But with whose premises? There are qualitative differences between the premises of Schoenberg and those of the others mentioned. None of the others espoused the sort of all-encompassing musical egalitarianism that Schoenberg did. Of course, Schoenberg knew of the historical precedents. He knew that Liszt, for instance, had used a "tone-row." Schoenberg thought he could appropriate Christ's words, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." But here he was wrong, I think. Schoenbergian atonality is only inevitable given certain dubious premises, regarding the consonance-dissonance dichotomy, regarding the acoustical nature of musical sound, regarding the purpose of art, and so on.

I have a lot of respect for Schoenberg. I've read more about him than any other composer. And I've studied all his theoretical works, even the posthumously-published unfinished ones. He was brilliant. But I think - that is, I came to think - that his premises were wrong, and that his philosophy of art was wrong.

I agree, by the way, that there are telling parallels between the development of music and that of the other arts, to say nothing of philosophy, and so on. As is usual, however, music lags a little behind.

[stlukesguild]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511HUVNZz0L._SS400_.jpg

Exquisite! Barbara Hendricks' voice was light and silvery... yet with a tinge of a deeper sensuality... perfectly suited to much of the French repertoire. For whatever reason EMI has been dumping these two-disc sets by Hendricks and subsequently Amazon Marketplace dealers have been offering them for ridiculous prices. I could not resist picking up the following:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51e6GjtjiyL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

$7

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51dDvIUAUbL._SS500_.jpg

$8

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51tCu5U1QkL._SS400_.jpg

$6

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51-qgFmnrXL._SS500_.jpg

$6.50

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51qXpiv-V6L._SS400_.jpg

$5.50... And from what I heard from the samples available on Amazon these Christmas carols and beloved songs from childhood are marvelously performed.

A belated Christmas gift to myself. I've been very good.:brow::D

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Hey, StLukes, you said this in another thread:


And...? The art galleries are filled with equally excretory works as are the concerts of contemporary classical music.

If you have the time, could you (or anyone else, agree ro disagree) elaborate? I'm not at all familiar with contemporary classical music (I still have much to learn about the masters), which is why I ask.

[Charles Darnay]

Hey, StLukes, you said this in another thread:



If you have the time, could you (or anyone else, agree ro disagree) elaborate? I'm not at all familiar with contemporary classical music (I still have much to learn about the masters), which is why I ask.

While I cannot claim to be an expert on contemporary classical music, most of my experience with it has been pieces like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRuxHVWfQtA
which I am not a fan of. My high school music teacher composed a (not sure what it was) based on the Apocalypse. It was actually pretty good, wish I could find it.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Well, if thats a reflection of most contemporary classical music, I don't need much explaining, because that sucked. :lol: I'm all for atonality, but that was just boring, and sounded like it should be background music for a crappy horror movie. Honestly, I didn't listen to the whole thing, just skipped around, so maybe I missed something, but I'm pretty sure I didn't.

[stlukesguild]

Actually, I quite like Tristan Murail... whose music is a great deal "tonal"... albeit in a rather minimal way in that it is virtually structured upon a single tone... not unlike many medieval chants. No... what I think of as "excretory" examples of modern through contemporary "classical music" goes far further into the real of the idiotic or the unlistenable:

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

I can almost see this one for some horror movie involving ghosts:

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9pOq8u6-bA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXqvBvOXV3U&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY7UK-6aaNA&feature=fvsr

A variation on 4:33 is Cage's As Slow as Possible:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_As_Possible

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCh9ifSoiL8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yqdgw2o-BuY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0CaGLOGI3g&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K46L1cwxxXc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDP8H5IK5nw

With Nam June Paik we enter the question as to whether we are experiencing avant-garde art... music... film... or WTF?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9k1FaMIYTs&feature=related

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcHJySm7ZO0

And perhaps up your lane, Mutatis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1NDTipMsF0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgOg6aYqASY&feature=related

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Quite interesting. Some of that made me cringe, some made me laugh, and the Henry Cowell definitely piqued my beagle's interest. Can't say any of it will be going onto any of my playlists, though, especially those last two. I can sort of understand how one may think a heavy metal fan would like those last two, as many perceive metal to just be "noise," but it does contain melody and structure (usually complex), but that was just noise, pure and simple.

I think for a lot of that it could be argued as to whether or not it's even music, honestly. After all, where do we draw the line?

[Emil Miller]

Quite interesting. Some of that made me cringe, some made me laugh, and the Henry Cowell definitely piqued my beagle's interest. Can't say any of it will be going onto any of my playlists, though, especially those last two. I can sort of understand how one may think a heavy metal fan would like those last two, as many perceive metal to just be "noise," but it does contain melody and structure (usually complex), but that was just noise, pure and simple.

I think for a lot of that it could be argued as to whether or not it's even music, honestly. After all, where do we draw the line?

It is always advantageous to seek the advice of experienced musicians such as Sir Thomas Beecham when discussing music and especially in discussing modern music. Asked if he had ever conducted any Stockhausen, he said, "No, but I once trod in some."
Yesterday morning I spent half-an-hour listening to a Bach partita played on the harpsichord and had to agree with Sir Thomas that it was like two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof. It was a relief to find on Youtube this wonderful performance of possibly the greatest piano concerto ever written, and yes I do know the Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms equivalent works that I got to know long before. From 8.26, you can hear God walking across the keyboard.

http://youtu.be/FQK-M54HQX4

[stlukesguild]

Emil... I agree with you... to a given extent. While I like the sound of of the harpsichord as it it is used in playing continuo... or establishing the rhythm in Baroque music, I have long preferred the piano as opposed to the harpsichord when listening to the solo keyboard works and keyboard concertos, sonatas, etc... of the same period. I think Beecham was on to something in that the harpsichord, as it has long been recorded, sounds overly loud... jangly... jarring... and lacking in subtlety. This may change as new performers and subsequent harpsichord builders and sound engineers have learned how to play the instrument, how to place the microphones, and how to construct (or reconstruct) the instruments properly.

The harpsichord, by its very mechanical nature, does not allow for subtle dynamic variations (or control of how loud or soft a note sounds or how long it resonates). Bach must have vastly preferred the organ where he most certainly did have control of these elements (and it might be noted that many of his major keyboard works never stipulated which instrument(s) were to be employed. Nevertheless, the harpsichord, like the organ, has the ability to play different "timbres" so that it need not always sound at the loudest and most metallic. This performance by Andreas Staier illustrates just how delicate the instrument can sound:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQTqn7DKCTM&feature=related

By the way... I quite like Beecham's work... but he could actually be a brutal critic of many artists, composers, and works that are of real merit:

On J.S. Bach- "Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint."

On the music of Frederick Delius- "I found it as alluring as a wayward woman and determined to tame it."

On Beethoven's great late string quartets- "Beethoven’s last quartets were written by a deaf man and should only be listened to by a deaf man"

[Emil Miller]

By the way... I quite like Beecham's work... but he could actually be a brutal critic of many artists, composers, and works that are of real merit:

On J.S. Bach- "Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint."

On the music of Frederick Delius- "I found it as alluring as a wayward woman and determined to tame it."

On Beethoven's great late string quartets- "Beethoven’s last quartets were written by a deaf man and should only be listened to by a deaf man"

Yes but much of it was tongue in cheek, although he did have a reputation for consorting with wayward women such as Emerald Cunard. His gruff imperious manner was largely assumed in order to debunk pomposity and he was genuinely admired by the British public as, not only a great conductor, but a real character.

[stlukesguild]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41QLpXPfIqL._SS500_.jpg

This recording has been the recipient of some rather mixed reviews, with Abbado accused of being overly fussy and Renée Fleming's finale faulted with sounding overly mannered in an attempt to portray the character of an innocent child... although almost all reviews are unanimous in their praise for Fleming and Abbado's performance of the Alban Berg Sieben Frühe Lieder which were the reason behind my purchasing this disc. Admittedly, I am not a Mahlerian to the point of being able to compare this performance of his 4th to several others. I have recordings of the 4th by Bernstein (with Reri Grist) and Reiner (with the great Lisa della Casa)... both of which I am more than satisfied with.

Honestly, I cannot fault this performance. The Berlin Philharmonic is transcendent... able to cut through and hold together the passages of the greatest chaos while illuminating the exquisite third movement with a crystalline clarity. As a sworn admirer of Renée Fleming I must admit that my bias is such that it would surely take a stupendous failing on her part for me to turn against her. having said as much, I will also admit that singers can and are indeed miscast on occasion. Fleming's voice is full, rich, sensuous, and "womanly". She is not the first singer I'd think of for a role like Cio-Cio San, Susanna from Le Nozze di Figaro, or other more "girlish" roles. The fourth movement sets the text of Das himmlische Leben from Des Knaben Wunderhorn as a child's narrative voiced by a soprano... presenting a sunny, naive vision of Heaven yet a vision laden with its darker elements: the child makes it clear that the heavenly feast takes place at the expense of animals, including a sacrificed lamb. Fleming is not the first singer I would have thought of for this role. Della Casa may have been the best... capturing a child-like innocence and yet not abandoning the serious overtones and slipping into something comic that would have completely undermined Mahler's intentions. I don't get the notion that Fleming comes off as some pursed lipped brat, at one of the worst reviews suggested. I do agree that there is a sense that she is holding back or attempting to hide a voice too big for the role. But then I wonder whether the composer were not to blame in part... expecting a soprano to play the role of a choirboy. Nevertheless, this is all really splitting hairs. Fleming performs admirably and one cannot imagine a choirboy or a lesser "girlish" singer handling the more lyrical and rich passages anywhere near as well.

As for Alban Berg's Sieben Frühe Lieder. For whatever reason... in spite of my own admitted passion for song and assuredly for orchestral songs... I only recently became aware of these exquisite works. Listening to these works almost leads me to a greater level of dislike for Schoenberg. Like Adorno, I'm led to wonder just what Berg might have achieved as a tonal composer. Indeed, I begin to suspect that just as Mozart and Schubert's early demise were such a loss to classical music, so was Berg's relationship with Schoenberg. If only he had come under the spell of Strauss or Zemlinsky instead... These early songs already suggest the richness of Strauss' finer works honed with a more "lyrical"... almost "impressionist" sensibility. Anyone who has never given any of the composers of the Second Viennese School a chance should certainly listen to these magnificent songs by Berg... especially anyone fond of Strauss' songs and operas:

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS8_Tlcemxo

Fleming's performance is absolutely delicious... perhaps less heroic but more "vulnerable" than Jessye Norman's equally stunning rendition.

[Lokasenna]

A friend of mine recently introduced me to the composer Edwin York Bowen, who, I'd never heard of. I'm only beginning my exploration of his music, but I'm impressed - he was obviously a very fine composer who's obscurity is a result of the changing fashion of the time. He was composing wonderful Romantic stuff by the bucket-load at a time when it was seen as old hat.#

Have a listen to this rather fine Toccata (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6VBLLe5gnM). If you like that, then settle down and listen to the entire length of this rather super Viola Sonata (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y96dbK-fXI).

[LitNetIsGreat]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCXg8xo31h0

Currently listening to one of Haydn's string quartets (due to a seed planted by Loka in another thread.) I'm then going in the bath with a bottle of St Peter's Organic ale - nothing to do with music but I'm quite excited about it nonetheless.

Any suggestions on the best of Haydn/favourites?

[Lokasenna]

Haydn's wonderful, and in my opinon he's at his best when composing masses - they are all wonderful, but the Nelson Mass and the Paukenmesse are up there with the best masses ever composed. There's also an oratorio called The Creation, which is an absolute masterpiece.

And, as you are discovering, the string quartets are fabulous - he doesn't set out to do anything big or clever with them, all he wants to do is create nice melody, and this he acchieves in buckets!

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I just saw a performance by the St. Louis Symphony of Dvorak's 7th Symphony, Crumb's Haunted Landscape, and Strauss's Last Four Songs.

I was a bit disappointed with Dvorak's 7th Symphony (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2pS1AOG240), which is what I was most looking forward to. It seemed to lack the power of the recording I have, conducted by Leonard Bernstein and performed by the New York Philharmonic.

I can't find a recording of Crumb's Haunted Landscape. Suffise it to say that it was bizzarre and haunting (fittingly), and I loved it. It had a lot of open space punctuated by odd percussion and piano notes, followed by stirring, yet soft, strings, usually playing only two notes. It was fun. There were plenty of people there who definitely did not dig it.

I also enjoyed Strauss's Four Last Songs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppoqUVlKkBU), sung by St. Louis's Christine Brewer. Not something I'd necessarily buy an album of, but Brewer's skill was definitely something to watch.

[stlukesguild]

Lokasenna- A friend of mine recently introduced me to the composer Edwin York Bowen, who, I'd never heard of. I'm only beginning my exploration of his music, but I'm impressed - he was obviously a very fine composer who's obscurity is a result of the changing fashion of the time. He was composing wonderful Romantic stuff by the bucket-load at a time when it was seen as old hat.

Have a listen to this rather fine Toccata. If you like that, then settle down and listen to the entire length of this rather super Viola Sonata.

So many unknown/lesser known composers of real merit left to discover... but they're all placed on the back-burner for the time being. I promised the wife no new music or DVD purchases until at least May upon buying a new laptop and an i-phone. As it is I have literally 100 CDs that I have yet to hear.:blush2: I'll need to satisfy my lust for new music to Spotify and YouTube for the time being.

Neely- Currently listening to one of Haydn's string quartets (due to a seed planted by Loka in another thread.) I'm then going in the bath with a bottle of St Peter's Organic ale - nothing to do with music but I'm quite excited about it nonetheless.

Any suggestions on the best of Haydn/favourites?

Generally the peak of Haydn's quartet oeuvre is deemed to be the Op. 76 the two quartets of Op. 77 and perhaps the finest his Op. 51: The Seven Last Words of Christ originally written for full orchestra, and also scored as a choral work. Beyond this almost any of his quartets from the Op. 33 "The Russian Quartets" onward are worthy of hearing. Seriously Haydn is the true father of both the symphony and the string quartet which alone places him among the most important composers of all time. While his efforts in either genre may never rise to the level of what Mozart and Beethoven were later to achieve in their finest works in these genre, the sheer volume of work at a consistently high level is mind-boggling. In many ways this is what keeps Haydn off of lists of the "greatest symphonies" or "greatest quartets/chamber works"... there are so many to choose from of equal merit. With Beethoven there are but 9 symphonies... and by general consensus only the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 9th are stand-outs. With Mozart there are 41 symphonies... but truly only no.s 25, 29, 35, 36, and 38-41 are major achievements. With Haydn you have 104 symphonies. There are 12 among the "London Symphonies" alone, which are counted as his finest... but there are also the 6 "Paris Symphonies" and a slew of other symphonies prior to these late works that are fully mature and worthy of hearing. I would greatly suggest investing in this set:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51irRfarXNL._SS500_.jpg

The symphonies included were well-chosen as being among Haydn's finest. A good many of them reveal a muscular "sturm und drang" energy (as opposed to the negative stereotype of an effete music written to placate prancing bewigged aristocrats) that clearly anticipate Beethoven.

Having said this much, I fully agree with Loka... Haydn's finest works are surely his choral compositions. The Creation is equal (if not greater) than any choral work written by Mozart and Beethoven, and is commonly placed along-side the Messiah, the St. Matthew Passion, The Mass in B-Minor, Mozart's Requiem, Brahm's German Requiem, and Monteverdi's Vespers as one of the towering choral works of all time. But this is but a single of his great choral efforts. There is a second oratorio, The Seasons, almost as fine as the Creation, and then there are a slew of great masses: The Lord Nelson Mass, the Mass in Time of War, Harmoniemesse, Kleine Orgelmesse, Great Organ Mass, the Theresienmesse, the Saint Cecilia Mass, and also the choral setting of The Last Seven Words of Christ. These are all incredibly fine works.

I'm actually delving into the choral works of a couple of other composers... Luigi Cherubini and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Using the Barnes and Noble gift cards I got for Christmas I picked up these box sets:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41pqw5m4M7L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517h5HyRW-L._SS400_.jpg

Cherubini was a composer of the late classical period... a peer of Beethoven... best know for his opera Médée made famous in "modern" times thanks to the iconic performances of Maria Callas. I actually picked this up late last year but have yet to play it:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51eNzhYm-OL._SS500_.jpg

Beyond his operatic successes, Cherubini was best known for his choral works. I've long had a recording of his Requiem which I thought was quite good...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51bROXJd7PL._SS500_.jpg

... but for whatever reason never got around to exploring him in further depth. Of course I will admit that the "classical era" as a whole (Haydn/Mozart/early Beethoven) demands that I delve much deeper... but right now it is still the Baroque that beckons most. Nevertheless, this new 7-disc box set was priced at a more than attractive price... and so I leaped... and I am glad that I did. I am listening to Cherubini's Mass in F "Di Chimay" right now... and it is a magnificent and powerful work. I look forward to the rest of the set in eager anticipation.

As for Giovanni Battista Pergolesi... Damn!!! This guy was dead at 26 in the year in the year 1736... and yet already his brilliant Stabat Mater had left behind the traditions of the Baroque and through the use of a greater simplicity, clarity, and transparency he was already closer to Mozart than he was to Handel and Bach... who still had nearly 15 years to live! Pergolesi wrote several operas of note, one of which caused a major dispute in Paris among supporters of the "old school" French Baroque and the new Italian style. He also composed a number of instrumental works as well as a body of highly acclaimed choral works. Had the composer not died so young, he quite conceivably may have stood alongside Gluck and Mozart as one of the founders of the "classical" opera and alongside C.P.E. Bach, Haydn, Gluck and Mozart as one of the figures most responsible for the shift away from the Baroque and toward the "classical" era as a whole.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2zc0wTORSI

Mutatis-Mutandi- I just saw a performance by the St. Louis Symphony of Dvorak's 7th Symphony, Crumb's Haunted Landscape, and Strauss's Last Four Songs.

I was a bit disappointed with Dvorak's 7th Symphony, which is what I was most looking forward to. It seemed to lack the power of the recording I have, conducted by Leonard Bernstein and performed by the New York Philharmonic.


That happens at times. It could, of course, have been a less stellar performance... and Bernstein, after all, is a hard act to follow. On the other hand, it could simply be that for you Bernstein's reading of Dvorak's 7th is Dvorak's 7th. This occurred quite often when I first began to explore classical music. I would own a single recording of various works and as a result, any deviation from this interpretation I took to be a failing. Even to this day, Marriner's performance of Mozart's Requiem IS Mozart's Requiem to me thanks to the film Amadeus where I first encountered this work. I picked up Marriner's version shortly after, and for years never even thought to explore any alternatives. Since then I have picked up Philippe Herreweghe's, John Eliot Gardiner's, and Harry Christophers'... all fine recordings... but I'll admit it took me a while to come around to appreciating their interpretations.

I can't find a recording of Crumb's Haunted Landscape. Suffise it to say that it was bizzarre and haunting (fittingly), and I loved it. It had a lot of open space punctuated by odd percussion and piano notes, followed by stirring, yet soft, strings, usually playing only two notes. It was fun. There were plenty of people there who definitely did not dig it.

The piece is available through Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/George-Crumb-Landscape-Colloquies-Philharmonic/dp/B0000030DA/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1327458596&sr=1-1

Coupled with William Schuman it should indeed be interesting. I'm not personally big on the more extremes of avant garde modernist experimentation in music, but I have found I do like a number of Crumb's works... which can indeed be haunting... harrowing... disturbing... and disorienting.

I really loved this disc:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Hi9DtDlzL._SS500_.jpg

But is surely is an acquired taste.:leaving:

I also enjoyed Strauss's Four Last Songs, sung by St. Louis's Christine Brewer. Not something I'd necessarily buy an album of, but Brewer's skill was definitely something to watch.

Strauss Four Last Songs is one of my favorite works of all time. Indeed, asked to make a top-ten favorites list a while back, I included this gorgeous song cycle. I must have at least 8 or 9... maybe even ten different recordings of this work. I don't have Brewer's recording, but I can imagine she'd be marvelous considering her efforts on the Hyperion recordings of Strauss' Complete Songs, which I do have.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Mutatis-Mutandi- I just saw a performance by the St. Louis Symphony of Dvorak's 7th Symphony, Crumb's Haunted Landscape, and Strauss's Last Four Songs.

I was a bit disappointed with Dvorak's 7th Symphony, which is what I was most looking forward to. It seemed to lack the power of the recording I have, conducted by Leonard Bernstein and performed by the New York Philharmonic.


