Classical Music for Aficionados

It’s more your Glory.

I find among very intelligent people I know they use spiritual all the time.

Most are people who can not understand why if there is a God why he allows

the horrows of our world .I have to turn my head when I see a 3 yr child weighs

ten pounds and a 13 year old girl is less than four 4 ,ft tall on a "Save the Child",,which is my chief fund ,, ad on TV .

Or why is my son or my mother or my wife have, cancer .

And a thousand other things. I don’t have the answer.

All I can think of , is mankind has proved there is infinity and if there is a God

all the Sorrows of this earth are less than the blink of his eye .

And there is always Pascal.

I rarely encounter a man so mature and deep in all fields of human interest than Pascal...

Reading him is a stunning awakening on all scale...And he was the greatest prose french writer , he transform french prose in an "art of the fugue"...

There is a deep link between Bach music and Pascal thinking...Even if more than 20 years separate the death of one and the birth of the other...

The audible presence of God in the music of Bach answer to the more than probable existence of the Designer in his famous mathematical "wager" and the inner heart consuming fire of love in man....

The wager idea was never understood clearly by most thinkers....Most said that this was a very simplistic argument about God existence...

But it was never intended to be an argument, but a little spark of fire able to ignite the whole world... Why?

Because if someone is able to think about the infinite only one time he will never be able to erase the idea or this experience after it was born in him...

The wager is the wood, and the stones which rubbed with one another will ignite a fire...it is more potent than the St Anselm ontological argument, because it is an appeal to an existential gesture of the thinking...Not only a logical argument....

If you create the idea of infinity one time in your imagination, going back before this moment will become for ever impossible...

Like in the history of mathematic the creation by Cantor of the infinite actualities...

I am surprized that there is no musical work i know of dedicated to Pascal....

It's midnight and  I'm tried  but i think I read Bach had fantastic math power in his head hence counter-point etc

also  Think that Brahms read Pascal - he did have an IQ  off the chart

Oh some drunk or drugy might forget but if you read Pascal  your' likely smart

    enough to remember

Viva La Quebec !

Leibniz improved the computing machine created by Pascal and designed his own one and created the calculus after reading Pascal..Leibniz was very admirative of Pascal genius ...

What is stunning is less the I.Q. of Pascal than his very mature deep thinking in all matter, spirituality included... Even Kafka or Borges could have learned from Pascal imagination of the infinites manifested in every day life mysteries....

Brahms is so great musician and serious spirit i am not surprized that he appeciated Pascal....His creation for chorus are my favorite works...And i am in love with Zymerman/Bernstein concerto number 2 for piano....Because of Zymerman subtle magical  touch more than for  Bernstein  whom is great here for sure...

This work for me embodied late popular 19 century "salon" romanticism...Just a so beautiful concerto that make shadow on  many others  ...Some work are so perfect that listening anything  ressembling them after them is  very difficult...I never was able to replace this concerto by anything else in my heart....

This particular flabbergasting and imperative supreme interpretation save me from my Brahms obsession about my favorite piano concerto the second one...

Played like this Beethoven shine like  perhaps never before and like rarely  after....The pianist is mature and stupendous by his sense of hues and power ... At the level of the few giants of the piano...

Andras Schiff has a very well respected Brahms twin piano concertos that I can really relate to. I think he plays a nearly period Bosendorfer but to hear it you wouldn't know it.

Last week we did not praise to the sky the birthday of Mozart, a despicable act.

I most give one of Schubert’s greatest pieces a rendition on his 225th this Monday.

Praise be to him from Brahms "He is the greatest of us all " !

They sleep next to next for infinity in the Wein City Ground .

This Scottish lament was played for the Duke of Edinburg as he was laid to rest .

Came to me, this is also played as every Canadian Soldier , Sailor and Airman

, no matter where they have Fallen., The lament is played by a lone piper as six men bring the dead to the tarmac from the belly of an RCAF plane .

.

I was a bit sad for the Duke but very few had a life like he.

Those young Canadians had so very little.

That’s to cry for .  

This lament was penned after the the battle of Flodden in 1513 when King James the Fourth and nearly all the Scottish nobility were wiped out.

Thank,Jim.

The German " I had a Kameraden " is sung by soldiers in many Armies .

USA being one. Canada will stay with Scotia Forever .

I’d like to hear the Burn’s "Soldier Returm""’ sung . No luck

ASK and Be Heard !

I’ve never heard Ian Bruce, sounds VERY much the man for the job!

I might have already mentioned this work somewhere in this thread, but try Symphony No. 1 by Florence Price. Available on Idagio in a surprisingly good-sounding recording on DGG. She's an African-American composer who worked in the early 20th Century. The symphony is filled with great tunes and is constructed with eminent skill and heart. Think of Dvorak...

Saša Večtomov

I heard his cello playing with Ivan Moravec's piano, Ravel's Habanera.  Incredibly beautiful.

