Classical Music for Aficionados

2 CD set of Vladimir Sofronitsky, one disc a Chopin recital and the second a Scriabin recital.  The Chopin was great but doesn't displace Moravec, but the Scriabin is truly other-worldly.  I don't know if it has something to do with the acoustic of the recording space or the piano.  Or perhaps it really is just Scriabin's sonorities...

There is a new book out on Richard Wagner, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music by Alex Ross.
 I came to Wagner while studying with Vincent Scully about Louis Sullivan, the Chicago architect, inventor of the steel framed skyscraper, always replete with ornamentation that has never been matched.
I realize that some here revile Wagner.  This book refutes some of the reasons often given for this revulsion, so perhaps it is worth quoting:
quote
Ross has much that’s interesting to say about the responses to Wagner’s controversial, wide-ranging, and widely circulated writings about art, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and any number of other topics; he’s attentive to Wagner’s early anarchist and leftist views; and, of course, he devotes many pages to the embrace of Wagner’s music and ideas by Hitler and the Third Reich. 
The strongest pages in Wagnerism—they come in the final third of the book, mostly in the chapter “Siegfried’s Death”—deal with the complex position of Wagner in Hitler’s imagination, Nazi Germany, and the Allied countries before, during, and immediately after World War II. Ross brings a feeling for historical paradox and ambiguity to this prototypical case study in the relationship among art, society, and politics. He explores the long-running scholarly debates about what he refers to as “the Wagner-Hitler problem.” Addressing scholarly discussions as to whether Hitler’s obsession with Wagner was dominated by a rapturous engagement with the operas themselves or an enthusiasm for Wagner’s writings on anti-Semitism and the German spirit, Ross concludes that “Hitler’s relationship with Wagner remained one of musical fandom rather than of ideological fanaticism.” 
Whatever attracted him most strongly to Wagner, Hitler was determined to make him central to the iconography and mythology of Nazism, though the composer and his work were not wholeheartedly embraced by the citizens of the Third Reich. Wagner “was too strange, too eccentric, to serve as a reliable ideological bulwark” in Nazi Germany, Ross writes. “Nor was his work popular enough, in the mass-market sense, to operate as a unifying force.” 
As for the claims that Wagner’s music was played in the concentration camps, Ross examines them carefully and concludes that if it happened, it was only rarely. “The vast majority of survivor testimonies,” he writes, “indicate that the music of the camps was popular in nature: marches, dance tunes, hits of the day, light classics.” 
Ross argues that “Wagner’s popularity in America actually surged” in the 1940s. Arturo Toscanini and other conductors performed the operas before enthusiastic audiences; apparently some concertgoers didn’t find it difficult to separate the nineteenth-century artist from the country that he had mythologized and that was now a sworn enemy. The New York Times critic Olin Downes wrote that Wagner’s operas were “the antithesis of Hitler, and crushing condemnation of all that Hitlerism implies.”

end quote

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/10/08/the-cults-of-wagner/
if you encounter a paywall, you can read it here
https://outline.com/z94bDB

Wagner = Hitler  period .

Schumann, Humoreske, Novelletten, Nachtstucke, Piano Sonata #2 / Andras Schiff.  Live recording by ECM, 2 CDs.  Not surprisingly it being ECM, the piano recording is excellent, and Schiff is on top form for his audience.

Wagner died in 1883
Hitler was born in 1889, 6 years later

So my friend said "let's stop at that estate sale". Sunday's are the last day so usually slim pickin's. Three boxes of records still. They hadn't sold many all weekend. 90 percent classical. If I had my car (and more room currently) I would have made an offer for all. Instead I only purchased 18 (all of Columbia Masterworks (all they had) and 5 RCA shaded dogs. 50 cents each, close m- + cons. They had over 20 MHS... 

Wagner was the most known of any German in the world  the day he died
and the huge amount of the vile anti- Jewish hate speech he wrote is not
forgotten to this day .