That happens at times. It could, of course, have been a less stellar performance... and Bernstein, after all, is a hard act to follow. On the other hand, it could simply be that for you Bernstein's reading of Dvorak's 7th is Dvorak's 7th. This occurred quite often when I first began to explore classical music. I would own a single recording of various works and as a result, any deviation from this interpretation I took to be a failing. Even to this day, Marriner's performance of Mozart's Requiem IS Mozart's Requiem to me thanks to the film Amadeus where I first encountered this work. I picked up Marriner's version shortly after, and for years never even thought to explore any alternatives. Since then I have picked up Philippe Herreweghe's, John Eliot Gardiner's, and Harry Christophers'... all fine recordings... but I'll admit it took me a while to come around to appreciating their interpretations.

I don't think it was a bad piece--it was by far my mother's favorite of the three performances. Like you said, it just wasn't what I'm used to. I haven't really gotten into buying multiple recordings of one work yet--the only one is Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which I have three versions of. There's just so much out there I haven't heard, I rarely want to focus on just one work--sort of why I rarely read the same book twice.

I'll definitely check out those recordings, too.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Also, since Mahler is mentioned above, I have a question about him, and that is this: why is he so widely hated? I've listened to some of his stuff, and it sounds good to me. I ask because of this quote from one of my favorite sitcoms, Frasier:

Niles: “… Or here, where I sit Sunday mornings playing Mahler while Maris dabs at her watercolors?”

Frasier: “But you hate Mahler. Besides Maris, who doesn’t?"

When looking for this quote, I ran into a few discussions echoing this sentiment.

[Charles Darnay]

*read in a pretentious voice* because he lacks all subtly! He is a savage beast, sans the sublime nature of the Romantics before him, nor the wild innovation of the expressionists after him.


Actually, I love Mahler: particularly this piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3hCCTRYcz0 (admittedly, this recording is not great)

[stlukesguild]

I actually haven't come across many who would suggest that they hate Mahler. In fact, within the realm of the classical music aficionados, I would say that the late Romantic period seems to have the most fans: Mahler, Brahms, Sibelius, Bruckner, etc... Wagner attracts the most hostility due to his antisemitic comments (in spite of the fact that Chopin, among others, were far more openly antisemitic), his popularity with Hitler (as if that has anything to do with him), and the fact that as a composer he limited himself almost exclusively to opera. It is telling, for example, that Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Puccini, Britten... and even Verdi are rarely discussed by the majority among classical music fans as being among the greatest composers for the very same reason... while composers such as Handel, Vivaldi, Rimsky-Korsakov, and even Tchaikovsky are grossly underrated by those who ignore of are completely ignorant of their operatic achievements.

personally, I think Mahler is a stunning composer. His symphonic achievements are perhaps only surpassed by Beethoven and his song cycles are equally stunning. If Mahler proves difficult to some listeners, I think it has to do with:
1. His inclusion of vocals within a good many of his symphonies ("impurity"... and that dislike of the operatic) 2. The scale and the "meandering" or very large and open structure of his symphonies. We can grasp the forms of Haydn and Mozart and Schubert and Brahms far more clearly. 3. His bending of traditional tonality. Here Mahler goes beyond Wagner heading into the realm of multi-tonality and atonality/dissonance in which case we lose the firm-footing of a home base or major key to which we return again and again... and in the process we lose more of the sense of form.

[Darcy88]

I just spent almost an hour trying to find this piece. I listen to a lot of classical music but I don't know the names and titles like you guys do. Now that I've found it I post it here triumphantly. It really is sublime. Around the 7:00 mark occurs one of those moments of supreme bliss that touch you to the quick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSeg69d3CQ8

Edit: While I'm at it, I may as well post my favourite piece of music, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde prelude. Its not my preferred recording but it will suffice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fktwPGCR7Yw

Here's what Nietzsche had to say about it:


Friedrich Nietzsche, one of Wagner's staunchest allies in his younger years, wrote that, for him, “Tristan and Isolde is the real opus metaphysicum of all art. . . insatiable and sweet craving for the secrets of night and death. . . it is overpowering in its simple grandeur”. In a letter to his friend Erwin Rohde in October 1868, Nietzsche described his reaction to Tristan's Prelude: “I simply cannot bring myself to remain critically aloof from this music; every nerve in me is atwitch, and it has been a long time since I had such a lasting sense of ecstasy as with this overture”. Even after his break with Wagner, Nietzsche continued to consider Tristan a masterpiece: “Even now I am still in search of a work which exercises such a dangerous fascination, such a spine-tingling and blissful infinity as Tristan — I have sought in vain, in every art.

I completely agree. I think somewhere he also says that without the operatic spectacle presented on the stage that this piece of music, decontextualized, would have driven him mad. He says "spine-tingling." It literally does tingle my spine.

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=Neely;1109202 I'm then going in the bath with a bottle of St Peter's Organic ale - nothing to do with music but I'm quite excited about it nonetheless.

Any suggestions on the best of Haydn/favourites?[/QUOTE]


No, but, more importantly, here's some information on St Peter's organic ale which indicates a very good brew indeed.

The brewery produces around twelve regular beers plus another six seasonal. St Peter's is well known for its Organic beers. St. Peter's Organic Ale was awarded the Soil Associations Silver Medal in the drinks category in their Organic Food Awards 2006. The company wins many awards and accolades for its beers. In November 2007, the Independent newspaper conducted a blind tasting by a panel of judges of bottled beers and lagers to creat a 'Top 50 beers' list and St. Peter's India Pale Ale* was voted overall winner.

Bernstein was a marvellous conductor of Mahler and if I were conducting this I would probably be floating somewhere near the ceiling, but I can't help wondering what Toscanini would have said if he could have seen this video.

http://youtu.be/rECVyN5D60I

[Charles Darnay]

Edit: While I'm at it, I may as well post my favourite piece of music, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde prelude. Its not my preferred recording but it will suffice.

I love Tristan and Isolde. Second most beautiful songs in any opera in my opinion is this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWgPiI1ihac

Number 1 belonging to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IfXJEOUD24
(at 1:50)

[LitNetIsGreat]

Thanks Loka, Stlukes and Emil for the notes on Haydn and St Peter's Ale respectfully.

Yes I have found the quartets so far to be quite delicious and very relaxing, unpretensious pieces. I will look further into the choral works as I have still been listening to the Benedictine stuff for a while now so the choral pieces should go down nicely as well.

......................

The St Peter's Ale was indeed a quality brew, highly recommended, even the bottle was a gem.

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=st+peter%27s+organic+ale&um=1&hl=en&rlz=1R2ASUT_en&biw=1366&bih=566&tbm=isch&tbnid=t6eH7UGUjeD9PM:&imgrefurl=http://beertastingevents.blogspot.com/&docid=SceIag2ILM7h6M&imgurl=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1138/5132452019_5600f664c2.jpg&w=494&h=500&ei=SncgT-6iCof08QP9gcHKDg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=492&vpy=226&dur=10934&hovh=226&hovw=223&tx=92&ty=246&sig=108278000410658559031&page=1&tbnh=119&tbnw=118&start=0&ndsp=31&ved=1t:429,r:23,s:0

It seems the brewery have got a pub in London as well?:
http://www.stpetersbrewery.co.uk/london/default.htm

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I actually haven't come across many who would suggest that they hate Mahler. In fact, within the realm of the classical music aficionados, I would say that the late Romantic period seems to have the most fans: Mahler, Brahms, Sibelius, Bruckner, etc... Wagner attracts the most hostility due to his antisemitic comments (in spite of the fact that Chopin, among others, were far more openly antisemitic), his popularity with Hitler (as if that has anything to do with him), and the fact that as a composer he limited himself almost exclusively to opera. It is telling, for example, that Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Puccini, Britten... and even Verdi are rarely discussed by the majority among classical music fans as being among the greatest composers for the very same reason... while composers such as Handel, Vivaldi, Rimsky-Korsakov, and even Tchaikovsky are grossly underrated by those who ignore of are completely ignorant of their operatic achievements.

personally, I think Mahler is a stunning composer. His symphonic achievements are perhaps only surpassed by Beethoven and his song cycles are equally stunning. If Mahler proves difficult to some listeners, I think it has to do with:
1. His inclusion of vocals within a good many of his symphonies ("impurity"... and that dislike of the operatic) 2. The scale and the "meandering" or very large and open structure of his symphonies. We can grasp the forms of Haydn and Mozart and Schubert and Brahms far more clearly. 3. His bending of traditional tonality. Here Mahler goes beyond Wagner heading into the realm of multi-tonality and atonality/dissonance in which case we lose the firm-footing of a home base or major key to which we return again and again... and in the process we lose more of the sense of form.
Thanks for the info, as always, StLukes. :)

Ie never gotten why an artist gets flack o Hitler likes there works, other. One of the greatest movies of all time Metropolis, was loved by Hitler. Does it take anything away from the movie? Of course not.

[Emil Miller]

Thanks Loka, Stlukes and Emil for the notes on Haydn and St Peter's Ale respectfully.

Yes I have found the quartets so far to be quite delicious and very relaxing, unpretensious pieces. I will look further into the choral works as I have still been listening to the Benedictine stuff for a while now so the choral pieces should go down nicely as well.

......................

The St Peter's Ale was indeed a quality brew, highly recommended, even the bottle was a gem.

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=st+peter%27s+organic+ale&um=1&hl=en&rlz=1R2ASUT_en&biw=1366&bih=566&tbm=isch&tbnid=t6eH7UGUjeD9PM:&imgrefurl=http://beertastingevents.blogspot.com/&docid=SceIag2ILM7h6M&imgurl=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1138/5132452019_5600f664c2.jpg&w=494&h=500&ei=SncgT-6iCof08QP9gcHKDg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=492&vpy=226&dur=10934&hovh=226&hovw=223&tx=92&ty=246&sig=108278000410658559031&page=1&tbnh=119&tbnw=118&start=0&ndsp=31&ved=1t:429,r:23,s:0

It seems the brewery have got a pub in London as well?:
http://www.stpetersbrewery.co.uk/london/default.htm

Yes I read about the pub but unfortunately it is in a part of London that I don't like. According to Wikipedia, the bottle was designed to match an 18th century Gin bottle that they had come into contact with. Since the brewery was founded in the 1990s, it's just another example of how the big brewers have been selling everyone short on quality whilst monopolising the market

[Emil Miller]

When I was about 17, I read Henri Murger's 'Scènes de la vie de bohème' in an English translation and was immediately struck by Puccini's ability to recreate the story in Italian operatic terms. I didn't know much about opera at the time but, like many people, I knew of this piece and even now, all these years later, it's hard to listen to unmoved.

http://youtu.be/7kl8P6n3lTE

[the facade]

I've been listening to Dvorak's "Americain" Quartet (op. 96) - performed by the Jerusalem Quintet. It is superb!

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I'd love to hear what you all think of this album, one of my favorites of 2011, if you've listened to it:

http://www.merawan.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMHO-Music-Goat-Rodeo-Sessions-cover.jpg

"Attaboy" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-31e8Nlujw), the opening song, is still my favorite from this album. It's so wonderfully energetic and joyous, and you can just tell the musicians are having a great time.

This is my first album of classical fusion, and I'm looking forward to getting more into the genre. I also bought one of Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Project albums, which is also wonderful.

[Charles Darnay]

I love everything Yo Yo Ma does....and this is fantastic.

[Charles Darnay]

MM's post reminded me of this, even though it is quite different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h5dI6m6Eh8

[stlukesguild]

After a long week we spent the evening out at a German restaurant: Jäger Schnitzel, Saurkraut Pierogies, Spätzel, Sauerkraut, and Apple Struedel... with two really magnificent German beers. Back home I'm continuing on my way to slow inebriation with a Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout. The only "classical" music that seems to fit is some "classic rock":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia1UjNBK_3Y

:banana:

[stlukesguild]

Returning to the real roots of the Blues:

http://991.com/newGallery/Muddy-Waters-Muddy-Mississippi-257312.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4t2AVTtPSQ

Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon were the real thing... the music that a slew of white American and British wussie wannabes plundered... and quite often without even offering up credit where credit was due... after all they were just a bunch of poor old black guys.

Of course returning to the Stones... they fully acknowledged just who they were indebted to... and you have to admit that anyone who can look like this:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8qZhaTk-ejg/Tm_cEnvz2QI/AAAAAAAAB8s/dRdHFkPaZFU/s1600/keef.jpg

... and not only still be breathing... but still playing guitar as good as ever... is no wussy wannabe... but rather one bad a*** MF-er!

:biggrinjester:

[stlukesguild]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61JS6HWBe-L._SS500_.jpg

Recently, I've been making some forays into the realm of the "classical era" beyond Haydn, Mozart, and early Beethoven. I absolutely loved Hoffmeister's clarinet quartets. The sonatas for flute and piano are quite enjoyable as well. Rococo bon-bons, certainly... but sometimes one is in the mood for bon-bons and Hoffmeister is quite masterful as providing what is desired.

[stlukesguild]

Playing around on Spotify this afternoon. I gave this a listen:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Hov3OU5WL._SS400_.jpg

I am a long admirer of the Historically Informed approach to older music... and of Jordi Savall in particular. His recordings of Bach's Brandenburgs and the Art of Fugue and numerous others were eye-opening. His Water Music/Royal Fireworks Music brought to life again a body of music by Handel I had not taken seriously for years. Having said that much, I have mixed feelings about this recording of Mozart's Requiem. Where Savall's recordings of the Brandenburg's or Handel'a Water Music/Royal Fireworks Music could surely suffice as a sole interpretation in any collection, I don't think such is true in this instance. Indeed, there are any number of other recordings that I would nominate as a first choice over Savall, including:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61XmEpVXDhL._SS500_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61XXy1ODlXL._SS500_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51nT6r2RFEL._SS500_.jpg

... even Karajan's "old school" interpretation.

Savall places the timpani, winds, and horns right up front... resulting in something of Mozart meets rock n roll. Initially, this results in a highly exciting sound. My first thought upon hearing the opening movement was "Damn!" Unfortunately, the "loss" of the strings results is a loss of a good deal of the subtlety and well as the fire of the Requiem. My overall impression thought is that Savall offers an intriguing interpretation... but I'll stick with Marriner, Gardiner, Herreweghe, etc...

The next disc I listened to this afternoon was:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514017sRF1L._SS400_.jpg

I have had mixed feelings concerning Tavener as a composer. Some works have left me indifferent... or worse. Others I have found pleasing enough, if not overly "original". Yet again there are those works (I think especially of the hypnotic Shûnya) I have found especially powerful. This disc, undoubtedly, proves the value of a top-notch performance. Harry Christopher's and the Sixteen could almost make the phone book sound stellar and spirit-enhancing. They do an absolute stunning job with this collection of Tavener's featuring the Ikon of Light, two settings from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (The Lamb and The Tyger), and several other short choral compositions. The only qualm I have is with the inclusion of Tavener's settting of the semi-well-known Christmas carol, Today the Virgin. It isn't the piece itself, but rather the context... which seems so out of place immediately after the Ikon of Light... and at less than 3 minutes it could be done without. Still... overall, a great disc.

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

Still toying about on Spotify... in spite of the fact that I have some 50... if not 100 discs I have yet to listen to. :p Anyway... I decided to stay in the choral mode... and to stick with Harry Christophers and the Sixteen. Anyone unfamiliar with this group really needs to give them a listen. Their performances of "Early Music" are absolutely stunning... and their performances of Bach, Mozart, and especially Handel may even be better.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61jiIQ%2BMNBL._SS500_.jpg

This disc is a collection of late 19th and 20th century choral music featuring works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Tchesnokov, Kalinnikov, Arvo Part, John Tavener, and James MacMillan. All of the composers, with the exception of MacMillan, have been profoundly impacted by the music of the Eastern Orthodox and/or Russian Orthodox choral tradition. There is a common stress upon the lower register or bass vocalists and a simple chant-like structure. MacMillan, a staunchly conservative Scottish Catholic, nevertheless fully fits within this selection. I cannot recommend this disc highly enough for anyone certain that there is no Modern/Contemporary music (and especially choral music) of real "beauty"... in the most traditional sense. No music could be more beautiful and more consoling.

[Mr.lucifer]

What do you think of this piece?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCdZbRBusz0

[Buh4Bee]

I really liked it. It's got some nice blues with a "classical" sound.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

It was interesting for a few minutes.

[stlukesguild]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61BgsdZ0E6L._SS400_.jpg

from Amazon.com:

"His work has great beauty...The separate pieces amount to one big work of a lifetime, such as we so much want to write: unbegun, unended, unending. Whatever is missing has to be imagined. It's all there"

-Wolgang Rihm

The present recording followed on from Rosamunde's performances in their Munich concert series "From the Quartet Book". In a CD booklet note, Yoffe writes that the contribution of the Hilliard Ensemble, "whose versions of Machaut, Palestrina or Lassus have for years been my yardstick for the art of singing, surpassed everything I could have hoped for..."

"Song of Songs" was produced by Manfred Eicher in St Gerold in November 2009, just a few months after the Hilliard's recording of "Officium Novum". The monastery has also been the site of Rosamunde recordings including the Mansurian quartets, as well as many other ECM albums of both composed and improvised music.

Boris Yoffe is a Russian-born, Israeli composer. Yoffe graduated from its Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in 1989. The following year he emigrated to Israel, and began his studies at the Tel Aviv Music Academy in 1990. In 1997 he moved to Germany to study, initially, with Wolfgang Rihm in Karlsruhe. Prodigiously prolific, Yoffe has been writing quartets almost daily since 1995, most of them around a page in length, lasting a little over a minute. By now his Book of Quartets is a compendium of several thousand pages. Critics have called the collected Book of Quartets a work without end... a composition as a diary... an unfolding poetic meditation. As his teacher Wolfgamng Rihm has admitted, the Book of Quartets is one of those epic creations of a lifetime: unbegun, unended, unending... a musical equivalent of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal... or perhaps the best analogy would be with Edmond Jabès' The Book of Questions. The pieces on this recording were selected, by the players and by the composer, from the approximately eight hundred he has written during the last three or four years. Among them are other single-page compositions from a related, interpenetrating project in which the quartet’s four parts become eight with the addition of four singers, their voices matching the instruments in range as they sing phrases from the Song of Songs.

The music is rather stark... minimalistic... yet unworldly. I would highly recommend this disc for anyone intrigued with Modern/Contemporary music and art song. The only equivalent I can think of is that of Othmar Schoek's songs set to a string quartet and a few contemporary songs I have come across on various discs. This is certainly one of those discoveries that I suspect I will be returning to again and again.

The performance, as should be expected of the first-ever collaborative effort of the Rosamunde Quartet and the Hilliard Ensemble is top notch.

[WyattGwyon]

Recently, I've been making some forays into the realm of the "classical era" beyond Haydn, Mozart, and early Beethoven. I absolutely loved Hoffmeister's clarinet quartets. The sonatas for flute and piano are quite enjoyable as well. Rococo bon-bons, certainly... but sometimes one is in the mood for bon-bons and Hoffmeister is quite masterful as providing what is desired.

Have you tried C.P.E. Bach? He has some stunningly good and beautiful music. Among the most adventurous and expressive is a set of six symphonies for string orchestra (W. 182), the early, highly experimental "Prussian Sonatas" (keyboard) (W. 48), and a number of really good keyboard concertos. Among the best is one in D minor (W. 23) that is, IMO, more interesting than most of Mozart's. If you aren't impressed with the latter, he is probably not your cup of tea.

There are also trio sonatas, lots of chamber music involving flute, and oodles of choral music.

[stlukesguild]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FliAy7mNL._SS500_.jpg

A magnificent performance of a marvelous body of music by a composer who really ought to be better known... or better appreciated. All too often it seems as if Gluck is simply the name of a historical personage recognized as instrumental in the transition of opera from Handel and the Baroque to Mozart. What is often ignored is that he achieved this as a result of some damn good music.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhRbdKLorZ8

Any fan of Mozart... or Handel... or opera in general... should seriously explore the works of Gluck.


Currently I'm listening to another under-appreciated repertoire:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51iflxkC6aL._SS400_.jpg

Strauss was one of the greatest song-writers of the 20th century... perhaps the last great master of the traditional German lieder. Unfortunately his efforts in this genre... with the exception of the famous Last Four Songs are often forgotten... dwarfed by his more famous achievements in the realm of opera and orchestral music. These really should be heard more often:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grYxkrOI1do

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

[stlukesguild]

Have you tried C.P.E. Bach? He has some stunningly good and beautiful music. Among the most adventurous and expressive is a set of six symphonies for string orchestra (W. 182), the early, highly experimental "Prussian Sonatas" (keyboard) (W. 48), and a number of really good keyboard concertos. Among the best is one in D minor (W. 23) that is, IMO, more interesting than most of Mozart's. If you aren't impressed with the latter, he is probably not your cup of tea.

