@squeek_king_77
My 2 Bach go to recordings would be (and this would be no surprise to my friends here) The Goldberg Variations with Dershavina playing as I think she really does get into the bones of the piece. Also included in that selection would be Andras Schiff in his Decca 1980's one because of the sheer joy in his playing and interpretation.
My next piece or correction , pieces would be the Partitas because between the major and minor pieces they are a microcosm of Bach and again two pianists because as different as they are I love both interpretations. My first is Murray Perahia who just seems to tick all the boxes for me. He uses a robust tone with the pedals used throughout and his decorations are beautifully done also . My second one would be Igor Levit playing them and it is a very exciting ride indeed with a technical ability second to none.
@schubert Len my friend I would be honoured to stand beside you up there so to speak but let's make it a long time until it happens.
Keep well and be safe,
Jim.
"Scotia forever"
@maghister I thank you for your very kind words to me both here and in the Goldberg's thread.
Be Safe my friend .
Jim.
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No Len didn't buy it I came across it on Qobuz and was hooked at the first listen. |
@twoleftears I have been a fan of Grimaud for anumber of years now, she has loads of stamina and a very good tecnique. a recording of hers I admire is Schuman's Sonata in A Minor for violin and piano.
Her partner on the recording is Gidon Kremer who I must admit is a hit and miss recording artist , bu I find his playing here very good without the harshness which on occasion do marr some of his recordings. His recordings with Martha Argerich are superb.
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Happy birthday Alfred and I really mean it. He more than any other pianist who I have heard live taught me more about Schubert and Beethoven.
I was always going to Glasgow or Edinburgh each week of the concert season and Edinburgh Festivals to hear him but oh how pained he made it look , but like Mitsuko Uchida you just had to suffer it. Bless you Alfred. |
@jcazador Hi Jeremy I can only describe your snippet as laughable in that if you go back in someone’s past that there may be a black gene floating about somewhere but I am glad that I am of the age now that I don’t care any longer. If you say anything nowadays against it you are instantly pegged as a racist.
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@schubert Len, I do agree with you regarding Haydn that his symphonies are just as great as Mozart and some of them more so. I would rather listen to Haydn than Mozart any day of the week. Haydn piano sonatas are rated greater than Mozart to me but no one comes near to Beethoven for piano sonatas as after listening to Op.111 there is no music I want to listen to after that, it has all been said. |
@rvpianoRV
@rvpianoR I listened to Eric Lu and then recorded him to my desktopI have to say he impresed me very Much ( I see he won the Leeds piano competition in 20 18 ) he should now be in demand from the major recital halls. I do find in his Chopin that he can use too much rubato but hey that's a purely personal reaction. I find the recording maybe a bit close but you can cerrtainly hear the reaction in powerfull playing. I hope he has a bright career ahead ofi him in the future
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Anyone interested in superb fiddling get on to Idagio and listen to Leonidas Kavakos 's album Virtuoso for a musical delight. The playing is so easy for him and he programs flashy showpieces by 19th century virtuosos and arrangements of other so well known pieces.
Best fiddle playing I have heard for a while.
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I'm afraid I have taken a self imposed 14 week isolation as last January I had Sepsis and Pneumonia and kidney failure at the same time. I was very lucky that I came out of Hospital but I have been left with one lung pretty duff and I already have Diabetes. My wife who works in a food store has taken a forced leave of absence as she is working with the public all day is in danger of bringing it home to me . The university my daughter works in has had positive Corona outbreaks amonst the students so she has gone into isolation also and I won't see her for twelve weeks. Yes things are changing in our country at the moment and there are still idiots packing trains. Hold onto your hats folks. Jim.
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RV
I have been listening more to Eric Yu and although not endowed with a blistering Volodos technique I do concur that he is very special pianist indeed.
