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
For Alain Connes and for Roger Penrose too the distribution of prime numbers express a musical universal memory beat that comes from BEFORE this universe and INFORM it... We reincarnated probably to add something new to "the music score"...Pygmies and Yoruba drummers get it more easily than us thats all...They have not waited for geometer like Connes to teach them... 😁😊 And the first humans creating language too... Furtwangler never directed symphonies with an EXTERNAL beat but with an INTERNAL pulse emerging with the music itself... Valery Gergiev explain it well... «Valery Gergiev: The most difficult thing in conducting is to avoid a mechanical beat. This endless search for a true tempo, the right tempo for every bar of music, and not just a single tempo for the whole movement, is something few conductors ever master. Few leaders will recognize, perhaps, that it is something difficult for them, but they will try to do it and compete with Furtwängler, and most likely they will fail.» This also explain why some jazz musicians are so great, like the youruba drummers, they are not handicapped by the burden of INTERPRETATING with the right beat written music and more easily access to this spontaneous spiralling waves expressed in pygmies songs or Amerindian or Indian drummers...Spiralling waves of the cosmic primes or divine heart itself...
By the way Connes admitted he was inspired by palindromic rythm studies of Olivier Messiaen and discovered a relation between palindromic beats and some non commutative operators in Hilbert Space that described genesis of time itself... This is why MUSIC COMMAND TIME not the reverse...... I will stop here... i hope to have convinced some that music is not about our taste only and is not only a hobby but a key to the heart and to the cosmos.... My best to all
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i cannot resist to post that...
«Furtwängler has always been Bruckner’s great protagonist. In 1942, the Telefunken firm persuaded Furtwängler to experiment with improvements in recording technique. Having consented, he opted for the famous Adagio from the 7th symphony, and later for Gluck’s Alceste Overture, in order to verify, as he said himself, whether the microphones were capable of restoring the breadth of his orchestra, and particularly the famous double basses of Berlin. The results were amazing. This interpretation of Bruckner by Furtwängler is the slowest and yet the most sustained with its striking tension. Once again the tragic element and the grandeur of the speech are unmatched. It is indeed a recording for a desert island, happily restored to the delight of music lovers everywhere, to be kept and cherished for a lifetime. Ironically, its tragic grandeur did not deter the Nazis from playing this recording on Radio Berlin to announce Hitler’s death, long after Furtwängler had fled Germany. Suffice it to say simply that no man, however great, or a fortiori vile, is worthy of the dimensions of this work.»
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But because this universal internal beat and rythm precede TIME itself it can accomadate many manifestation at the same time... Compare the adagio version from Furtwangler to the Celibidache version...The Bohm version and the Giulini version also...Karajan,Wand and some others... it is impossible to choose really...There is many different roads that come from the same peak and go back to it....
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Ah! This remind me i am almost 71 years old and this remind me that he is a giant for sure... Sad... I will listen to him tonight with a prayer ... It does not take more than few seconds to discover an interpretion by him which is supremum... He walked on embers with an internal pulse that is never outside of the music, the music played him more than he play it...
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Appear very interesting to me...To say the least...it is very delicate and clear voicing... My favorite version is Feltsman in Moscow...This one is so different that it will be complementary...Feltsman was propulsed like a meteoritic surge in some sky, Angelich is inward in his own explicit way ...I cannot put words for now...it is a discovery for me... it seems we just lost two giant pianists...
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This version rival any other great one i know of indeed...It is very delicate and poetical interpretation...the drama is interiorized... Save for only one version nobody exceed anyway and which is in a class of his own but a version "sound purist" dont always love because too volcanic and too powerful playing by "Liszt reincarnated" for Hungarian People...
Angelich is with Lupu a giant for me... This piece is the key to Liszt soul...Many versions are welcome...
And Liszt is one the greatest underestimated composers there is because of his Christus among other works, which is the only oratorio with the Messiah for me rivaling Bach Passion... Liszt deeply influenced Bruckner with Shubert through this oratorio who rival even the Greatest Mass of Bruckner himself... So astounding that the first time i listened to it i was out of my chair and never understood at the first listening the majestic simplicity of Liszt devotion and his mastering of symphonic orchestration chorus and soloists so great and purified and refined to a a truly celestial perfection that nobody ever exceed it for me among any composers.. He unite the most moving simplicity with the peak of glory which is an impossible task and union save in Paradise... I think Liszt conversion was really a spiritual one... .. i owned four version of this three hours work... 😁😊 It is the life of Christ told by angels in heaven after the resurrection for me ...Not a Passion at all... It is like the Art of the Fugue by Bach, the only work i know at the same heights of perfection on all counts form and content which put almost any other works under them save few truly inspired spiritual works... I am ashamed to say i discovered Listz only late in life...Too great for my small mind and heart it seems, i was not ready ...I dont joke here...This work humble us... It is useless to put a link to this 3 hours work and feel the right impression without immersing ourself in it...You cannot judge the Himalaya from below... The only work for me that rival Liszt Christus is not his marvellous choral works so great they are indeed, but his 5 th symphony...Incredible work underestimated to this day, because the beauty of his other symphonies are easier to catch at first listening... But no one ever write a symphony so perfect in content and form with a so intense spiritual experience hidden in it i put it beside the cHristus and the Art of the fugue... The Bruckner 9 th symphony for example so deep, beautiful it is and it is rival almost any symphonic piece ever written, lack the purified, refined spiritual perspective over the cosmos itself and over all life there is in the 5th... A great critic in the 10 century say it all : "this is to the symphony art what the art of the fugue is to the klavier "...