There are also trio sonatas, lots of chamber music involving flute, and oodles of choral music.

Yes... I have a couple of C.P.E. Bach discs. I like J.C. (Johann Christian) Bach even more... but then that may be because I am such a fan of vocal music and J.C. Bach was an opera composer and wrote several lovely choral works as well. Among other "classical era" composers I have been listening to, I would include Boccherini, Cherubinui, Galuppi, and Paisiello:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510p1NKDPnL._SS500_.jpg

These composers are all slowly being "rediscovered"... rather like Handel 20 years ago... and Vivaldi at present. There are few top-notch performances of the work... but give it time.

[stlukesguild]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51vKDVwfsyL._SS400_.jpg

I've recently been exploring Richard Strauss' lieder which, with the exception of the justly famous Four Last Songs, are unjustly known far less than they deserve. Listening to these absolutely exquisite orchestral songs beautifully realized by Diana Damrau I seriously doubt that there has been a single song writer within the classical realm to rival Strauss since. These songs throb with a lush sensuality and a late Romantic gushing forth of emotion that cannot help but move all but the most hardened cynic.

I could have posted a few videos of Damrau performing selections from these lieder... but then I discovered that today is Renee Fleming birthday (a valentine's Day baby!) and she, after all, is the unrivaled Strauss performer of our time:

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHeI1LfujbY


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

Returning to Strauss (did I ever leave?):

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412jF%2BScK5L._SS400_.jpg

As an avowed Straussian... one who would place Strauss just behind Mozart and Wagner in his personal pantheon of opera composers, and who holds the composer as the greatest of the 20th century... someone who has at least 8 or 9 versions of The Last Four Songs and more discs by the composer than by any other composer since Brahms... it is not common for me to come upon something/anything by the composer... outside of a minor work... that I am unfamiliar with.

However I must admit that this disc represents an entire repertoire by Strauss of which I was fully unaware.:eek: The Deutsche Motette Op.62 of 1913 is a terrifyingly complex twenty part setting of a Friedrich Rückert poem. Lasting nearly nineteen minutes of hugely taxing unaccompanied writing - spanning a full four octave compass. It is quite likely that one of the main reasons for its relative neglect is that only the very finest and bravest choruses can tackle it.

The two other longer works included here (clocking in at nearly 12 minutes each) are Der Abend and Hymne. The two works make up the Zwei Gesänge Op.34 of 1897. By date of composition they sit between Also Sprach Zarathustra Op.30 and Don Quixote Op.36. Der Abend is to a text by Schiller and the narrative follows the sun-god Phoebus as his fiery chariot sinks into the sea and he abandons himself to the arms of Tethys the sea-goddess. This text gives Strauss, master of the orchestral tone poem, a wide range of opportunity for word-painting from the gently lapping sea, the radiance of the setting sun to the ultimate calm of night. Hymne is another setting of a Friedrich Rückert poem... this one based upon the passage in Genesis where Jacob laments the loss of his favourite son Joseph sold to the Ishmaelites. Enshrined in the poem is the message of hope: “Sorrow no more." Both of the Zwei Gesänge are far less complex than the Deutsche Motette... but exceedingly beautiful.

The last work included, Traumlicht Op.123 No.2. is another Rückert setting and reflects the wider problems Strauss was having at the time of its composition – 1935 – getting his opera Die schweigsame Frau staged due to the perceived ‘jewishness’ of the librettist Stephan Zweig. There is a direct linkage between Strauss’s current experience and the message of the poem – “let not the powers of darkness be victorious over the inner light”.

Some critics have suggested that Accentus, a French choir, would do better in employing some deeper male voices ala German and Eastern European orchestras... and this criticism is not without merit. Accentus does not have a fully-filled out lower-register... still this is a matter of personal preference. Another criticism I have come across in reading up on this disc is that the text is not clear. Then again... I find this is not a major issue in a majority of choral music... especially when the music washes over you with such lush beauty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLE6eefNiK8

[stlukesguild]

We're carrying over the Valentine's Day celebrations from yesterday. My wife had bought some marvelous T-bone steaks not knowing I had planned to take her out... so we had these tonight. I actually grilled these up on the barbecue grill even though its snowing out. We had these with baked potatoes, a salad, the chocolate-covered strawberries from our local chocolatier, Malley's, and some great beers: Samuel Smith Imperial Stout, Young's Double Chocolate Stout, a banana bread beer (it sounds weird but tastes great), and a bottle of Chimay.

I'm enjoying these drinks all to the accompaniment of great American classics:

http://www.jazz.com/assets/2007/12/20/albumcoverBlueTrain.jpg?1198121321

http://www.jazz.com/assets/2007/12/21/albumcoverDaveBrubeck-TimeOut.jpg?1198224309

And what a classic cover that Brubeck LP had!

[PoeticPassions]

Coltrane... that's the stuff.

I just recently went to see a concert by my local Philharmonic Orchestra... it was quite wonderful. They had some Austrian pianist as well, though I did not like his choice.. he played Berg's Sonata op. 1... it just sounds too disharmonious and harsh to me... it kept me feeling a bit uneasy.

[Emil Miller]

Here's Yundi Li playing Chopin in probably the finest performance of this piece ever recorded. Rubinstein's take, also on Youtube, might match but doesn't surpass it.

http://youtu.be/tvm2ZsRv3C8

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I have fallen in love with Adagio in G minor, by Tomaso Albinoni & Remo Giazotto (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW2dQbN7i3U). It may be my favorite classical song ever. It's just so emotional and beautiful, and when the organ and strings really kick it in at 7:45, it almost makes me hurt it's so amazing.

Too bad there isn't more from Giazotto.

[stlukesguild]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51yM9TIE7kL._SS400_.jpg

I'm giving a second spin to this one (or at least of disc one) and this time I got all the way through. Netania Davrath is quite special... but I think I prefer the elegance and fluidity of Veronique Gens. On the other hand... it could simply be that I was merely impatient to get at this disc which just arrived:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61s%2Bvho7IDL._SS500_.jpg

I eventually plan to pick up an HIP or period recording of this work. The set I have my eye set on is that by William Christie... however when I looked at it the other day on Amazon I discovered that it was currently priced somewhere around $35 US. The John Eliot Gardiner set (my second HIP choice) was not much cheaper. But as I browsed through the recordings of The Seasons on Amazon I came upon the recording by Herbert von Karajan with Gundula Janowitz and Walter Berry made immediately after the legendary recording of The Creation... priced at a little over $3 US... and I immediately pounced. Good thing... as I see that currently the cheapest new recording is going for almost $80 US!! At the same time... this set, with Bohm was going for about $7 US... so I could not resist grabbing it as well. Years ago when I first was shopping for a Seasons, this set was nearly $30, the Karajan was out of print, and the Christie and Gardiner recordings hadn't even been made. I ended up going with Marriner, who was the cheapest... and beside, I loved his Haydn symphonies.

This recording, however, is something else! The soloists are great. The orchestra has the grandeur and power that one would expect of Beethoven... and considering that this is one of Haydn's later works, perhaps this is not out of place. The choir, however... they are hair-raising. My first thought on hearing this was "Damn!!!":eek2::eek6:

The Seasons may not be as great of a work as The Creation... but you would never know it from Bohm's recording. Bohm is at times criticized for his overly slow or labored approach that can undermine drive of a work. This, however, is as muscular as it gets: Haydn on steroids. Forget the effete puff in a white wig and his elegant Rococo manners... this is Haydn meets Beethoven in a bad mood... Haydn meets rock-n-roll! If Haydn had written a few more of these it might be his name, and not Mozart's, that we think of along side Bach and Beethoven.

Highly recommended.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Okay, looking for recommendations again, because I just seem to wander aimlessly on Amazon. I'm looking for composers/works that are (having one or all of these traits) fast, dark, and energetic. Something along the lines of this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjO9khrhlbA), this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0bcRCCg01I), this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyknBTm_YyM), and this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGecTrhNzG4).

It's not that I haven't found any artists like that (I've obviously found some), I'm just looking for more. And it's not like I limit myself to only classical that's within this vain . . . it's still my favorite, though.

[OrphanPip]

Ah some Bartok maybe.

Have you listened to Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique"?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Nope. I've heard some Bartok and liked it. I'll have to check out Berlioz.

[stlukesguild]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51kK6y5WVfL._SS400_.jpg

I picked up the third volume of the Busch Quartet performing Beethoven's quartets on the classical Dutton label. The quartet plays no.s 7 & 12. These recordings are one rare example in which a recording of this age (1942 and 1936) would be my first pick for this repertoire... if the whole of the quartets were available. As I noted earlier, chamber music... and especially string quartets (trios, quintets, etc...) are not among my favorite musical forms... but these recordings of Beethoven's quartets are surely awakening a greater degree of interest.

**********

Local boys (George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra) make good!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/613A79QN8YL._SS500_.jpg

Some marvelous playing by Fleisher... whose career was tragically cut short when he lost the use of his right hand, due to a condition that was eventually diagnosed as focal dystonia. Fleisher commenced performing and recording the left-handed repertoire as well as teaching while searching for a cure for his condition. In the early 21st century, Fleisher regained the use of his right hand through a combination of Rolfing and botox injections.

This recording is most certainly deserving of being placed on CBS roster of "Great Performances". It showcases both Fleisher and Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra at their finest. Recently I have been listening to Fleisher/Szell's recordings of Beethoven's piano concertos...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51RPkHKwuYL._SS400_.jpg

and their performance of Barhms' concertos...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GBlA0YBfL._SS400_.jpg

...which have once again awakened a real interest in Brahms in spite of my sworn allegiance to Wagner and his heir, Richard Strauss.:rolleyes5:

Highly recommended!

[stlukesguild]

OK Mutatis... dark, heavy, bombastic classical music? Your focuse will be primarily upon Romanticism and Modernism (the 19th and 20th century):

I've always loved this one myself:

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goeOUTRy2es

Originally written for solo piano, this orchestration by Leopold Stokowski is absolutely brilliant!

While we're on Stokowski transcriptions, why not this transcription of Bach's organ masterpiece, the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YjoECZ8tVE&feature=related

Bartok:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNMO2pkFreU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVQddCgchm8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srz8p10XawE&feature=related

Lutoslawski:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1-02C3jMr4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghtpM_OA0Gg&feature=related

Wagner:

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

Zoltan Kodály:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXKz6o2cRbs&feature=related

Karl Amadeus Hartmann:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2q6BHPGKbo&feature=fvsr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nk5kUVtpmY

Benjamin Britten:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXVqNaYwyJE&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL4CFDA3A1FB76B44F

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

The Prokofiev is actually one of my favorites. Love it.

Liszt is one of those artists I've always wanted to get into. I find a cool little set of his rhapsodies for orchestra on Amazon that's going on my wish-list.

The Bach was beautiful. A disk of Stokowski transcription also going on wish-list.

I have a recording of Bartok's concerto, and it's a wierd piece, because as I listen to it, I'm thinking "I should be getting into this," but I never do, and I don't know why. I'll give it another try sometime. I love the piano concerto, though.

Ditto for Lutoslawski.

I have a Wagner compilation I've been meaning to return to, and then delve deeper into his music from there. There's just so much to listen to, he got a bit lost in the shuffle.

As for the Kodály, I like it, but I've found that if any solo piece lasts longer than 6-7 minutes, I lose focus and get bored. It's just how I am. Still, I'll have to check out some of his orchestral stuff.

I liked the Hartmann, but it was a bit avant-garde for my tastes (admittedly, I didn't listen to all of the violin concerto). Maybe as my tastes grow, I can get into him more. Still going on wish-list for later.

Same goes for Britten as for Kodály, though that piece was the perfect length for my waning attention span. Even though the cello is my favorite of the orchestral instruments, that was a bit out there.

Thanks as always for such a great list, StLukes! It'll keep me bust for a while.

[Charles Darnay]

The ending from one of my favourite symphonies (sorry if it's already been posted on this thread)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rECVyN5D60I&feature=related

Also, watching Berstein conduct is always fun

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Believe it or not, this is the first time I've ever seen Bernstein conduct. I've heard plenty of his recordings, but never saw him. I can see where his fame comes from. It seems like he's really sloppy, but I've never seen a conductor so into it before, singing along like that. I'm assuming that's why his orchestras are so powerful--the players can't help but get not it when watching him.

[stlukesguild]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Twv1e2HnL._SS500_.jpg

Damn!!!

This just arrived this week. Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos with Hilde Zadek, Rita Streich, Sena Jurinac, etc... conducted by Joseph Keilberth with the Westdeutschen Rundfunks Köln Orchestra (WDR) recorded in 1954. The sound for this era is quite stupendous and both the soloists and conductor of great historical and artistic merit.

Best of all... the prices on these Historical WDR recordings are ridiculously inexpensive. I immediately rushed to pick up the following:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51mdeIIvrQL._SS400_.jpg

While Fidelio has never been my favorite opera, how could I possibly lose at $5 US for a recordings with Birgit Nilssen, Hans Hopf, and Gottlob Frick in his greatest role?! This performance was conducted by Erich Kleiber just weeks before his death.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Q0LcwUfTL._SS400_.jpg

Niccolai Gedda and Hermann Prey with Keilberth performing Gluck! I already have this opera in a more contemporary period recording... but still, I couldn't pass this one up.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51RWxj9lUvL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Von Weber's masterpiece performed by Elizabeth Grümmer, Rita Streich, etc... with Erich Kleiber again. Again for only $10 US!!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MkjBQ531L._SS400_.jpg

Strauss' masterpiece with Astrid Varnay, Leonie Rysanek, Hans Hotter and Richard Kraus?

Double Damn!!!

I have gotten to the point where my recordings of Strauss operas outnumber those by any other composer... Wagner included!!! I must rectify this immediately. Perhaps another Ring cycle?

In the end, I even jumped on this disc from the same WDR historic recordings series.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51m5utY6OSL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Returning to Ariadne auf Naxos, this work is a marvelous slapstick comedy... an opera about opera and the theater... with the libretto by the brilliant librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The opera was first performed (in its original form) in 1912, a few short years after the Expressionistic tragedies, Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909). In the original form, the audience was presented only with a brief hybrid: an opera that combined a serious classical story with a comedy performed by a commedia dell'arte group. Not only was the result confusing, but impractical, at barely 30-minutes the work still demanded both an orchestra and opera singers as well as a troupe of comic actors. in 1916 Strauss expanded the work with a prologue that essentially "explains" the bizarre serious/comic opera: "Ariadne auf Naxos", a tragic opera, the first work of a young composer is to be performed at the home of the wealthiest man in Vienna. The music master in informed that a comic play and a fireworks display will immediately follow the performance of the opera. The music masters protests, but informs that he who pays has the ultimate say. The composer is fascinated with the beautiful, young Zerbinetta, leader of the comic troupe of actors, but is outraged when he learns that a comic play will follow his opera. While he is raging, the steward of the wealthy man again arrives and announces that for the sake of expediency, both the tragic opera and the comic play are to be staged at the same time. The composer is aghast, but Zerbinetta is able to seductively talk him into seeing it from another perspective. The opera takes the tale of "Ariadne and Theseus" in which the daughter of the King of Minos aids Theseus (the Athenian enemy of Minos) with whom she has fallen in love, in killing the Minotaur. She then elopes with Theseus who abandons her on the island of Naxos where in despair, she commits suicide. This tragedy is mutated into a farce when Zerbinetta and her four companions from the burlesque group enter and attempt to cheer Ariadne by singing and dancing. In a sustained and dazzling piece of coloratura singing, "Großmächtige Prinzessin" / "high and mighty princess" (the most well-known aria of the opera) Zerbinetta insists that the simplest way to get over a broken heart is to find another man. In a comic interlude, each of the clowns pursues Zerbinetta.

Ariadne auf Naxos proves a striking contrast to Strauss' other operas. As opposed to his usual penchant for lush, rich, and grandiose orchestration, Ariadne auf Naxos is performed by a stripped-down, chamber orchestra of some 35 instruments and piano. It and clearly illustrates the fact that Strauss had the ability to write striking passages of chamber music... and yet at the same time never abandon his signature sensuality.[/QUOTE]

[Charles Darnay]

I just can't get into any Strauss opera - maybe I just haven't come across the right recordings. I will have to check out some that you posted.

[stlukesguild]

Which Strauss operas have you heard?

[Charles Darnay]

Salome and Elektra

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Which one (and which part) of Mozart's symphonies is this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C2w4O9k8NQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player)?

[Charles Darnay]

Not a symphony. It's Eine Kline nachtmusik, first mvt

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Cool, thanks.

[stlukesguild]

Salome and Elektra

Damn! Those are almost certainly the two best of Strauss operas... of course they are also the two most Modernist/Expressionist. Of course I should note that Strauss probably has the broadest range stylistically between operas. Nothing else in his oeuvre is like Elektra and Salome. Der Rosenkavalier is championed by an equal number of Strauss admirers as being his greatest achievement. Der Rosenkavalier merges the lush 19th century Romanticism with elements of Mozart's operas (especially Le Nozze di Figaro) and Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus. Another equally brilliant opera is Die Frau ohne Schatten while Ariadne auf Naxos, mentioned above, introduces the chamber opera genre.

Beyond Strauss... which operas have you experienced and particularly liked?

[Charles Darnay]

I'm fairly well versed in opera. Rossini and Mozart are probably my favorites. Others that I love

Bizet's Carmen
Wagner, particularly Tristan and Isolde
Purcell, anything by Purcell
Puccini, particularly La Bohem
Verdi, particularly Othello or Rigaleto
Gluck, Paris and Helen

There are others, but those are the top. As you can see I tend to not go past the Romantics when it comes to opera (Wagner being the exception, because he is fantastic)

[Charles Darnay]

He is a better singer in Russian than he is in Italian, but I am really liking Dmitri Hvorostovsky's stuff. I just picked up his album, "Portrait"

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

[stlukesguild]

Yes, I have several of the so-called "silver fox'" CDs... especially of Russian lieder and opera. Yet he is particularly good as La Traviata's Germont:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p37BAmgA-I&feature=related

And how about DM with Anna Netrebko:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36vm2VoXuXA

There can be no doubt why these two are among the most in demand performers in opera today!

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I just caught about the last hour and a half of Phillip Glass's Satyagraha (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ9k3luFucE) on PBS earlier today. I was really, really surprised by how much I enjoyed it, do in no little part by the beautiful voice of tenor Richard Croft, not to mention some of the beautiful staging:

http://www.operanews.com/uploadedImages/Opera_News_Magazine/2011/6(1)/Departments/BroadcastSatyagrahaHDhdl1111.jpg

[stlukesguild]

I'm giving a first listen to Carl Maria von Weber's (not to be confused with Anton WeberN)... Gothic masterpiece:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51i5mkrg9XL._SS500_.jpg

I actually first heard this opera a good many years ago... perhaps not long after I graduated high-school:eek2: but only now have I finally picked up a copy ... and I'm already thinking of grabbing hold of a second (if not a third) recording.

This particular recording is by Erich Kleiber, father of Carlos Kleiber... who also recorded a classic version of this opera. Indeed, there are a number of highly regarded versions of this seminal opera:

Erich Kleiber recorded the version that I am currently listening to with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra and soloists including Elizabeth Grümmer, Rita Streich (one of my favorites among the older singers), Hans Hopf, Kurt Bohm, etc...

Wilhelm Furtwangler recorded this opera with the same soloists as Erich Kleiber

Carlos Kleiber recorded the opera in 1973 with the Dresden Staatskapelle and soloists Gundula Janowitz and Peter Schreier

Joseph Keilberth records the opera in 1958 with the Berlin Philharmonic.

For a historic recording (1955) the sound on this recording is consistently excellent. Even so, I'll probably pick up another copy of this opera as I currently seem to have an obsession with German opera... from Handel to Gluck to Mozart to Wagner to Strauss. Quite likely I'll go with Keilberth... but then again Carlos Kleiber always has something interesting to offer... and in this instance, his is the newest of the great versions... and includes the full libretto.