On a warm September afternoon, a startling sound could be heard in a rehearsal room here: a full-size orchestra, playing the second act of Wagner’s “Die Walküre.”

“I’m not saying we planned this,” Donald Runnicles, who was conducting the rehearsal, said in an interview. “But if you knew you were going to have a six-month hiatus where you didn’t hear any live music, what would you wish to hear after that six months? In my top 10, it would be ‘Die Walküre.’”

When Wagner began work on the text of the “Ring,” he was a young radical fleeing the failed revolutions of 1848. “We are all in a situation like Wagner,” Mr. Herheim said. “All somehow refugees, confronted with the concept of not having a harbor, not feeling safe, and at the same time having to face the destinies of so many people trying to get to us, and face the fact that many of us are not ready to feel empathy.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/arts/music/wagner-walkure-opera-berlin.html

Fearing the fate of Louis-Philippe, some monarchs in Germany accepted some of the demands of the revolutionaries, at least temporarily. In the south and west, large popular assemblies and mass demonstrations took place. They demanded freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, written constitutions, arming of the people, and a parliament.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_revolutions_of_1848%E2%80%931849

None of which stopped Wagner from being , in voice and pen , the greatest Semite in the German lands .

Tonight begins The Jewish High- Holidays and this is normally the first music that usher them in . Played by the great Pierre Fournier.


https://youtu.be/WuC_0W4O_MI?t=25

"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

Abraham Lincoln, Sept. 18, 1858

Four days before his death, speaking to Gen. Benjamin Butler, Lincoln still pressed on with deportation as the only peaceable solution to America’s race problem. “I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes … I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country…”

there is a lot more - and worse - here:

https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/12/01/lincoln-to-slaves-go-somewhere-else/

Copland- Appalachian spring, rodeo and billy the kid suite all conducted by Leonard Bernstein NY Phil.
Ravel- bolero- also Leonard NY phil
Barber - Adagio for strings Len as well
Debussy- Suite bergamasque, Clair de lune Cecil ousset
Erik Satie- gymnopedies 1 2 3- aldo ciccolini
Gershwin - Rhapsody in blue- Leonard again
Grieg - peer gynt- Herbert von karajan- Berlin phil

theres more but those are my go it’s

Nice list.
I see you’re a Bernstein lover.

I was surprised to find politics infiltrating this forum. I honestly couldn't care less of Wagners political views. I accept that he's vile anti semite, but I love his music. I don't think we should be canceling composers and classical music in general. Apparently, Beethoven is now racist too. At this rate soon enough all classical music will be censored and labeled racist. 

I also do not want to have politics coming between me and my music and if push comes to shove I would say that The Ring Cycle to me was the greatest operatic endeavour of the 19th century. He was still a stinker of a man.  

I ONLY  loath Wagner . Don't care for opera's  with incest  as the theme either.I care greatly that Wagner did much to make murdering millions OK ..

On Saturday night, he and the Berlin Staatskapelle orchestra completed the programme as promised at Jerusalem's international convention centre. But when Barenboim returned for a second encore, he surprised the audience by asking if they wanted to hear Wagner.

An emotional 30-minute debate among the audience followed, with some shouting "fascist" and "concentration camp music", and dozens walked out, banging doors as the music began.

But most stayed and Barenboim, 58, played a piece from Tristan and Isolde. He was reported to have been close to tears after receiving a standing ovation.

"I respect those for whom these associations are oppressive. It will be democratic to play a Wagner encore for those who wish to hear it. I am turning to you now and asking whether I can play Wagner?"

He said he did not want to offend anyone and that those who would find the music objectionable could leave.

The debate, carried out in Hebrew, was lost on almost all of the orchestra. Holocaust survivors were in both camps. Michael Avraham, 67, an engineer, said: "Wagner was a giant anti-semite but also a great musician. I'm against his views, but not his music."

