MY favorite Violinist does the unreal at  82  !

I have always liked the tech solid sound of this Polish artist that seems to have got little love here  when he was alive , or dead for that matter .

Milstein’s Bach exquisite!

‘He was one of those wonders of nature.

As he aged, lost very little if anything at all.

Szeryng, Very, very fine violinist.

One of the best!

Yes these older violinists could teach today's young violinists a few lessons if they were still here. As in pianists the older ones are just as good as the young ones of today

One word, globalization.  This has led to a certain standardization of approaches to playing as opposed to in the past when there was more emphasis (acceptance) on a more personal approach.  The same can be said of soloists on any instrument, not just violin and piano.  On a “larger” scale the result of this globalization can be clearly heard in the major orchestras whose previously very distinctive personalities have become somewhat homogenized due to the phenomenon of the prevalence of the traveling guest conductor and, even more recently, principal players from different parts of the world who are the product of different “schools” and their respective approaches.

Btw, on the wonderful Milstein/Horowitz Brahms clip, I think that rv’s astute observation re tuning is, more than anything, a result of pitch instability in the playback of the recording.  Obvious with the piano’s sound which doesn’t have the more forgiving “cushion” of the violin’s vibrato.  
 

I don’t know much but I did think like frogman’s cushion and why I made

PERFECTION .

The Great Leipzig Gewandhaus had men only from Leipzig Conservatory for over 200 years.

Stopped slowly after DDR collapsed which made me think Masur might  be  good for divas in US .

As the DDR was  in riot Masur walked among alone talking people to calm the mob  and  he did much .

. Masur is still beloved in Leipzig.

That Glazunov has so MUCH to say,I have one somewhere but doubt if it could

begin to do this Milstein .

I listened to it three times yesterday and my small brain said 3 times Glazunov is telling his life .

In any event he has something that is as good as any other and better than many!

The orchestra is stunning .

t

Seems like he has Meditation to me.  I love this .

The Glazunov is a very great concerto!

Lovely “Meditation” by Perlman. Meditation of a different kind:

Indeed., I put mine in with "the Lark " .

More often than not Perlman is , great as he is, a bit thick for me. Just thought

I’d try him and he seemed on the spot with Glazunov .

For me , this is bringing out the HEAVY artillery.

I agree re Perlman.  Certainly a great player, but hard to match the restrained sophistication of expression of Milstein.  For instance, his glissandi are, in fact, a little “thick”.  His Glazunov “Meditation” is beautiful, but FOR ME, when he makes a glissando from one note to the other he accentuates the glissando a little much with the effect of sounding dangerously close to the overly dramatic.  With Milstein the glissando doesn’t draw attention to itself and away from the melodic line.  

My favorite violin interpretation ever, not because he is the best violonist no more than the more perfect virtuoso... Not at all listen to Milstein and Heifetz for this...

Like said once the great poet Rene Char : "imperfection is the peak" ....

Disembodied static "perfection" is always UNDER embodied living "imperfection" like this Szeriyng interpretation here...

No other interpretation vehicle a so deep spiritual charge, it is no more simply violin playing here... Only a miracle... You can verify with another more sound perfected version by Szeryng in 1967 for Deutsch after this 1955 unique version... He is no more a match for himself anymore... I sold this 1967 version after one listen.... Miracle happen once...

This album is my violin love forever....We can sense the heart beat of spiritual respiration of a soul inhaling the cosmos...Is it music?  Embodied music of the sphere here , too intense to be only beautiful....Uniting body and world....Bach must have played like that or would have wanted be able to play like that....Bach for me is IN this work like the Fournier version of the cello opus for the same reason on par with one of the Starker version ( they are five beware)....

Ok the sound is not the best possible it is not so well balanced but so what? i discarded all other well recorded version, BECAUSE our RESPIRATION change listening this and i discovered listening this that we listen with our body then with our LUNG/heart not only with our ears....This is a YOGA lesson in the listening and playing art... Respiration as a cosmic fact...

Schopenhauer was right, music place us in the noumenal dimension of the world where there is no more a listening and a playing body, no mere an internal subjectivity in front of an objective world... Only one cosmic respiration like the AUM of the Indian cosmologist...

I forgot to thank

jim5559

For reminding me and us about this interpration....

