Classical Music for Aficionados

Schubert, I agree! Also, Denise Graves version is one of my favorites. 

Socially this is the most important post ever on here ,
The first clip he is refers to is "Neese Dorma."

And we send black kids to rat-ridden falling down schools with teachers
who can’t teach .

https://youtu.be/d-utPde8ckw?t=5

Nikita Magaloff - Pianist & Teacher [DVD] [2011]
Magaloff listening and teaching 3 different students, including Philip Cassard. 
This video greatly increased my appreciation of the nuances of classical piano.
It's in French, available from Amazon.

The gorgeous Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata is finally fully realized in a new recording by two young musicians: Hee-Young Lim and Nathalie Milstein. It’s usually performed as a vehicle for cellists to shine. This rendering includes the pianist as, at the very least, an active partner. It’s heartbreakingly beautiful Rachmaninoff. I just discovered it on Idagio after seeing it listed elsewhere.
 It’s on a brand new Sony release which contains the Prokofiev Cello Sonata as well.

Shostakovich box set , wdr , barshai.

The recording of Symphony 8 has made it my new favorite of his:-)

https://youtu.be/PpE6IUj4y8I

Certainly plays for the Great One and not herself !
He’s one I’ve listen to a lot , comments over the two would be welcome. Piano is not my wheelhouse , I argue over String Qt.

https://youtu.be/RjXZYBbrBDk?t=3

Dina Ugorskaja Bach Fugue No 24 in B Minor, BWV 869
exquisite
recently deceased Dina is daughter of Anatol
Anatol is still going strong
one of my favorite recordings is the two of them playing together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH5lgcw6eD4

More Nikita Magaloff
Chopin, The Complete Piano Music, 13 cds
Scriabin, Les trois cahiers
Great Pianists 067, 2 cds
awesome, highly recommended
there is also a 21 cd collection that I cannot find

Thanks .

One of THE greatest trios ever written by anybody, anytime, anywhere and under any circumstance ! Period .



https://youtu.be/aanDMH7GEZE?t=2

Yup, Hough is what they say he is !


Correct way to play Haydn. Original Instruments .
https://youtu.be/4eQKUffDkaw?t=7

I just got the new Hough Brahms CD , will play it this evening .Bought it on review in Gramophone.

Stephen Hough

I hear there is a new recording of Beethoven Concertos since the Brahms you mention.
I love Stephen Hough.  My fav is his Mompou.  But don't take my word for it:
http://www.stephenhough.com/
https://www.classicfm.com/artists/stephen-hough/guides/facts-gallery/

I love Moravec.  Did I see him perform once?  I think so but can't quite remember.  And only if he performed in L.A.

I love Moravec's playing , The Pianists Pianist as he was affectionately known. He had beautiful tone palate and he was totally built for Chopin.

Ivan Moravec
His Chopin Nocturnes are recognized as best ever.
Moravec was already well known in Czechoslovakia when he was "discovered" by Alan Silver, who ran Connoisseur Records.Alan recorded him playing Chopin, and helped him get his first engagements in USA.  Alan was incredibly skilled at making recordings, although what he actually did was considerably simpler than big time producer/directors.
I knew Alan in Berkeley in 1967, nice man.

        Glad you liked him , Jim .

@schubert      Len thanks to you I have been listening to Firkusni all afternoon , Idagio has quite a treasure trove of his recordings. I really liked On an Overgrown Path so thanks for reminding me about him. Have a good weekend.

London CS 6533.  Sonata for Two Pianos and Variations for Two Pianos on a Theme of Beethoven.  Bracha Eden and Alexander Tamir.
This is a must for piano enthusiasts as it was performed on a Pleyel double piano.  This very rare instrument was actually two grand pianos in one case with one reflective lid.  The remarkable thing is how well articulated the recording is.  You can tell just which performer is playing just what notes.  And of course the piano(s) match in sound exactly.