Der Freischütz was an instant hit and immediately established the genre of German Romantic opera. Like Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Weber's opera makes use of simple memorable folk-like melodies. In this way Weber's opera contrasted with the more ornate, courtly Italian operas and clearly took the side of the humble German peasants who had long suffered under the rule of foreign potentates. To Mozart's model Weber brought the drama of Romanticism... the "Sturm und Drang" of Beethoven. He also brought something truly new to opera: the element of the supernatural of German Gothic. The scene in the Wolf's Glen, where the two peasant hunters meet with Zamiel, the "Black Hunter" who hunts for human souls, employs a music worthy of Goethe's Walpurgisnacht... and it set a model for an endless exploration of the supernatural in subsequent operas: Charles Gounod's Faust, Berlioz' La damnation de Faust, Boito's Mefistofele, Heinrich Marschner's Der Vampyr, etc...

[Emil Miller]

The ending from one of my favourite symphonies (sorry if it's already been posted on this thread)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rECVyN5D60I&feature=related

Also, watching Berstein conduct is always fun

I have posted the Bernstein performance on this thread previously and thought it was as good as it could be until I heard this. The ending is simply unbelievable.

http://youtu.be/RONBzkthUjM

[stlukesguild]

The Cello Suites by J.S. Bach are among my absolute favorite works... ever since I first came upon them in performance by Yo Yo Ma a few short years after high-school.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ub4TIeV6L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Beside this first recording of the suites by Ma, I have recordings of the suites by Pierre Fournier...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51M1qUlzQBL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Janos Starker...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Q7BptHk5L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

and Paul Tortelier...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51tTm0qzMVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

(Yes... I am a Bach fanatic... to the point that I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 discs by old Johann Sebastian.)

Beyond these recordings of the cello suites, I have heard the historic recordings by Pablo Casals and Rostropovich famous recording from late in his career. For whatever reason... part of it, I think is due to the tonality of the venue or perhaps the engineering of the actual recording which I just don't like... I have (until now) never been keen on getting Rostropovich' version of the suites.

But then I watched this documentary on Rostropovich recently...:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt4tfg5Ed5U

... I found myself wanting to give Rostropovich another listen. Browsing through Amazon... I stumbled upon this live recording made at the Prague Spring music festival...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61txqys6aNL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Rostropovich had as much of a special relationship with Prague as he did with Bach. Bach's suites were the unquestionable peak of the known cello repertoire... and certainly the ultimate measure of any cellist. Prague was the first city outside of the Soviet Union that Rostropovich had visited. It was in Prague that he met the brilliant Russian singer, Galina Vishnevskaya, and married her 3 days later... without even having heard her sing a single note!

http://www.vokrug.tv/pic/person/4/e/9/a/medium_4e9ae4822ebdbcc37cfc4e9d44d1ce7d.jpeg

Rostropovich appeared at the Prague Spring festival 7 times, but refused to perform there again following the Soviet crackdown in 1968 as a result of the period of liberalization known (ironically) as The Prague Spring. He did not return until 1991 after the final member of the Soviet occupational force had left Czechoslovakia.

This recording was made in 1955...

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4006/4480920325_2f1b916fff_z.jpg

at his third appearance at the Prague Spring festival. The recording barely shows its age and the fact that the performance was live... The cello sounds rich and closely miked... and yet there is also a sense of the space of the hall... and the performance is stunning... all the more-so considering the cellist was but 27 years old.

[stlukesguild]

I have posted the Bernstein performance on this thread previously and thought it was as good as it could be until I heard this. The ending is simply unbelievable.

http://youtu.be/RONBzkthUjM

Dudamel's performances have been criticized for some of the same "sloppiness" that was attributed to Bernstein. I'm somewhat intrigued, Emil, considering your background and personality, that you are attracted to these broader, looser, messier... "sloppier" interpretations of a lot of the music you love. I've come to love some of these interpretations: the classic recordings of Munch, Furtwangler, Stokowsky, Jean Martinon... and certainly Bernstein, but I have always been drawn to those soloists and conductors who were real "Nazi's"... carving the music from stone: Karajan, Bohm, Klemperer, Szell, Solti... and now Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan. Nevertheless, my favorite recordings of Mahler's 2nd (perhaps my favorite among his symphonies) remain those of the "screaming skull"... George Solti:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OvqWPmpHYoo/TsSDTtHWI8I/AAAAAAAAHiI/PGDXCtauPDk/s1600/Georg%2BSolti%2BRed%2BSkull.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61APGbKyNNL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

the famous Zubin Mehta recording:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41EB10MGE7L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Bruno Walter, perhaps the greatest conductor of Mahler... a close friend of the composer who first performed his masterpiece, Das Lied von der Erde, also recorded a stunning recording of the 2nd with Maureen Forrester:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FQE2AZFXL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

... and then there's the classic recording by the young Simon Rattle... considered by many critics to still be the best:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PWW6MN7GL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I must admit that seeing the actual performance of Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Symphony who approach this music in an openly, visually, intensely emotional manner makes for a truly powerful experience.

[Emil Miller]

I have posted the Bernstein performance on this thread previously and thought it was as good as it could be until I heard this. The ending is simply unbelievable.

http://youtu.be/RONBzkthUjM

Dudamel's performances have been criticized for some of the same "sloppiness" that was attributed to Bernstein. I'm somewhat intrigued, Emil, considering your background and personality, that you are attracted to these broader, looser, messier... "sloppier" interpretations of a lot of the music you love. I've come to love some of these interpretations: the classic recordings of Munch, Furtwangler, Stokowsky, Jean Martinon... and certainly Bernstein, but I have always been drawn to those soloists and conductors who were real "Nazi's"... carving the music from stone: Karajan, Bohm, Klemperer, Szell, Solti... and now Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan. Nevertheless, my favorite recordings of Mahler's 2nd (perhaps my favorite among his symphonies) remain those of the "screaming skull"... George Solti:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OvqWPmpHYoo/TsSDTtHWI8I/AAAAAAAAHiI/PGDXCtauPDk/s1600/Georg%2BSolti%2BRed%2BSkull.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61APGbKyNNL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

the famous Zubin Mehta recording:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41EB10MGE7L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Bruno Walter, perhaps the greatest conductor of Mahler... a close friend of the composer who first performed his masterpiece, Das Lied von der Erde, also recorded a stunning recording of the 2nd with Maureen Forrester:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FQE2AZFXL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

... and then there's the classic recording by the young Simon Rattle... considered by many critics to still be the best:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PWW6MN7GL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I must admit that seeing the actual performance of Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Symphony who approach this music in an openly, visually, intensely emotional manner makes for a truly powerful experience.

Well Stlukes, it is the powerful experience that I look for in music and judging by the massive reception that the 6000 people attending that promenade concert performance gave to Dudamel and his orchestra, so do many concertgoers. To my mind music is not to be played with mechanical precision but must have room to breathe and Mahler cannot be performed as though the orchestra were playing a Boccherini minuet. As long as the dramatic potential of the work comes through I'm not too bothered about the niceties of the performance; in pursuit of which conductors often put the music into a straight jacket.
As Sir Thomas Beecham once famously told his players: "Do what you like but don't be boring."

[stlukesguild]

I straddle the line when it comes to performances. In other words, I'm not a purist. I love Bohm and Karajan's overly grand and Romantic interpretations of Haydn's Die Schöpfung... but I also like Gardiner's historically informed performance (HIP). Jordi Savall's historically informed... yet free interpretations of Handel's Water Music and Royal Fireworks music rehabilitated these oft overplayed works, his Boccherini recordings are simply unrivaled, and his performances of Bach's Art of the Fugue, Brandenburg Concertos, and Musical Offering are among the finest ever recorded... and yet I also love the icy precision and perfection of Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan.

With composers like Mahler, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff, I find that the music is already broad, sprawling, and Romantic enough as it is. A conductor like Karajan, Szell, Solti, etc... is able to bring to this music something of a German sense of precision and clarity that allows the music to avoid sinking under its own weight into bathos and sentimental mush. And yet I still appreciate the Romantic approach of Bernstein or Gergiev as well.

[Emil Miller]

I straddle the line when it comes to performances. In other words, I'm not a purist. I love Bohm and Karajan's overly grand and Romantic interpretations of Haydn's Die Schöpfung... but I also like Gardiner's historically informed performance (HIP). Jordi Savall's historically informed... yet free interpretations of Handel's Water Music and Royal Fireworks music rehabilitated these oft overplayed works, his Boccherini recordings are simply unrivaled, and his performances of Bach's Art of the Fugue, Brandenburg Concertos, and Musical Offering are among the finest ever recorded... and yet I also love the icy precision and perfection of Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan.

With composers like Mahler, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff, I find that the music is already broad, sprawling, and Romantic enough as it is. A conductor like Karajan, Szell, Solti, etc... is able to bring to this music something of a German sense of precision and clarity that allows the music to avoid sinking under its own weight into bathos and sentimental mush. And yet I still appreciate the Romantic approach of Bernstein or Gergiev as well.


I will nail my colours to the mast of romanticism although, of course, one cannot forget that its basis is in the classicism of Bach, his German antecedents and those of the Italian renaissance.
Do I listen to Bach, Mozart etc.? Well of course I do, but it must be clear that instrumental development throughout the 19th century enabled a quantum leap in musical expression. Inevitably, the small tightly controlled Court orchestra of Haydn's time became a thing of the past, even though Haydn's music would henceforth determine the development of the symphony and continue to be greatly performed. Much as we may love Mozart's music, by the time that Richard Strauss wrote his Alpine symphony (1915), the orchestra had reached a peak of perfection that, whatever the aesthetic content of the 'classicists', they couldn't match the sheer magnificence of modern orchestral sound until they ran into the dead-end of German musical expressionism. This leaves Richard Strauss as the last great German musical genius in a line going back to J S Bach and Telemann .

[stlukesguild]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41YN35BKR2L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Recently I've been fleshing out my collection of Mahler. I've long had every symphony by him, but in many cases I had but a single recording of these. As Mahler's grown in my esteem I've found myself wanting to explore alternative recordings... especially of my favorite symphonies.

In this instance the recording is of a live performance by Bruno Walter with the Vienna Phiharmonic performing in Vienna in 1938. This particular recording has great historical worth. It was Bruno Walter who gave this symphony its first performance a year after Mahler's death. This performance was the swansong of the Vienna Philharmonic under their great conductor, Walter. A few weeks after this recording, Walter showed up as a bewildered refugee in Paris. A few weeks after that the Germans annexed Austria and there was no chance of hearing Mahler performed by the Vienna Philharmonic until the end of the war.

The sound on this recording is surprisingly good considering both the date of the recording and the fact that it was recorded live. Of course Dutton was famous for the quality of its recordings. While the sound can be a bit "sharp" at times, there is a real sense of depth to the orchestra... something quite rare in orchestral recordings prior to the 1950s. The performance itself is edgy, tense, and laden with emotion.

I would not choose this recording as my sole recording of the 9th... but it is a fabulous musical document.

[Emil Miller]

I was listening recently to a performance of this work on the radio and it was an enjoyable experience. Then someone on Youtube mentioned this video and I have to ask myself why the hell couldn't I have been there when this was being played? Another truly astounding finale to a Mahler symphony.


http://youtu.be/JyJYeB4oJT0

[stlukesguild]

Yes, Bychkov is a real up-and-coming figure. Perhaps just behind Valery Gegiev among Russian conductors. His recent recording of Wagner's Lohengrin garnered a wealth of praise in the classical press both in the US and the UK. Beside Wagner, he seems quite admired for his performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Strauss' Alpine Symphony (although it would have to be absolutely spectacular to surpass Karajan's iconic recording), and symphonies of Mahler and Shostakovitch.

Speaking of Gergiev... he is an absolutely mercurial and explosive conductor. His turbo-charged Nutcracker absolutely revitalized that work for me, and he has worked wonders with a great wealth of Russian composers and especially Russian ballet and opera. I can't think of any single figure who has done more for Russian music in my life time. Hell... he even "discovered" Anna Netrebko!!

Like all great conductors, Gergiev looks like a real character. Quite often he appears like a homeless man stuffed into a suit... with a week or two worth of facial stubble:

http://sverigesradio.se/diverse/appdata/isidor/images/news_images/2482/1143396_520_347.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7Uz3qGsu5Q

I'll always love this work... yet the best version I have ever heard was that of the Cleveland Orchestra playing at a white-hot fevered pitch under Christoph von Dohnanyi... live from the first row. My hair was absolutely standing upon end.

[Emil Miller]

Some time ago, I posted the Bychkov performance of the Alpine. I know it seems impossible, but it IS better than Karajan's with the BPO: the same orchestra conducted by Bychkov. If anyone had told me that it superseded Karajan's performance I would have told them to get lost. Unfortunately, for contractual reasons the BPO are unable to issue it on a DVD, despite the impassioned pleas of Youtube watchers who have given an overwhelming response to the short excerpt the BPO management have put out on Youtube; they are worth reading. However, it is possible to hire the whole performance from the Berlin management by paying so many Euros but as usual with these things, it means jumping through hoops. Anyway, here it is and to my mind it is the greatest performance of any orchestral piece committed to Youtube. I have watched it many times and will continue to do so.

http://youtu.be/xK7z2NhUrsQ

[Dark Star]

The Cello Suites by J.S. Bach are among my absolute favorite works... ever since I first came upon them in performance by Yo Yo Ma a few short years after high-school.

One version that you didn't mention (that is excellent) is Paolo Beschi's period instrument recording. Highly recommended.

[Charles Darnay]

Been listening to a lot of J.C Bach lately: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyYvMNv82mQ

[stlukesguild]

Hmmm... from what I've been able to listen to of Paolo Beschi's performance of Bach's cello suites, I'm quite intrigued. Now can I justify yet another recording?:willy_nilly:

[Dark Star]

Hmmm... from what I've been able to listen to of Paolo Beschi's performance of Bach's cello suites, I'm quite intrigued. Now can I justify yet another recording?:willy_nilly:

You can always justify another Bach recording!

[stlukesguild]

Except that have almost 300 of them now.:nonod:

[stlukesguild]

I gave a listen to the Zubin Mehta recording of Mahler's 2nd Symphony today...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41EB10MGE7L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Damn! That thin was played at a white heat. Absolutely stunning. It was one of those musical experiences that left me so drained afterwards that I could only sit in silence for a while. When I eventually popped Vasily Petrenko's recording of Shostakovitch' 6th and 12th into the CD player it seemed so anti-climactic that I'll definitely need to give it another listen later... under different circumstances. Brian... you would surely love Mehta's performance. All fire and drama... no holds barred>

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I've been hearing a lot about this soprano Katherine Jenkins now that she's competing on Dancing with the Stars (and, yes, I too think its a travesty that she has to appear in such drivel to gain any kind of popular fame), so I searched her on YouTube to see what the fuss is about.

I think I'm in love. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH9ivB-eTnE&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

[Dark Star]

I've been hearing a lot about this soprano Katherine Jenkins now that she's competing on Dancing with the Stars (and, yes, I too think its a travesty that she has to appear in such drivel to gain any kind of popular fame), so I searched her on YouTube to see what the fuss is about.

She's actually a very popular classical crossover singer in England.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

She's actually a very popular classical crossover singer in England.

"In England" being the key words, there. I guess I should've clarified and said fame in the USA. We're not in the habit of making opera or classical artists well known sales, unless it's Yo-Yo Ma.

[stlukesguild]

Unfortunately, Katherine Jenkins' finest "assets" are not to be found in her singing:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jp66PZgtEfY/T2gT-TXtWfI/AAAAAAAAADM/WS22yAD_Eqw/s1600/Katherine+Jenkins+Weight+And+Height.jpg

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/39092767/Katherine+Jenkins+katherinejenkins687549656.jpg

http://greenobles.com/data_images/katherine-jenkins/katherine-jenkins-03.jpg

A female equivalent to Andrea Bocelli.

[Emil Miller]

I gave a listen to the Zubin Mehta recording of Mahler's 2nd Symphony today...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41EB10MGE7L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Damn! That thin was played at a white heat. Absolutely stunning. It was one of those musical experiences that left me so drained afterwards that I could only sit in silence for a while. When I eventually popped Vasily Petrenko's recording of Shostakovitch' 6th and 12th into the CD player it seemed so anti-climactic that I'll definitely need to give it another listen later... under different circumstances. Brian... you would surely love Mehta's performance. All fire and drama... no holds barred>

Got to agree, and although the sound quality on YouTube isn't good, it's an incredible performance. Those last bars are so powerful they seem to sweep one into eternity; which I guess is what Mahler intended. Mehta was also fortunate in having Ludwig and Cotrubas as solo singers as they were both out of the very top drawer at the time of recording.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Unfortunately, Katherine Jenkins' finest "assets" are not to be found in her singing:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jp66PZgtEfY/T2gT-TXtWfI/AAAAAAAAADM/WS22yAD_Eqw/s1600/Katherine+Jenkins+Weight+And+Height.jpg

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/39092767/Katherine+Jenkins+katherinejenkins687549656.jpg

http://greenobles.com/data_images/katherine-jenkins/katherine-jenkins-03.jpg

A female equivalent to Andrea Bocelli.
Why? What's wrong with her singing? I don't know that person you named....

[stlukesguild]

Like the singer I mentioned, Andrea Bocelli... or Sarah Brightman... Jenkin's is a classical cross-over artist... or what is referred to in the classical world as a "Popera singer". As a pop singer, her abilities are more than adequate. Within the world of classical vocalists she is seriously lacking. First she is wholly dependent upon the microphone. The real opera singer must be able to project regardless of where she is in the theater or on stage... or what she is expected to do in terms of acting:

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

Jenkins is then limited... from what I have heard of her... to an easier, less demanding repertoire. It is more than doubtful that she has the stamina to pull off a heroic role such as demanded by Wagner or Richard Strauss. And certainly she has shown no ability to perform one of the roles that demand a degree of vocal pyrotechnics. Just watch as the brilliant Diana Damrau tears up one of the most difficult arias ever composed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvuKxL4LOqc

Seriously, Jenkins could probably be quite good at some secondary, less demanding roles... or certainly as part of the chorus or a vocal group. As it stands now she's dependent upon the microphone, added reverb, schmaltzy saccharine settings, and autotune, which uses computer software to alter the pitch in vocal performances (originally intended to disguise off-key inaccuracies, allowing vocal tracks to be perfectly tuned despite originally being slightly off-key... employed by many pop singers of limited vocal abilities).

If Jenkins was truly serious about becoming an opera singer, she would do well to focus more on classical vocals as opposed to all the pop music... but one cannot blame her... the path she has taken will undoubtedly result in far greater success than if she were to focus on a classical music career. I think a lot of classical fans are irritated by the manner in which she is marketed by her PR and idiotic TV commentators as a brilliant opera singer although she has never once sang in an opera. At the same time, she has made dismissive comments toward critics suggesting that she is bringing opera to a new audience (in other words, bringing pseudo-opera to an audience that doesn't like opera) and making snide remarks about true classical vocalists... while repeatedly stating that when her voice matures (she's in her 30s now) she wants to sing opera at La Scala. The reality is that if she were serious, she'd be singing in the chorus... or in smaller regional theaters.

Now here is Jenkins performing O mio babbino caro. The performance is mediocre... not bad... although her use of vibrato is ridiculous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lJ9oFzMVU0

Compare with Anna Netrebko... who is far from the finest at the Italian repertoire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-4TSWg2h3w&feature=related

Another truly fine example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuYQ9KRJms&feature=related

Now I can appreciate that Jenkins is a real looker... but then again Opolais (see above) wasn't bad... and Netrebko in her prime was an absolute stunner:

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

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Okay, totally get where you're coming from. And I do agree . . . Jenkins doesn't really compare to the examples you gave.

Out of curiosity (and I ask this because I suspect you enjoy making such lists as I do perusing them), who are the best opera singers right now, make and female? I've watched a few operas, but I haven't really learned the "who's who," if you will, of the opera world. The only contemporary name I know of is Placido Domingo. I would know a few others if I saw there names, and I'm definitely better at recognizing a singer by their face (I probably know 20 or so that I would go, "Oh yeah, I remember him/her."

And, if you feel like it, who were the best of the past? I know Pavarotti was just awesome. I also know of a woman named Reneta Tebaldi, but that's only because her name has been mentioned on Frasier.

I've noticed with opera I really don't have a refined ear at all. I've been pretty impressed by every opera singer I've seen (though, all the operas I've watched have been recorded or simulcast from The Met, and I doubt many slouches get to perform there)--hell, I'm usually blown away by them--but then I'll look up reviews and read so-and-so was off or so-and-so was weak, and I think, really? They sounded good to me.