Ephraim Zuroff, director of the Israeli branch of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said: "We will urge all Israeli orchestras to boycott Daniel Barenboim."

In 1981, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra tried to play a piece from Tristan and Isolde, but a Holocaust survivor jumped on to the stage, opened his shirt and showed scars from a concentration camp. The performance was abandoned.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jul/09/ewenmacaskill

Arrau's complete Liszt Etudes.
Who knows this recording well?

The piano image is remarkably high, as if it were up on a raised stage and you were down in a seat close by.

Also the bass/lower midrange seems remarkably, err, generous.  I'm not complaining, it just brings home again how many ways a single piano can sound different when recorded.

I have to say this is my favourite recording of the Transcendentals and Arrau was 75 at the time of recording which is pretty incredible  seeing as the incredible difficulties involved . If you have ever been to a recital by Arrau pretty much the first thing you would hear in his piano tone was that incredible midrange which was rich and full. Most recordings of his actually do him a disservice in that a lot of that rich and glorious depth is diminished somehow. His last Phillips recordings do redress this with his latter digital recordings much more faithful in tone. A wonderful recording which hopefully would sway people from saying they hate Liszt without hearing Arrau ever playing him.

Here is an article that is 28 years old, about pianos, about music, about Glenn Gould, and about Alfred Brendel.
Anything I could say would only diminish it, so I simply recommend it to you.
The original is behind a paywall here:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n06/nicholas-spice/how-to-play-the-piano
A copy (almost complete) is here:
https://outline.com/36fmR7

NYT reviews Lang Lang's new recording of Bach Goldbergs.
"Lang Lang: The Pianist Who Plays Too Muchly

On a new recording of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, the superstar artist stretches the music beyond taste."

Very critical, preference for Jeremy Denk and Beatric Rana recordings.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/04/arts/music/lang-lang-bach-goldberg-variations.html?action=click&a...

A great Bartok Concerto for viola that you are unlike to hear live in US .

https://youtu.be/yfpCCJqu4Ts?t=2

Mr. Jarrett, 75, broke the silence, plainly stating what happened to him: a stroke in late February 2018, followed by another one that May. It is unlikely he will ever perform in public again.

“I was paralyzed,” he told The New York Times, speaking by phone from his home in northwest New Jersey. “My left side is still partially paralyzed. I’m able to try to walk with a cane, but it took a long time for that, took a year or more. And I’m not getting around this house at all, really.”

When he tried to play some familiar bebop tunes in his home studio recently, he discovered he had forgotten them.

“I don’t know what my future is supposed to be,” he added. “I don’t feel right now like I’m a pianist. That’s all I can say about that.”

“But when I hear two-handed piano music, it’s very frustrating, in a physical way. If I even hear Schubert, or something played softly, that’s enough for me. Because I know that I couldn’t do that. And I’m not expected to recover that. The most I’m expected to recover in my left hand is possibly the ability to hold a cup in it. So it’s not a ‘shoot the piano player’ thing. It’s: I already got shot. Ah-ha-ha-ha.”

“I can only play with my right hand, and it’s not convincing me anymore,” Mr. Jarrett said. “I even have dreams where I am as messed up as I really am — so I’ve found myself trying to play in my dreams, but it’s just like real life.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/arts/music/keith-jarrett-piano.html

I have just finished listening to Barenboim playing the Diabelli Variations and must say I have on the whole enjoyed it. How he can keep this kind of work at his age and especially live at that is incredible. After a shaky start he then bowls headlong into them and on the whole I think it is a great achievement. If I had to pick anyone who he resembles playing them it has to be a lot of Arrau and a little of Kovacevitch. Not that he copies them though but more resembles, in his youth he revered Arrau and and Arrau liked him and his playing . His interpretation is quite slowish but not drastically so, he just lets the music breathe so to speak .
In the faster variations he dives straight in and takes no prisoners and the great thing about late Beethoven is that the music doesn't sound too clean as per Beethoven's instructions to Schindler. Arrau was a great proponent of the musical slurs in Beethoven's late works which he also suggested to his pupils and I'm quite sure Barenboim also as his playing does resemble Arrau a lot.
Anyway if you give it a spin so to speak it is on Qobus at the moment and I'm quite sure the others will have it also . The recorded quality is superb also so that should be a bonus.

