Classical Music for Aficionados

Len pal I am fast catching up on you there , I now get my daughter to tune in and program the video from the remote as I am sure having difficulty now .

@phomchick Again I'm afraid I have to disagree with you because
 the direct Steam DAC still suffers from the Garbage in Garbage out principal. As an example my friend suffered from the principal   that it did not matter what the digital source was you could not get better quality by giving it a better source and bits was bits syndrome. I told him to come down with his digital gear( a laptop and a desktop ) and we would play his gear against mine. We agreed to stream a piece and play also from a hard drive. As I had thought his laptop put up a  dull uninvolving sound and his desktop was a little better. I then played my laptop and he was saying a see I told you so with his eyes . I then connected up my PC and it was a different ball game completely, my machine demonstrated much better dynamics and far more detail to the files. Now we were both musicians and we know how instruments sound and he was in complete agreement that my source sounded so much better.

@mahgister   Hi I have been listening to Zacharias playing Scarlatti for a lot of the day on and off and have to say that I can see a lot of wonderful musicmaking there. The only thing I have to say is that he does play them quite literally with not a lot of feeling there but yes I can see why you are enamoured of them. 
I have to pin my colours to another mast though, Mikhail Pletnev's accounts to me are quite literally poles apart with lots of colour injected and a blistering virtuoso technique. We must remember that Scarlatti was a virtuoso of the highest order and tasked with teaching a princess and later Queen of Portugal who was quite a virtuoso herself. In their day velocity was a pre requisite and a great few of his sonatas were written with that in mind. I have heard Pletnev play a lot of times but only heard him play Scarlatti twice and as encores. His first was the D minor one K517 and a blistering account it was and he was giving washes of colour with pedal being used liberally. The next one he played was the B minor K27 which I did not really appreciate from his record but live the accents on loud and soft playing was incredible. I have to say those two sonatas were what I had taken home with me that night.

No unfortunately not piano but classical guitar and Renaissence  Lute for about forty years.

Hi Jeremy, I had a few guitars in the years I was playing . I had two wonderful Lowden guitars , a jumbo one ( boy that thing could project and one that was the same size as the Martin D19 which was a lovely guitar to play. I also had a few nice classical guitars of which my favourite was a bespoke one made by William Kelday the man who makes guitars for Tony McManus the Scottish fingerstyle guitarist. In 1973 when I was taking lessons in classical style guitar I found out that I liked to play renaissance lute music and at the time to buy a lute was totally prohibitive as they could only be made as one offs and the cost was sky high. I did not let that deter me so I managed to get some plans and some tone woods and made my own seven course lute. It actually turned out not too bad and I then started playing William Byrd, Francis Cutting ,John Dowland and my idol JS Bach. I played those instruments for many years and I still have the lute lying unused in a cupboard for a good few years. I gave up some years ago when I was discovered to have diabetes and due to peripheral neuropathy I couldn't feel the strings beneath my fingers so I had to give up playing altogether.I now only listen to music but have to admit that it is piano music most of all that I am interested in.

Thank you Len that is very kind of you.

Yes Jeremy you are right about the steel string guitars , but I had them as I liked to play many styles of guitar music as well as the classical . One of my favourite things to do was capo three frets up and play lute music on the steel stringed instruments, it gave a wonderful ring to the music.

@jcazador Yes Jeremy they are indeed lovely guitars ( I would love to hear how the ones with sound holes at the front sound like )
As an aside I am this moment listening to a gorgeous Handel’s Messiah from Emmanuelle Haim and Le Concert D’Astre . It,s a facsimile of a performance Handel organised at Covent Garden in London. In it the Alto was a counter Tenor and I must admit I do like it though we are all more used to female altos but I do indeed think there is cause to put it beside the Dublin editions.