[Dark Star]

I've noticed with opera I really don't have a refined ear at all. I've been pretty impressed by every opera singer I've seen (though, all the operas I've watched have been recorded or simulcast from The Met, and I doubt many slouches get to perform there)--hell, I'm usually blown away by them--but then I'll look up reviews and read so-and-so was off or so-and-so was weak, and I think, really? They sounded good to me.

This is not surprising. The reality of the professional opera world is that standards are so high that anyone who 'makes it' will be quite talented, even if individual performances are mediocre. As a result of this, many of the flaws present in a particular performance require a trained eye and ear (and extensive knowledge of the repertoire) that neither you or I possess.

Two names come to mind off the top of my head for past greats:

Hans Hotter (beautiful, powerful baritone) and the Wagnerian soprano Birgite Nilsson, though I should note that her voice is not particularly accessible. She is very powerful and that will take some getting used to, but the effort is worth it.

Edit: I'm not going to bother arguing over whether she is among the greatest or not, but Nuria Rial is a fine, living soprano that is worth your time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-eocdsRVRE&feature=related

She ain't bad looking, either...:biggrin5:

[stlukesguild]

Among the finest living and performing female singers you would have to include:

Cecilia Bartoli
Angela Gheorghiu
Anja Harteros
Anna Netrebko
Anne Sofie von Otter
Christina Schäfer
Danielle de Niese
Dawn Upshaw
Deborah Voigt
Diana Damrau
Edita Gruberova
Elina Garanca
Joyce DiDonato
Kristine Opolais
Natalie Dessay
Patricia Petibon
Renée Fleming
Vesselina Kasarova
Vivica Genaux
Veronique Gens
Magdalena Kozena
Sandrine Piau
Waltraud Meier
Mariella Devia
Nina Stemme
Camilla Nylund
Bernarda Fink
Karina Gauvin
Christine Schäfer

The names in bold are those singers who I am quite familiar with.

Older (retired or diseased) female singers:

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Lucia Popp
Joan Sutherland
Maria Callas
Kiri Te Kanawa
Montserrat Caballé
Renata Tebaldi
Victoria de los Angeles
Mirella Freni
Shirley Virrett
Christa Ludwig
Ileana Cotrubas
Leonie Rysanek
Astrid Varnay
Barbara Hendricks
Elly Ameling
Maureen Forrester
Lisa della Casa
Mady Mesple
Elizabeth Grummer
Rita Streich
Jessye Norman
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson
Leontyne Price
Frederica von Stade
Leyla Gencer
Lotte Lehmann
Teresa Berganza
Marilyn Horne
Katia Ricciarelli
Galina Vishnevskaya
Pilar Lorengar
Regine Crespin
Renata Scotto
Kathleen Ferrier
Kathleen Battle
Janet Baker
Irmgard Seefried
Kirsten Flagstad
Teresa Stratas
Gundula Janowitz
SENA JURINAC

Among the finest living/performing male singers you might include:

Placido Domingo (still performing at 71!)
Bryn Terfel
Philippe Jaroussky
Juan Diego Florez
Thomas Hampson
Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Jonas Kaufmann
Roberto Alagna
Thomas Quasthoff
Andreas Scholl
Rolando Villazon
Bejun Mehta
Matthias Goerne
Ian Bostridge
Simon Keenlyside

Male Singers from the past:

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Hans Hotter
Tito Gobbi
Nicolai Gedda
Beniamino Gigli
Fritz Wunderlich
Jussi Björling
Franco Correlli
Hermann Prey
Peter Schreier
Peter Pears
Lauritz Melchior
Wolfgang Windgassen
Luciano Pavarotti
Jon Vickers
Robert Merrill
Jose Carreras
Richard Tauber
Gérard Souzay
Léopold Simoneau
Cesare Siepi
Walter Taussig
Samuel Ramey
Alfredo Kraus
Pavel Lisitsian
Alfred Deller
Richard Tucker
Mario del Monaco

Undoubtedly I've forgotten any number of worthy singers. Your best bet is looking at the names that appear frequently in the leading roles in the recordings of operas on the major labels... especially EMI, DG (Deutsche Grammophon), Decca, etc...

Anyone serious interested in learning more about opera might explore this forum:

http://operalively.com/forums/forum.php

[stlukesguild]

I've noticed with opera I really don't have a refined ear at all. I've been pretty impressed by every opera singer I've seen (though, all the operas I've watched have been recorded or simulcast from The Met, and I doubt many slouches get to perform there)--hell, I'm usually blown away by them--but then I'll look up reviews and read so-and-so was off or so-and-so was weak, and I think, really? They sounded good to me.

I think there's something about opera... this unique art form that combines theater and music... that brings out the most fiercely passionate supporters and critics. Indeed, in no other field of classical music have I come across such brutal criticism. There are those who are absolute acolytes of Maria Callas who will spit out the most vicious critiques of any challenger... however brilliant: Joan Sutherland, Birgit Nilsson, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. There are fans of contemporary singers who are equally brutal... merciless in their criticism of any singer excepting that with whom they are obsessed. Renee Fleming fans will post comments on YouTube videos calling Anna Netrebko a "slvt", or Angela Gheorghiu a "wh-re" (although Gheorgiu does deserve her nickname, 'Draculette':lol:). There are also those who will argue to the death as to the superiority of some singer who reached her peak in 1917... when recording technology was less than ideal. At the same time... as Dark Star suggests... the highly-trained listeners are able to pick up on things that the rest of the audience will miss. They catch the slightest missed note... the poor enunciation or pronunciation. I was listening to this show on the radio once when they played about 15 seconds of a selection of 10 different singers performing the same aria. The experts were able to identify almost all of the singers with little or no real effort. I was absolutely flabbergasted... but then again... I probably have an eye for paintings that is quite similarly developed.

[Lokasenna]

That's a great list Luke, and there are quite a few on there I haven't heard of but am going to explore! I was wondering, though, whether your soprano list ought to include Dame Felicity Lott and (perhaps to a lesser degree) Dorothea Röschmann. Also, as a denizen of Durham University, I feel obliged to recommend Sir Thomas Allen to the list of male singers!

[stlukesguild]

Certainly Felicity Lott belongs on the list. Dorothea Röschmann? I can't say as I'm not familiar with her... although in no way would I suggest that this is an all-inclusive list. Classical music is so broad and there are some many genres which each have their great singers who often specialize in a given repertoire. I think now of Michael Chance... another great singer I forgot. You also have vocal groups which specialize: the Anonymous 4, the Gothic Voices, the Deller Consort, the Hilliard Ensemble, the Tallis Scholars, Sequentia, etc...

[Lokasenna]

A sad day for music lovers... Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has died, at the venerable age of 86.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18118722

One of the greatest voices of the 20th century, and who leaves behind a tremendous legacy to the musical world.

[stlukesguild]

I just happened upon this news myself. Honestly, I did not know that he was still alive. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest singers. I would be hard-pressed to think of a single singer who appears on more recordings in my collection. RIP:sad:

[lawpark]

Recently, I have discovered a very charming Mozart Violin Sonata K377.

[Emil Miller]

Lang Lang gets a lot of criticism on You Tube for his behaviour when performing, often from people who don't play the piano themselves, but he is an amazingly dynamic performer. In this performance, I doubt that even the composer could have given a better rendering. Total confidence and control with an amazing technique brilliantly adapted to this showpiece concerto that dazzled the audience. My first contact of this work was when I was very young and I bought Rubenstein's recording but it doesn't live up to Lang's stunning live performance.

http://youtu.be/8yE3Dz0-koA

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

It's hard to tell if he's genuinely being swept away by the music in the way he acts, or if he's putting on a show. I'm thinking it's more of the latter, but I don't see what's wrong with that. He's a showman, good for him. If he sucked it'd be another issue, but he's obviously excellent. And as to what YouTube commenters say, who cares? They are one of the poorest representations of mankind one can come across.

[stlukesguild]

Rubenstein... who was the master of Chopin, Brahms, and Schumann... was probably not ever the best man for Liszt... or at least not the more exhibitionist side of Liszt. He might have been suited to perform the Années de pèlerinage... but then again, Wilhelm Kempff plays these exquisitely. This particular repertoire truly demands a virtuoso and theatrical showman... someone closer to Van Cliburn, Sviatoslav Richter, Georges Cziffra... or especially Krystian Zimerman and the incomparable Marc-Andre Hamelin. Lang Lang is obviously a first-rate piano virtuoso and Liszt may just be the perfect repertoire for him. I do suspect, as usual, that Emil/Brian is too easily swayed by the visual theatricality of the performance... but I can excuse him for this as I have to admit that I have been equally seduced by operatic performances of Anna Netrebko, Kristine Opolais, and Elīna Garanča among others.

There's a story told by one of Rostropovitch's students about a brilliant young virtuoso who was studying with the great Russian cellist. After flawlessly executing an extremely difficult piece, Rostropovitch scowled... and then told the student: "Imagine you have in your hands the most exquisite suitcase. It is made of the finest leather and calves-skin, and fixed with the most marvelous metal clasps and hinges. Can you imagine it?" The student stuttered, "Y... yes!" "Here... take it!" Rostropovitch commanded. The student acted as if he were taking the suitcase. "Now... open it." He commanded. The student obeyed... acting as if he were opening a suitcase. "What do you see inside?" After a pause, the student replied... "N...nothing." Sitting back, the great cellist intoned, "Exactly... and you are like that suitcase. Outside all glitter and virtuosity and show... but inside... there is nothing."

Lang Lang, may just be the real thing. However, there have been endless young virtuosos who have come and gone because they have not been able to dig deeper into the music. To survive over the long haul, he will need to be able to bring something special... something unique to the field. It is questionable whether we need yet another flashy virtuoso performing the same repertoire that has been recorded brilliantly endless times before. Of course there will always be a demand for such performers live, and just as Anna Netrebko may hold up more in DVDs of live performances than in recordings, so Lang Lang may become more known through his videos than his records.

For the time being, I'll suspend judgment. I will note that he is making some attempt to dig deeper into the music. Recently, DG released this disc:

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_51LOX2KUVRL_SS400_.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=51LOX2KUVRL_SS400_.jpg)

Here, Lang Lang performs with two musicians who have long and towering reputations upon their respective instruments. Lang Lang appears to have learned a degree of restraint... finesse... and an ability to work in a group setting... with equals. Reviews for this, his first recording of chamber music, have been quite solid. Perhaps DG will be able to guide Lang Lang's career in such a manner that he doesn't burn out as simply one more young virtuoso.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Would you say Yo-Yo Ma is someone who's been able to dig deeper and bring something deeper to the field than just another virtuoso? I would say yes.

[Charles Darnay]

Would you say Yo-Yo Ma is someone who's been able to dig deeper and bring something deeper to the field than just another virtuoso? I would say yes.

I don't know if he is deeper or even a better player than all else, but he is so happy and full of energy when he plays that it is hard not to pick up on it when listening

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I know, but I was wondering if he has reached that second level by StLuke's standards due to all his work in fusion genres, i.e., that he's gone beyond just being a good performer, like Lang Lang's current status.

[Lokasenna]

Lang Lang is an excellent pianist, but I must admit I feel like he plays up his expressions. I'm always much more impressed by musicians who can inject fire and passion into the music with very minimal physical expression.

For example, I recently had the pleasure of going to a concert conducted by Frans Bruggen (which rather surprised me, as I thought he'd been dead for some time): the programme was Strauss's Metamorphosen, Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto and Mozart's Jupiter symphony. Bruggen, elderly and very frail, was brought on stage in a wheelchair, and had to be helped onto his seat on the podium by the first violin. His performance, however, was indescribable. During Metamorphosen, there were long periods when he didn't even move: his touch was light but purposeful, controlled but with no unnecessary ornamentation. I have no hesitation in calling it the best rendition of Metamorphosen I have ever heard, recorded or live: Bruggen penetrated right to the heart of the matter, drawing out the incredible layers of pathos in the music with consumate skill. But then, for the finale of the Mozart (of which I would again say it was the best performance I've ever heard), with only small and careful movements, he worked the orchestra up into state of Bacchic fury that was incredible to observe: intense, fierce and passionate.

It was an incredible night, and he gave a performance that put other conductors I've seen, many of whom like to dance and cavort about their podium, into the shade.

Anyway, here's a little something I'm listening to at the moment. It's not often a piece of music makes me laugh out loud, but Ernő Dohnányi's Variations on a Nursery Tune is laugh-out-loud funny in places, particularly around the 3:30 mark. In the words of the composer, it is a piece "for the enjoyment of humorous people and for the annoyance of others."

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

[Emil Miller]

I agree that Lang Lang has invited criticism by his behaviour at the keyboard and it does seem to be lessening now. However, it's worth remembering that Liszt was also a great showman who had similar criticism thrown at him during his early years. I don't think that Lang's behaviour is strictly attributable to showmanship but it's a kind of natural exuberance that one sees in some other oriental players, it's as though they cant wait to get to the piano and start playing. Naturally there is a certain reserve shown among Western performers that is part of a tradition of showing respect for the composer and the music, but this music is relatively new to the Orient and the enthusiasm is noticeable in the playing which makes some western performances today seem rather tired.
I have watched music students playing in China under the watchful eye of their teacher and their command of the piano or violin is undeniable. Earlier oriental performers such as Fou T'song and Mitsuko Uchida spent much of their lives in the West and grew up in that tradition of looking serious at the keyboard but Lang Lang's generation had little or none of this conditioning and many seem to be entranced by their own ability to play this great music to such a high standard.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Lang Lang is an excellent pianist, but I must admit I feel like he plays up his expressions. I'm always much more impressed by musicians who can inject fire and passion into the music with very minimal physical expression.

For example, I recently had the pleasure of going to a concert conducted by Frans Bruggen (which rather surprised me, as I thought he'd been dead for some time): the programme was Strauss's Metamorphosen, Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto and Mozart's Jupiter symphony. Bruggen, elderly and very frail, was brought on stage in a wheelchair, and had to be helped onto his seat on the podium by the first violin. His performance, however, was indescribable. During Metamorphosen, there were long periods when he didn't even move: his touch was light but purposeful, controlled but with no unnecessary ornamentation. I have no hesitation in calling it the best rendition of Metamorphosen I have ever heard, recorded or live: Bruggen penetrated right to the heart of the matter, drawing out the incredible layers of pathos in the music with consumate skill. But then, for the finale of the Mozart (of which I would again say it was the best performance I've ever heard), with only small and careful movements, he worked the orchestra up into state of Bacchic fury that was incredible to observe: intense, fierce and passionate.

It was an incredible night, and he gave a performance that put other conductors I've seen, many of whom like to dance and cavort about their podium, into the shade.

Anyway, here's a little something I'm listening to at the moment. It's not often a piece of music makes me laugh out loud, but Ernő Dohnányi's Variations on a Nursery Tune is laugh-out-loud funny in places, particularly around the 3:30 mark. In the words of the composer, it is a piece "for the enjoyment of humorous people and for the annoyance of others."

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

Your description of the conductor you saw reminds me of this video of Stravinsky conducting The Firebird:

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

He's not flashy . . . he doesn't move much at all, actually, but when he does it's that much more powerful. When it kicks in and he's getting into it, you know he's really getting into it.

[stlukesguild]

Would you say Yo-Yo Ma is someone who's been able to dig deeper and bring something deeper to the field than just another virtuoso? I would say yes.

At his best, Yo Yo Ma has been able to produce some marvelous recordings. I especially give him credit for exploring and promoting a broad range of music... everything from Bach to the film composer Morricone (Think Clint Eastwood's classic "Spaghetti Westerns") to non-Western music to the Tangos of Piazzolla. I had the chance to see him perform the entire Bach cello suites live, and he was marvelous. I'm awaiting a third... mature... recording of this work. His first recording was solid... but a bit too middle-of-the-road in comparison to the finest performances (Rostropovitch, Pierre Fournier, Casals, Steven Isserlis, and Janos Starker).

Lang Lang may join Yo Yo Ma, Mitsuko Uchida, Sumi Jo, and Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan as one of the great Asian additions to classical music. This is not to ignore the composers Toru Takemitsu, Toshio Hosokawa, Keiko Abe, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takashi Yoshimatsu, etc...

[Lokasenna]

I've not been on LitNet much recently, mostly because of the ridiculous number of conferences I'm doing this summer (six of them, four of them being back-to-back, and I'm giving papers at five of them).

Anyhow, one of the conferences at my home university finished today - and our Chancellor dropped in unexpectedly to see what all our work is about. It's the first time I've met him in person, so it was rather nice. He's very nice too.

Here he is, singing some Schubert (as arranged by Berlioz):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTYqFzps0i4&feature=related

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

So, is singing opera a pastime for him, then? He sounds quite good.

[Lokasenna]

So, is singing opera a pastime for him, then? He sounds quite good.

Well, he's pretty much retired now, but Sir Thomas Allen has been one of the finest classical baritones of the last generation - he's a famous opera star. Have a look at his entry on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Allen_%28baritone%29).

Here's another nice piece of his, singing one of John Ireland's songs:

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

[Emil Miller]

Well, he's pretty much retired now, but Sir Thomas Allen has been one of the finest classical baritones of the last generation - he's a famous opera star. Have a look at his entry on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Allen_%28baritone%29).

Here's another nice piece of his, singing one of John Ireland's songs:

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

I think I saw him sing Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen at the Royal Festival Hall some years ago. He was certainly one of the top line British singers in his day.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Well, he's pretty much retired now, but Sir Thomas Allen has been one of the finest classical baritones of the last generation - he's a famous opera star. Have a look at his entry on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Allen_%28baritone%29).

Here's another nice piece of his, singing one of John Ireland's songs:

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

Wow. So, is being Chancelor his pastime, then?

[Darcy88]

I'm still obsessed with Wagner. Mozart too, but mostly Wagner. Such a fascinating personality. So many positives and negatives. A great victor and great victim.......victor in the realm of art......victim in the realm of ideology. I can't get enough of Wagner. I love him and hate him and his music quite simply puts me on fire. That Tristan und Isolde prelude rattles me like nothing else. To me its better than drugs or sex. Lohengrin is amazing too. I love all his stuff. I love listening and watching and just absorbing the immense breadth of his art. There is so much to it. Its medieval, its Christian, its archaic, its modern, its so chalk full of paradox and power.

Anyway. If you can't tell......I am into Wagner. The good and the bad.

[Lokasenna]

Wow. So, is being Chancelor his pastime, then?

I suppose you could say that!

It's really only a figurehead postion given to someone as an honour by the University, but some Chancellors take their role seriously and are very active - I'm glad to say Sir Thomas is so far proving to be one of the good ones!

[Darcy88]

Half the time I'm conscious I have this tune buzzing my head. I find its a good one, really sets the mood for half the things I do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSY4Yi2ypno

[stlukesguild]

Now this was absolutely delicious... and oh so fun!

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_51lCu8t6GsL.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=51lCu8t6GsL.jpg)

An absolutely irreverent and outlandish retelling of the Orpheus and Euridice tale... complete with parodies of Gluck's famous aria, Che farò senza Euridice? from his opera, Orfeo ed Euridice...

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

an absurd "seduction" scene in which Zeus takes the form of a fly...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi6SDINpeTw

and of course the famous can-can:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38lIfgWIg8o

As Jules Noriac wrote in the review in Le Figaro, the day after the premier:

"Unheard of,
Splendid,
Outrageous,
Graceful,
Charming,
Witty,
Amusing,
Successful,
Perfect,
Melodius.

If despite all that you are not entranced by Orphée, you have only yourself to blame..."

All I might add to Noriac's list is the word "naughty"... for the work is surely a bit "naughty"... sexy... is the manner of fin de siecle Paris. I will most certainly be picking up Minkowski's other performances of Offenbach's operettas:

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_51Soi1tfIEL.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=51Soi1tfIEL.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_51JLjUnC0aL.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=51JLjUnC0aL.jpg)

Beside which... I gotta admire Offenbach simply for his ability to have pissed off Wagner. Much as I love Wagner, I gotta wish that he could have loosened up now an then and given us something as absurd as Orphée aux Enfers.

[Charles Darnay]

I recently listened to La Belle Helene. While I don't think it's as good as Orféo, the music is very playful, and enjoyable. It seems to be more a satire on the opera form than anything else.

[stlukesguild]

Which "Helen" opera is it a parody of? Gluck again (Paride ed Elena)? Or simply the entire Helen of Troy narrative? Strauss has a Helen opera as well, Die Ägyptische Helena. It was initially intended as a comedy but then became a tragedy... and tragic it is... tragically bad. Perhaps the worst libretto ever penned... which is a loss considering that Strauss wrote some rather lovely music for it.

