Thanks jim5559 for you kind word i am moved...
Merry Christmast....
Classical Music for Aficionados
I would like to start a thread, similar to Orpheus’ jazz site, for lovers of classical music.
I will list some of my favorite recordings, CDs as well as LP’s. While good sound is not a prime requisite, it will be a consideration.
Classical music lovers please feel free to add to my lists.
Discussion of musical and recording issues will be welcome.
I’ll start with a list of CDs. Records to follow in a later post.
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique. Chesky — Royal Phil. Orch. Freccia, conductor.
Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Vanguard Classics — Vienna Festival Orch. Prohaska, conductor.
Prokofiev: Scythian Suite et. al. DG — Chicago Symphony Abbado, conductor.
Brahms: Symphony #1. Chesky — London Symph. Orch. Horenstein, conductor.
Stravinsky: L’Histoire du Soldat. HDTT — Ars Nova. Mandell, conductor.
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances. Analogue Productions. — Dallas Symph Orch. Johanos, cond.
Respighi: Roman Festivals et. al. Chesky — Royal Phil. Orch. Freccia, conductor.
All of the above happen to be great sounding recordings, but, as I said, sonics is not a prerequisite.
I will list some of my favorite recordings, CDs as well as LP’s. While good sound is not a prime requisite, it will be a consideration.
Classical music lovers please feel free to add to my lists.
Discussion of musical and recording issues will be welcome.
I’ll start with a list of CDs. Records to follow in a later post.
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique. Chesky — Royal Phil. Orch. Freccia, conductor.
Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Vanguard Classics — Vienna Festival Orch. Prohaska, conductor.
Prokofiev: Scythian Suite et. al. DG — Chicago Symphony Abbado, conductor.
Brahms: Symphony #1. Chesky — London Symph. Orch. Horenstein, conductor.
Stravinsky: L’Histoire du Soldat. HDTT — Ars Nova. Mandell, conductor.
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances. Analogue Productions. — Dallas Symph Orch. Johanos, cond.
Respighi: Roman Festivals et. al. Chesky — Royal Phil. Orch. Freccia, conductor.
All of the above happen to be great sounding recordings, but, as I said, sonics is not a prerequisite.
Showing 50 responses by mahgister
All artist practice... But sometimes some are different because all men are not equal... An anecdote: The great mathematician, Alexander Grothendieck, for many the greatest of the 20th century, NEVER bough a mathematical book and almost NEVER study save by himself.. Rediscovering unknown to him modern integration theory by himself... A journalist interviewing him at his home seeing no books at all about mathematics "where are they ?" The mathematician Alexander Gronthendieck answered smiling i wrote them i dont have time and the need to read none of them....He left perhaps 60 thousands page of mathematical works even today all is not even published... At sixteen years old coming from concentration camp he go to the Bourbaki group, the more advanced mathematical group in the world and say i wanted to be useful... These man all great mathematician, some being the greatest in the world like Andre Weil smiling gave him 100 hundred important problems and said to him come in one year if your able to solve one or two... He solve them all in few months and created singlehandly modern mathematic for the next 15 years alone with a great french mathematician Dieudonné as a passive scribe...
Incredible story!... Some artist or creators dont need "practice" or studying like normal human... Vivaldi was able to wrote at a speed like Mozart a works one after the other... Ervin Nyiregyhazi practiced music as a baby for few years but quit his dictatorial mother at 16 years old and never practice really after that and even never own a piano for decades... Some journalist ask him at 74 years old for his first concert almost for the last 30 years were is his piano? He answer mechanic dont need tool at their house... He dont have one... All artists practice but some are more superhuman than other... Ramanujan teach himself mathematic at young age with a simnple english book and is now recognized to be a mathematician exceeding almost all mathematical genius in history... All artists practice but to any rule there is exception... And like say frogman the concept of practice is very different for each musician... If someone wanted to know what is genius read the biography of William James Sidis, he was not a musician but this life express very well that we are not created equal for studies and practices needs...He was the highest measured IQ in history probably and declared out of any knowm measuring scales...I read his bio and 2 books by him... It is so incredible that is in UNBELIEVABLE...He learn all indian languages of america, and know any language after a week or two... He go to university at 11 years of age and was refused at 9 being too short... His first conference at 11 years old was about the projection of 4 manifold in three dimensinal space in 1911 and he answered questions ( all this is redacted at Harvard) about the diffference between the very new Einstein Minkovsky 4-d space time notion and his own 4-d geometrical concept... All artists practice and study... Some way less than others... I can go on with examples... Superhuman exist it is historical fact, genius in music exist, it is historical fact...