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Yes Jeremy you are in good company with Claudio Arrau, He is great in almost anything. His Debussy discs are so liquid and his Liszt Transcendental Etudes are so powerful and so tender by turns and to think he was 75 years old when he committed them to disc. His Beethoven is peerless , I went down to London to hear him play the last three sonatas and in the train back up to Glasgow I was in cloud 9 all the way I couldn't get those trills from the ending of Op.111 out of my mind. Yes although it was my only concert with Arrau it was enough to tell me he was / is the best pianist I have ever heard. Has anyone heard any of his CDs of recordings done in the Forties and Fifties, oh how I wish the recording quality was better because they show a man at the very peak of his powers. You should have heard his Albeniz it is explosive and the technique is faultless , every bit as good as Horowitz but with a far bigger repertoire. Yup, for me he is the man. |
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Yes Len we were a good band but could never beat Shotts and Dykehead or Glasgow Police. |
Yes Len they have had the knife in Salmond since he lost the Independence referendum . Out of all those who accused him not one of them was proved. Something stinks. |
I discovered Olafsson last year through a Wigmore Hall Concert by BBC Radio 3. I am very impressed by his Bach which is exceptionally clean and the counterpoint is peerless in my opinion. I even discovered a disc of Bach on Idagio, but I have tried to listen to his twentieth century recordings and I can't get my head around it. My appreciation of piano music seems to stop with Rachmaninov and I can't seem to get any further than that. If he brings out more Bach I will snap it up in a Jiff but the other stuff it just doesn't seem to make any sense to me.
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Thanks Len, for your (as usual) words of wisdom, they are very much appreciated.
My daughter works fo The University of the West of Scotland but she has had many offers to work elsewhere . She does not want to leave Ayr and us aswe din't have any more family and she is particularly close to me. I have tried many times to get her to pursue another job with more prospecs but she just says she wants to be close to us (she lives in the next street to us). She has a Masters with Honours from St. Andrews University in Politics and Law and as you may deduce I am more than a little proud of her. Take care Len and be safe , Jim.
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My wife says of my daughter and I is that we know what each one of us is thinking before we say it. I say that I'm glad she got my brains and her mother's looks as if the other way round she would be in qute a pickle. I am just kidding as my wife is the glue that binds us together.I had a listen to the jazzman that you posted and although not to my taste he is a very clever and inventive chap. The music reminds me of the direct cut discs we used to hear at all the audio shows in the seventies, I wished at the time that the ordinary record companies would have issued limited runs of these for the classical market, it would have been better than the tripe we were forced to buy at the time. Take care all of you, Jim.PS , I see Prince Charles has tested positive for Corona virus now !!!
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Just listening to Vikingur Olaffson on Idagio at the moment, stirring stuff indeed. The recording tone is close and sumptuous and the quallity from
Deutsche Gramophon is super and as good as anyrhing I have heard. I am so glad he takes the Rameau pieces from a twentieth century perspective and not trying to copy a harpsicord. I like this recording very much.
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I’m just listening to a wonderful recital from the yellow label and the moment. Rachmaninov from Sergei Babayn and let me tell you it dosen’t get any better than this, with one dreamy piece after another and played to perfection. Definitely a must try, RV you’ll love it.
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@rvpiano I'm so sorry I did not wish you luck earlier but I do hope you feel better soon. It's at times like this that we need our music. RV my very best to you and I hope you start getting some relief soon. |
Yes Cherkasky did have flashes of brilliance but he also had a lot of the waywardness of his master Josef Hoffman as they were always trying find hidden meanings in everything they played. Don't get me wrong Hoffman was peerless in Chopin but he really was all over the place in Beethoven. No very much two pianists for the Romantic repertoir.