Jeremy , I listened to the Beamer guitar and yes it does have a nice sweet tone but I did find the playing a wee bit "Twee"

@jcazador   Jeremy if you want to hear a really great guitarist then find on you tube Martin Taylor, I can only say what he does on a guitar defies belief. He plays jazz guitar but I got over that hurdle very quickly. I have seen him personally 5 times and he always leaves you wanting more. If you don't believe me then check out the stuff he plays on his Yamaha custom guitar. It has an autograph on it from Chet Atkins and it says "Martin you are the best, Chet Atkins"

@jcazador       Jeremy while I am listening to it I shall tell you what, it's Mariam Batsishvili and she is playing Liszt and Chopin pieces and she is mesmerising. I know it is no use mentioning to @Schubert  and @rvpiano as they hate all things "Liszt" sorry guys just having a little fun. Now back to the recording it is the only recording I could find on Idagio but I'm quite sure that will be remedied soon. She can only be described as a true poet and she has a technical facility the equal of any. I was sold on the first track of her album ' it was the Liszt Benediction that got my mind made up. I could hear a technique truly the equal of Volodos but she uses her virtuosity solely at the service of the music. Her tone palate reminds me of Claudio Arrau and she plays Liszt's Consolation in D flat major as if Horowitz was on the piano stool. I have found a lot of videos on You Tube giving us a lot more examples of her art, she plays the Bach-Busoni Chaconne in D Minor with a virtuosity that is truly stunning.
There is also an account of her Liszt Piano Concerto No 1 that focusses on her playing manner and there are shots from above of her hands and her octaves are stunning and so precise. This girl is going to go very far and she is only 25 years old. Oh one more thing her persona on stage is in no way flamboyant and she hasn't succumbed to manager tricks to sex her up , she wears a lovely tailored trouser suit which does not detract the listeners in any way ( what a breath of fresh air ). I also now have a recording she made of a recital she gave in Liverpool which BBC Radio 3 had recorded and very illuminating it is, she gives us a technically perfect Bach Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue then a beautifully balanced Mozart Piano Sonata and in the second half she gives us the Liszt Piano Sonata in B Minor . That particular piece I have many copies of with different pianists playing from all different eras and my favourite for as many years as I can remember is Arrau in his analogue set for Phillips which was digitised in the Eighties and Phillips did a retrospective of his career with them and did a lot of boxes of him playing different composers. Our little Georgian wunderkind is going to be up there now with Arrau. Oh and she has a wicked sense of humour also at the end of the Liverpool concer and B Minor Sonata she came on stage and announce that after the Liszt she would give us something mare simple and not so serious. She played The Paganini-Liszt transcription of La Campanella , she brought the house down.

@schubert     Len I can't fault you on the pollini treasure , I think it was not long after that disc that he retired from the platform to study for a while longer. That was the worst thing he ever did in my opinion because he went to study with Michaelangeli for a while and when he emerged he was quite a different pianist , gone was that beautiful crystalline tone to be replaced with pure ice. As far as I am concerned He just wasn't the same. I probably said before that I heard him in Glasgow once and he played a Mozart Piano Concerto and I think he was well suited to it. He played the whole concert with not a finger out of place and some of the most perfect pianism I have ever seen , but cold as ice. Pity.

Hi David you may like to try this one out it's from Benjamin Grosvenor and I say this as it is full of explosive Virtuosity and I find it very satisfying and it has some nice fill ups from Saint-Saens and Ravel. Grosvenor is a very young man but don't let that hold you back because he has a stunning technique.

Jeremy I too like The Biret Schubert/Liszt transcriptions but have to say I love the Jorge Bollet ones even more ,he injects an old world charm to them but make no mistake he could always keep up with the big boys as his Earl King will testify.

@mahgister     I think you are absolutely right regarding his CD's , I also find them quite cold to  listen to with the exception of Stravinsky's Three Movements from Petrushka. He plays that piece as if The devil or in Scot's parlance ( Auld Nick - for you Len ) was sitting at the keyboard playing it himself. If poor old Arthur Rubinstein the dedicatee could have played it like that , but sadly that is the type of thing that Pollini excelled at. While on the subject of Pollini has anyone heard Pollini's latest Beethoven's last three piano sonatas, I wish I could say it was great but I found it quite difficult to listen to. That famous accuracy is gone and the pieces lack any cohesion and there are a few finger slips which I am putting down to age. Take Martha Argerich she is now over seventy five now and she plays like a 40 y.o. which I am sure most 40 year olds would love.