[Charles Darnay]

Which "Helen" opera is it a parody of? Gluck again (Paride ed Elena)? Or simply the entire Helen of Troy narrative? Strauss has a Helen opera as well, Die Ägyptische Helena. It was initially intended as a comedy but then became a tragedy... and tragic it is... tragically bad. Perhaps the worst libretto ever penned... which is a loss considering that Strauss wrote some rather lovely music for it.

Gluck's, given the late Baroque tropes

[RicMisc]

Half the time I'm conscious I have this tune buzzing my head. I find its a good one, really sets the mood for half the things I do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSY4Yi2ypno

Love this, so so so much!!

[stlukesguild]

Flash Mobs and Classical music are quite fun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrEk06XXaAw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_561785&feature=iv&src_vid=mrEk06XXaAw&v=gww9_S4PNV0#t=2s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAXAs03xsI8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRKKmY5yCv0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBaHPND2QJg

These surely do much to undermine the notion that "classical music" is not for everybody.

[Emil Miller]

Flash Mobs and Classical music are quite fun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrEk06XXaAw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_561785&feature=iv&src_vid=mrEk06XXaAw&v=gww9_S4PNV0#t=2s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAXAs03xsI8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRKKmY5yCv0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBaHPND2QJg

These surely do much to undermine the notion that "classical music" is not for everybody.

Nice to watch western civilisation in it's darkest hour striking back against the trash merchants of post WWII, although the baton has already been passed on to the orientals who are the future and not only in music.

[stlukesguild]

More of Emil's imitations of Henny Penny/Chicken Little.:willy_nilly:

[stlukesguild]

Poor Emil will probably slit his wrists when he comes to fully realize that the non-Western cultures are quickly absorbing all he most "loves" about Western popular culture and are far from being some last bastion of an illusory "high culture" and sophistication:

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_gorillaz.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=gorillaz.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_yuji_diviner_lg.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=yuji_diviner_lg.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_miss-ko-2-murakami-0908-lg-75230041.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=miss-ko-2-murakami-0908-lg-75230041.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_727b.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=727b.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_WangGuangyi.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=WangGuangyi.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_puppy2Yo****oroNara.gif (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=puppy2Yo****oroNara.gif)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_ode1.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=ode1.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_ling_jian_untitled.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=ling_jian_untitled.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_IU_SartorialAnarchy__72IkeUhde.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=IU_SartorialAnarchy__72IkeUhde.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_Guangyi2.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=Guangyi2.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_feng_zhengjie_print.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=feng_zhengjie_print.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_FengZhengjie.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=FengZhengjie.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_2884083032_6eb925a7c2_b1-e1295874608608.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=2884083032_6eb925a7c2_b1-e1295874608608.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_2792415109_c22b7834aa.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=2792415109_c22b7834aa.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_YueMinjun_Kungfu_Lithograph_58Editions_2006.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=YueMinjun_Kungfu_Lithograph_58Editions_200 6.jpg)

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8284/7618040456_a596914e0f_n.jpg (http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8284/7618040456_a596914e0f_b.jpg)

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8017/7618055022_a5565381f5_n.jpg (http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8017/7618055022_a5565381f5.jpg)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKxebYpt95Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuF2tNl-nRQ

Emil's living in an "Oriental" fantasy that is about as real as the orientalist fantasies of 19th century painters and writers.

[Emil Miller]

As I recall it, Chicken Lilttle thought the world was collapsing because an acorn fell on her head. It's interesting to note that Western administrations, of whatever complexion, consider the economic meltdown in the US and Europe and China's enormous economic strength to be somewhat larger than an acorn.
On those occasions when I have been in China, I have noticed Western meretriciousness but on nothing like the scale that Europe has absorbed since WWII and it's important to remember that China has a form of government that will, when it suits them, eradicate it because mass produced decadence, no matter how profitable in the short term, runs contrary to their long term objectives.
Moreover, as China's economic and military power increases, other countries in the region will inevitably come under its sway and it's likely that Western excess will decline as traditional values begin to reassert themselves.
In short, they will keep what's best of Western civilisation and ditch the rest.

[stlukesguild]

it's important to remember that China has a form of government that will, when it suits them, eradicate it because mass produced decadence, no matter how profitable in the short term, runs contrary to their long term objectives.

Now that's something positive to look forward to: censorship. How did that work out back during the Cultural Revolution when it was not only rock music and Hollywood films but also Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart that were eradicated as signs of Western decadence contrary to their objectives?

You are also assuming that those in charge... and their children... have not themselves become enamored of Western decadence. But you can always dream, can't you?

[Emil Miller]

Now that's something positive to look forward to: censorship. How did that work out back during the Cultural Revolution when it was not only rock music and Hollywood films but also Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart that were eradicated as signs of Western decadence contrary to their objectives?

You are also assuming that those in charge... and their children... have not themselves become enamored of Western decadence. But you can always dream, can't you?

I recently checked out David Cameron's choice of Desert Island Discs and there were a smattering of pop groups included. Now of course, he might just be pandering to the masses on whose votes he relies but the Chinese leadership doesn't have to and I can't somehow imagine Hu Jintao hip hopping with other members of the Central Committee.
I also don't see many Chinese pop performers on the world stage whereas there are an increasing number of world class classical performers playing everything from Bach to Bartok it would not be to China's advantage to ban such an important cultural advertisement.

In 1957 the Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa made a Japanese version of MacBeth which received international acclaim. T.S.Eliot considered it one of the finest films ever made.
Meanwhile back at the ranch...

http://youtu.be/9ru028GnTHU

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Why is the world before WWII so much better than the world after, exactly?

[stlukesguild]

The past always looks far more rosy when viewed through rose-colored glasses.

[stlukesguild]

I've been exploring the "Classical Era" in a bit more depth. This is the period dominated... at least in the present... by Mozart, Haydn, and young Beethoven... but like every musical era, there were many other composers who achieved marvelous things... in spite of the fact that they have been reduced to little more than a footnote today.

Luigi Boccherini is known mostly for his quintets... often for guitar and strings, his works for cello... and especially for his minuet...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42sTUQKdvcs

... a work almost as overplayed as Vivaldi's Four Seasons... which says absolutely nothing about the merits of either.

Beyond this quite gallant Rococo bit of ear-candy, Boccherini composed some other marvelous music. Jordi Savall performs several of Boccherini's quintets to great effect:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dmWAve3Pvk&feature=fvsr

Perhaps even more interesting... at least to me with my penchant for vocal music... is Boccherini's Stabat Mater. Where the Stabat Mater is commonly scored for full orchestra and choir, Boccherini offers instead a rather intimate version for soloist and string quintet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTxlqiy_7Zs

[Emil Miller]

Why is the world before WWII so much better than the world after, exactly?

I imagine that for some people it was and for others it wasn't. I wouldn't know because I wasn't there. I don't see the relevance of your question within the context of this thread.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

As opposed to the relevance of this post?


As I recall it, Chicken Lilttle thought the world was collapsing because an acorn fell on her head. It's interesting to note that Western administrations, of whatever complexion, consider the economic meltdown in the US and Europe and China's enormous economic strength to be somewhat larger than an acorn.
On those occasions when I have been in China, I have noticed Western meretriciousness but on nothing like the scale that Europe has absorbed since WWII and it's important to remember that China has a form of government that will, when it suits them, eradicate it because mass produced decadence, no matter how profitable in the short term, runs contrary to their long term objectives.
Moreover, as China's economic and military power increases, other countries in the region will inevitably come under its sway and it's likely that Western excess will decline as traditional values begin to reassert themselves.
In short, they will keep what's best of Western civilisation and ditch the rest.

[Charles Darnay]

When it comes to non-Mozartian Classical period music, my favourite is probably G.B Viotti - who I discovered fairly recently.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJpgs7RhCHs

He reminds me of Hayden if Hayden has a bit more vitality in him - I find Hayden excellent background music, and very pleasant, but I can rarely sit and listen to a Hayden symphony.

Luigi Cherubini's Requiem in c is also a great work from the Classical period.

[Emil Miller]

As opposed to the relevance of this post?

The post was in reply to one submitted by stlukes but I'll make it easier for you as you appear to have missed the point.

I don't see the relevance of your question within the context of this discussion.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I accept your apology, Emil.

[Emil Miller]

I accept your apology, Emil.

There's a good boy but you still haven't answered the question:

What is the relevance of your question within the context of this discussion?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

There's no reason for me to answer that. You screwed up with your first question. No do overs. Since the discussion had no relevance to the thread, I hardly see why I need to justify the relevance of a comment made pertaining to an already irrelevant topic.

[stlukesguild]

OK... returning again from our digressions to the subject at hand:

Flash Mobs and Classical music are quite fun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrEk06XXaAw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_561785&feature=iv&src_vid=mrEk06XXaAw&v=gww9_S4PNV0#t=2s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAXAs03xsI8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRKKmY5yCv0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBaHPND2QJg

These surely do much to undermine the notion that "classical music" is not for everybody.

[stlukesguild]

Currently I've been listening to some of the most outrageously daring baroque music... composers who were far ahead of Schoenberg when it came to employing dissonance for expressive purposes:

Jean-Féry Rebel (1666~1747):

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

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644~1704):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9DJpaxT7wg

Wait until you get to the second movement... absolutely mind-blowing for the time!:yikes:

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Those flash mobs are pretty cool. I think the dancing ones, while kind of neat, are pretty dumb and nothing more than a novelty act. I wouldn't stop and watch them, that's for sure. I think it can be easily argued that the people doing these classical music flash mobs are really doing a public service, exposing those to a bit of high sculpture and music they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. Who knows, maybe someone sees one of those and the seeds for a love of classical music are planted. I know I'd be pretty stoked to see one of those. Symphony ticket prices are outrageous, after all.

[Emil Miller]

There's no reason for me to answer that. You screwed up with your first question. No do overs. Since the discussion had no relevance to the thread, I hardly see why I need to justify the relevance of a comment made pertaining to an already irrelevant topic.

:lol: I really love this forum.

[Anton Hermes]

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644~1704):

Battalia a 10 in D major, C. 61 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9DJpaxT7wg)

Wonderful piece! A cinematic battle scene complete with soldiers drinking before the fight, a tense march, the dramatic conflict, and the mournful aftermath.

Though the second movement (in which several drinking songs are played simultaneously, ending in cacophony) predates the layered thematic experiments of Ives by 250 years, it's only a theatrical device. Biber's real innovations here are in string techniques: the players must strike the strings with the wood of the bow, snap them against the fingerboard, and weave paper between them to simulate martial drumming during the march movement.

[stlukesguild]

Don't forget Biber's use of special tuning... including crossing strings... as employed in his great Rosary (Mystery) Sonatas.

I agree, by the way, that Biber's layering of tunes... which results in a sort of chaotic dissonance... is largely a theatrical device... but I would suggest that this was the great value of dissonance whether employed by Biber, Gesualdo, Mozart, or others. I am reminded of the critic who suggested that the failure of Abstract Art wasn't the abandonment of illusion, but rather the abandonment of expressive distortion. That, in a way, strikes me as the failure of Schoenberg and his followers: the loss of the expressive possibilities of dissonance within the larger context of a tonal work.

[Anton Hermes]

Granted, the outrageously daring composers of the last century sound a lot different than the ones of Biber's day. It's all good (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_T9QdarI4g&feature=relmfu).

[OrphanPip]

I went to see the Montreal Symphony Orchestra on Tuesday, the theme of the night was Latin American composers.

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

[stlukesguild]

I just came across Arturo Marquez' Danzón Nº 2 on the classical radio here perhaps a month ago. I will certainly be saving that video... and perhaps picking up Dudamel's DG disc:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61l0AY4NL2L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

[Emil Miller]

Flawless performance of a great solo piano piece.

http://youtu.be/jPlte-4OTMw

[stlukesguild]

I am somewhat burned-out on Romanticism... or rather I should say I have been investing far more effort recently in exploring the music of other periods. At the present I have been digging deep into the Baroque era violin works which predate Bach's violin concertos and his brilliant Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin.

Among the composers I am listening to are Johann Paul Westhoff

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51mlNv2a6AL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Johann Jakob Walther:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51LEauQgETL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

the brilliant Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51NB6FJ72AL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Giuseppe Tartini:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51EYYF9DWYL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Arcangelo Corelli:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51dM2lle97L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Antonio Pandolfi:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/415DBRWGWVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Jean-Fery Rebel:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51M5ZSHHHYL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Jean Marie Leclair:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61t08sQFOAL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Johann Heinrich Schmelzer:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5188ZEv4-QL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Francesco Veracini:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51X-T%2Bcpu-L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

On the other hand... I have picked up a couple of Romantic era recordings lately. Liszt is a composer I have too long ignored. I just got this one today:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/415PZSM5BHL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Can't ask for a better combination for the Romantic music of Liszt than Richter and Kondrashin.

Then I was introduced to Richard Wetz recently and listened to the 3rd Symphony on Spotify. The third symphony is truly marvelous and powerful. As a Romantic era fan you should certainly check him out, Emil.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41X73R7H7JL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3QEEDa2WII

[Emil Miller]

Then I was introduced to Richard Wetz recently and listened to the 3rd Symphony on Spotify. The third symphony is truly marvelous and powerful. As a Romantic era fan you should certainly check him out, Emil.



Wetz is a composer where form is more noticeable than content and I agree with the reference to Bruckner in the Youtube comment section. I don't think it would appeal to many listeners except perhaps those who have a particular liking for Bruckner.

[stlukesguild]

Wetz is a composer where form is more noticeable than content and I agree with the reference to Bruckner in the Youtube comment section. I don't think it would appeal to many listeners except perhaps those who have a particular liking for Bruckner.

To a great extent the same can be said of Brahms. Bruckner, for all his aspirations and admiration of Wagner, was (like Brahms) tethered to the structural form of early Romanticism/late Classicism... in a word: Beethoven. To a great extent the same is true of the arch-Modernist, Arnold Schoenberg. For all his Romantic Wagnerian credentials, Schoenberg's developments owe far more to the formal structures of Brahms' chamber works. Perhaps that is why I prefer Berg of all the Second Viennese School. He is far more lyrical and one could imagine him evolving along the lines of something between Debussy and Richard Strauss has Schoenberg not gotten hold of him.

[Emil Miller]

Wetz is a composer where form is more noticeable than content and I agree with the reference to Bruckner in the Youtube comment section. I don't think it would appeal to many listeners except perhaps those who have a particular liking for Bruckner.

To a great extent the same can be said of Brahms. Bruckner, for all his aspirations and admiration of Wagner, was (like Brahms) tethered to the structural form of early Romanticism/late Classicism... in a word: Beethoven. To a great extent the same is true of the arch-Modernist, Arnold Schoenberg. For all his Romantic Wagnerian credentials, Schoenberg's developments owe far more to the formal structures of Brahms' chamber works. Perhaps that is why I prefer Berg of all the Second Viennese School. He is far more lyrical and one could imagine him evolving along the lines of something between Debussy and Richard Strauss has Schoenberg not gotten hold of him.

Brahms acknowledged his debt to Beethoven but I doubt that he would have had much time for Bruckner even though he also used massive orchestral forces.
It would be difficult to to imagine Bruckner producing anything as thrilling as this for example.

http://youtu.be/yb6qkZY6TLU

[prendrelemick]

The Sao Paulo SO are killing the Albert Hall tonight.

[Emil Miller]

The Sao Paulo SO are killing the Albert Hall tonight.

Nope, I have just been listening to the London Symphony Orchestra playing Tchaikovsky's 'Manfred' Symphonic poem conducted by Jurowski. It received tumultuous applause.

[Emil Miller]

The Sao Paulo SO are killing the Albert Hall tonight.

Actually the Sao Paulo SO performed at the proms 3 days ago under Maris Jansons, the main work being the New world Symphony by Dvorak.

[stlukesguild]

I take it you're not a Brucknerian, Emil. He was a composer I discovered on my own... in the classic Eugen Jochum recordings:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516wfyD3WOL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I will admit that as a composer he is very dense... and I think the same is true of Brahms. I really struggled with his symphonies until I heard John Eliot Gardiner's recordings which are far more "transparent".

Bruckner lacks the lyricism (and neurotic angst) of Mahler, the absolute mastery of orchestration and orchestral "colors" of Richard Strauss, or the insane and emotionally overwhelming genius of Richard Wagner... and certainly he cannot rival Brahms' breadth and depth... especially his chamber music and choral works... but he surely makes a 5th among these great late Romantics... every bit the equal to Sibelius or Grieg.

Herbert von Karajan makes this quite clear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CEiZ7DTVZ8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfjG1DhA8w&feature=relmfu

[Charles Darnay]

I think Bruckner at times rivals Mahler, at least when you compare their symphonies. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with any of Bruckner's other works beyond the symphonies. At their best, Mahler is better, but it is very hard to compete with Mahler's 2nd and 3rd symphonies.

[Emil Miller]

I take it you're not a Brucknerian, Emil. He was a composer I discovered on my own... in the classic Eugen Jochum recordings:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516wfyD3WOL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I will admit that as a composer he is very dense... and I think the same is true of Brahms. I really struggled with his symphonies until I heard John Eliot Gardiner's recordings which are far more "transparent".

Bruckner lacks the lyricism (and neurotic angst) of Mahler, the absolute mastery of orchestration and orchestral "colors" of Richard Strauss, or the insane and emotionally overwhelming genius of Richard Wagner... and certainly he cannot rival Brahms' breadth and depth... especially his chamber music and choral works... but he surely makes a 5th among these great late Romantics... every bit the equal to Sibelius or Grieg.

Herbert von Karajan makes this quite clear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CEiZ7DTVZ8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfjG1DhA8w&feature=relmfu

Bruckner's symphonies have sometimes been likened to gothic cathedrals as the structure is their most noticeable feature and it's on this point that I'm reminded of Sir Thomas Beecham's amusing comment that Elgar's 1st symphony was the musical equivalent of St Pancras Station.


http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/9177/240pxstpancrasrailwayst.jpg

[stlukesguild]

Really, the only important works that Bruckner composed beyond the symphonies were his choral works which are probably best represented in the classic recordings by Eugen Jochum (Perhaps THE great Brucknerian):

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61fqJ3AFZzL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61gh4MTOwRL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

... or in the marvelous recent set on Hyperion:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Q0CEYIQ2L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Of course, in his limitations Bruckner is rather similar to Mahler whose only works were symphonies... and song cycles that in most cases are not far removed from his symphonies. In my opinion, Mahler's masterpiece was Das Lied von der Erde.

It's because of Brahms greater breadth and his mastery in such a variety of forms (symphonies, choral works, chamber music, lieder, music for solo instrument, concertos, etc...) that I would give him the nod as the greater composer... although I think Richard Strauss' reputation will only continue to increase due to his mastery of orchestral music (the tone-poems and Alpine Symphony), the operas (a number of which are among the most frequently performed) and his wealth of lieder that goes well beyond the brilliant Four Last Songs.

[stlukesguild]

Bruckner's symphonies have sometimes been likened to gothic cathedrals as the structure is their most noticeable feature...

Bach's music has also frequently been compared to the Gothic cathedrals.

...and it's on this point that I'm reminded of Sir Thomas Beecham's amusing comment that Elgar's 1st symphony was the musical equivalent of St Pancras Station.

It could be worse... Schoenberg's work too often strikes me as the musical equivalent of the Brutalist concrete bunkers of Moshe Safdie for the Montreal Expo:

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_220a.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=220a.jpg)

[Emil Miller]

Bruckner's symphonies have sometimes been likened to gothic cathedrals as the structure is their most noticeable feature...

Bach's music has also frequently been compared to the Gothic cathedrals.

...and it's on this point that I'm reminded of Sir Thomas Beecham's amusing comment that Elgar's 1st symphony was the musical equivalent of St Pancras Station.

It could be worse... Schoenberg's work too often strikes me as the musical equivalent of the Brutalist concrete bunkers of Moshe Safdie for the Montreal Expo:

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_220a.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=220a.jpg)

Well Goethe likened architecture to frozen music, but in this day and age both music and architecture have, unfortunately, very different meanings to when he made the comparison.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Just a little find. If anyone wants to listen to a large selection of classical radio online, then you can download (for free) itunes. From here you can select from a fairly large body of radio stations in classical, jazz, blues and pretty much everything else really. In the classical section you can listen to things like the Mozart/Baroque/Opera/channel and things like that. Not bad at all.