Telemann for example taught music by himself alone at young age and his output of work exceed Bach at least by triple numbers... Did he practice ?i guess he did... But what is practice and what is playing, what is the need to practice many hours each day if you create more than 3000 works among them figure 1000 cantatas yes not 100 but one thousand... Did he had time to practice each week all the instruments he was able to play? No....
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First there is no greatest in a general way of speaking... Pavarotti is not Greater than Jussi Bjorling in an absolute sense... Second there is greatness...For me it is Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fisher Dieskau the two greatest singer i ever listen to... Yes i know i contradict myself here... I cannot claim in an ABSOLUTE way that Bach is the greatest composer in history, even if i think so somewhat and to be frank i think so... Because esthetic and ethic converge in Bach works at a level never seen before or after save like in Beethoven case for example but never with the perfect balance that exist in Bach between esthetical choices and means and ethical one....... But i love Scriabin And Gesualso because the esthetic choices here are so constrasted that esthetic choices here border near an ethical abyss and over it...Gesualdo with his contrasted excessive colors use is almost contemporary composer...And Scriabin is near atonality not by an equation like Schoenberg but by a genius particular chords choices obsessive expressive habit... Then i am not afraid to speak about "greatest" or "best"...But i know that this is only a relative way for us to express something objective sometimes, the ouput of Telemann is the larger in European music and sometimes subjective, like Bach is the greatest Composer in European history... But feel free to contradict me, if someone say that Scriabin is the greatest i will never mock him, knowing his genius ....Or Telemann who was the greatest composer and the prefered choice of one of my friend ... How do we know a man who has written 3,000 works and more, 1000 cantatas, 40 passions... It is safe to say that almost no one can judge Telemann... The greatest and the best are always like say wisely frogman personal choices but these personal choices COULD be motivated and must be motivated by precise reason to say so... it is sometimes clearer and more informative to speak about vertical greatness than to put all on a relative horizontal line... The point is not to say which one is the best in an absolute sense , but why we think so in a relative way.... It is a way to think in different perspectives and anyway to clearly emerge, each one of these perspectives must be hierarchicallly described and related.... If we forbid ourself to express our own feeling and any hierarchy, how do we are supposed to understand all musical history? Musical history is not ONLY objective facts, it is also critical debatable esthetical choices and ethical one... All mountains are not equal at all and many Himalaya exist.... I apologize for being too exclusively passionnate in this thread... I recognize it like my greatest defect but also my greatest quality....
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Why not Martinu? Ruzickova is spectacular in EVERYTHING she touch ! She is by far my favorite harpsichordist.... Four years in at least 4 concentrations camps and heavy communist regime forbid her to teach music and malaria, malnutrition, ulcers, bubonic plague left her untouched at the end ! She learned harpsichord after Theresienstadt , Auschwitz, Terezin and Bergen Belsen , playing 12 hours a day for the years lost!