Yes Jeremy as you say "the real deal" and I was listening to BBC broadcasts of her in the seventies and eighties. A great tecnique and sumptuous tone.

Between Perahia and Pollini , no contest I would pick Perahia and day of the week. I have loved Perahia since the day he won the Leeds Piano Competition ( a long time ago ) and I have to admit he is my go to pianist for any Bach keyboard works. I have only heard him live once at Glasgow and it was the Goldberg Variations with some Bach / Busoni thrown in also. It was a wonderful performance with some sparkling pianism and for all Pollini's virtuosity it is Perahia I will always fall back on.

RV,   I am so glad you are giving Liszt a try as he wrote ( in my opinion ) some of the most beautiful piano music of all time and yes he also wrote some bombastic show pieces to show off his technique. After all it was an age when everyone was vying for the top rung of the ladder and Liszt had to do the same if he wanted to be up there with the rest. A little piece to note is a letter Chopin wrote to a friend and it goes something like " I don't know how I am writing on this page but I am totally consumed by Liszt a few meters away playing my Etudes , Oh how I wish I could steal his technique and way he plays my music". That was Chopin's Op.10 Studies dedicated to Liszt. On the century's most inspired music, in the 18th century it has to be Bach's Goldberg Variations and for the 19th century I would have to go for Liszt's Sonata in B Minor. All I can say just now is thank goodness we now have young pianists of the Calibre of Volodos and some of these young lionesses that can safely surmount the enormous difficuties of his music and present it in a way that gives us a coesive whole that does not look like they are just trying to get through it with as many notes as intact as possible.

@jcazador     Jeremy I have just read your account of the Chopin Godowsky Studies. By not being up technically to Bolet's recordings do you mean Godowsky's technique or the technical imperfections of the recorded sound then. I have read of Bolet going back to his young days when he was a student of Josef Hoffman and how everyone was in awe of Godowsky's technique even Hoffman an Rachmaninov had said that he could do things on the piano that no normal human being could do.

Len,  I am sorry for your friend my condolences to you , we are now losing friends and colleagues left right and centre as we get older and it is very sad. As to Harry Lauder , yes he was corny but he was a mainstay for ex pats in Canada and America and yes they did go overboard on the whole heather and haggis thing .
Scotia ever more. 

Jeremy  yes it was me who recommended Grosvenor, I think he is a very fine young pianist and he has a really bright future.

I hope all my friends on Audiogon have a really lovely Christmas.

@schubert    Hi Len I'm afraid I have a block on Vaughan William's music. Every year when it comes to Proms time they trundle out that bloody Lark Ascending, I run for cover every time it is on. I can't even stand his symphonies now either. I do quite like The Wasps Overture though.

@twoleftears    You are absoloutely right about the exagerated width of th piano , I listen to more and more disks each year with severe perspective problems. I don't notice it too much on my setup as I use phones but I do when I go to my pals house and we listen to his conventional system , it seems that the signal has you looking straight on to the keys and the keyboard is eight foot wide, " I don't like that ". I like BIS piano recordings best because they have a massive dynamic range and you have the best seat in the house. lf you want to hear piano et it's best today I suggest you go to the BIS catalogue and listen to Yevgeny Sudbin's solo work especially his Scarlatti Sonatas. I shall also chastise my self for my outburst about VaughanWilliams because if truth be told there are lots of less competent composers that him and I'm afraid all after Shostakovitch fall into that category, that's my thoughts and I don't expect anyone to agree with me.

I must look that one up , it's the Marc-Andre Hamelin one I have. I must admit I find it heavy going like most of Busoni's original compositions.

@jcazador    Johnathan I see you are a fan of Uchida and yes she is great in Mozart but I remember the first concert of hers I attended, it was Mozart piano sonatas in the first half and Schubert impromptus and the little A Major sonata in the second half. Yes it was a beautiful concert but I could not keep my eyes off her face, the faces and mannerisims were all over the place I was mesmerised. I did not even watch her fingers as I just kept staring at her face and my pal was the same. I since have enjoyed lots of her Mozart but from the comfort of my armchair and hi fi system.