Jim,

Yes, I listened to that performance a while ago and was similarly impressed.
At his age, like his compatriot, Martha Argerich, he seems to have lost nothing in technique.  What a musical genius!  He conducts even the most complicated scores from memory.
What is there in the water in Argentina?

@rvpiano          I totally agree RV about the two of them especially Barenboim I just don't know where he gets the time or energy for all the things he is involved with. The two of them have gone into now their late seventies with their techniques intact, in fact I would put Argerich as possibly in the top three pianists before the public today. Her Schumann is mercurial and so quirky that it is totally unique to her. I have enjoyed her playing for as long as I can remember. I still remember her EMI releases from the sixties and although they were very expensive at the time I couldn't wait till I had enough money to go and catch another one of her Chopin releases. What do you think of her Mazurkas, to me they are superbly played with not a note out of place ( do remember Michaelangeli had a hand in forging her technical aparatus ) she is one of the greatest pianists ever. I always remember a passage in a book about Barenboim when he was dining with Arthur Rubinstein one afternoon. Afterwards they went out on to the veranda for a cigar. as they were enjoying their smoke the talk as always went to pianists. Martha's name came up and after a little while Rubinstein looked straight at Barenboim and said she was one of the  supreme pianists of the age but why did she have to play so fast. Barenboim looked him in the eye and said "because she can Arthur because she can" and with that they fell back to their cigars.

Jim,

I haven’t listened to Martha’s Chopin Mazurkas yet, but I will and let you know my impressions.
I actually do agree with Rubinstein’s observations about how fast she plays. At times it’s a little disconcerting and interferes with the natural flow of the music.
However, she’s an extraordinary talent and, at her best, is unparalleled.
Speaking of pianists, I’m just now listening to a new album by Daniel Trifonov containing Russian composers called “Silver Age” (available on Idagio.)
Again, as we’ve discussed before, aside from his formidable technique, I just don’t find him very interesting, despite all the hullabaloo.

AshkenazyI have heard his 1966 Diabelli Variations, but not the new recording.Now listening to his "Rare First Recordings 1955" which is a bonus
part of "The Solo Recordings on DG & Westminister 40CD"He must have been 13 years old, looks so young in the cover picture.I love his music, and I appreciate what he did with Edward Said in Israel.

Chopin Mazurkas by Antonio Barbosa is the most astoundingly rythmically accurate and "dancing" version for me  of these pieces that Chopin wrote for all his short live.....

RV    I am in total accordance with you regarding Trifonov  , he really has a lot of musical growing to do. He reminds me of Michelangeli  and Pollini who were capable of playing anything but cold as ice. No for me he needs a couple of decades under his belt , alas too late for me I fear.

Me too!

Listening to Kondrashin's Dvorak 9 for a first time on my improved system, and what an exciting recording it is.  Superb dynamics!  The tympani strokes in the first movement made me jump. I would never have guessed the recording's age. All cobwebs firmly blown away.  Dvorak reenergized.

All that said, anyone care to recommend a complementary more relaxed, "romantic" reading, with a suitably delicious slow movement?  I'd like to have both.

I have always enjoyed Karajan with the Vienna Philharmonic and although maybe a bit lush for some I think he would be a perfect foil for Kondrashin.

The Woman Who Built Beethoven’s Pianos

Nannette Streicher has been marginalized by history, but she was one of Europe’s finest keyboard manufacturers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/arts/music/beethoven-piano.html

Speaking of Kondrashin, I believe he is one of the great conductors of the 20th century and somewhat underrated.  He was superb not only in Russian music.  His Mahler performances, especially the 9th Symphony, are truly admirable.