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jim204 Rubinstein was also a marvellous pianist in the mazurkas..... But unknown to many the great Yakov Flier, the russian professor of many great late pianits, gives to us one of the best version of the mazurkas but totally different than Barbosa....The amazing fluidity and interprenetrating rythms of Barbosa with a perfect easiness and poetic delicate fluency is replaced by a more romantic and forceful expressiveness and mostly an amazing recreation of the dance itself (a waltz with a hicup said someone but i forgot whom) by Yakov Flier.... One of the very great russian pianists... Rubinstein is romantic like Flier and easily fluent like Barbosa but less surprizing than Flier in the dance figure recreation itself....And i like the more detached interpretation of Barbosa more than the interpretation from many other very good pianists.... Then Barbosa and Flier are my 2 favorites for these pieces because they are so opposite and complementary to each other and so perfect anyway in their own rendition of these dances which were the best of Chopin for me and the most precious works for the composer himself.... |
I just listened to the organ music Of Pachelbel.... The older J.S. Bach brother, Johann Christoph Bach cherish and admire him much, and was his pupil, indeed Bach too was admiring him and apparently copy the partitions book of his eldest brother...... His music is less complex than Bach, less profound, but pleasurable in his own way, relaxing, with a playful sense of melodies and great clarity in the immediate expressive gesture ... Buxthehude is a genius, and many other organ giant composers....Pachelbel is one of them for sure, with an appeal to all people that is like Vivaldi for people who are not fond of more emotionnally complex music like Beethoven for example......His easy to understand music is not from the highest point of the soul/spirit like Bach, but he know to soothe the soul of all of us...And that is marvellously easy to listen to just relax.... I listen to the Joseph Payne integral compare it to the Antoine Bouchard one... 24 hours of listening....😊 Payne is more diversified soundwise and spectacular, but i prefer the more calming introvert playing of Bouchard.... I own the 2 integral, then no boredom...... |
I’m now interested in finding pieces from Heinrich Schutz. I recommend the marvellous interpretation by Mauesberger of the Geistliche chormusik....Schutz synthetise Italian and German influences... This work is examplary and operate with an irresistible compelling rythmic pulsation that is sublime and deeply felt by the heart and spirit in this old rendition by Mauesberger...The singers not only sings but we feel the prayers...It is an opera of the soul who walk toward the sunlike Christ..... One of my cherished choral music work, i listen to it each day for 7 years writing .... It is with the mastering of Italian lighter rythm and German heavier pulsation a choral masterpiece at the same level that Bach work will make habitual with his own contrapuntal complex means and this is not a small feat.... Pure diamond.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnZQ0EPuNqk I ask to a complete stranger in a music store 30 years ago:" what is the more miraculous choral work you listened to in the last years of your life ? He explode enthusiastically recommending that to me.... i never see him again.... Was it an angel walking in a music store or an audiophile forgetting his hell ? 😊 « Beside speakers angels listen music and the damned hear the sound »- Groucho Marx |
It is impossible to die without listening the trio sonatas Of Jan Dismas Zelenka, the bohemian bach.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpTaf-rL5zU |
Haydn worked more about his inspiration than only with it... He is a craftsman... All he wrote is perfect workmanship.... His quatuor exceed Mozart one in perfection... But Mozart rival his master with his quintets...And his symphonies.... And for voices composition, no one on earth ever equal Mozart at all...No one has ever create melodic voices so much ethereal, almost angels voices.... Cosi fan tutte is so ethereal, than reading the libretto is ridiculous....Cosi is like the art of the fugue for voices, but not like the Art a work coming from a supremum mathematical combinatoric, but more a pure gushing from the heart elevated to the spirit.... There exist no formula for that....No mathematics either.... Mozart dont work in a steady pace like Bach and Haydn did, it is more like Vivaldi, an uncontrollable melodic output with no rear thinking, but on a more deep inspiration than Vivaldi....Their creations gives something that does not comes from works.... But there is exception, moment when they work hard, for example Vivaldi gives to us when he was very young, his sonatas for violin opus 2...( one of my favorite Vivaldi works with the seasons) Listen and you will hear the working refining the inspiration.... His immense concertos output was created, except for example the 4 seasons, with melodic inspiration but almost no works except formulas... It was for him like Vivaldi, too easy for them to do really hard work....Telemann was like that....We feel this easy inspiration also in Mendelssohn....But none of them reach the deep touching of Mozert.... Except at some moment of exception: for example the Kyrie of Vivaldi on par with Mozart... By the way Karl Ristenpart is a great maestro..... |