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Between live performance concert in big hall and listening recorded concert there is a difference always a changing one with no absolute superiority of one over the other in all case, for me... It is true that a lived performance will always own a potential superiority for sure in principle because the musician spirit and body is in the room... A very small room concert is then the ONLY ideal way...Or playing ourself with this musician for sure.... 😊 Glenn Gould prefered studio recording... I dont say he was right , i say he was not wrong either... But for sure we can judge to a relative high degree a great pianist playing even from a bad recording... We cannot assess the level of an artist only if we were "there" so to speak...
Another example: i own albums of a tanbur Iranian musician, very badly recorded , which are among the most powerful musical performance i ever listened to, Yehudi Menuhin wrote and tought the same about him and to be frank i listen to this musician after reading Menuhin impressions... But for most people it will be only an horrendous recording and a not tamed music at all (persian origin) ... I know i test it with many music lovers, and they cannot understand why i loved it so much... Any music must be learned so to speak and must be approached like we tame a wild unknown beast.... And at the end music is not only sound and is not even any more related to the musician body and spirit , it is a personal spiritual event that transcend even the musician personality and precise moment of the event...
Then there is one mountain peak yes, but many roads to musical illumination like in religious matter i think.... 😁😊😊😊😊😊😊
By the way, what i appeciate the more here, is the diversities of experiences and opinions, this is these diversities which is the door to new discoveries for me... Like said frogman one day here, to tamper my always too great enthusiasm 😁 , there is no objective best of the best... I will not dare to contradict him, because he is right for sure, especially if we take into account all opinions in the world...But for me there is, like for each one of you, the best of the best... It is normal and a testimony to our own different spirit journey...
Some musical event is like a first love, we cannot renounce it for the rest of our life...
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A god not God... It will be a theological mistake and a pure misplaced idolatry otherwise... We all have our own admirations... A thread like this one is interesting... Supposed you claim that the best Schubert interpreter is Radu Lupu... Supposed i never pounder Lupu in Schubert, or for some reason i never listen to him my attention directed at some aspect of his Schubert playing... I will listen to him anew with new ears, thanks to you... And i will perhaps discover something that has passed over me before because of my distraction ...And i will thank you without sarcasm for that ... I try to evite sarcasm about other people impression in spiritual matter...And music is a spiritual matter for me... This is the reason why this thread is interesting... When you say that some pianist is the "best" there is for some composer interpretation, it is not a theological truth, but a way to enlightened me...It is the way i read you... It is the way i take it... Take my enthusiasm for the same as yours... 😊 A way to partake music and surprise ourself about others differences and perspective... Superlative adjectives here are only a way to express our own amazement...Not objective truth... Yes for me E. N. is a god especially in Liszt Obermann .... Like Sofronitsky is a god in Scriabin... Sometimes i cannot choose between great artists, i renounce to claim that some musician is better than an another one ... For example i am unable to pick between Feltsman or Schiff, my two favorites pianist in Bach Klavier... I dont doubt there is even other great one here to place beside them... But miraculous events exist too....Even in music... And sometimes like Marian Anderson singing "ave maria" of Shubert my heart is vanquished and it is, if not a goddess, an angel without rival here FOR ME... I hope to have been clear about "my entusiasm" which is not a rational claim about a rational argument to be winned or lost... Only a poetical way to focus others attention on some aspect of listening and convey my experience... Then i thank you for the occasion given to me here by you to clear this point about admirations... My best and deepest respect to you ....
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Late this night i was dumbfounded by the beauty of this two playings of Liszt , the first by a "playing giant" and the second version by a "singing god"... Pick the one you prefer, but listen attentively to the continuity uniting "pulse" behind all successive passing states and the subsisting constrasts polarities at the same times and read how alternate emotions coming from the unconscious mind of the very conscious Liszt are translated by the two pianists unequaly, one in a more spectacular but beautiful playing, the other with an absolute clarity about the poetical and unified alternative emotionals rumination of Liszt in the same moment sometimes in the piece... The "playing giant" tempo is faster than the "singing god"... It is a lesson in piano playing by two masters...