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After reading the The young Icelandic pianist Vikkingur Olaffson's favourite Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould was his perfomance at Salzburg in 1959 I have to concur. He still dosn't heed any of the repeats but it is a blistering performance all the same. It is much faster than the 1955 recording and a world away in terms of recording quallity. By the way I don't know if any of you have this CD or not but a man called Zenph invented a way of re recording classic recordings from quite far back and he makes a remarkable job of it. He takes the basic recording and electronically processes it . it gets played back through a modern concert grand of the Yamaha type where it goes onto a disc which is inserted into the piano and you get a modern repoduction of the piece minus the distortions of pre 1950s discs. I must say up to now if I wanted to hear Gould play the 55s it would then be the Zenph copy. I don't know what happened to Zenph but I thought he was onto a winner but probably the big record companies crushed him before he could get started . I'm sorry I digressed and I do appologise but see if you can find it and you shall be in for a treat ,( I just don't know how he can play so fast ) the 59 copy not the 55 Zenph.
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Wang certainly has a stunning technique but like Trifoniov and Buniatishvhilli they need to get into their third decade and beyond to gain some musicality, only then will they be unbeatable. |
@schubert Len I'm glad you like our Icelander, I think he is super but I hope he doesn't give us any more Glass ( absolute tripe from me ). |
@rvpiano RV I thought you would like the Babayan recording especially the Volodos transcription and I thought his piano tone was luscious with such a warm glow over everything. It takes a great pianist to turn a fundamentally staccato instrument into such a warm legato instrument. "Hats off gentlemen a genius" ( Schumann ). |
Milstein was almost a brother to Horovitz and stayed with them for some years.
He is my favourite Bach violinist, his chaconne in D minor is awesome.
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Last Mov. of Mahler's 9th
Last Mov. of Mahler's 3rd
That will have to do me as I'm quite at a loss to recall any more just now ( getting too old I think ) if you had asked about piano movements I would have rattled them off.
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@newbee Yes I completely forgot about that movement, that mighty crash from the beginning of that movement it' as if Heaven has been split asunder. Also Mahler was quite young when he penned it and a little aside , when he played one of the movements to Hans von Bulow he exploded at the end shouting to Mahler that it would never work. Thank goodness Mahler stuck to his guns is all I can say or ( maybe if he had been a better pianist !!! ). |
@rvpiano RV that was a lovely podcast about Julia Fischer I enjoyed it immensely. She really could succeed on either instrument, what a talent she is and her dedication puts her on my top 3 fiddlers list. I was bowled over by her octaves in the cadenza of the first movement of the Grieg. She really does deserve to be at the top of the tree. |
@Schubert Aye and conducted by Gunter Wand. |
Yes these older violinists could teach today's young violinists a few lessons if they were still here. As in pianists the older ones are just as good as the young ones of today
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@rvpiano RV thanks for posting that Horowitz film it was very interesting and informative also, I loved the way he played the Schubert / Liszt - Soirée de Vienne it was so controlled and the runs and scales were perfect. Even the virtuoso Chopin pieces were played like a twenty year old and it was amazing how much technique he had retained for such an old man. Yes he truly was one of a kind. |
Has anyone had the chance to listen to Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde in the classic reading by Klemperer and Fritz Wunderlich and Christa Ludwig,in a wonderfull remastering by EMI. Absolutely astounding and even for 1964 it has cleaned up beautifully. I don't think I have ever heard better.
Also high on my list just now is,
Francesco Piemontesi - Liszt Annees de Pelerinage Swiss
Quite a young Swiss pianist with a beautifull singing tone almost reminds me of a young Murray Perrahia. Last year I had the pleasure of listening to him play Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4 in my local town hall and it was really enjoyable.
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A new young Scandinavian conductor has really caught my eye called John Storgards, I have seen him live in Mahler's 2nd and 6th symphonies with BBC orchestras . he is very exciting and the dynamics are explosive so he is my favourite of the modern lads at the moment. Of the past conductors I have always loved Klemperer and Bernstein.EMI have just remastered Klemperer's reading of Das Lied von der Erde and they have made a superb job of it.
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@schubert Len thanks for that link to the Schubert , it was a lovely interpretation.
@rvpiano . I also have listened to D.959 and think it is a truly wonderful
performance. I think Volodos is a wonderful player and a real favourite of mine.