I’m  listening to a work of incomparable genius: Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and just had to write about it.
Some of the most brilliant variation writing existent.

You are not wrong there RV as I also think he was a phenomenon of which sad to say I do not think we shall see the likes of again. He left us a whole treasury of works which are unique and in so many forms. I particularly love his Corelli Variations especially played by Mikhail Pletnev on Rachmaninov's own Steinway in his villa, a truly wonderful recording.
Other works of his I love are his piano pieces Op.23 and Op.32 and those two together give us a full 24 preludes in all the keys, and the variety is fascinating. When I have listened to him play his own works on recordings I think what a crying shame hearing this horribly diistorted and hissy sound when everyone now can listen to any modern pianist with superb digital sound. 

I’m so happy his time has finally arrived.

Here's an instrumentalist whom I hadn't heard before: Hille Perl.  To me she sounds like stiff competition to Jordi Savall et al. on the viola da gamba.  The Schenck CD is excellent, with superb sound and impassioned playing. I have immediately ordered two more of hers.

@maghister  Re Barbosa, I have listened to his recordings of the Mazurkas and I really enjoyed them .His rubatos are beautiful and unhurried with a superb technique. I did know of him because he was a pupil of Arrau’s but sad to say I had never looked up any of his recordings so a big thank you for putting his name my way.

There is other Music than Piano . This bit is modern and conducted by the composer.https://youtu.be/OnAtvyK6bzY?t=4

This piece confirms , to me at least, his greatness . Sadly Sir Peter is no longer with us .
https://youtu.be/zpJB-XXE9Xg?t=2

jim204

Rubinstein was also a marvellous pianist in the mazurkas.....

But unknown to many the great Yakov Flier, the russian professor of many great late pianits, gives to us one of the best version of the mazurkas but totally different than Barbosa....The amazing fluidity and interprenetrating rythms of Barbosa with a perfect easiness and poetic delicate fluency is replaced by a more romantic and forceful expressiveness and mostly an amazing recreation of the dance itself (a waltz with a hicup said someone but i forgot whom) by Yakov Flier.... One of the very great russian pianists... Rubinstein is romantic like Flier and easily fluent like Barbosa but less surprizing than Flier in the dance figure recreation itself....And i like the more detached interpretation of Barbosa more than the interpretation from  many other very good pianists....

Then Barbosa and Flier are my 2 favorites for these pieces because they are so opposite and complementary to each other and so perfect anyway in their own rendition of these dances which were the best of Chopin for me and the most precious works for the composer himself....

Orfeo d’ Or reissues historical recordings. My favorites are from the Salzburg Festival. The Clara Haskil remaster is in mono but it’s so amazingly beautiful. Also, many years ago their existed the Andante label and their vintage recording remasters are exquisite. It’s very apparent that performance practices have changed since the early 20th century and it can be enlightening to hear people like Wilhelm Backhaus or a young Vladimir Horowitz.

Just listened to Schumann: Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13 by Sviatoslav Richter. Melodia release, available on Tidal. It is astounding. Is there another notable recording of this ? 

ei001h,
I’d recommend looking at the apr label, here’s a Richter recording,

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=221050

Here’s a list of recordings with Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes for Piano, some are listed as recommended;

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/albumList.jsp?name_id1=10915&name_role1=1&comp_id=2717&a...

@goofyfoot found it on Tidal, listening to it now. Thanks 

@ei001h  My favourite in Schumann's Etudes Symphoniques is Mikhail Pletnev although not for everyone pianistically and musically  his interpretation  goes down to my very core and he seems to hit parts of me that few others do. Heard him in recital once at The Edinburgh Festival  and I was ecstatic. 

My favorite recorded versions of the Etudes are by Alexis Weissenberg and Ivo Pogorelich.
Of course Pletnev is great in whatever he does.