Haydn to the Rescue !
https://youtu.be/q5_vTv0ucq4?t=3

https://youtu.be/AOHRabxpg1Y?t=16
The full 44 m of Overgrown by Firkusny .

Firkusny was a student of Janacek  and he really "gets"  him .

Check this Lad ,
I am a BIG fan of Janacek !
https://youtu.be/jdy1FS3ql-s?t=2

https://youtu.be/Fan00iCNC80?t=3
Schiff is great but IMO Moravec is better in Mists .
Firkunsky was my go-to for a long time on Overgrown .

Len you talking about Janacek there brought me to mind of a disc I had ages ago and it was of all people Andras Schiff playing On an Overgrown Path and In The mists . I don't know what happened to it but I did really enjoy his playing of them.

I can’t argue with you Jim, or newbee either .
I listened to Katchen and Lupu and they and Moravec all sound similar to me.But then, piano is not really my wheelhouse .
Just something about Moravec I like a tad better. I see Brahms when he plays ,

Perhaps it’s because I love the piano music of Leos Janacek as well , where he excels .

If you want great Brahms might I suggest Julius Katchen.

Too bad Moravec didn't record more music for the solo piano. I have his Brahms Intermezzo Op117, #2 and OP118 , #2. This recording (Vaia 1096) was my introduction to Brahms solo piano music. Tough to follow up on this. Fortunately for other pianists, unfortunately for us, he didn't record a lot more.

FWIW I have two words for Volodos recording, somewhat dark and  broad (sumptuous?), and flaccid. I agree with your thoughts ---

I took a few minutes this morning and listened to the Intermezzo OP118 by Plowright, Kubalek (a long time favorite -  performances not damaged by the recording) and Lupu. I find  Plowright's Brahms the opposite of  Volodos'. He has 4 volumes of Brahms piano music and I wouldn't be without them. Not sleepy time performances. :-)

Here are the missing parts ,the intellect and study to know where the master was going and the heart, soul, and humility to travel that path .

https://youtu.be/wNV5I1Polws?t=1

Perfect !

 

So does mine!

My mind can’t get past Ivan Moravec .


And the older my mind gets the more it loves Brahms .

Although Volodos may be my favorite among pianists performing today, i really don’t like his way with Brahms as represented in this album.  He plays in a hushed, sort of reverential manner, eviscerating the bones of the music.  It almost sounds impressionistic.  Brahms’ inherent counterpoint is somehow lost.  While this is not the heaven storming music of his youth,  Brahms is emasculated in this manner.
Volodos’ tone is sumptuous, and the playing is immaculate.  The recorded piano sound is really gorgeous. But, in my opinion these performances miss the mark by a wide margin.

New on Idagio:  “Volodos Plays Brahms,” a disc from 2017.
I’d be interested in opinions of his Brahms interpretations.

Thanks for the reference. I haven't heard Ormandy's version in quite a few years - I disassembled my vinyl system and gifted it all, records included, to my son in law. Now I have only CD's and this is not one of them.

The particular disc of the “Dances” with great sound  that I’m listening to is a Sony Essential Classics with music also by Smetana and Offenbach.

Newbee,

Reference Recordings LP’s are fantastically good.  I’ve just never had much luck in finding good sounding CDs, even though my player automatically reads their HDCD encoded discs.  I’ll have to try your examples of good ones.  I’ve noticed that lately their philosophy has changed: not such a distant, undefined presentation.  Even so, not state of the art as far as I’m concerned.
btw, You might want to re-listen to the Ormandy “Symphonic Dances” Especially if your set has improved over the years.  It was a revelation for me.