I apologize for my passionnate embrace of ONE interpretation..

But when someone could discover that we listen ALWAYS in fact with our lung inhaling/exhilarating body participation is it not surprizing?

For me it was with this album i experienced it consciously for the first time in my life 35 five years ago....Dietrich-Fischer- Dieskau would had smile at me for sure and taught me a lesson about singing...Any playing jazz musicians sax or trumpeters would have smile at me too...

And what appear as a miracle for me is only an usual phenomenon for most musicians and singers...But i am only a listener...And many in audio thread are like i was anyway, they think that we listen only with our ears...

Merry christmast to you and to all

I agree with you mahgister, and really admire your intellect.

As you say you and I are in the audience and I gather frogman is in the band .

He will hear things you and I will never hear , or want to and vice -versa .

Frogman being a musician smile at me for sure, but being a wise one he know that even passive listener could experience music also as a spiritual embodied event...

Thank you jim559 for your kind words...

Szeryng had a technic that he was is in complete control of in every second he played,

I never heard anyone like him ,   

He was Polish . No one is more stubborn than they .

r

I like your post.... The most stubborn philosopher i ever read was a Polish genius : Wronski... Balzac wrote a complete novel about him : "the search for the absolute"...

😊😊😊😊😊

Then see this , our man is playing LvB trio with two of THE best on piano and

Bass in the world ! Concert is in Bonn , no mistakes there !

During rest all throw what and how things should be . And they don’t put their 2 cents in, more like their million bucks .

Not in English , no need  anyway .

Wow! i never listened to this one...

Spoken words through music.... Thanks 

Joseph Szigeti has not the spritual embodied respiration of Szeryng, no one has anyway, he was not a virtusoso like the god Heifetz, his tone dont have the perfect transparency or sun-light quality of a Milstein or a Grumiaux...

But why a so powerful, expressive, sometimes " unclean" tone, tear our heart apart, when listening this Bach interpretation with a powerful rythmic constrasted almost unbalanced control like someone walking near an abyss, on par with the best violonist, but so personal that it was completely unheard before or after...Nobody among all violonist nowadays will dare to play like that in a so risky dance on one leg sometimes and near the fall....

Perhaps the less " perfect" of all versions i love, but one of the most expressive one and one which sound like a complete improvisation....

And this explain perhaps why : " In 1923 Ysaÿe set about composing his most extraordinary music: the Six Solo Violin Sonatas, op.27. It was a recital by Joseph Szigeti of Bach’ sonatas and partitas that set Ysaÿe on the path to composing these works."

«Imperfection is the peak» René Char

The Vanguard people like Japan with Ervin Nyiregyházi clean very well the old recording with the best possible audiophile sound mix...One of the less known great Bach interpretation...These two hungarian masters, one on violin the other on piano, had something in common in their "sound" and expressive movement, they never practice to be better they only play the more powerfully they could...Volcanos never study or practice before eruption...

At the end music is a complete mystery and any musician is unique and incomparable, but in love like in music we must chose one god, one wife, or one mistress, and many friends....

I can believe the never practice alright. I love Vanguard but I pass

on this .

When I read of the past greats not practicing all I can think of is what a lot of missed opportunities to be even greater than what they were because of lack of practice. Milstein was an inveterate practicer who always said I owe it to my public to be at the top of my game because the people in the cheap seats have paid a lot of money ( to them ) to come and hear me. Heifetz was exactly the same , he also practiced a lot , even as an old man. When Segovia said the immortal words that John Williams was touched by the hand of God , Williams said he may have said that but he also told me to practice as if there was no time left in the world.

Wonderful article that explain what i listened to and why....Thanks frogman...

I understand better why i love him so much now WITHOUT being able to explain the shift from some perceived relative perfection and cleanliness in many other interpretations to the Szigeti spoken words in sentence where each word is destabilizing like a passionate love poem or like a discourse near an abyss before dying...

Thanks for this article so moving.... And now i can learn to listen to him in a new light....

This article confirm what i wrote: he never practice to reach a sound perfect for itself but he played like we speak to reach the more truthful articulation between "words"....

More than ever i think that this interpretation ressemble more of an improvisation and a volcanic eruption than to a beautiful perfect object...Like when someone speak we must read between the line to understand....And anyway human speech is too complex mystery to be understood completely in the deep , music is the same and linked to language like Szigeti taught it...Sometimes beauty only for itself deceived us but spoken words are always a window into the soul....