I go on with Pachelbel organ 2 complete sets.... Antoine Bouchard and Joseph Payne.... My impressions did not change and i prefer the more interiorized and intimate version of Bouchard than the more extrovert version and more spectacular one and more celebrated and more rhetorical gesture version of Payne...But get me right, the Payne version is very beautiful, and many will prefer it... I enjoy the 2 sets....Only in the case i would be in the obligation to choose i will keep Bouchard...in fact the 2 versions are so different that it double the pleasure....Almost 24 hours of Pachelbel with these 2....😉 I an very pleased by Pachelbel genius in simplicity, clarity, and soothing melodic inspiration....Pachelbel is a genius because nothing is never out of place or with less interest.... All is perfect .....I can have preference about some part or works but really all is on the same scale of beauty all the time....No low nor high really in the writing composition....It is like Scarlatti, amother giant, with no defect in his output .... No boredom at all, only a sweet and immersive contemplation with an always perfect humility that persuade us with no arguments, some wave of sounds floating like swans on a lake of silence... Some genius dont ask for attention and dont force the attention at all to their points for the sake of being known....They gives to us the precious gift of an attention of a new kind, an encompassing one....The music of Pachelbel walk with us or in us and never on us and passing us....It is a commentary on silence.... There is something taoist in Pachelbel....I am not surprized that at least 2 Bach admired him.... By the way with Bouchard we even forgot that the music is for organ, the organist disapear and even the instrument.....Not with Payne.... |
The finer expression of all the range of emotions (Puccini) is not the same that the pure elevation of heart to the spirit with voice that sings but speaks no more (Mozart Cosi)... But i will give you that the seven last words on the cross of Haydn is on par with any Bach.... Only that is a testimony for this giant..... But i must confess that no one beat Bach for me..... 😊 All composers act or react with or against Bach with all the degree of freedom between the 2 positions..... My favorite opponent to Bach is Scriabin ( 2 minutes of Scriabin may transcend anything else sometimes)......My favorite disciple of Bach is Bruckner....The 5 th symphony is the art of symphony.... The final fugue is the most beautiful and deep works ever written after Bach.... All other symphonies of other composers seems like gentle toys.... 😉 Beautiful poems sometimes compared to Bruckner like the 6th or 7th of Beethoven the greatest composer in symphony after Bruckner(before him by date of birth), or for example Mahler.... But the 5th of Bruckner and over are so great that they crush the business of symphony making after them....After him the symphonies of all other composers are more like some cinema, they can be masterful, but yet always less spiritual and more mundane and yet sure may be very moving.... But emotions only are not spirit.... |
i am going on always with Pachelbel organ works....It is really a gift....His writing is so perfect that i cannot even choose a best of or a cd among the others.... Incredible perfection in the organ waving with pulsative melody....like i already said he was the very loved master of the older Bach brother, and Bach copied these partitions for himself with total devotion for sure.... How to improve Pachelbel ? Only Bach could in his way, he has improve it by his complex counterpoint, his complex harmony reaching a level that will never be exceeded.... But even Bach works hard to improve the unerring, foolproof, infaillible simplicity of Pachelbel; he succeed with his chorals, slightly more complex but paradoxically gifted with the same humble and powerful efficiency .... Really an underscored miraculous work; and between the complex beauty of Bach work and the soothing simplicity of this one, it is impossible to choose.... We need these 2...These 2 are me favorite organ composers .... I am very stun by the pleasure to flow so easily in the river of time with Pachelbel, and the pleasure of going so forcefully out of time with Bach.... Like Bach, Pachelbel is indeed irreplaceable..... The 2 goes hand in hand, the mathematician touch more the brain/spirit, the poet more the heart/soul....The 2 are heart/brain/soul/spirit perfect catalyzers.... 2 integrals of Pachelbel are not too much, even a third will not be too much.... Like the many interpretations i own of Bach klavier.... If you dont love the organ, this is your luck , try Pachelbel, if you dont like it, forget the organ forever.... :) |
