Classical Music for Aficionados

This is a Scottish composer who composed about any type of serious music there is.

I find him interesting but having a Scottish bias ............. I must be right !

Gaun yersel big man !!!

I don’t like Tech of any form , wish i was like you Jim , but I’m just not .

I just finished with Presto for the Sibelius with a bit of Bach,Grieg and Holst  as well .

From "The Carls O’ Dysart "

We’ll live a’ our days

And them that comes behin"

Let them do the like.

And spend the gear they win .

 A week in Scotland is worth a year  anywhere else ,lucky you !

Cheers

Hi Len, If and when I get the odd CD it is usually from Presto but I understand it can take a bit of time to get them from the UK. Have you ever thought of downloading them from Presto as I often have as you can download flac or wav and put them on a hard drive and play them with something like J River which is rather affordable and not like Roon which is a rip off. Stay well my friend, Jim.

Sibelius:

Complete Symphonies and Tone Poems   ---   Boston / Colin Davis  - Decca 

Currently on Ebay and amazon.   I have ordered several items from Presto, and you will receive them eventually.  I received one order within 7 days from order, and two others 45+ days after order.  And that was with $11 shipping.  Of course, nothing is normal these days.

Ebay also has the same performances on Philips Classics  2fers.

Cheers

Presto in England. Cheaper than Amazon - larger catalog - prompt delivery especially if you buy any quantity and they ship UPS. Slower if they ship USPS. I buy about 80% of my CD's from them. FWIW their service is great.

I can't get enough of Sibelius  , Finnish music and people in general .

Where's the best  to buy other than Amazon ?

@newbee        I agree 100% with you about the new Sibelius cycle, the playing and conducting are inspirational. Anyone looking for the complete set could not do any better, I am always dipping into it now.

Queue up the recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 1, "the Titan," .performed by the orchestra Les Siecles.. The label is Harmonia Mundi France..On Qobuz. Hi-Def. As good a performance & recording of the work as I’ve ever come across. It even gives the famous Bruno Walter recording a run for its money. For those not familiar with the work, it’s got drama, comedy, grandeur, intimacy, and most of all tunes to die for. The way I hear it, Mahler is telling us the story of Planet Earth..

Who needs more Sibelius, I know I don't, but then ......

A new 4 disc set of his Symphonies. Just came out. A young (age 26) conductor I've never heard of, Klaus Makela (A Finn, what else) leading the Oslo Philharmonic. Very, very, good I think and certainly worth exploring (which I am doing). Got a great and detailed review in Gramaphone. And all for $25. FWIW.

I think this may be a conductor to follow...........

twoleftears (and anyone else who might care), I noted in another post that you recommended a Schubert solo piano piece...so, have I got a deal for your!  Larissa Dedove playing Schubert's piano sonatas on Centaur. A 5 cd set for about $25 to $30. I'd never heard of her - they came to me by recommendation - since I love Schubert's music for solo piano I couldn't resist (even though my CD drawer(s) overflows.)  

Bottom line - excellent playing, excellent SQ, AND CHEAP. What more could your ask for (even though you didn't). This is easily one of the best sets that I have. :-)

Interesting!

I will listen Parry choral and symphonies... Thanks..,.

I started a retrospective of British composers pre- and post-Elgar and Vaughan Williams.

First up: Sir Alexander Mackenzie.  Nice but not outstanding.  I recommend sampling the Violin Concerto and Pibroch Suite.

Currently: Hubert Parry.  So far I'm through Symphonies 1 and 2. Parry has real orchestral chops.  I can't understand why he is not more popular and most often played.  I guess he's known mainly as a choral composer, but that does him a considerable disservice.

Igor Levit

The nyt times loves him.

So do I.

Or how the Great German "second" orchestras are !

Almost as good as the Big Boys .

And Girls !

Miracle indeed !

A mini-one is how little the music of the great Hindermith  is played in North America  .

Now i cannot wait to read his autobiography, i just learmed that it was published 2 years ago ...

«In this January 2020 discussion, author Wendy Holden talks with Deborah Oppenheimer about the process of creating a memoir with Ružicková's own words.»

Why not Martinu?

Ruzickova is spectacular in EVERYTHING she touch !

She is by far my favorite harpsichordist....

Four years in at least 4 concentrations camps and heavy communist regime forbid her to teach music and malaria, malnutrition, ulcers, bubonic plague left her untouched at the end !

She learned harpsichord after Theresienstadt , Auschwitz, Terezin and Bergen Belsen , playing 12 hours a day for the years lost!

How to beat this poetry with Neumann and Ruzickova?

In my next life i wanted to be a musician....And perhaps encounter this angel.....😁😊

Try these well less known pieces of Haydn...

Incrdedible version!

Alas! i dont own it save for youtube...

This woman is miraculously  perfect in Couperin spirit, spectacular....  

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...

Pure Beauty 

@jim5559 The live Benny Goodman version from the Carnegie Hall concert will never be surpassed.

Currently getting lovely tone and vibrant, spacious 3D sound-staging from a,,,get this...CD level stream of Der Freischutz on Idagio. I'm a happy guy. Yeah, it's from Harmonia Mundi France.

+ 1 on the FRANCK, Wore out mine .

Here is the people in the world that when they really put there mine in to it.

the rest of us can just forget about it .

Good thing too, they made their Air Force twice, as big in 5 years and their pilots

are thinking about China .And let us have 5 air bases.

For enthusiasts of Bruckner, Mahler, etc., I recommend this.  The second (slow) movement is especially fine.

This version is certainly hard to improved !

Stunning interpretation of Franck by Moravec with  the giant Neumann !

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...

And I have a lot but not all . I am always struct  how great the Czechs do it all out

with a another countryman. As as have said before, to my hears they are the most

musical bunch in Europe at least .

And I have a lot but not all . I am always struct how great the Czechs do it all out

with a another countryman. As as have said before, to my hears they are the most classical music bunch in Europe at least .

I concur with Moravec choice...

He is one of my third favorite pianist with E.N. and Sofronitsky...

I own all his albums... 😊

His mastering of colors hues is almost unmatched...

The Greatest Czech artist with the Great Czech Orchestra .

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
cannot separate illustrate TWO different interpretations conception...

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 first one by the giant Richter, beautiful and perfectly played... One of the great version...

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...

It is impossible to chose between these two versions, which one is the best because one is not like ANY other one....
But we know the one which is the more terrifying and possessed by a daemonic force...

Music is more than any man because it is the source of mankind being the mother of speech...

«An angel is terrible»-Rilke

«Imperfection only  is the peak and the apex»-René Char

Now i will propose to you a listening experiments with three versions of the same piece of Liszt "the evening bells"...

The first version with a good pianist...

The second one with a great pianist....The beautiful one...

And the third one with a god pianist, one of the supremum few one... The eepest version the more moving one....He is so in love with this piece that he repeat it two times...We dont listen here to a beautiful sound only like in the second case but to a pure emotion emerging with his own time flowing  in eternity...

Judge by yourself....

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...

An english citizen of complicated origin, which music is so orginal it is maddening and enligthening us at the same times.. .

Amen !

Aye that wee lass has come on famously in the last few years. Alba forever !!

I have never seen any top

musician who has done anything like what she does for her people or her land !

When the National Childrens Orchestra came in I left my tears and just cried  .

Scotland Forever !

I would not say someone is better on "The Lark " among the 10-15 top Violinist

alive or dead . I can say the Scottish Lady with the Italian name brings me faster to

tears than anyone ..

Must be wonderful to be God himself !

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 ....

Must be wonderful to be God himself  !