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Is music an emotion becoming a beautiful sound ? Or is music a sound becoming pure intense sometimes terrifying emotion ?
These two interelated notions, which we may distinguish but Two polarities intricated in one another and dominatating one another at the service or disservice of one another ... I will illustrate each one of these polarities by two versions of the Mephisto Waltz no 2 from Liszt...
The second one by the godly pianist is terrifying in his brutish character coming directly from hell... No more Beautiful sound here, only a mesmerizing violent emotion that let us in pieces... The 4 last minutes of the second version shatter all other versions for me...Pure daemonic summoning which transform the worst heavy metal ceremony in children play...
«An angel is terrible»-Rilke «Imperfection only is the peak and the apex»-René Char
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I think the same... The mix of the right folks diversities all around in their country ? They had a way of singing when playing that make them unique... All countries had a soul, but the Czechs have been tuned by God toward singing not opera so much than poetry, with violin or anything else... Think about Dvorak and Zelenka among many others...Their music is poetry for me...
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I decided to come back listening my beloved Zuzana Ruzickova complete Bach Klavier, especially the Partitas... For two reasons: First it is my favorite Bach integral... Second the sound... His harpsichord produce a deluge of harmonics on all scale that is very difficult to catch in his beauty , like a rainbow for each register timber change in a new world of colors... It is an acoustic test for your speakers/room treatment and control, i remember the difference in sound with this album before and after my acoustic control implementation not so long ago...The sound was if not awful, ugly at times and compressed without the actual mesmerizing harmonic palette... In truth this sound interpretation is like a colored ongoing kaleidoscope dance, it is impossible to be bored...On the opposite it is like a drug induced sound hallucination more akin to heaven than to this world... Then it is not only by his masterful interpretation which match even the greatest harpsychordist , it is for his unique sound that i am entranced ... This woman is born with the Bach angel near his bed and after his survival through concentration camp decided to promote the harpsichord , not a primitive musical instrument, not inferior to the piano, but unique and irrepleacable even OVER the piano...Like the original Veena in India which is in no way primitive or inferior to the modern sitar...
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Nobody will say that you lack in taste here...😊 Celibidache is unique.... And Fournier too is my favorite interpreter for Bach cello suites... My first vinyls purchase was a Beethoven symphony and a Dvorak one 58 years ago for 2 dollars if i remember well... With Schubert and some few others, Dvorak is a poet of the highest order...
Thanks for this work i did not listen to before.... ... My deepest respect.... |
I just read the autobiography of Zuzana Ruzickova... For me easily the greatest harpsichordist... His musicality is not matched for me by anyone.... I discovered her long time ago with Bach complete recording for Klavier...The first one made...By a woman who loved so much Bach that she defended harpsichord against the prejudice that it was an instrument inferior to the piano.... Which is false... I discovered her 2 times....The last time this year with my audio room finished and a sound so iridescent than no other artist can compare in this instrument.... Her choices of colors, hues and rythm specific for each music piece is so various that it become heavenly beautiful and refreshing....Good sound conditions can help indeed and she shines in Scarlatti, Handel, Couperin, Purcell, Dowland, Spanish masters or any other works.... A revelation....I am flabbergasted that a so great musician was so underestimated.... But there is many factors i will not touch here... I listened to all the others albums i can look at and my ears were amazed one album after the other.......She registered perhaps one hundred, where are they? it is a Czech woman of Jewish origin who loved his country dearly.... His autobiography is moving and a life lesson about music....( she befriended Vaclav Neuman and Karel Ancerl in the Nazi concentration camp for 4 years among other great musicians) Yes to answer Jim, it is in the water, which is the source of all poetry... The sound of the video is bad, but it is for the heart more than for the ears...
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I did not know about the Mauser... 😁😊 Couperin and Scarlatti between Bach pieces...It is a treat.... 😁😊
Comenius insisted on education at young age and a genius without stimuli at young age will shine way less.... The more honest and rational people and interesting people i encountered in my life were often asperger type... I wrote a poem years ago in Rhymes resuming the life of Heinecken... 😁😊
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I think you are right...
They never quit because they are and always had been and always will be there.... Like Beethoven deaf was always anyway in music land....