Between Pachelbel organ works by Antoine Bouchard and Bach Well tempered Klavier with Andras Schiff and my favorite version with Vladimir Feltsman i go on with: Samuel Feinberg sonatas. this Russian giant pianist among other some Russian giants pianists, was also a great composer... His sonatas, greatly influenced by Scriabin, even if they are under the best of Scriabin, are indeed very beautiful and over many other composers works anyway... I am in love with them.... They are my favorite with Shostakovich piano works....The only version i know by Nicolaos Samaltanos and Christophe Sirodeau is very good if not more than that.... 😊 When Scriabin died, all Russian people take a mourning for a long time....God sad for them, knowing anything from the beginning of time, gives them Feinberg sonatas, and Shostakovich piano works and one, if not the best, piano school there is in the world to console them....Then russian people can goes on listening Scriabin played in an optimal way.... And the rest of the world underestimate Scriabin and dont even know Feinberg works.... 😪😌 |
I forgot this rendition of the " Rhapsody for alto" of Brahms by Marian Anderson, which is with Kathleen Ferrier the goddesses of song... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w35B8hK5Y4 |
Easily one of the greatest Bach rendition by a female voice on par with Kathleen Ferrier and very, very few others... In her voice emotion eclipse technical art like the sun eclipse the world.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuzYE3E0Nfk For those which can be interested by her, this documentary illustrate his talent by astonishing example of solo chants classical pieces and the greatest of all negro spirituals ever sang and probably never to be sing again with so much deep rendition: "crucifixion".... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXkUlCv4Jj4 To fill the cup of those thirsty listen to his version of " deep river" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bytFrsL4_4 Or this "elegie" of Massenet, compare it to any other interpretation even of Caballe or anyone else: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bytFrsL4_4 Her modest ego let shine divinity without interrupting the light by any sin of proudness.... Then in this "ave maria" version she does not sing at all, she pray and look at the way Stokowsky look at her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXhdUC43Jq0 I love her.....It is amazing to see the soul through this body.....Easily one of the most beautiful woman i ever see... I cannot resist to give his "Casta Diva" rendition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPGEiWAPm1M These are at least on the same emotional level than Maria Callas.... In fact i prefer the more natural and simple interpretation of Anderson... Like Sibelius said to her visiting him: " my roof is too low for you " I dont think that the old composer was meaning it to be only a compliment, more a fact in his heart after listening her .... |
Vivaldi is very young when he published his sonatas opus 2... He was very motivated by the Corelli domination of all Italian musical scene.. I imagine him, offering his work with a real but also some " distorted sense of humility" to the older Master.. With the back tought to prove itself to the old master in the Corellian writing style and form itself.... These Vivaldi sonatas are very Corellian inspired one but with the characteristical Vivaldian melodic pulse and rythmical surge though...And some say erroneously that they lack the depth of the future works to come, they dont lack depth they dont look for depth at all, here Vivaldi was looking for a magical SPELL and he succeeded... I imagine the old master reading them or playing them and thinking about this young man like the future master of all musicians by his seductive spontaneous inspiration , save perhaps Bach or Beethoven or Mozart and very few others to come.. Corelli is great indeed...And the Vivaldi "greek gift" is a testimony to the old master also...But also a treat....These Vivaldian sonatas are a pure masterpiece, never surpassed by other Vivaldian sonatas to come, they are not an imperfect work by a beginner at all, even if vivaldi is 21 years old....These pieces a no less achieved and polished than any of his future best works, they present a cohesive rythmical unity between them that is marvellous...Vivaldi wrote and never work hard save for certain works where he put some hard polishing effort, the "4 seasons" for example and these sonatas i think because he wanted to impress the Corelli roaring lion... I listened to these sonatas opus 2 near one thousand times, almost each day for more than three years when i was writing ... I know, i know i am a bit too passionate and excessive man in music or in love ... 😁😊 I prefer this old interpretation on conventional modern instruments to the new one with old instruments...
