Classical Music for Aficionados

Is that only on You Tube?

An icon rendering of Brahms  Great Symphony 2 .

Then it is not very important to you, which is your right .

jim5559

I gotta tell ya' that it just doesn't matter to me if I understand what the words are in foreign language vocals. I just get into the exotic sounds the singers make. The foreign languages add to the the flavor of what I hear. I let the vocalists' artistic expression supply the meaning.

They gave him what he wanted ,

Then you have to come back in Lust  Vegas .

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...

If you love Classical Music it would do you wonders to learn even a bit of German !

Even the Dummy books would do, English is a Germanic language and not all that hard to talk to Beauty ,.. And German is truly beautiful .

                              Wake Up

Florence Price:

I have her Symphonies nos. 1 and 3

The Philadelphia Orchestra / Yannick Nezet-Sequin

DG 2022

Was on the FM  station here in St, Paul , very interesting !

Have I mentioned the symphonies of Florence Price on this endless thread? Early 20th Century African American female composer. Featured on Idagio. Recordings on DG with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Like Dvorak, but just that tiny(!) bit more authentic. Utterly lovely and accessible.

Exactly how I saw Cile to the bone !   His time was just a miracle , 1st class!!!

😊

I have NEVER heard any thing about  Canada  on TV .

The Frogman's First Law.

Cheers

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...

I think you meant “Egmont”, not “Coriolan” 😊.

Thanks for your comments. First, my choice of the young Celi was in great part for the visual element in that clip. I agree that it could be said that the 1976 Stuttgard version is “more mature”. However, the question must asked whether in this case “maturity” (of time conception), better serves the music’s intent. I’m not so sure.

The music was composed as the overture to incidental music for a play (Goethe) celebrating the life and heroism of a Dutch count (Egmont) in his country’s struggle for liberty against imperialistic Spain; culminating with the count’s execution. The music was composed while the Napoleonic wars were raging. All a pretty dramatic backdrop, I would say. Perhaps partly due to the more distant and less present sound of the 1976 recording, and certainly no intention on my part to diminish the wisdom of maturity, but the 1976 has, for me, less of the drama and angst which I think the historical setting would demand. Examples: the introduction, intended to represent “The Prison” and the feeling that imprisonment might convey seems to be better served by the young Celi’s version which gives me a stronger feeling of drama and tension. For me, the sometimes excruciatingly long rests (silences) in the 1976 detract from the drama and urgency. Likewise, in this version the first statements by the woodwinds give the music an almost pastoral feeling; not what I would expect given the circumstances to be conveyed. What is it they say, “mellows with age”? Not so sure “mellowing” fits in the context of war, imprisonment and execution. Bernstein, for me, strikes a more convincing balance balance in this regard; hence my choice.

Thank you for the clip and for your thoughts, mahgister; always thought provoking.

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... 😊

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...

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.

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.  

John Adams' recent "Must The Devil Have All the Good Tunes" with Wang, Dudamel and the LAPO is worth hearing.

Indeed, I heard it performed last week at the San Francisco Symphony and enjoyed it very much. The pianist was Víkingur Ólafsson (one of my favorites) with conducter Esa-Pekka Salonen. The musicians looked like they had fun playing it, and John Adams was in attendance.

John Adams' recent "Must he Devil Have All the Good Tunes" with Wang, Dudamel and the LAPO is worth hearing.  IIUC is it available only on LP and on the usual streaming sources.

Among the best in North America.

I did not know about the Mauser...

😁😊

Couperin and Scarlatti between Bach pieces...It is a treat....

😁😊

P.P S . Science in last few years thinks someone like the boy genius is autistic .The scale is that, but extreme aka 1 in a million .

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...

😁😊

Yes , I had forgotten that , did a paper about him about 50 years ago.

The Czech Republic is Industrial . Things I know ,Skoda auto , best VW gets ,

I know I had one . I was born a hunter , no longer have Czech hunting rifles, which cost a lot and were the best .Still are .

The Germans pushed the Rifle factory’s night and day , The Czech Mausers were

better then they could make .

P.S . anything Couperin is OK with me , her job was unreal !

P.P S . Science in last few years thinks someone like the boy genius is autistic .The scale is that, but extreme aka 1 in a million .

I think you are right...

I put it with Beethoven,always forward and never quit .

They never quit because they are and always had been and always will be there....

Like Beethoven deaf was always anyway in music land....

Also Jan Hus

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...

A VERY great Clip, perhaps the best ever for me .

I knew Neuman and Ancerl were in a camp. but need to check up on Ruzicko.

The soul of the Czech is mighty !

I put it with Beethoven,always forward and never quit .

Also Jan Hus .

This work is the wedding present from the husband composer Viktor Kalabis to his pianist harpsichordist wife, Zuzana Ruzickova, she played it here , absolute poetry of the Czech soul...

This recording is better than the one i put above...

A well recorded one  on youtube yes but very well  acceptable..¯Alas i have this one only on youtube...

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...

Most be something in the water .

I’l make it clearer . A s a combat soldier I tend to see another one .

IMO it was the czech people. "We’re only 5 million but Russians can go to hell"

They fought the Russians hard when no other under the Russian thumb would blink

their eye .

Dvorak is the Recent.

There are dozens of others.

Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745) was held high by both Bach and Teleman and

Bach was in tune with him.

Jose Mys livecek (1737-1781 ) Was a friend of Mozarts dad and he did models for Mozart

for Symphony and Violin concerts ,

Haydn was in touch with several Czech composers .

Could go on for quite a while .

Smetana, Leos Jancek , Martinu, Suk ........... All in this tiny land ,

Thanks mahgister , I knew the clip was not the best , but I also knew a true Classical person would git it !

I may be wrong that the Czech composers are helped by the Czech life

but in the few times I was in Prague it seemed so to me .

In the one concert I took in it was a joy to see so many young acting like it was a

rock band

Only other place like that is Hungary .Austrians who came there for cheap Opera said the same to me .

P.S. The one thing I do think I have,  but usually say only to me is , I have good taste.

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....

Can’t miss that fantastic Czech music with both my best player, Fournier. and conductor, Celibidache.

May they rest in peace .

Very good !

Len your Bach on the lute was lovely, I used to play that on the guitar and let me tell you it was not at all easy.

Petra Poláčková performs "Chaconne" from Violin Partita No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1004, by J.S. Bach - YouTube

I'm sorry I couldn't get the video to appear on this you tube video to appear on this post but have a listen to this lady play th Bach Chaconne in D minor on an augmented guitar , it is stunning to hear.

Why on earth would someone want a gun that can fire 11 rounds a second !!!

Pure madness. The usual "man thing" mines is bigger than yours.