By the way i NEVER said that this interpretation was the BEST there is...

I said that i dont understand why this interpretation was so much powerful...

When we listen music like a child for the first time forgetting or putting aside our learned taste, we are ready then to open ourself to discovery...

There is no better at the end, only powerful suprizing meaninful new worlds of expression...

Music is not only object to be idolized for their perfection but gesture inviting us to a new kind of participation...

“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

« At a deep level every word and every chord is an angel»-Anonymus Smith

By the way jim you are absolutely right about practice...

All great musician practice, only a few one practise in their own way by playing

out of their comfort zone, improvizing like Szigeti and Miles Davis...

Some never practice but play each evening like Chet Baker who play minimalistic

like if it was his last  few words...

Ervin Nyiregyhazi play all day long from a very young age...In his mature years he practice no more and even did not  own a piano for decades...

No artist is the same...

But generally we must practice an art, save some few angel who are born with it...

I want to thank you very much to speak your mind, this is the RAREST quality possible and i admire your frank  and direct speaking...

I wish you and to all the best christmast possible in this impossible world

When I read of the past greats not practicing all I can think of is what a lot of missed opportunities to be even greater than what they were because of lack of practice. Milstein was an inveterate practicer who always said I owe it to my public to be at the top of my game because the people in the cheap seats have paid a lot of money ( to them ) to come and hear me. Heifetz was exactly the same , he also practiced a lot , even as an old man. When Segovia said the immortal words that John Williams was touched by the hand of God , Williams said he may have said that but he also told me to practice as if there was no time left in the world.

Since my Angel has saved my life more than once(no joke} I still think God knows

what he does .

This is my kind of music and players that do it.. And the best country they can do this in.

@mahgister Seasons Greetings to you and your’s and I hope you have a very lovely Christmas.

Best wishes, Jim.

@schubert  Len I hope this finds you well and in good spirits and our shared musical God is looking over you. Bless you and have a lovely Christmas.

Jim.

@rvpiano O great leader , this has been a most enjoyable thread and I hope it goes on for a long time and we all learn from our most revered pastime to enrich our lives with more new and enjoyable music. A most enjoyable Christmas to you and to every one of us contributing to this truly enjoyable thread.

Take care everyone. Jim.

Jim204,

Thank you for your salutation, though undeserved, and for your good wishes.
A very, very wonderful holiday  season to all who participate in this thread.

And thank you all for your contributions!

It is Christmas time and a Great Singer , one Pavarotti , comes on :7:28

with the Montreal Sym.

He was at his peak and I am not ashamed to say I cried.

As much as for the Glory of the people of Quebec as Luciano .

Thanks jim5559 for you kind word i am moved...

Merry Christmast....

Merry Christmas to all!

On the subject of practicing:

No question that disciplined practicing elevates one’s playing no matter what stage of one’s development as a musician is at. It is a life (career) long pursuit. To a great artist, there really is no such thing as perfection and while we may attribute perfection to favorite artists, they themselves would be the first to recognize (if not necessarily point out) the imperfections in their own playing. This attitude is really the only path to true greatness.

Having said all that, there are different ways to “practice”. To a certain extent it is a very personal matter and what it takes some players four hours to achieve, someone else might be able to accomplish in one. A very busy artist is concertizing all the time and that half hour of “warm up” in a dressing room before a performance may be all he gets given the very busy schedule. Performance itself helps keep the playing in shape. Developing a personal and extremely efficient practice routine is key. Personal in that it considers the player’s personality and any physical idiosyncrasies or limitations; they all have them to one degree or another.

Some players need and strive for 110% consistency of a particular technical goal during practice. For instance, if there is a particularly brutal fast technical passage in a musical work some strive for accuracy at an even faster tempo with the knowledge that at performance there will most likely be some reduction in the level of accuracy. Conversely, another player may feel that this approach is over practicing and they enjoy the controlled tension that results from aiming for something new during performance as a means of achieving a musical goal for that performance.  Regardless, no player becomes the kind of artist considered here without having practiced a tremendous amount of time at various points in their careers. Of course, in the case of the great artists discussed here this all happens at an extremely high and exalted level with the goal of personal artistic expression; always a reflection of personality. A couple of favorite quotes on the topic:

- ”If you sound great practicing, you are practicing the wrong things”

- “If I don’t practice for one day, my fingers know it. If I don’t practice for two days, my friends know it. If I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it. On the fourth day, the critics hear about it” - Ignacy Paderewski (sometimes attributed to Heifetz, or Louis Armstrong)

All artist practice...