I will add Comenius the genius father of modern pedagogy... It was under the guidance of Comenius disciples in Germany that the world see the emergence of the astounding Henri Christian Heinecken....He dies at 4 years old, a genius so precox that Kant wote a book about him... («It is said that when he was ten months old, he could speak German. He read the Pentateuch at age one,[1] and between the ages of two and three, he read the Old and New Testament in Latin.[1] When he was three years old, he was said to have recited his own History of Denmark when visiting the King of Denmark.[1] Also at three, he testified in court to the murder of his friend, another boy named Reid.[1] He died at age four of celiac disease.[3] He was breastfed until close to his death, which was very likely caused by the ingestion of grain products.[4] While his exploits may seem hard to believe, they are relatively well documented. In 1726, his tutor (a man named Schöneich) published a study of Christian entitled The Life, Deeds, Travels and Death of the Child of Lübeck.[1][5] Immanuel Kant wrote an essay about the child calling him an "ingenium praecox" (someone "prematurely clever").«) Wikipedia
I apologize for this part about Heinecken but i think the importance of Comenius in history is underestimated...Like the goddess Ruzickova for harpsichord and music...
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I cannot vouch for all his performance but Celi interpretation was always about time not as a passing rythm , like the seasons, but more about one instant where everything is enclosed... We sometimes must learn to listen something, and for sure all is not for everybody... I already posted a piece of Indian Sarangi, one of the most fascinating instrument of India, and a poster say to me that it got on his nerve...😁😊 We cannot like eveything at the same times and sometimes our preference are right in a way.... Our taste are also a miror of our own ongoing evolution.... It takes me time to appreciate jazz for example... I never got it young.... But i loved Bach at first chords...Nothing is wrong and right, only an evolution... But the "cult" about Celi come from this concept of time, no other Conductor explored his way... Celi express and give to everything the density of eternity... Eternity can be boring so to speak ... 😊 Anyway some composers are more suited for this maestro "suspended" stick than some other... Bruckner’s interpretation for example are certainly stupendous...It is here i catch his art and unique vision... The greatest examples in the way to use of time for me by conductors are Furtwangler and Celibidache...No one is able to imitate them perfectly though... They become myths...Or examplar of the art of conducting...Most maestros distributed themselves between these 2 ways to express time... In Furtwangler: Music pass with his own beating time completely out of everyday time... In Celibidache : Music dont pass, but surge directly from his timing eternal origin or source... No one is right here or wrong , Celi. or Furt. only gods waiting for us to listen... But we cannot got their specific way at the same time and the same day... Our listening life is an evolution...
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Bernstein is a genius between Celi and Furt... His concept of musical time is between these two... Bernstein is one of the great maestro for me with these two...And some other few... But here frogman you pick the young Celi , a better example of his musical original time conception will be the Stuttgart 1976 more mature version of Coriolan.... 😊😊 I did not say here which one i prefer, it is not my goal... 😊
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You are right on all counts about Celi here.... I prefer Bernstein version to the two Celi version in Beethoven Egmont yes ... 😊😁 But the young version with Berlin has nothing to do with his mature notion of the musical time which he exhibit well with the Stuttgart version like you know for sure... And yes someone can be a genius in intemporal Bruckner and less convincing in mundane incarnated warring Beethoven... i prefer Furtwangler to almost all in Beethoven because his notion of musical time is at home with Beethoven like Celi concept of musical time is at home with Bruckner... Bernstein is a so great genius because he can use any of these two way to create musical time appropriate to each composer... Like other great maestros geniuses with him... Georgiev one day said that all maestros try to imitate the temporal musical direction of Furt. without succeeding completely , I think he is right...The way musical time is out of mundane measurable time and emerge from music itself without being objectively "measurable" at all is fascinating experience with Furt and sometimes with other maestro in some composer... Celi is a singularity among maestros, because he impose more than any other his own concept of musical time, which is not the Furtwanglerian one, i described above and Celi impose it on every composer...Then we listen Celi fascinating or boring interpretation, it is only dependent on our ability to see what there is to see... When we listen Celi there is no more time passing, nor the musical time in the Furtwangler sense, nor measurable mundane time, there is only a single moment of variable duration where eternity pour in an everlasting moment like water pouring in a glass andoverflowing or a moment of time elevating or stretching itself to eternity...What is miraculous in his Bruckner is the way Celi never lost intensity in this everlasting moment like in the Egmont case...Time is almost vanishing with him or become transparent so to speak, especially in his Bruckner at home interpretations ....it is a Buddhist notion of time and anyway Celi was buddhist pupil.... He is the only maestro obsessed by time in this sense.... He cannot be judged without be understood...He is fascinating if we understood him , boring if we dont try to understand him , more boring in Egmont for sure, not boring at all in any Bruckner... Unique... Thank for your kind words... i am not a musician at all... I dont know music language by the way, i attempt to decipher it with my ears/brain/body thats all...
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This interpretation with Klemperer and these two giant singers is out of this world ... There exist only one other interpretation perhaps rivaling it...
But the best possible version dont exist... It will be Wunderlich and Ferrier for me... The luminous honey hue of Wunderlich voice with the never before heard deep somber subterranean voice of Ferrier here....( or Marian Anderson who is only rival) I am in love with contraltos voices...I want to marry one... In my next life...
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