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.
WhaGot my Currentzis today. Shows me one thing , it is done from an Eastern Christianity perspective where life is always hard and we do not deserve anything else as sinners .
In Western Christianity we are still sinners but joy still stops by now and then . In American " born again " quarters it seldom leaves.
As an Anglican I’m somewhere in between .
In3, the Allegro molto vivace sounds like that band could play any thing . Going to look for more them and him.
4- is very good as well,
IMO all in all this is a legit rendition .
Jim , I should have thought of Scot’s wha hae . My uncles took me to Burn's Night where I sung in in my McDonald of the Isles kilt .
Len I'm glad you like Currenzis as I hate recommending something and you don't like it, I consider it a pure waste of money then whether a little or a lot of money. Snap I am a McDonald also !!
For you Mahler fans, I just rediscovered an incredible performance and sound spectacular in SACD form of Mahler’s 6th Symphony on Telarc, conducted by Benjamin Zander with the Philharmonia Orchestra. To me, it’s an overwhelmingly beautiful rendering in maybe the best recorded orchestral sound I’ve ever heard. It’s a three SACD set on which the conductor also shrewdly analyzes the work. Truly an extraordinary disc set.
My fave Orchestra is the Bavarian Radio Symphony and has been for about 30 Years, In all that time never heard a blip.
Check this small clip with wonderful early 6-8 Haydn Symphony's which every real music aficionado should hear. They where written when Haydn wrote what he wanted , not what his master wanted to hear . How sad can that be !
Rvpiano, that Zander disk also has both versions of the last movement, the original version with the three hammer blows and the final with two. I think one of the stories about why it was changed was that Mahler the conductor so identified with the hero in the symphony that he couldn't bear to hit him with the third hammer blow, so he took it out. Don't know if it's true but it makes a fun story. Many, if not all, of the Telarc discs of Mahler symphonies have commentary by Zander, making them worth seeking out.
I’ll mention James Levine. His professional demise was sudden and shocking. I’m sure his actual demise was accelerated by the scandal. I know, among musicians, for years there were stories of his inappropriate behavior with children. I had no idea how extensive it was until the scandal broke. In my opinion, he was one of the best conductors around. Practically a fixture at the Met, he led the world’s greatest orchestras and made many excellent recordings, especially of Mahler, which I own. Should you throw away his records?. A Times reviewer spoke to this point years ago. Should his bad behavior color our view of him as an artist? Are his accomplishments all for naught?
I just discovered a wonderful young Turkish pianist whose debut offering is a Rachmaninoff disc: Emre Yamuz. On Idagio. Some really great Rachmaninoff playing.
Koh on The Melodia of the Bartok Solo Violin . Though I have never heard it live , I dare say it could no be done better If the 2 good recordings I do have are any clue .
RV Thanks for the tip on Zanders Mahler Symphony. Agree, very nice dsd and rendition. I don't think there is mention of this recording in the late Penguin Guide?
Schubert, Thanks for the tip about Julia Fischer playing Bach’s Partita in D Minor. I airplayed it on my home theater system (don’t have streaming on my main stereo rig) and thought it elegantly and beautifully played. I’m going to look for other recordings by her.
When that was finished, YouTube began to auto play Itzak Perlman playing the entire Partita in a BBC concert in a church in London, back when he was a young man (20’s?). I had never heard that version, and I sat mesmerized for the entire piece. Art, beauty, emotion...I do not have the words to describe it. Much more than just a listening session, it was a very moving experience.
I also listened to Jennifer Koh’s version that you linked to. I am curious as to what others more knowledgeable than I think about it.
There was a guy named Sit Thomas Beecham who made the best recording of a 5th I have ever heard written by a guy named Franz Schubert . It is on the EMI Great Recordings of The Century .
Some folk think the best ever 5th was written by one Shostakovich and recorded by a Bernstein with the NYO .
Another group think a heavy drinking Swede named Sibelius is the greatest 5ther .
I know , fact certain , his 5th is the best sounding and played by the foremost Finn conductor , one Osmo Vanska , at the helm of the Lahti Symphony . Said 5th is found on the BIS label in superb sound .