If I might give a little recommendation of my own while I am typing at the moment I am listening to Natalie Clien playing the two Haydn cello concertos. I must say they are delightful and done on period instruments which always gives me a little nervousness with anyone playing on gut.
I can say the orchestral sound is superb , it has a beautiful fullness and no screeches anywhere ( can't say that for the rest of them ) Do try it as it is featuring on Idagio at the moment.
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Len you are so right about Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven learned a lot of their craft from him. And that tripe about Beethoven having learned nothing from him is pure rubbish, you don't devote a complete set of string quartets to a person you said taught you nothing. Even Mozart devoted a set of string quartets to him also. I'll probably be branded a heretic for what I'm about to say but I'd rather listen to Haydn Symphonies than Mozart's . |
I think this question has came up many times in the past here but I think there is still time to give it an airing so here goes . Do any of you ever dismiss a recording because the recording quality is dire.
I am ashamed to say that I have done in the past and am still doing, case in point is Claudio Arrau's very early stuff say 30s and 40s. I have some of his records which I have put away because the sonics are horrible. One of the ones being a case in point is his 1944 Bach Goldberg Variations which when looked upon subjectively is an interpretation which is most definitely as good as the Glen Gould 1955 one. For a start Arrau's rubato's are not as extreme as Gould's but Arrau is every bit as good a technician as Gould himself and in fact Gould seems to play this version as if he was playing Chopin's etudes ( a bit extreme but I hope you get my drift ). It is not just the monotonous hiss and crackles, and that just gets worse the farther back you go but to me I just cannot countenance any of the bad frequency hills and troughs. The recording quality pre war was not great to put it mildly but it did favour some frequencies far more than others and that is why say you are valiantly listening to some of Beethoven's piano sonatas and every time the pianist hits an F sharp the volume of the piano explodes in your ear with a very significant rise in volume and a very distorted sound also. As I have been talking about Arrau I used to have a copy of the Phillip's series Great pianists of the Twentieth Century, they had what they said was probably Arrau's earliest
recording Balakirev's Islamay. Now through this what I can only say sounds like a continuous blast of white noise and very low level audio I can just discern what I think sounds like a piano being hammered is this torrent of notes. Now this was in 1928 and it was indeed very primitive recording quality. Earlier in the acoustic recording era we had Ferruccio Busoni who went to but down some acetates and he played one or two of his most famous Bach transcriptions and the recording engineer came out and then asked him to play this note harder than the rest and here are a couple of notes you need to play softer. He did try but gave up in disgust. As one of his friends said of that day "how can you record Busoni , it's like bottling an ocean ).
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If you want great Brahms might I suggest Julius Katchen. |
Len you talking about Janacek there brought me to mind of a disc I had ages ago and it was of all people Andras Schiff playing On an Overgrown Path and In The mists . I don't know what happened to it but I did really enjoy his playing of them. |
I have just purchased a 24/96 file of the pianist Igor Levit called Alive.The quality of the recording is stunning and I have to say it is the best piano recording I have heard. It is probably not for everyone but it is definitely worth it if you want to stun your friends. It comprises reworkings of music originaly from Bach and other composers and best of all is the chaconne from Bach's Violin Partita in D Minor not in the familiar guise by Busoni but the version for left hand by Johannes Brahms. The pianist turns this piece into something magical by way of a superhuman technique and a wonderously sumptuous tone . Definitely one to try. I have been following Levit's career since he was a new generation artist with the BBC.Other discs by him are Bach Goldbergs and Partitas and Beethovens Diabelli Variations, definite treasures and I remember a memorable night at The Wigmore Hall where he played the last three sonatas byBeethoven in two concerts on the one night such was the clamour for the tickets. Brought back wonderful concerts by Claudio Arrau in the same repertoir and I can't say better than that. Also I have been listening of late to a beautifully warm toned Harpsicord recital,