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Mendelssohn: complete piano works, Howard Shelley, 4 vols.i have only the three cd but i concur with your enthusiasm Mendelssohn is an always underestimated genius like Haydn, compared to some others, but save for personnal taste, it is truly a great composer.... Shelly is sure a very great pianist....This music can be listen all day long... |
One day someone make the observation that the piano with which he must play this evening is in a very bad shape, to whom Ervin Nyiregyházi replied, "it is me not the piano which will make sound".... I always were amazed by this pianist and it is the same for Russian pianists.... Music is never only sound.... Just to pull your beard.... By the way i prefer good piano sound but....i prefer Neuhaus on a bad piano or Sofronitsky to almost anyone... |
A god play and teach children.....If someone know a best version i must know but i doubt it.... 😊 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIgSWhiLq00 |
For me the Russian school is the best example of a teaching that exemplify in his pupils and masters the 3 main factors i listen to in a pianist: The first factor is the one linked to the hues and "NUANCES" in color , ONE NOTE says all....Moravec, the pianist’s pianists ( he is not Russian i know) is an emblematic master of this colors and pastel mastery of note where the timbre playing of the instrument fuse with the microdynamic timbre gesture of the body....This is the seeds of the pure beauty, ethereal and/or incarnated .... The second factor manifest itself between TWO NOTES : by constrasting, balancing, polarizing,attenuating, etc it is the INTENSITY... The abyss where gods and magicians transform crowds and the world....The hungarian Nyiregyházi and Sofronitsky playing Scriabin are supremum examples...For me this factor is linked to the ethos and/or the pathos.... The third factor is the dynamical and rythmic, and motoric mastering with THREE NOTES and more ... Pure VIRTUOSITY....Too many examples here and not necessary to give one... But Hamelin and Earl Wild or Horowitz for example own enough of the first 2 factors to exemplify the third without any negative coming from it....Here it is between the living logos versus the logical formula or the mechanical and the rythmical.... Artistry, Demonic power, and virtuosity.... An artist must slowy feel his artistry first , more than he can practice it, but he can practice his virtuosity and invoke then the circonstance when he feel it at his best.... The demonic power is linked to the miracle of the moment and cannot be practiced at all, it can only exploded....We may learn virtuosity, but nobody learn how to be a god and improvising and throwing miracles on listeners.... Artist, gods or magicians we can also call them.... We can all argue about our evaluation on this 3 factors scale of any pianist....It is relative to our own internal alchemical balance and then perception.... Never mind this subjective fact, these 3 factors can be use to describe the piano playing for me....1-2-3 notes.... Mozart and Chopin are supremum artist, Listz and Scriabin more on the demonic side for example, and Beethoven more in equilibrium between these 2.... it is only my way to communicate how i listen to pianists.... |
I dont own vinyl... But i can say that whatever composer he plays he is good and more than good most of the times... But when he play Scriabin he attain the status of a god....It is the reason why Richter and Gilels idolized him, and at his death declared him the greatest pianist that ever lived...They listened him play Scriabin....In Russia a pianist is truly great only after playing Scriabin.... It is Scriabin that teach me after Bach a new lesson about what music really is... With Bach i learn how music can make me more than who i am.... With Scriabin i learn how music can transform the world or that the world is greater than what i ever perceive it to be.... Scriabin is a Christlike figure in music like Beethoven, without the negative there is in Wagner ...Beethoven speak to humanity in man, Bach speak to the spirit in man, Scriabin speak from the future cosmos spiritualized in man, it is the reason why his music is truly promethean but without the egoic glue nor the grandiosity there is in Wagner.... 2 minute poems of Scriabin played by Sofronitsky made all Wagner sound like children pretense theater....Scriabin also between tonality and atonality make Schoenberg look like a talented brain without body and creator of sounds unable to bear a cosmos...A chord by Scriabin recreated the world... Scriabin is way more than piano music... It is the reason why almost all pianist cannot make it alive and working... They plays it apparently perfectly, like benignly like first prize student.... But Scriabin must be played like Christ was walking and creating miracles around him.... Sofronitsky always deliver miracles....You will be transformed like taking a substance or like dying and ressuscitating... Then anything even with a bad sound will be a revelation.... If you absolutely want a good sound you can try Igor