Currently listening to the Mozart piano channel!

[stlukesguild]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61yLyB8A%2BsL._SS400_.jpg

This disc, featuring Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica includes music by Sibelius, Arvo Pärt, Raminta Šerkšnyté, Robert Schumann, Michael Nyman, Franz Schubert, Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer, Shostakovitch, Lera Auerbach, Piazzolla, Georgs Pelecis, and Alfred Schnittke. Kremer illuminates the thoughts behind the musical selection with the following (from the liner notes):

"Out of the depths I cry to you." Countless poets and musicians have used these timeless words from Psalm 130. I feel they are especially urgent in our time, when the world is afflicted with greed, corruption, and false prophets...

In today's world, oil is ... used to sustain tyrannical regimes, be it in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Myanmar, or Russia. Despite painting themselves as advocates of democracy, their rulers engage in Soviet-style suppression of free speech, the show trials, and presumption of guilt. In these Orwellian states everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. Drunk on oil, the worshipers of the golden calf seek to silence the opposition and build wall between peoples and states. Contrary to that, we, the worshipers of Art, believe it is our duty to build bridges and to stand up in support of those who are trying to build a more democratic society, those who are fighting for transparency and truth. Therefore, I would like to dedicate De Profundis to all those who refuse to be silenced, who understand that the real freedom is within us.

Yet my intention is not to make De Profundis a political statement, for politics represents only the surface of things, while the artists featured on this record affirm a deep-rooted personal expression that can resonate with anyone. For music, unlike authoritarian rulers, speaks with an outstretched hand, not with a clenched fist...

So, "out of the depths", these artists cry out for a better world, one that is not dominated by the superficiality of sales figures, ratings, self-promotion, and "small talk."...

Each of the twelve pieces selected for this album sends its own individual message to the listener... one that my colleagues and I have tried to illuminate. Now it is up to you, dear listener, to fuel your soul.

[stlukesguild]

I spent yesterday afternoon with a pair of 2-disc sets:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VM0dAu3mL._SS400_.jpg

This set features a number of Boccherini's symphonies, including "La casa del Diavolo"; the Stabat Mater, and the Quintet G. 328. The symphonies are all quite nice... but the Stabat Mater and the quintet are something truly special. The Stabat Mater is scored for a small chamber orchestra and solo vocalist. The work is quite beautiful... and uniquely intimate in comparison with Rossini's or Pergolesi's Stabat Mater. The quintet is equally striking... enough to motivate me to explore more of Boccherini's chamber works.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51NBvmT8jcL._SS400_.jpg

I have a good number of recordings by Yehudi Menuhin including the Bach violin concertos... but I just picked this set up for next to nothing... and it is worth far more than what I paid. Menuhin was still a teenager when he recorded this set... and yet they are played with such assurance and feeling. An excellent addition to Kremer, Szeryng, Grumiaux, and Milstein. The only other recordings I can imagine wanting are those of Heifitz and Rachel Podger. But not now.

*****

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51f85y4cToL._SS400_.jpg

This interpretation of the Stabat Mater is a world away from that by Boccherini which I played yesterday. Boccherini's work is deeply personal... intimate... heartfelt... scored for a solo vocalist (soprano) and small chamber ensemble. Rossini's Stabat Mater is clearly operatic... but what else would one expect of Rossini? Writing on his Petit messe solennelle, Rossini pondered, "Dear God, here it is finished, this poor little mass. Is this sacred music which I have written... or music of the Devil. I was born for opera buffa as you know..." Rossini might just as well have been speaking of the Stabat Mater. I am immediately struck at how "operatic" the second movement is:

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

The piece is fabulous... but seemingly suggests a swaggering character laden with braggadocio from an opera by Rossini (or Verdi). But the lyrics?

Her soul sighing
anguished and grieving
was pierced by a sword.

O, how sad and afflicted
was that blessed mother
of the Only-begotten,

who mourned and grieved
and trembled when she saw
the sufferings of her glorious son.

A bit of a disconnect between the music and the text? :lol:

[prendrelemick]

Crackin' bit of Mahler on Tonight. BBC 4



A proper conductor that.

[chrisvia]

Can anyone recommend pieces that are in the same vein as the first movement of Nielsen's 5th symphony? I've been listening to this lately, over and over, and I can't get enough of this beautiful structure. I'm sure I'll be asked to better articulate what I mean by "the same vein"; but I can do no better than to say: any other piece that comes to mind when you listen to this movement of Nielsen's symphony.

Thanks!

[stlukesguild]

It was a day for "light"... melody-laden opera/operettas:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HoP8rNC7L._SS400_.jpg

Richard Tauber was a singer of incredible natural fluidity... perfectly suited for Viennese operettas... which is what he was most known for. I have the marvelous Dutton recording of his songs/arias from Lehár. This disc featured less well-known composers of Viennese operettas (beyond Strauss, Lehár, Flotow, and Lortzing) including Oscar Straus, Robert Stolz, Emmerich Kalman, Paul Abraham, and Jaromir Weinberger.

*****

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51lHaIavWKL._SS400_.jpg

I played this... in the Jeffrey Tate recording... last night...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rnSBeBzgL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

...and was so blown away I had to play it again. I've actually owned Karajan's recording of Hänsel und Gretel for at least 5+ years... but for whatever reason never got around to listening to it. A huge loss on my part. For an opera often described as a folk opera/fairy-tale opera/children's opera, Hänsel und Gretel could not boast of a greater pedigree. The tale upon which the opera was based was first collected and given serious literary consideration by the Brothers Grimm. The tale was related to the brothers by a certain young girl by the name of Dörtchen Wild... who would become Mrs. Wilhelm Grimm.

Engelbert Humperdinck was a precocious protégé of Richard Wagner who had spent time at the "master's" side dutifully copying Parsifal. It was his sister, Adelheid Wette, who requested that Humperdinck set to music her children's play of Hänsel und Gretel. She was so delighted with the result, that she insisted her brother expand his efforts... and compose an entire opera. Humperdinck was not immediately thrilled with the request... after all, as a sworn Wagnerian, he took a lofty view of the operatic calling. What would Wagner think!? And what chance did such an undertaking have in competition with those upstart Italian operas with all their sex and violence passed off as social commentary?

Humperdinck's sister prevailed... luckily for us... and the opera was composed and set for production at the same theater in Weimar where Wagner's Lohengrin had premiered. The Kapellmeister who accepted the opera was none other than Richard Strauss. Sensing the importance of the event, Strauss engaged the distinguished conductor of the Munich Opera, Hermann Levi (Wagner's favorite) to conduct the premier. When the singer employed to perform Gretel took ill, the premier was postponed for a week... and Levi was no longer available... so Strauss conducted the opera himself.

Hänsel und Gretel is almost a magical achievement in its seeming simplicity... its child-like joy... its folk-like melodies... and its spontaneity... in spite of the sophistication of the work: the mature, adult sub-texts, the sensuality and complexity of the orchestration... built heavily upon Wagner's Lohengrin and Parsifal with its spiritually uplifting moments of grace and benediction. Even the melodies that resonate with the honest simplicity of true folk music are largely Humperdinck's originals... masterful pastiches.

The work not only impressed Richard Strauss, it proved a smash hit. In London crowds flocked to Daily's Theater for the biggest show of the Christmas season, 1884. Gustav Mahler, then head of the Hamburg Opera, proclaimed Hänsel und Gretel to be a "masterpiece". Hänsel und Gretel holds the distinction of having been the first opera performed in its entirety on the radio in Europe (on the BBC) in 1923, and in the United States in 1931. In spite of the popularity of the work, for whatever reason it was never recorded before WWII... and after the war there was some hesitation in performing a piece in which the Witch puts children in an oven coming fresh upon the memories of Auschwitz.

Thus this performance by Herbert von Karajan, recorded in 1953, became the first recorded version of Hänsel und Gretel... and arguably the best. Karajan, in many ways, was ideally suited to the task... his great-grandfather, Theodor von Karajan had been a close friend of the Brothers Grimm. The cast was ideal... including Elisabeth Grümmer, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Joseph Metternich. In spite of Karajan's reputation as a task-master and perfectionist, he avoided spending much time in rehearsals, responding and delighting in the opera's spontaneous nature. The overture comes from the test run-through during which Karajan kept the tape recorder running having learned this tip from Thomas Beecham.

The entire experience can only be described as "delicious".:)

Interestingly enough... there was one sour note to it all. Following the release of this recording, Wieland Wagner sent a letter to the producer Walter Legge exclaiming dismay that his old friend could have been involved in recording such a "mediocre, second rate" opera... and employing such masterful performers and performing it so well. Karajan and Legge both laughed off the comment and accepted it as the finest endorsement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNyy0CqnjVU

*****

Following on the heels of Hänsel und Gretel seemed difficult. Surely any "heavy" or "serious" work would come of as leaden and pretentious in contrast. Thus I continued in the same vein... listening to the second operetta of this disc... the classic, Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) by Franz Lehár. There are two other fine recordings of this opera that I have... the famous version conducted by Lovro Von Maticic, and the relatively recent performance by John Eliot Gardiner. This recording, conducted by Otto Ackermann, was part of a series of recordings made by EMI after the war of classic German operettas. Many employ the same singers... as did the later Von Maticic performance. All of them are truly special.

Ackermann's Die lustige Witwe... indeed of all of his operetta recordings... are special in that he and his magnificent crew of singers... Elisabeth Schwarzkopgf, Nicolai Gedda, Erich Kunz, Emmy Loose, and Otakar Kraus... grew up with and loved this music... and after the horrors of the war it undoubtedly represented the best of a German/Austrian culture tainted by the Nazis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iay2uyHKOE0

[Emil Miller]

Philip Glass studied in Paris for two years with Nadia Boulanger and the French influence in this piece is unmistakable.

http://youtu.be/iB0sXWwH_eA

[stlukesguild]

Emile!!! What has gotten into you?! You're actually listening to a living composer???!!!:yikes:

[Emil Miller]

Emile!!! What has gotten into you?! You're actually listening to a living composer???!!!:yikes:

I have posted some of his music on previous occasions although I am not particularly enamoured of his contemporaries. Glass is interesting because he makes a little go a long way. The other 'minimalists' seem to lack the melodic invention that I find indispensable to my enjoyment of music.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Itzhak Perlman was in The Colbert Report the other night. I'm ashamed to admit it, but this was the first time I've seen him perform, and I was pretty wowed. I like how Stephen Colbert exposes his viewers to stuff like this every now and then, too.

The interview:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/419257/september-19-2012/itzhak-perlman

Performance 1:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/419260/september-19-2012/exclusive---itzhak-perlman----liebesfreud-

Performance 2:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/419258/september-19-2012/itzhak-perlman----spanish-dance-

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Thanks for sharing that.
Amazing what you get out of a 300 year old violin.
I had the opportunity to see Perlman live at the Dallas Symphony in spring of (EDIT) 2010 , performing a piece by Bach.
The other treat that night was Dvorak's Serenade for Strings.

This weekend the DSO is perfoming Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a performnance that I would certainly have gone too had I learned of it sooner. I am listening to it now.

Here's the Old Castle:

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

[Emil Miller]

Despite showing extracts of this in the past, here's the complete version. Yuja Wang has the technique of a Goddess and the face of an angel.

http://youtu.be/aQKWHMKvyAk

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Yeah, she's pretty amazing. I stumbled on to this video from that one. I love what she all does here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epQ548wJq8k&feature=related

[Emil Miller]

Yeah, she's pretty amazing. I stumbled on to this video from that one. I love what she all does here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epQ548wJq8k&feature=related

She's a phenomenon and I would pay a lot to see her perform Rachmaninov but although she was in London earlier this year, as with her London appearance last year, she played the Bartok 2nd: a concerto I cannot stand, but looking at her schedule for the year I see that she is playing Rach3 all over the place. :banghead:

[Volya]

I have never before listened to classical music in my life (of my own will). Today, whilst doing my homework, I decided to turn on the radio to see what was on. After sifting through the channels, I ended up on Classic FM and I thought to myself, 'this is quite nice, I guess I'll listen to it'. An hour later, I am still listening and I think I have discovered I actually like classical music quite a lot :)

I am listening to this at the moment:

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

It is very beautiful.

[Emil Miller]

I have never before listened to classical music in my life (of my own will). Today, whilst doing my homework, I decided to turn on the radio to see what was on. After sifting through the channels, I ended up on Classic FM and I thought to myself, 'this is quite nice, I guess I'll listen to it'. An hour later, I am still listening and I think I have discovered I actually like classical music quite a lot :)

I am listening to this at the moment:

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

It is very beautiful.

You are lucky to have discovered real music when so many in your age group are frightened of it because they fear not understanding it and remain stuck in the ****.
Rachmaninov was the last of the great romantic composers and the movement you have posted is very much in his orchestral style.
Here is a piece, not by Rachmaninov, but which I hope you will also agree is beautiful music.

http://youtu.be/x6-UGlNyjn0

[Emil Miller]

I don't recall having posted this previously but it stands a repeat performance anytime.

http://youtu.be/5PYt2HlBuyI

[Mr.lucifer]

How can I tell the difference between any of the many performances of a classical piece?

[Emil Miller]

How can I tell the difference between any of the many performances of a classical piece?

That's a very interesting question because there are several factors that come into play when listening to recordings. First there is familiarity with the piece being performed; if you have familiarized yourself with it on one recording, you will hear differences on others, such as clarity, speed of delivery and overall interpretation. Some performances simply leap out at the listener with a vividness that isn't matched by others; this is usually due to the conductor's ability to direct the different sections of the orchestra to achieve the most brilliant effect but there is also the age of the recording to consider because recording techniques have moved on massively since the days of giants like Toscanini, Walter, Furtwangler etc.: even so, there are some performances that are so peerless that they withstand their age and remain unmatched. Then there is the sentimental attachment to a recording that was perhaps the first one that was purchased by the listener and will always be a special reminder of the piece itself, I know this from experience but I am all too grateful for You tube that allows me to hear dynamic performances from the younger generation of orchestral and solo performers who are blazing a trail for the future of great music. The real answer to your question is to keep listening, but a good tip is to choose the Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan: possibly the best orchestra and conductor ever, with demonstration quality sound by Deutsche Grammophon but when it comes to soloists, the choice will always be personal.

[Mr.lucifer]

I heard that some performers were brilliant because they weren't afraid to take a few liberties with a piece and thus, giving a fresh take on said music.

Btw, I think the term, greatest recorded conductor, is more appropriate.

[Emil Miller]

I heard that some performers were brilliant because they weren't afraid to take a few liberties with a piece and thus, giving a fresh take on said music.

You are right but there's a limit to which a performer can move away from the original score before it becomes a form of vandalism. A music score has instructions printed below the bars as to how fast. loud or softly a section should be played but these are open to interpretation and this is where individual performances come in.

[Mr.lucifer]

The only one I know of that does this was Glenn Gould. I am also interested in seeing what middle eastern and oriental music is like. That interest was inspired by The Silk Road Ensemble, who do original middle eastern music that was influenced by the tradition of that region.

[Emil Miller]

The only one I know of that does this was Glenn Gould. I am also interested in seeing what middle eastern and oriental music is like. That interest was inspired by The Silk Road Ensemble, who do original middle eastern music that was influenced by the tradition of that region.

Glen Gould got a lot of stick from certain musicologists but is still acknowledged to be among the foremost Bach players in the world.
I believe The Silk Road Ensemble was initially the idea of Yo Yo Ma but I haven't heard them; I'm afraid my knowledge of Oriental music is very sparse except for some CDs bought for me by Chinese friends. I suspect that as China's influence increases in the West, their may well be a greater interest in the music of the Middle and Far East.

[Lokasenna]

I spent the morning on a Puccini binge, which was very nice. Whilst I'm checking my emails (not to mention various fora!), I'm relaxing to a bit of Massenet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtiIpIJ5J2Q) - I always find this piece so moving.

[Emil Miller]

Btw, I think the term, greatest recorded conductor, is more appropriate.

Karajan's record company, Deutsche Gramophon, engineered some of the finest examples of recorded sound in the history of sound recording and his discs were noted for their demonstration quality. He was, however, a world famous concert and opera performer. I saw him conduct towards the end of his life and the ticket cost me a good deal of money but even before he returned to Berlin after WWII, he'd established a large following in the UK conducting and recording with the newly formed Philharmonia orchestra.
The argument as to whether he was the best ever will probably never be settled but his recorded legacy is outstanding with some stunning performances. And now, thanks to Youtube, also on video.


http://youtu.be/MC515tXR6Xg

[stlukesguild]

Emil... you would get more than just a little flack on any classical music forum for proclaiming Karajan the "Greatest" anything. Personally... I would agree with you... to a given extent. he was one of the greatest conductors of the Modern era... and one of the conductors by whom I have the most recordings. His Beethoven cycle (1963) is unsurpassed. He is among the finest for the complete symphonies of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner, and Tchaikovsky... and again a top-choice for Strauss. He has a god dozen or more opera recordings that are absolute "must-have" material to the classical music fan: Humperdinck's Hansel und Gretel, Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflote, Wagner's Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger... and arguably the Ring... (although there he really can't beat Solti, Knappertsbusch, Krauss, and Keilberth), Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony and Der Rosenkavalier, Johann Strauss' Fledermaus, and a slew more.

Having said that... there are a wealth of brilliant performances by other conductors who were every bit as good as Karajan... including Georg Solti, Georg Szell, Bruno Walter, Joseph Krips, Erich and Carlos Kleiber, Leonard Bernstein. John Barbirolli, Otto Klemperer, Hans Knappertsbusch, and of course Wilhelm Furtwangler. Karajan, of course, had the advantage of being the conductor/director "for life" of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra... arguably the greatest orchestra in existence... and certainly one of the two or three most influential institutions in the realm of classical music. And then, as noted, Karajan was involved with Deutsche Grammophon and their technological innovations in recording... including digital technology. He was also a favorite of Walter Legge for operatic recordings on EMI... which was the unmatched lable for opera. The only conductors who might have rivaled Karajan's influence would be Leonard Bernstein, Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski, and Wilhelm Furtwangler... Karajan's predecessor with the Berlin Philharmonic.

Today there are some marvelous conductors involved with the great orchestras around the world... but the most innovative seem to be those involved in exploring music outside of the old Classical/Romantic/early Modernist realm. The HIP (Historically Informed Performance) movement has shaken up the industry and many of the finest active conductors (John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Neville Marriner, Jordi Savall, René Jacobs, William Christies, Harry Christophers, Marc Minkowski, Trevor Pinnock, Masaaki Suzuki, Ton Koopman, Rinaldo Alessandrini and Fabio Biondi) and performers (Rachel Podger, John Holloway, Gidon Kremer, Andrew Manze, Elizabeth Wallfisch, Andreas Staier, Max Emanuel Cencic, Andreas Scholl, Magdalena Kozena, Philippe Jaroussky, the Sixteen, the Hilliard Ensemble, Sequentia, etc...) are greatly involved with Baroque and earlier music... as well as with stripping away the Romantic "perfume" from classical works by Mozart... and even Brahms. René Jacobs' Mozart opera recordings have become the "go-to" recordings of today.

[stlukesguild]

Recently I've been exploring the music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996). Weinberg was a Polish-born Russian/Soviet composer. He barely escaped the German invasion of Poland in 1939, and again in Russia in 1941. He settled in Moscow as a sort of "safe haven" where he began to develop a close circle of friends in music and the arts... including his neighbor, Dmitri Shostakovitch, who became highly supportive of Weinberg's work. Both Weinberg and Shostakovitch struggled with Soviet censors against accusations of the crime of "formalism". Like Shostakovitch, Weinberg refused to abandon traditional tonality, and maintained certain elements of Romanticism including lush orchestration, sensuality, and emotional expressiveness.

Weinberg's works have only recently begun to gain the sort of recognition they deserve. His works for cello are especially strong... far more complex... and perhaps even more expressive than the cello works by Shostakovitch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4xZLp6O5Go&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01aOSNYCJBc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4txVnHJfKg&feature=related

Weinberg's chamber works as a whole are quite marvelous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWGqxJC4Ijo

But the composer was also a master of the symphony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5ISS8ioqY

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

Weinberg is proof that Romanticism in music was not made obsolete by Schoenberg... regardless of what Pierre Boulez may have had to say on the subject... and that one could continue to build upon the tradition of Romanticism... and yet produce music that was clearly "modern".