But sometimes some are different because all men are not equal...

An anecdote:

The great mathematician, Alexander Grothendieck, for many the greatest of the 20th century, NEVER bough a mathematical book and almost NEVER study save by himself.. Rediscovering unknown to him modern integration theory by himself...

A journalist interviewing him at his home seeing no books at all about mathematics

"where are they ?" The mathematician Alexander Gronthendieck answered smiling i wrote them i dont have time and the need to read none of them....He left perhaps 60 thousands page of mathematical works even today all is not even published...

At sixteen years old coming from concentration camp he go to the Bourbaki group, the more advanced mathematical group in the world and say i wanted to be useful... These man all great mathematician, some being the greatest in the world like Andre Weil smiling gave him 100 hundred important problems and said to him come in one year if your able to solve one or two... He solve them all in few months and created singlehandly modern mathematic for the next 15 years alone with a great french mathematician Dieudonné as a passive scribe...

Incredible story!...

Some artist or creators dont need "practice" or studying like normal human...

Vivaldi was able to wrote at a speed like Mozart a works one after the other...

Ervin Nyiregyhazi practiced music as a baby for few years but quit his dictatorial mother at 16 years old and never practice really after that and even never own a piano for decades... Some journalist ask him at 74 years old for his first concert almost for the last 30 years were is his piano? He answer mechanic dont need tool at their house... He dont have one...

All artists practice but some are more superhuman than other...

Ramanujan teach himself mathematic at young age with a simnple english book and is now recognized to be a mathematician exceeding almost all mathematical genius in history...

All artists practice but to any rule there is exception... And like say frogman the concept of practice is very different for each musician...

If someone wanted to know what is genius read the biography of William James Sidis, he was not a musician but this life express very well that we are not created equal for studies and practices needs...He was the highest measured IQ in history probably and declared out of any knowm measuring scales...I read his bio and 2 books by him... It is so incredible that is in UNBELIEVABLE...He learn all indian languages of america, and know any language after a week or two... He go to university at 11 years of age and was refused at 9 being too short... His first conference at 11 years old was about the projection of 4 manifold in three dimensinal space in 1911 and he answered questions ( all this is redacted at Harvard) about the diffference between the very new  Einstein Minkovsky 4-d space time notion and his own 4-d geometrical concept...

All artists practice and study... Some way less than others...

I can go on with examples...

Superhuman exist it is historical fact, genius in music exist, it is historical fact...

Telemann for example taught music by himself alone at young age and his output of work exceed Bach at least by triple numbers...

Did he practice ?i guess he did... But what is practice and what is playing, what is the need to practice many hours each day if you create more than 3000 works among them figure 1000 cantatas yes not 100 but one thousand... Did he had time to practice each week all the instruments he was able to play?

No....

Allow me to add my appreciation for the contributions by the frogman.  Both here and on a jazz site, he offers great insights to the music and the artists.  He has a way of doing this for musical dummies like myself, while not dumbing down his comments, so they are also meaningful to those with more musical background.

Others of course add valuable insights, but few with the depth and consistency of the frogman, a treasure for those looking to learn.

With that, here's wishing a warm and wonderful Holiday Season to all, and a safe and sane New Year. 

Putting aside the question of whether musicians such as Milstein, or Perlman can be compared to unquestionable geniuses such as Haydn. The very things that drive any particular artist’s personal approach to “practice” in its various forms are also what shape an artist’s musical personality.  It is about more than simply what is sometimes perceived as a reflection of that person’s work ethic.  These are hugely accomplished individuals with often equally huge personalities, musically and otherwise. Artistic expression is an expression of the musician’s personality even when taking a back seat to that of the composer. I have always had trouble with the notion of a “greatest”, or “best”.  Personal favorites?  Of course.  Our own personal preferences (biases) are always a part of the mix of reasons that influence our reactions as listener; enough to always throw into question an attempt at designating a “greatest”.  

