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 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 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.
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...
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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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