There are many in Moscow that are certain this and that Russian composer wrote THE greatest 5th . I would not know about that . I am sure those in Wien that claim Mahler or Brucker is the best 5er are wrong . LvB is FAR above those .
Some French critic named it the "art of the symphony" like Bach has written the art of the fugue...
The final movement is for me the greatest fugue written after Bach... An astonishing powerful fugue resuming all preceding themes like all life is resumed in one singular multidimensional vision after death....
Astonishing when we learned that Bruckner study counterpoint with Schubert old master at the time with complete interdiction to wrote anything save counterpoints for the time of the study... I think Bruckner was pass his thirty years...After the 5 Bruckner wrote master pieces after masterpiece but this 5 was more "modern" in so much aspect paradoxically than the remaing next 4.... The perfect fusion of the past ancient music and the future of music perhaps...For sure this 5 changed my life, 35 five uears ago....
Bruckner is indeed my supreme master symphonist and i think Beethoven spoke and said to me that i was right but immediately he boast about his chamber music to change a tactful delicate subject.... 😁😊😊😊😊
Seriously , the greatest 5th I have heard from the greatest Conductor of the last Century is this .
The sound is nothing to write home about , but the perfection of tempo and every detail brought in just as written on the score blew me away as I followed it ! The musicians of the Halle did not like him , they truly loved him and it shows .
The Sibelius is uplifting , what is better from music ? .
Very great choice.... Thanks for the link.... Barbirolli is the proof that some of the highest genius are not enough known.... Sibelius is a great poet like Mahler....
If Mahler is a poet, Bruckner is more a mystic and a projective geometer.... I love the 2 but Bruckner changed my life.... Mahler make it more beautiful....i am in love with all his lieder tough more even than with his marvellous movements in his symphonies... There is a unity of thinking in Bruckner 5 for me that override anything save Bach affine geometry....
We can all beat our own character.... But in music it is very slowly like in life....
We cannot change our inclination and taste, but we can open our mind.... It is difficult i confess... For example Stravinsky is evidently a genius in music but dont spoke to me deeply...
I was a dreamer nothing will change that then i perfectly understand what you just said about your soldier character...
I've never gotten anything but harrumphs and eyeball rolling, but my favorite Fifth Symphony is Tchaikovsky's. Maybe it all started when, as a kid, I'd watch a TV show that recreated great moments in history...recreations doctored to make them look like aged, silent newsreel footage. The theme music for the show was the second tune of the Second Movement.
I really have to say that for me the greatest 5th is Beethoven's ,it exploded onto the scene in Vienna in 1808 and nobody had heard such audacity and daring in a symphony before. It goes through every emotion unimaginable despair to absolute joy. It to me is the most perfect symphony of the 19th century and beyond. When I was very young I burned myself out from playing it too often but now as I am old with lots of time on my hands I spend most of my time now streaming and have found lots of original instrument bands from Germany and the bring a crisp rawness to the sound that I like to think the folks heard at the premier of the symphony. I also love the Sibelius symphony again conducted by "Glorious John".
I like Bruckner , not in love like Bach or Brahms , but enough to listen now and then .
This is my favorite recording .
The Maestro had come home to his Orchestra of 20 years for his last time.https://youtu.be/Az-kHLRQhsk?t=45 He was on deaths door in his 90’s and all , including him, knew it . He was beloved by the Minnesota and they gave him ALL they had and in a few months he passed . Just opening with Minnesota .
For whatever reason the label has a clip for every page. I have a full recording on second paste , about 6 months before with the Frankfort Orchestra , you can see how frail he was yet he still was the most sought after Bruckner Conductor in the world .
Don't ask me why I got the clip from the Frankfort Radio Symphony in the middle of my first paragraph , Mister "Puter is acting up . Just get the 2 at the bottom .
None of the German Radio Bands were ever second -rate .
BTW, Brahms couldn’t see anything in Bruckner either.
Even genius own an ego...
Bruckner is the greatest symphonist, and Mahler was in the obligation to reinvent it in his own way to be there.... I love the 2 but Bruckner is a geometer and a poet, Mahler a poet...
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