Amazing Pavarotti.

First there is no greatest in a general way of speaking... Pavarotti is not Greater than Jussi Bjorling in an absolute sense...

Second there is greatness...For me it is Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fisher Dieskau the two greatest singer i ever listen to...

Yes i know i contradict myself here...

I cannot claim in an ABSOLUTE way that Bach is the greatest composer in history, even if i think so somewhat and to be frank i think so... Because esthetic and ethic converge in Bach works at a level never seen before or after save like in Beethoven case for example but never with the perfect balance that exist in Bach between esthetical choices and means and ethical one.......

But i love Scriabin And Gesualso because the esthetic choices here are so constrasted that esthetic choices here border near an ethical abyss and over it...Gesualdo with his contrasted excessive colors use is almost contemporary composer...And Scriabin is near atonality not by an equation like Schoenberg but by a genius particular  chords choices obsessive expressive habit...

Then i am not afraid to speak about "greatest" or "best"...But i know that this is only a relative way for us to express something objective sometimes, the ouput of Telemann is the larger in European music and sometimes subjective, like Bach is the greatest Composer in European history...

But feel free to contradict me, if someone say that Scriabin is the greatest i will never mock him, knowing his genius ....Or Telemann who was the greatest composer and the prefered choice of one of my friend ... How do we know a man who has written 3,000 works and more, 1000 cantatas, 40 passions... It is safe to say that almost no one can judge Telemann...

The greatest and the best are always like say wisely frogman personal choices but these personal choices COULD be motivated and must be motivated by precise reason to say so...

it is sometimes clearer and more informative to speak about vertical greatness than to put all on a relative horizontal line...

The point is not to say which one is the best in an absolute sense , but why we think so in a relative way.... It is a way to think in different perspectives and anyway to clearly emerge, each one of these perspectives must be hierarchicallly described and related....

If we forbid ourself to express our own feeling and any hierarchy, how do we are supposed to understand all musical history? Musical history is not ONLY objective facts, it is also critical debatable esthetical choices and ethical one... All mountains are not equal at all and many Himalaya exist....

I apologize for being too exclusively passionnate in this thread... I recognize it like my greatest defect but also my greatest quality....

frogman, Ignacy Pdererwski stole that from my Marine Drill Sgt. on Paris Island .

He just took the Push Outs, out.

All jokes aside, it is exactly what happens to a Marine re PT .

Alice Sara Ott: Liszt: 12 Études d'exécution transcendante

Nudge up the volume just a smidgin, and you have a Steinway grand in your living room.

As their title makes clear, composed for “practicing”. 😊

Took me a few decades to go on vacation , you must hear live music ,

to some Euro fest not here. Only ticket I could get was to Prague Spring ,

Ok, that’s something.

It’s something alright , an atomic bomb in a 6 mil country ,

which when you dig things up was making great music from 1200 to Leos Janacek.

This is from 1750 and is known a bit to Classical Slaves .

FWIW , If I had to say what is the most Musical country in the Western World it would be the Czech Republic .

Not the UK, USA, Germany, France, Austrian, Finland,Spain .Italy . or the man in the moon.

Hungry is second, but not close IMO.

 @twoleftears     I have been listening to Alice Sara Ott playing Liszt's Transcendental Studies and have been impressed by her maturity and deftness. These pieces have been much maligned over the last century but only because of players who just don't have the technique to convey the pieces properly ( I know because I have been at recitals which have been cringe worthy. It is no wonder Liszt got such slights thrown at him, as Schumann once said after a performance by Liszt that these pieces were written for maybe four or five pianists in the whole world. As Alfred Brendel once said If you don't like Liszt's music then blame the pianist and that sentiment still applies today. My personal favourite recorded performance is by Arrau who makes each piece a masterpiece in itself . His playing is lithe, masterful and his tone is golden and orgiastic at times . The very surprising thing about them is he was 75 when he recorded them. At times you would think he was 35.

This is Vlast , "My Land"

This and its composer are icons in Czech lands.

Smetana had something in common with Beethoven . he was deaf when he wrote it.

One reason I’m playing this is played by a German Orchestra which is seldom on

here or on any were else , with a Czech leader .

Bamburg is a small city , but perhaps the most Lovely one in Germany and IMO

has a very good Orchestra .