@twoleftears

Yes I am glad you like her program she surely is a poet of the piano and with a fearless technique to boot. There certainly is no shortage now of young women who can keep up with and very often beat the men at their own game. Now I see a time upon us where men and women can take on Liszt,Alkan and Godowsky and make something of the masses of notes in front of them and turn it into a cohesive whole . As a phrase of Busoni comes to mind , "Bach is the Old Testament and Beethoven the new and together they make Liszt possible"

Sudbin has two discs of Scarlatti available but Iam sure any of the two are representative of his art. They are also very exhilarating.

@rvpiano Wow RV that's going to keep you busy during lockdown. I wish you well to enjoy them.

@schubert
Len , I listened to the choir and yes it was a very refined and smooth sound. Brings back a whole lot of memories when my sister used to sing in the Arran choir back in the sixties and I used to go to their rehersals.

@jcazador     Jeremy i used to love Nathan Milstein and back when I used vinyl I had the main violin concertos and the Bach Sonatas and Partitas and I just loved him. You are talking about the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and the last time I heard it in person was up in Glasgow and it was going to be Ida Haendel playing it. Unfortunately Haendel was ill that night and she was going to be replaced by someone called Nigel Kennedy. Well we sat back and out rolled this little boy to play this tiger of a concerto and all we knew about him at the time was he was a student at the Menuhin School. He dully launched into the work and astonished us with his prowess for a boy he was certainly some player. I am really saddened by what has happened to him over the years because it seems that he squandered his talent but I suppose that is what burnout does to us no matter what you are good at. So sad.

@schubert         Len I share your views on Julia Fischer She shares a triumvirate I think with Maxim Vengerov and Leonidas Kavakos and I think those three reign supreme at the moment. Kavakos at the moment has a recording on Idagio of him playing and directing the Beethoven Violin Concerto and at times the playing verges on the impossible with tempos and his control of the orchestra . Have you heard his playing of the Sibelius Violin Concerto in the original manuscript and the revised one, no wonder Sibelius revised it, it must have been the very devil to get your fingers round it. And Julia Fischer who as well as beautiful playing is quite a beauty herself , the Bach unacompanied sonatas and partitas will be at the very top of the pile for quite a time. She is also nearly as good a pianist as she is a fiddler.

@schubert     Definitely my most favourite symphonic piece by Rachmaninov, these pieces are so dynamic ,colourful and vibrant.

I'm afraid the canes and walkers are commonplace at all classical concerts now. I hate to think what will become of our music when our generation dies out.

@mahgister      If you need a little break from Schiff and still need some Bach try The Goldberg Variations played by, Ekaterina Dershavina quite different from Schiff but also superb. It may be just what you are needing ,I love her playing.

@twoleftears      Have you got Francesco Piemontesi playing the Liszt Years of Pilgrimage First year Switzerland and Second Year Italy. I love them as he has a beautiful touch at the keyboard and the recitals are beautifully recorded. A couple of years ago I attended a recital in my local town hall and he played Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto , one of the best concerto recitals I have been to.

Thats a great pity as he was a fantastic horn player. I had the privilege of hearing him in Glasgow many moons ago and he played Strauss and Mozart with great aplomb. He also was a very comic character.

@rvpiano    I have just read your discourse on Bolet and I also love that you enjoyed the Carnegie Hall performance. When you consider who his teachers were it's a who's who of giants from the late 19th century. We have Moritz Rosentahl probably the best of List's students because he didn't die young and he didn't forget the piano to write operas. His other teachers were no less exaulted was Josef Hoffman who's teacher was the great Anton Rubinstein , also Leopold Godowsky who tutored Bolet on Godowsky's finger twisting creations . Unfortunately Bolet did not get on well with the big recording companies because none of them at the time wanted the Liszt Piano Sonata and his Transcedental Etudes so he did not get any big recording contracts until that stupendous Carnegie Hall recital. Thankfully Decca grabbed him up and they gave him a blank canvas to record what he felt like so we got a lot of Liszt and other virtuoso fare. He was actually primed to do some of Godowsky's Studies on the Chopin Etudes and I was there in Glasgow one day when he was giving a lecture on Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto and he had three students who were also taking a masterclass and being recorded by the BBC. When he was finished giving the masterclass both audience and orchestra gave him a standing ovation and quite buoyed by it he came back on and gave us an encore and it was one of the Godowsky Chopin etudes and it was two separate etudes at the one time and I still don't know how he did it. I was trying how to work out how it was possible because there skips and playing through the hands I just could not believe it and when he finished he gave a delighted bow and that was the last time I saw him. Yes Mr Bolet was a very special link to another age.