Zukhov.... This is not Sofronitsky but what is among the best playing just under the master....I like it tremendously...But only Sofronitsky exceed the piano playing to reach divinity.... Neuhaus can also but there is not much by him....Neuhaus is the only one who was on par with Sofronitsky with "toward the flame" for example and in fact incredibly almost surpass him in his rendition of the abyss....Neuhaus was one of the giant of the Russian school...His playing is totally marmorean and totally fluid, with handling of colors hues rivalling Moravec and an intensity trespassing anyone except Sofronitsky and the hungarian Nyiregyházi .If he has not been only a teacher under Soviet iron schackles but a concertist on the world scene, he would have been one of the most known pianist in the world.... Piano russian school is something..... Ervin Nyiregyházi plays Liszt like Sofronitsky play Scriabin.... They are World events for me, not only mere music.... |
😊 no more piano playing, only music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95LCUHw50C8 Who will play this piece after him? A master’s master recorded under the leg at 70 years old...Without a piano for most of his last 40 years of life... Another exemple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn_O8SABHvw this one nail the coffin of almost any pretender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIC-bGI_Frc It is not me who pretend about him.... It is him: Arnold Schoenberg wrote the following about Ervin Nyiregyházi: "...a pianist who appears to be something really quite extraordinary... I must say that I have never heard such a pianist before... What he plays is expression in the older sense of the word, nothing else; but such power of expression I have never heard before. You will disagree with his tempis as much as I did. You will also note that he often seems to give primacy to sharp contrasts at the expense of form, the latter appearing to get lost. I say appearing to; for then, in its own way, his music surprisingly regains its form, makes sense, establishes its own boundaries. The sound he brings out of the piano is unheard of... And such fullness of tone, achieved without ever becoming rough, I have never before encountered... as a whole it displays incredible novelty and persuasiveness. ...it is amazing what he plays and how he plays it". |
Give me any pianist name that play at the same level or better i will buy his album right now...If i dont already know him ... 😊 Moravec is one of my FEW gods on piano....All his album are TOP artistic playing with none musically underpar with the others...I listen to them all...If he is not the best he is beside the best interpreter of a piece...This pianist is not so well known because probably he is too great to be true... His color sense is astounding and his mastery of the flowing "hues" unsurpassed save by few other gods....he dont play piano , he is a painter... Do you want to SEE the "cathedral engloutie" under water? I was in love with Debussy after listening him....Never before... When your eye catch what look like a cathedral under water you never forgot it... I discovered Moravec because of a friend who wanted to cure me at all cost of my Sofronitsky and Nyiregyhazi serious disease for months....He succeeded...I was able at last to listen to another pianist....😁😊
«Only a diamond can replace a diamond»-Lazare Kaplan diamond cutter
listen to it at 4m41s. |
No pianist exceed him in raw power, and it is the reason why the composer Schoenberg wrote about him with the highest praise to the young Klemperer...Remember Schoenberg never give much to interpreter....It was like Einstein praising with admiration an engineer... He praised Tesla..... This pianist is an Himalaya of emotion....Playing "right" like a pupil make no sense for him....He is not in the same league than Horowitz for example... A god is not a giant..... Schoenberg never praised giants, there is many, he praised a god.... We must listen the music here not the piano.... When you make love with a goddess you dont point to her "mistakes" or her "divergence of interpretation".... Love is over perfection for a saint and for this pianist.... « Perfection is only the name of a dog walking behind his master....»-Groucho Marx |
Well, when the composer calls for hemidemisemiquavers, it’s nice to have a pianist who can actually execute them both correctly and artistically.We dont lack of first of their class pianists and contest winner pianists to perfectly translate a partition.... 😁 their number exceed my 2 hands by a big number... We need rarest bird able to recreate a partition on the spot, and playing it for the first and last time ever...Living playing is not mostly and only perfect playing.... This is good for pupil in a contest... Their number is less than my fingers or not many more.... Music is "living" playing and by the way N. is not a less virtuoso than Hamelin at all, if you listen many pieces of him.... Some listen to written partition, i listen to emotions only.... I am not a musician Alas!... |