[RicMisc]

This does not relate to previous posts but to the general topic. I was just studying and decided to put on some classical music. First off, I had forgotten why I loved listening to classical music so much (I kind of neglected the genre over the last few years) and I have decided to pick up listening to it more often. It's especially well fit for studying. Secondly, one of the tracks was one of Vivaldi's Quattro Stagioni. I had of course listened to these before and probably everybody knows the beginning, but the beauty of the composition and just the entire track struck me all of a sudden. And so I decided to share this sudden insight with you guys.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Could someone explain to me what makes a tone poem a, well, tone poem?

[stlukesguild]

There has been a long history of what might be defined as "programmatic music": music which is not purely abstract, but rather serves to "illustrate" or suggest an extra-musical narrative. Some of the most famous would include Vivaldi's Four Seasons in which the composer used the forms of the concerto to suggest the changing seasons:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFHPRi0ZeXE

Spring, for example, suggests the joyful coming of Spring... the chirping of birds, etc... The slow movement suggests a quiet day in the warm weather of Italy, while the rhythm of the third movement suggests a jaunty stroll through the Spring landscape.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLP1pqNx0v4&feature=related

In the second concerto, Summer, we move from a sense of the slow, lazy summer days... in an almost oppressive heat... to the oncoming storm and rain. You hear the coming thunder around 6:50... and then the storm erupts at 7:30

Beethoven's Symphony no. 6 ("The Pastoral") has a similar program. This video quite well outlines the various programmatic aspects of the work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHT7J01YacY

Franz Liszt is generally credited with having composed the first "tone poems" or "symphonic poems". In these what Liszt did was compose an orchestra work that abandons the traditional formal structures of a symphony... and instead loosely structured the work based upon an external narrative. Liszt's Les préludes, for example, was based upon an Ode of Alphonse de Lamartine's Nouvelles méditations poétiques.

Mussorgsky famously composed Pictures at an Exhibition, in which the music is intended to convey his response to a collection of paintings by a friend, the artist/architect Viktor Hartmann following his sudden death:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSc6y4nLTyE

The Wiki entry outlines the program and shows some of the paintings... although clearly Mussorgsky's response is more emotional... responding more to the sudden loss of his friend and compatriot... than to the paintings themselves... that are rather mundane:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_at_an_Exhibition

Mussorgsky also composed Night on Bald Mountain... in which he illustrates (musically) the Witches Sabbath. Disney's Fantasia marvelously illustrated the narrative upon which Mussorgsky's work was based... and Stokowsky's addition of Schubert's Ave Maria at the coming of day is quite keeping with Mussorgsky's intentions:

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

Probably the greatest exponent of the "tone poem" was Richard Strauss. Strauss, as a composer, was of a particularly literary mind-set. He was a master of opera and musical drama. He worked closely with his librettists, including the great Hugo von Hoffmansthal, and as a result his librettos are among the finest in to the whole of opera. prior to his great operas, however, Strauss made a name for himself with his tone poems. Probably the most famous was Also Sprach Zarathustra... based on Nietzsche's book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFPwm0e_K98

The YouTube video gives a general outline of the parts of the orchestral poem...

The Alpine Symphony... which is essentially a tone poem... not employing symphonic abstract forms... is perhaps Strauss' greatest symphonic work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHLW9FQbBzw

The Wiki entry spells out the program to the work quite well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Alpine_Symphony

Of course, as the listener, you may have extra-musical interpretations of a purely abstract work of music. I believe it was the great conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler who outlined what he felt was the "program"... or rather his interpretations of the how the music made him feel... with regard to Beethoven's 9th Symphony... which was in no way a programmatic work. At the same time, you may listen to Strauss Alpine Symphony and enjoy it as wholly abstract music... without any thought or idea of the intended program.

[Charles Darnay]

Korsekov's Scheherazade is also a good example, I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_pkRH2DZuw

[namenlose]

Coincidentally, I was just listening to Scheherazade this morning.

[Emil Miller]

Scheherazade reflects Rimsky's fascination with the Orient but this is, without doubt, firmly rooted in Russia.

http://youtu.be/0lAV4I5-Fpc

[stlukesguild]

I have been listening a good deal to a number of recent purchases of the music of Richard Strauss. It is interesting to discover that Strauss, the greatest acolyte of the music of Richard Wagner, seemingly inherited little of Wagner's megalomania. Strauss himself declared... toward the end of his life... with characteristic self-deprecation, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer." Contrary to Strauss underestimation of his own achievements, the great Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould, described Strauss in 1962 as "the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century." The more I have listened to Strauss... and the music of the other leading composers of the 20th century... the more I am convinced that Gould was right. In my opinion, Strauss was the greatest single composer of the last 100+ years. Schoenberg and Stravinsky may have been more innovative... but ultimately little of Schoenberg really resonates with me on a truly deep level (and I do not seem alone in feeling this way), while Stravinsky's reputation... at least to the larger classical audience... seems based upon a few major works... the Rite of Spring first and foremost. Among the more avant-garde strains of Modernist music, Bartok may actually be equal to Stravinsky in terms of the amount of music (and the inventiveness thereof) that has entered into the "core repertoire".

Contrary to the passionate claims of hard-core Modernists... especially dogmatic theorists such as Pierre Boulez... the Romantic/Post-Romantic strain of 20th century music has had far more impact (one need only look to the music of film) and the works of the major Romantic/Post-Romantic composers of the century has been far more accepted within the core repertoire of classical music. Popularity... at least initially... is of course no measure of artistic merit. But then again... this holds true whether speaking for or against. Contrary to many Modernist arguments, composers like Puccini, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Copland, Strauss, and even Shostakovitch cannot be dismissed merely because they remain popular with the classical music audience any more than Bartok's string quartets or Schoenberg's violin concerto can be dismissed outright because they present a real degree of difficulty to many listeners.

But back to Richard Strauss. As I stated above, the more I have listened to Strauss... indeed, the more I have delved into his oeuvre... the more I am convinced of his brilliance... and ultimately centrality to the musical achievements of the 20th century. I suspect most listeners to Strauss begin with his orchestral works... especially his great tone poems. This works, including Don Juan, Tod und Verklärung, Macbeth, Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Don Quixote, Ein Heldenleben, and of course Also sprach Zarathustra...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSC4w-fvojA&feature=related

...were ironically all composed in the late 19th century. But in no way do they represent the whole... or even the best of Strauss' achievements, in spite of their continued popularity. His operas Salome and Elektra are as outrageous, audacious, and innovative as any other Modernist work... but Strauss major operatic achievements are not limited to these two works. Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Intermezzo, Arabella, Daphne, and Capriccio are all major works... and serve to place Strauss above even Benjamen Britten and Puccini as the major operatic composer of the century. Even Die ägyptische Helena with it's absolutely absurd libretto contains some of Strauss' most marvelous music.

And then there's the lieder. Strauss deservedly iconic Four Last Songs stand alongside Mahler's Song of the Earth as one of the two finest song cycles of the 20th century. But Strauss' achievement in the genre was not limited to this masterful cycle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0JpGp4-wSE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycQquES2vvA

Lately I've been listening to a slew of Fritz Reiner's classic recordings of Strauss (Emil is no doubt familiar with these):

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51DCcq%2Bk-UL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2BMMNMmICL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5134Vp%2BudJL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61E3SxjMm5L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

These RCA "Living Streo" recordings have stunning sound... even more-so when one considers their age... and Reiner was one of the greatest of Strauss conductors... along with Karajan. RCA has recently been releasing a number of classic recordings such as these in bargain-priced box sets:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XAXnQ7z9L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

One loses out on all the liner notes... but there's always Google... and beside which I already have other recordings of nearly all of the included works.

Beyond these classic recordings, I've also been exploring the less-well-known works by Strauss... works which in most instances deserve to be better known by the classical audience.

Take, for example, this marvelous violin sonata, played here by the great Jascha Heifitz:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5NPwbQps-Y

Or what of the lovely Duet Concertino for clarinet and bassoon:

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

The Violin Concerto:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og3mX8dB2YU

Or the marvelous Oboe Concerto... written near the end of his life, at the request of an American GI who in civilian life was the principal oboist of the Pittsburgh Symphony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M00dn1fXPgY

and then there are the almost wholly ignored chamber works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9SFbDQ7bCE

Hell... Strauss even composed some marvelous choral works... here performed by the group Accentus:

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

[Anton Hermes]

Strauss himself declared... toward the end of his life... with characteristic self-deprecation, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer." Contrary to Strauss underestimation of his own achievements, the great Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould, described Strauss in 1962 as "the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century."

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Strauss):

Strauss himself declared in 1947 with characteristic self-deprecation, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer." The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould described Strauss in 1962 as "the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century."

You might not be able to work the quote function, but your use of the copy-and-paste function is pretty accomplished...indeed...nearly unrivalled.

[stlukesguild]

And your point is....?

Oh yeah... there is no point to your comment... per usual.

[Emil Miller]

This may not be the best peformance of the Tchaikovsky No1., because it's in competition with innumerable others, including the Van Cliburn legendary and unbeatable recording, but I doubt that there will be a sexier performance than this. Every single note of the concerto is ingrained in my being and the music does eventually takes over from those golden thighs in its glorious finale: but only just.

http://youtu.be/PmaGcQyAKcM












http://youtu.be/PmaGcQyAKcM

[LitNetIsGreat]

Currently listening (and trying to de-stress) to some Glenn Gould Beethoven:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHku-o_8eak

It's good stuff, it is.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Thanks for the explanation of tone poems, btw. Much appreciated.

[Charles Darnay]

I do love me some Glenn Gould. The Goldberg Variations are never far from the top of my list of music. Then there's this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP4BRPqHE5Y

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes, everything I have heard with Glenn Gould is just brilliant.

[stlukesguild]

Emil- This may not be the best peformance of the Tchaikovsky No1., because it's in competition with innumerable others, including the Van Cliburn legendary and unbeatable recording, but I doubt that there will be a sexier performance than this. Every single note of the concerto is ingrained in my being and the music does eventually takes over from those golden thighs in its glorious finale: but only just.

Emil, you old pervert. :hand: I'll admit that there are performers who I may rate higher because they aren't hard to look at... Anna Netrebko being at the top of the list (along with Elīna Garanča and Kristine Opolais)...


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

and there are some performers whose looks I've found detrimental (Joan Sutherland is hard to buy in the various seductress roles she played... even with my astigmatism... and Rolando Villazon looks too much like Mr. Bean not to find myself laughing). But in opera we are speaking of singers who are also actors and actresses and an art form that is visual as well as aural.

But when it comes to pianists... I can't say that their golden thighs have ever weighed much in my judgment. Certainly I'm not likely to be attracted to Van Cliburn's thighs... and yet I still would place his performance above Yuja's any day.

Neely- Currently listening (and trying to de-stress) to some Glenn Gould Beethoven

I love Glenn Gould as well. I have nearly everything by Bach that he recorded. I only recently picked up some of his Beethoven performances. They are (as always) "interesting". They wouldn't be among my first choices for Beethoven... but neither would I be without them.

[Emil Miller]

[COLOR="#B22222"]
But when it comes to pianists... I can't say that their golden thighs have ever weighed much in my judgment. Certainly I'm not likely to be attracted to Van Cliburn's thighs... and yet I still would place his performance above Yuja's any day.



I don't see anything perverted in it: golden thighs have been an attraction to me since the days of the mini-skirt and the day when that ceases to be the case will be the day to call it a day.
I've spoken before about the matchless performance by Van Cliburn but I agree that he would not look nearly so attractive in the equivalent of Yuja's stunning red outfit.

And just to show that there is many a good tune played on an old fiddle:

http://youtu.be/fY1mkTPjh3o

[Anton Hermes]

I've spoken before about the matchless performance by Van Cliburn but I agree that he would not look nearly so attractive in the equivalent of Yuja's stunning red outfit.


It's too bad Wang couldn't be appreciated for her playing and not for the fact that she dresses like she's performing in a Bangkok bordello.

[Emil Miller]

It's too bad Wang couldn't be appreciated for her playing and not for the fact that she dresses like she's performing in a Bangkok bordello.

You obviously haven't read the critical reviews of her playing.

[Anton Hermes]

You obviously haven't read the critical reviews of her playing.

I was talking about yours, which mentioned her thighs and her outfit more than her piano playing.

[Emil Miller]

I was talking about yours, which mentioned her thighs and her outfit more than her piano playing.


Well, as an apparent newcomer to this site, you are unaware of the number of times that I have championed Yuja Wang's playing. I have been listening to and attending concerts of great piano playing before many of the members of this forum were born and it is my considered opinion that Yuja Wang is one of the greatest pianists of this or any other generation; the fact that she is also extremely attractive is the icing on the cake and to be enjoyed along with her fabulous technique.

[Dark Star]

I finally gave in and ordered this disc recently (in spite of the price) because I've been hankering for some late Brahms on a period instrument:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511rn-Nn-qL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Based on a preliminary listen it is wonderful. The pianist really knows how to dig into Brahms' beautiful, melancholy side and can also play up the drama when necessary. The pianoforte sounds great. A reviewer on Amazon compared him to Kempff and I have to agree when it comes to generating a mellow, flowing sound. He has more of a dramatic sense than Kempff, though. Highly recommended in any case.

EDIT: I purchased Vol. 2 in this series last year (piano sonatas #1 and #3) and that disc also comes highly recommended.

[Charles Darnay]

On the subject of pricey discs, I have had my eyes on Viotti's Violin Concertos (Franco Mezzena) for some time, but the price of it does not suit my current income status. But......this:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvfD3j6kQSU

[stlukesguild]

The pricey set that I have been eyeing for quite some time:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XwdcPgPLL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Arguably the finest "Ring" recording:

http://www.amazon.com/Wagner-Ring-Nibelungen-Astrid-Varnay/dp/B000XTCBWS/ref=sr_1_13?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1353121994&sr=1-13&keywords=Wagner+Ring

Another set I am drooling over:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81hGr9fKwaL._AA1500_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/Solti-Wagner-Operas-Wilhelm-Richard/dp/B008H29YVY/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1353122070&sr=1-2&keywords=wagner+solti

Still... 36 CDs for a little over $100 US is a hell of a buy... especially when it includes Solti's entire "Ring Cycle" which alone sells for over $100 US.:eek2:

[Lokasenna]

And the Solti recordings are so superb, too... That really isn't a bad price for that amount of music.

[Anton Hermes]

Well, as an apparent newcomer to this site, you are unaware of the number of times that I have championed Yuja Wang's playing. I have been listening to and attending concerts of great piano playing before many of the members of this forum were born and it is my considered opinion that Yuja Wang is one of the greatest pianists of this or any other generation; the fact that she is also extremely attractive is the icing on the cake and to be enjoyed along with her fabulous technique.
Her technique is truly amazing. But she's all about the fireworks and not the insight. It's not surprising that her outfits get so much attention; her playing only draws attention to her too. Whether people watch her or listen to her, they're only supposed to be thinking about Yuja Wang.

[Emil Miller]

Her technique is truly amazing. But she's all about the fireworks and not the insight. It's not surprising that her outfits get so much attention; her playing only draws attention to her too. Whether people watch her or listen to her, they're only supposed to be thinking about Yuja Wang.

Much the same was said of Franz Liszt's performances but he is also often referred to as the greatest pianist in the history of the piano. Noted for his flamboyant dress when young, he gradually toned down his appearance with the passage of time; as Yuja Wang has said: " I'm not going to be wearing short dresses when I'm forty so I might as well wear them now."
In any event, she doesn't always wear short dresses and often appears in traditionally long gowns.

[LitNetIsGreat]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ9EUBXckB8

Just listening to Glenn Gould and Bach again, such a civilizing process.

I've just come across this film thing about Glenn Gould, it sounds interesting I wondered if anyone had seen it?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Short-Films-about-Glenn-Gould/dp/B0077KUE70/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1353197719&sr=8-2
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108328/

Edit: possibly my most listened to and favourite piece of all time - well certainly the first movement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnRIU4u7B9o

[Anton Hermes]

I've just come across this film thing about Glenn Gould, it sounds interesting I wondered if anyone had seen it?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Short-Films-about-Glenn-Gould/dp/B0077KUE70/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1353197719&sr=8-2
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108328/


I really liked Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould. It avoided the usual pitfalls of the conventional biopic by focusing on different aspects of his life and work in each chapter. The actor who portrays Gould doesn't look at all like the pianist, but his mannerisms and speech rhythms (sometimes he's even miming to actual recordings of Gould speaking) are quite appropriate. Some fans may complain that it's an arty, self-conscious movie, and Gould comes off as an inscrutable eccentric at odds with his audience and celebrity more than a genuine human being. But the film, like its subject, is fascinating nevertheless.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I really liked Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould. It avoided the usual pitfalls of the conventional biopic by focusing on different aspects of his life and work in each chapter. The actor who portrays Gould doesn't look at all like the pianist, but his mannerisms and speech rhythms (sometimes he's even miming to actual recordings of Gould speaking) are quite appropriate. Some fans may complain that it's an arty, self-conscious movie, and Gould comes off as an inscrutable eccentric at odds with his audience and celebrity more than a genuine human being. But the film, like its subject, is fascinating nevertheless.

Excellent thanks. I'm going to watch it, it sounds interesting. I am beginning to love some of the Amazon reviews too. Take this one on the film I read yesterday:


Available at last on DVD in the UK! I have been raving about this film for years. I video'd it off the TV years ago because it was on one afternoon while I was at work. I was astounded by it and I literally wore the tape out watching it. I have never been able to buy it because it is rare on VHS and has been noexistant on DVD in the UK until now. The film is a masterpiece and the actor playing Gould (Colm Feore) is a genius here at portraying the inner life of a genius. The non linear format of the film is structured like a piece of music and you just need to go with it. If you love Gould already, you will love this.
If you don't love Gould already, you will after watching this. Turn down the lights, lock the door and step into the mind of a genius. It is a profound and deeply moving experience that you will return to.

I write this review as I wait for my copy to arrive. When it does it will not be a good idea to disturb me for at least 93 minutes :)

I love the last bit especially.

Whilst on the subject of Amazon reviews (or such reviews in general) I have to share this even though it has nothing to do with music. I was looking at chess clocks for Christmas (I know, I know, but I have always wanted one) when I came across this one. I've been thinking about it all day.:lol:


Great timer. I don't play chess - I wanted something that would have two timers that could count upwards. I work from home so I use the left side for when I'm doing work and the right side for when I'm messing about, so that it guilts me into doing more work. The design is nice and sturdy. It's quite big but not stupidly so - check the dimensions before you buy to make sure it's OK for you.

What the hell??:lol: I just can't get the image of this bloke walking around his house tapping the clock from left to right. Brilliant.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I'm about 3/4 through the Glenn Gould film thng, I've had to pause it for now because I'm dong something else. It's interesting. It's a little fragmentary and erratic for my tastes exactly, but that of course matches Gould's personality and is presumably is the point of the production?

Oh he had to be autistic. I was reading briefly that his autism was disputed by some but he surely was. He reminds me of Fischer, another disputed autistic genius who was clearly autistic.

Anyway, all week I've been listening to...guess what? Yes Gould and Bach - various - so the film thing was certainly not out of place.

I always feel a little frustrated with these genius type loner figures though. I mean so much potential to go way beyond and they always fall short of their own massive potential. We should be grateful and are to a degree, but there is something so frustrating about unfulfilled genius (unless that's just me). I mean take both Gould and Fischer as I mentioned them. Gould stopped playing live in his early 30s and his own original compositions fizzled to nothing. Fischer could have been the undisputed, greatest ever player of chess the world has ever known but quit after his world storming victory in fear that the Russians were trying to kill him (or whatever paranoia it was - regardless, we don't forgive him for it). And of course, we all know that true genius always seems to die early, like Mozart for example. How inconvenient for us.

Anyway...

Again! Let them play on!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnRIU4u7B9o

[Emil Miller]

St Luke's and I have in recent years proclaimed the virtues of various pianists and, while everyone has their favourites, there must come a point where individual preference is overruled by a performance that is so great that all others, whatever their musicality, remain as also rans. Such is the performance of Van Cliburn in the Tchaikovsky’s first Piano Concerto, which is also an historic performance because it heralded a breakthrough in East/West relations. The work’s dynamics have never been better realised than this, and the overall presentation is so majestic as to remain the greatest performance on record. If human greatness means anything at all, then this is it.

http://youtu.be/f7MAriotZyE

[LitNetIsGreat]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpOtuoHL45Y
Liszt Liebestraum. Another old favourite piece.

[Emil Miller]

Beat this:

http://youtu.be/weBcmhMwGnY