François Couperin : L'art de toucher le clavecin by,
Olivier Fortin
and this is one that I cam heartily recomend. The good thing about this recording is that the microphones are not right inside the instrument and allows a little bit of room for the right amount of ambience. Give them a try if you are seriously into Piano or Harpsicord. |
@schubert Len thanks to you I have been listening to Firkusni all afternoon , Idagio has quite a treasure trove of his recordings. I really liked On an Overgrown Path so thanks for reminding me about him. Have a good weekend. |
@jcazadorI am so sorry I meant to type life and my fingers were elsewhere so please accept my apologies . It is an awesome disc of piano playing and how to record a piano. I was more used to him playing Bach and Beethoven and just wasn't prepares for that wondrous new disk of his. I still cannot believe that chaconne by Bach is only for left hand alone. I have a feeling this will be my disc of the year. You should hear it through a pair of Stax phones !!! |
@jcazadorJust @jcazador Just got your 2 addresses and a couple I don't have thank you very much. |
I too have seen some wonderful concerts over here in the UK. just a small selection are, Brendel in Glasgow, 1. - The last Three Schubert Piano Sonatas, 2 - Brahms First Piano Concerto 3 - Mozart - Piano Concertos. Ashkenazy in Glasgow - The Five Beethoven Piano Concertos and Choral Fantasy in one week. Absolutely amazing all from memory. Boris Beresovsky in Edinburgh - playing Mussorgsky Pictures and Liszt - Transcendental Etudes. I have never heard such volume from a piano. Pletnev in Edinburgh playing Bach Book 1 of the Forty Eight Preludes and Fugues. Perahia in Glasgow playing Bach Goldberg Variations. Kissin in Edinburgh playing Bach Busoni Chaconne and Chopin Etudes. and at the end of the concert he played 11 encores. Kissin in Glasgow playing Liszt B minor sonata and loads of Chopin. In Wigmore Hall in London Angela Hewit playing Bach Igor Levit playing Beethoven last three Piano Sonatas. In Royal Festival Hall my all time idol Claudio Arrau playing Beethoven last three piano sonatas. I was on cloud 9 all the way back up to Scotland I have been to many many more but these are the most memorable that spring to mind. All these people absolute masters of the keyboard and you havn't lived unless you have seen and heard a pianist of the highest rank playing a Steinway just yards from you. Also recordings are a poor second to listening to one of the greats live.
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RV. I hope you are still enjoying Steven Osbourne as I saw him up in Edinburgh and he played the whole Opus 39 by Rachmaninov and it was a super concert. He is also superb at Debussy so grab those if you can as I am sure you will enjoy them , his pedalling is superb. |
Schubert and brayeagle In my youth I was a piper and played for a good few years with Ayr Pipe Band Society but I also played classical guitar and had to make a decision between them. The guitar won because as I also liked listening to music on good equipment and was afraid to dull my ears prematurely. The pipes are an outdoor instrument and at that age a guitar got you more girls than pipes did so no contest. Anyway it is great to see how many overseas people can claim a bit of our heritage. Jim.
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Aye he is and a cracking good pianist as well. |
I'm afraid the Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia Schubert disc just eclipse this new one but not by so very much. They seen to have a lightness of touch and fleetness that just pips the new one for me. I don't feel the recording process does any good for Osborne as I have some recordings I made from Radio 3 of Osborne at The Wigmore Hall and he really is a different pianist with an audience in front of him. He just seems to come alive then. I found Arrau to be the same as I have got every record he made with Philips and with a few exceptions I find most of them to be a bit earthbound. Mind you when he was re recording the Beethoven Sonatas in the eighties in digital I started to hear that glorious tone of his that I heard live. I could never come to terms with the analogue recordings of his there really was something missing and there could also be a certain steeliness in the first Phillips set of the Beethoven Sonatas. And say all you like about Arrau but in front of an audience I have never ever heard a more ravishing piano tone. |
@schubert I would love to hear Kissin and Perahia get together even now. At one of the Proms this year Barenboim had Argerich on with him and at the end the two of them did a bit of Schubert and it brought the house down. I see there is a recording of the two of them doing a live recording together, I must seek that one out. |