Stumbled upon a stunning Barber Knoxville 1915 done with British Chamber Orch. without baton no less , Won’t get better than these great musicians ! Literally took my breath away . A masterpiece in all its glory .

https://youtu.be/PQzaFJZ8CuE?t=3

Everything from Barber is a must ! As is the Great American novel
"A Death in the Family"  by James Agee  from which this poem comes .

https://youtu.be/RF05F0Sc4dw?t=4

jim, IMHO there is nothing wrong with how you feel about poorly recorded music. I have many, well at least quite a few, records which I bought solely because of the quality of the performance despite the poor quality of the recording. I wanted to be informed. I listened and my curiosity was satisfied. I put them away and rarely have a desire to hear them again. Quite a few of these were old 'live' performances. Richter's Mussorgorsky's Pictures is a clear example. Sonics are terrible but you are unlikely to hear a more exciting performance. 

RV, Ormandy was my intro to Symphonic dances. I still prefer your previous  recommendation of Ashkenazy's.

 FWIW I agree with you about RR recordings, and I feel much the same way about Telarc recordings but for different reasons. I have more that I don't listen to than I do. That said I'm a sucker for RR's Copland Symphony #3. Also some of the earlier RR's are quite good as well. I've always enjoyed Keith Clarks recordings with the Pacific Symphony of the Menotti and Barber VC's and Copland's Appalachian Spring in its original 13 instrument version and which includes Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson sung by Marni Nixon, and a rarely heard Ourdoor Overture. The Telarc recording of Barbers Symphony #1 which includes Higdon's Blue Cathedral and Theofanidis' Rainbow Body is another disc I really enjoy for the music, especially the two modern pieces.

Babies and bathwater......:-)

newbee . I’l look for the Estonian , a very musical tongue in all they do.Say hello to Avro Part for me .

Though I almost always go to Russians on Russian Music  .

I think this question has came up many times in the past here but I think there is still time to give it an airing so here goes . Do any of you ever dismiss a recording because the recording quality is dire.

I am ashamed to say that I have done in the past and am still doing, case in point is Claudio Arrau's very early stuff say 30s and 40s. I have some of his records which I have put away because the sonics are horrible. One of the ones being a case in point is his 1944 Bach Goldberg Variations which when looked upon subjectively is an interpretation which is most definitely as good as the Glen Gould 1955 one. For a start Arrau's rubato's are not as extreme as Gould's but Arrau is every bit as good a technician as Gould himself and in fact Gould seems to play this version as if he was playing Chopin's etudes ( a bit extreme but I hope you get my drift  ). It is not just the  monotonous hiss and crackles, and that just gets worse the farther back you go but to me I just cannot countenance any of the bad frequency hills and troughs. The recording quality pre war was not great to put it mildly but it did favour some frequencies far more than others and that is why say you are valiantly listening to some of Beethoven's piano sonatas and every time the pianist  hits an F sharp the volume of the piano explodes in your ear with a very significant rise in volume and a very distorted sound also. As I have been talking about Arrau I used to have a copy of the Phillip's series Great pianists of the Twentieth Century, they had what they said was probably Arrau's earliest
recording Balakirev's Islamay. Now through this what I can only say sounds like a continuous blast of white noise and very low level audio I can just discern what I think sounds like a piano being hammered is this torrent of notes. Now this was in 1928 and it was indeed very primitive recording quality. Earlier in the acoustic recording era we had Ferruccio Busoni who went to but down some acetates and he played one or two of his most famous Bach transcriptions and the recording engineer came  out and then asked him to play this note harder than the rest and here are a couple of notes you need to play softer. He did try but gave up in disgust. As one of his friends said of that day "how can you record Busoni , it's like bottling an ocean ). 

I listen to Classical Music because it lifts up my heart and soul in a way that nothing else does . I have ZERO doubt if I had not just
stumbled into it, I would be a FAR worst person than the sinner I am still.


It is what it is , the Greatest Achievement of Western Civilization .I know it , I say it and will till the day I die !Educated and not so educated folks in every corner of the world also know this , try and get a Symphonic ticket in Tokyo .



Of course good sound is nice but is secondary at the end of the day unless you vomit .
I’ve heard of the Ormandy, I shall look again .




P.S . the opinion of a first class musician is scarcely a rant .