Classical Music for Aficionados

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  !

Between live performance concert in big hall and listening recorded concert there is a difference always a changing one with no absolute superiority of one over the other in all case, for me...

It is true that a lived performance will always own a potential superiority for sure in principle because the musician spirit and body is in the room... A very small room concert is then the ONLY ideal way...Or playing ourself with this musician for sure.... 😊

But for a big hall concert it depend on many factors at play, location of the listener, crowds noise, acoustic properties of the room...

Glenn Gould prefered studio recording... I dont say he was right , i say he was not wrong either...

But for sure we can judge to a relative high degree a great pianist playing even from a bad recording...

We cannot assess the level of an artist only if we were "there" so to speak...

Our taste each one of us differ so much that for example i put here few months ago one of the greateast pianist perhaps i ever listened to and some criticized my choice saying they even cannot pick a reason why i admire him... 😊

Another example: i own albums of a tanbur Iranian musician, very badly recorded , which are among the most powerful musical performance i ever listened to, Yehudi Menuhin wrote and tought the same about him and to be frank i listen to this musician after reading Menuhin impressions... But for most people it will be only an horrendous recording and a not tamed music at all (persian origin) ... I know i test it with many music lovers, and they cannot understand why i loved it so much...

Any music must be learned so to speak and must be approached like we tame a wild unknown beast....

And at the end music is not only sound and is not even any more related to the musician body and spirit , it is a personal spiritual event that transcend even the musician personality and precise moment of the event...

Then there is one mountain peak yes, but many roads to musical illumination like in religious matter i think.... 😁😊😊😊😊😊😊

By the way, what i appeciate the more here, is the diversities of experiences and opinions, this is these diversities which is the door to new discoveries for me...

Like said frogman one day here, to tamper my always  too great enthusiasm 😁 , there is no objective  best of the best...

I will not dare to contradict him, because he is right for sure, especially  if we take into account all opinions in the world...But for me there is, like for each one of you, the best of the best... It is normal and a testimony to our own different spirit journey...

Some  musical event is like a first love, we cannot renounce it for the rest of our life...

I wish that I had gotten to hear Arrau live.

Some people are saying this and that pianist produced the best tone, I have been to many many live concerts and believe me live is the only way you can judge a pianist. The pianist who is number one for me was Claudio Arrau whose tone could be a soft whisper or an earth shattering roar but never once with a rough tone. He was like the old pianists like Rachmaninov or Hoffman who were quiet at the piano not for them the histrionics of hand waving and tragic faces , even Horowitz hardly betrayed his playing and not portraying todays penchant for playing with evermore hand and arm waving. I now hate watching the Leeds or other pianoforte competitions as each successive pianist is more flamboyant than the last. I managed in the late sixties to get down to London to hear Arrau play the last three piano sonatas by Beethoven. I have not to this day heard piano tone like it with a total economy at the keyboard producing such a regal tone that I was enchanted. When he got to the last sonata in C Minor he got to the bit where it is nothing but trills and I have to say that being a big gruff Scotsman I surprised myself to find floods of tears flowing down my cheeks and of people around me also. I never will forget that concert and that tone and it was in my head for weeks after . I find that most of Arrau’s records are just a poor imitation of the great man, and after all this is the man that Rachmaninov and Horowitz used to go backstage and congratulate him on his interpretations and tone. Horowitz also whispered to him once that he Horowitz was glad he didn’t play any Beethoven.

@jim5559    My dear friend I agree with you one hundred percent, his Schubert is as if God himself is at his back and willing him on to give nothing other than life itself on a palette of 88 keys, such was his genius.

Jim204 , I Was going to say that Lupu was THE Schubert  pianist . But every one 

knows  I am a Schubert freak  and  perhaps It would not go over well at his death .

BUT our Scottish  Icon of all things pianist did it for me.

I have every Lupu  of Schubert that  is (I think) and IMO no reason to play anything else !

This version rival any other great one i know of indeed...It is very delicate and poetical interpretation...the drama is interiorized...

Save for only one version nobody exceed anyway and which is in a class of his own but a version "sound purist" dont always love because too volcanic and too powerful playing by "Liszt reincarnated" for Hungarian People...

Angelich is with Lupu a giant for me...

This piece is the key to Liszt soul...Many versions are welcome...

And Liszt is one the greatest underestimated composers there is because of his Christus among other works, which is the only oratorio with the Messiah for me rivaling Bach Passion...

Liszt deeply influenced Bruckner with Shubert through this oratorio who rival even the Greatest Mass of Bruckner himself... So astounding that the first time i listened to it i was out of my chair and never understood at the first listening the majestic simplicity of Liszt devotion and his mastering of symphonic orchestration chorus and soloists so great and purified and refined to a a truly celestial perfection that nobody ever exceed it for me among any composers.. He unite the most moving simplicity with the peak of glory which is an impossible task and union save in Paradise... I think Liszt conversion was really a spiritual one...

.. i owned four version of this three hours work... 😁😊

It is the life of Christ told by angels in heaven after the resurrection for me ...Not a Passion at all...

It is like the Art of the Fugue by Bach, the only work i know at the same heights of perfection on all counts form and content which put almost any other works under them save few truly inspired spiritual works...

I am ashamed to say i discovered Listz only late in life...Too great for my small mind and heart it seems, i was not ready ...I dont joke here...This work humble us...

It is useless to put a link to this 3 hours work and feel the right impression without immersing ourself in it...You cannot judge the Himalaya from below...

 The only work for me that rival Liszt Christus is not his marvellous choral works so great they are indeed, but his 5 th symphony...Incredible work underestimated to this day, because the beauty of his other symphonies  are easier to catch at first listening... But no one ever write a symphony so perfect in content and form with a so intense spiritual experience hidden in it i put it beside the cHristus and the Art of the fugue... The Bruckner  9 th symphony for example  so deep, beautiful it is and it is rival  almost any symphonic  piece ever written, lack the purified, refined spiritual perspective over  the cosmos itself and over all life there is in the 5th...  A great critic in the 10 century say it all : "this is to the symphony art what the art of the fugue is to the klavier "...