Classical Music for Aficionados

I wish that I had gotten to hear Arrau live.

I had one Lupu lp that I loved, all Brahms, the Second Rhapsody and some of the late Piano works.  I saw him in recital 20 years ago.  He seemed uncomfortable in the large Orchestra Hall venue, maybe just a bad afternoon.  I purchased a box labeled “The Complete Decca Recordings “ and it’s only around 12 discs, a relatively small recorded legacy, and not much for the last 3 decades or so.  R.I.P.

I saw Nicola in Chicago a few years ago .  After she played the WarHorse Concerto she encored with a few Scottish ditties, and her personality really came out.  She is a tiny person, btw, barely 5 feet and probably a size 1.5….

I never got the Celi cult.  All I can say is that his Munich concert goers must of had strong bladders to make it through his glacial performances.  

Is that only on You Tube?

I listened to Jascha Horenstein conduct Brahms3 with the Southwestern German Orchestra. On a Pristine Audio restoration of a late mono era Vox recording.  I’ve had the Vox for years though I haven’t played it that often.  The Pristine enhancement is definitely worth it.  One now perceives air around the instruments and a real soundstage.  Solo woodwinds are more prominent, and what used to be a third tier sounding Orchestra now at least sounds second rate.

  I admire JH, and collect many of his recordings, but his Brahms 3 isn’t really for me.  It is definitely old school, autumnal Brahms, although extremely well done.  It sounds deliberate and thoughtful, and not like the flabby mess that Giulini made at the end of his career, and less gimmicky than Bernstein’s outing with the VPO

  I haven't hear Nelsons in Brahms.  The reviews have been somewhat mixed.  For the record my favorite cycles are

1) Kurt Sanderling/Dresden Staatkapele  mine are on Japanese Blue Spec discs but they always seem to be in print somewhere. 

2) Walter/Columbia SO (stereo-there are several Walter mono cycles which are even better performances) only a low energy Fourth keeps this from top rank 

3) Klemperer/Philharmonia  O.K., Klemperer could be granitic, but Brahms was definitely in his wheelhouse

4) Jurowski/Pittsburgh  on Pentatone-the best Multichannel set

5) Karajan/Berlin P   I give my nod to the seventies cycle, but there is a more exciting live Brahms cycle from the early seventies recorded in Paris in good FM stereo available from Norbeck,Peters, and Ford (norpete.com) that blows away the studio cycles.  The more live Karajan I hear, the more I realize that he could have tremendous spontaneity)

I'd like to hear the Steinberg/Pittsburgh set that was just released by DG, I think it is mentioned a bit upthread

  The Janowski is a solid cycle.  Pittsburgh is a great, and under rated orchestra, the interpretations are well shaped, and Pentatone is truly  an audiophile label.  If you are a Multichannel enthusiast, there really is no other MC Brahms cycle that comes close (I have 3 others-maser/Gewandhaus, Manze/Helsingborg, and Paavo Jarvi with the Bremen Chamber Orchestra on Blu Ray.  The Jarvi is excellent but it's small band Brahms, much like Berglund/COE.  You do miss some oomph in the bigger moments).  If you don't care about multichannel, the Janowski is still a worthy set that sounds great in two channel.

I have been listening to an oldie but goodie Brandenberg, Karl Ristenpart with the Chamber Orchestra of the Saar.  It will sound anachronistic next to HIPP versions but I love it.  The players (including Rampal, Andre, and Veyron-Lacoix) are superb and the tempos are sane.  Their is energy in the music, demonstrating that one doesn’t need hyper caffeination to sound involved

I love the Hogwood Mozart Requiem, but it’s a curio because he refuses to use any notes that might have the taint of Sussmayr, so it sounds very truncated.  I think that is being a bit extreme, since Sussmayr was an accomplished 18th century composer, had been a student of WAM, and was the choice of Frau Mozart to finish it off.

  I found digital copies of all the Ristenpart Bach recordings, a 6 CD set from France, via eBay, at about $15 per CD.  A bit pricey, but I had bought a turntable and phono pre just so I could play treasured LPs that are unavailable digitally, and a substantial fraction of my lp collection are the aforementioned Ristenpart Bach recordings.  I had bought a handful of other Nonesuch and Vox/Turnabout recordings that I now have been able to locate digital versions as well.  Considering selling the analog rig as listening to these noisy, poorly pressed records is reminding me of why I got out of vinyl in the first place

I really like the Hogwood Mozart Requiem—but miss the absent parts 

Can you use headphones?  Also -just curious if listening sans subs puts any significant strain on the rest of your speakers, though I suspect not.  
  I actually used a recording of Beethoven op 59/1 and 59/3, the first and third Razumovsky Quartets, to audition a sub, many years ago.  The salesman was aghast and kept trying to play some rap to show the boom factor.  My reasoning was that the Beethoven with its extended cello parts would reflect the kind of bass that I was more likely to reproduce.  I had also remembered reading that a musical sub should make even a solo flute sound better by enhancing the room ambience.  I would use other music now-Shostakovich Fifteenth Symphony comes to mind-to test a sub, but the Beethoven Quartets would still be useful.

  Regarding the Op. 18 works, I prefer: 1) ensembles who play them big and bold, and not like embryonic Mozart; and 2) Vibrato, please.  I really dislike Quartets that eschew all vibrato (and coincidentally play at crazy speeds) and completely blow the expressive effects of the music.

  My longstanding favorites are the Hungarian Quartet (stereo version)) and the Cleveland Quartet.  Most of the more modern recordings I’ve heard are HIPP and therefore excluded by at least one of my criteria 

Don’t know the Krips record that you referenced and I really can’t remember my first recording of the Mozart Requiem .  A late mono Walter was the only lp that I had; it’s usually Jordi Savall that turn to now

Don’t know the Krips record that you referenced and I really can’t remember my first recording of the Mozart Requiem .  A late mono Walter was the only lp that I had; it’s usually Jordi Savall that turn to now

I also once was out phase when I auditioned new speaker wire.  After unhooking the sample cables I mistakenly rewired the original and didn’t notice until the order of the new cable came in a few weeks later.  I had the vague feeling that something was off without being able to figure out just what 

When I first started reading about subwoofers the dogma was that one only required one, and many in addition argued that position of the sub relative to the main speakers wasn’t very important.  The justification for both of these points was that bass tends to be unidirectional and the low frequency wave forms are difficult to place as to origin in a soundstage.

  I quickly learned that the second part of the proposition just isn’t true as sub placement is very critical but I just use one sub in all my systems.  The current dogma seems to be use 2 or 4 subs.  The systems that I have heard with multiple subs don’t impress me, but their owners don’t tend to listen to the music that I prefer

@rvpiano 

I raised the one sub issue in reference to your current problem with your Tritons.  My understanding was that you currently had the enclosed sub working in one speaker only.  My point was that if systems are generally well served with just one sub, do you notice a difference if only one is intact?