Liszt Ballade no 2 Guess how Liszt playing was? Like Horowitz or N. ? Feel the continuous wave unity in the emotions whithout hiatus in N. This unity is not there at the same level in Horowitz....Perfect playing is not living playing... When Horowitz play it is a " set of successive perfect objects" that is delivered, when N. play it is a soul event with a beat unity that is lacking in Horowitz... Only my impression.... by the way.... Horowitz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvCWRcmdFG4 E.N. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5XXiIxC73E |
@maghister I have tried as hard as I can to see something in your "God pianist" but I am sorry to have to admit defeat because all I can hear is massive rubatos and distortions of the melodic line . some of the Liszt pieces he plays are almost unrecognisable with massive agogic hesitations and splashy chords. No I am sorry he is not for me.It is perfectly Ok to perceive some perspective better than other... I am more attentive to colors and intensity than to virtuoso perfect playing.... "fingers flying" He seems to be a throwback to the 19th century, with its romantic excesses.You are partly right but dont be deceived by only 2 or 3 pieces listening.... Perfection is not enough! Anyway i prefer romantic excess to modern dryness.... And wrote to the composer Schoenberg that his divine pianist is under Hamelin for his playing.... Like me he will smile.... 😁 |
You are perfectly right i just give my impressions....The great Earl Wild think the same than you.... He called his playing "baloney" .... The playing of Earl Wild is to me of the highest order but under N. ...I side with Schoenberg....By the way i have no opinion, only feelings and soul impression about music.... I am not a musician at all... Alas! And Music was never an object to evaluate and taste for me, more of an abyss to enter into.... Because of that my choices are very exclusive and many known artists fail to impress me not because they are not very good but because of those few that impress me too much ...I am perhaps an obsessive listener more than an exploratory one.... My best to you.... |
I apologize because it is not classical but i am in love with all great contraltos... Marian Anderson and Kathleen Ferrier are my 2 goddesses love... This young russian is amazing like his life story is... For male save for Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who are my gods, in my next life i want to be anyway an "oktavist"... I guess i will be a Russian soul this time.... |
Like usual very interesting comment from frogman confirmed by this reader comment under the video: «There‘s another intersting interview (in German) with Christa where she says the following: Karl Böhm got it always right Karajan was always either too soft or too loud Bernstein was always either too slow or too fast But of the three, only Bernstein could communicate music with an unparalleled intensity. Christa, who will turn 93 in a week or so put that pretty well! »
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It is my favorite version among other great one, like the Bohm one, but this Hogwood interpretion with a children voice chorus is an interpration that did never sound like a mass but like a drama, a spiritual opera, expressing the fear of death, the acceptance of death and the desire for death like in a children heart afraid and at the same time nostalgically aspiring to the promising adventure, all that make this version unique and to be frank the best for me in spite of any other possible and rightful criticism someone could make...No interpretation is perfect....But this one catch the universal essence of this ARCHETYPICAL work about death... Contrary to the magnificent Bohm version that sound like a magnificent mass for example, the Hogwood version sound like a spiritual opera not a mass at all.... How deep and how wise was this choice of children voices and of the pulsating rythm and tempo to illustrate Mozart beating heart at the time of his own death...Thanks Christopher Hogwood... This is the more universal Requiem ever written because of this PRIMEVAL understanding of death for the children heart in each of us, like the swift coming of the great fearsome riper and like the awaiting of our loving mother after our own death at the same time ....And listening to this we are all children again facing death.... And listen the solists they are singing like in an opera they dont pray, they tell a spiritual intimate and at the same time universal story.... The prayer is not in the parts of this " requiem mass" but you can listen to this prayer in the irresistible dancing beating pulsating heart of the composer himself writing all the voices like if each one of them was himself speaking....Incredible feat....The more efficient and powerful requiem ever written....Who will dare to write a requiem after that, it will be difficult to wrote another concerto called the "Four seasons" after Vivaldi, or another work called the Well tempered Klavier or the Art of the fugue after Bach ... This Requiem is magical especially in this interpretation....
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