I really do not know how I would have survived my childhood without Bach in my life. As I am now reaching my seventh decade I have to say that Bach is my anchor and I couldn't go through a day without listening to something of his and to bolster my spirit for the day ahead and if this is the day for me to depart I can go with my heart and soul ready because of listening to one of his soul cleansers. Jim.

@jcazador    Hi Jeremy that was a very informative piece that you wrote about Godowsky . Have you got Constantin Scherbakov playing Godowsky's Baroque transcriptions on the Marco Polo label I love it, notably the Musette and Rondeau in E Major I find it hypnotic and I usually play it at least three times in a row when I am in the mood.

@david_ten     I'm glad you went with the Grosvenor disc I was sure it wouldn't disappoint.

We will miss Haitink ( now retired ) and Blomstedt very much when they go. In the summer of 2019 I watched some BBC Proms performances and one I really loved was Haitink at the helm of the VPO and he played Bruckner 's Seventh and after a few curtain call you could see he was quite upset as that was to be his last performance in the UK. I remember the last parting shot of the back of his head as he recieved a standing ovation from the audience and the orchestra. Very touching and the end of a very great career.

Hear Hear Len.

@jcazador       Funnily enough Jeremy I was expecting a lot more from Dershavina's Haydn but they weren't for me, I must admit I enjoy Hamelin more. Have a listen to Paul Lewis he is quite a star in them, oh and he has just released a recording of the Beethoven Bagatels which are really 

While we are on a Liszt theme at the moment I have been listening lately to some stunning piano playing from Daniel Barenboim from 1973 to 1983. It is called The Romantic Piano 1 and it is on Idagio at the moment with a complete set of the Chopin Nocturnes , Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words and some stunning Liszt. He plays the Swiss Pilgrimage and also most of the Itallian one and some of the list Wagner transcriptions. There is also a superb account of the B Minor Sonata which I had never heard from him before. He really was some player before he went over to the dark side ( conducting ).

@jcazador   Hi jeremy yes I have heard and have his new piano album and I think it gives a more tangible link to the 19th century piano playing and I think it also has a wonderful tone. Yes the dark side was meant to be a bit flippant because one side of me says we already have enough wonderful conductors and one says without these pianist's contributions we would be bereft of the benefit these pianist conductors. I do hate though going to concerts where the pianist in a concerto would be thoroughly triounced pianistically by the conductor. I'm afraid the Scot in me says I am being short changed.

Quite honestly Len the Scots couldn't give a stuff about the Royal family.I think the Queen and the prince of Wales should be the only ones that the state should keep, the rest get out and find a job ( too many hangers on ). In fact Len the Prince of wales is the only one who works and pays tax, he has the Dutchy of Cornwall and he has turned it into a very profitable place through farming and tree production. Yes I do like Prince Charles he is a very intelligent and astute man. Ask any true Scot who should be on the throne and they will always come up with the Stuarts.

You guys who have access to Idagio there is a lovely concert with the Vienna Phil. and Gergiev conducting exclusive to Idagio . It's Tchaikovsky's Lovely 1st Symphony "Winter Daydreams" and Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherezade in a lovely interpretation by Gergiev.
@twoleftears    You are right about Paul Lewis I have been watching him for a number of years and I like your comment aout the playing being more human and I think that is because Alfred Brendel had a hand in finishing off his musical education. If it is of any interest he also has some really nice Haydn Piano sonatas available also.

Yes Len you are so right ,I have seen Brendel live many times and although not a natural virtuoso he had a wonderful way with Schubert. I remember one concert he played the last three sonatas and I have never heard them played better by anyone although I do still have a soft spot for Volodos.

@jcazador          Wow don't you have enough to get on with at the moment LOL.