He was Czech, studied in Moscow, contemporary with Rostropovich.

Hard to find any actual recordings, but there is plenty on YouTube.

Perhaps the best is with his brother on guitar.

Schubert Symphony No. 8 (9) in C major. "The Great." Ricardo Muti and the Vienna Phil. Currently listening to it on Idagio. One of the sweetest, most spacious DG orchestral recordings I’ve heard. Singing. Beautifully paced.

What on-line shops do you recommend for classical albums? The few places I have been using tend to favor jazz and rock. Very little classical choices.

Thanks.

Fenmoore,

Try Presto Classical.

Also Amazon

@edcyn

I could only find it on EMI-Warner. That might also account for the unexpectedly fine SQ. IIRC Muti has been under contract to them for most of his career.

@rvpiano Thank you

I have just came upon Leonidas Kavakos new recording of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin on Idagio and am very impressed by them. I find him to have a totally original approach to them in that he uses decorations in the repeats which no other present day soloists do according to the ones I have heard in the last few years. His intonation is perfect with no portamentos to slide up to the correct note. I find his violin tone to be not so penetrating and sterile as a few I could mention. He starts of with the E major Partita and ends with the D minor partita so he knows how to get the ball rolling and end on a high. His rendition of the great Chaconne in D Minor is an awesome piece of recording a violin to give it's utmost tone and purity. If you are going to try any of them do watch the volume control as Sony's recording misses nothing. 

Thanks,204 .

I'll see if I can buy one .

The D  Chaconne is one of the Masters  best !

Very much enjoying the Classical Newest Releases playlist on Spotify this afternoon.  Check it out!

Chopin's Nocturnes.  I have four versions (Ohlsson, Moravec, Arrau, Lisieki) and just ordered two more (Freire, Pires).  But kinda bummed that I can't get a CD of Engerer anywhere at a reasonable price.  Seems like the other one that everyone should hear.  And no, I don't stream.

My two pence, if you have Arrau Moravec and Pires I would say you have all bases covered.

Grieg's lovely Flute piece , VERY seldom heard !

Tuning in to the zeitgeist, for about the last month I've been listening to a lot of Shostakovich, particularly the symphonies.  Listening to, for example, the Eleventh Symphony, you can imagine Russian troops in action.  Or you could just turn on the news.

Of the versions of Shostakovich's 11th Symphony I possess on CDs -- Nelsons, Stokowski and Barshai -- I'd recommend Barshai. It has the feeling of an invasion.

Agree about Barshai you get the feeling of invasion and brutality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Pei_1-kOQ

Here are Brigitte Engerer's complete Nocturnes.  Sounds pretty good to me, as it did to the people who commented on youtube.

The Greatness of Grieg , to Me at least , is his music can speak to any and all 

facets of being  a human being whether they know it or not .

A True Aficonado of Music knows what and that it did not come easy or soon.

I plan to listen to this  Sonata at least 3 times more today , its a school .

P.S , Julia got a pianist of her class , WOW !

THE MINNESOTA  ORCHESTRA  IN CUBA !

Few months ago Gramophone  declared the Minnesota the Orchestra of the Year. 

Jim204,

Just heard the UK has taken a Russian Cargo ship in the English Chanel .

Seems like only the Royal Navy could do that ?

Need a lot of guts anyway one looks at it.

I  can  only have the outmost respect for the fight of the Ukraine people but see no

way they can win.

@jim5559   Yes my friend the ship was on it's way to St. Petersburg filled with new cars but I'm betting that's not all it was filled with. I am really fearful for the people of Ukraine as that swine Putin is mad and bad enough to do anything , and do remember he was head of the KGB and other black operations so he knows every trick in the book.

Just so 204 , the man has mental problems but stupid he is not .

The people of Ukraine  are making heroic  efforts .

Some engineers had put TNT on a bridge , with a radio to send it off at the right time, but the radio was broken.

One soldier just stood up and walked down to set it off with his hand and himself .

How brave can a man be !

That truly humbles one.

AMEN !

Talked to my man in Berlin. Germany always has a problem because of what the nation did , To their credit  EVERYTHING  is thought in every German school ,

Today they lifted their  face up and sent 1,000  anti-tank and 500 air  missiles to Ukraine .

Segen dir Deutschland !

My main bitch in Music  is that WALTON  never gets recorded or played in USA.

All most fell of my chair when one of our greatest artists , Gil Shaham, is in love

with him.

And Midori plays him! 

In England ,  he must  be not allowed in USA  .

Proms is not best place but the Brimingham Symphony was up to it .

My favorite Walton is 1st Symphony with Preven/LSO .

Diary of One Who Disappeared, by Leos Janacek. Claudio Abaddo, Berlin Phil and various vocal soloists. A DGG CD I fished off my shelf. Bought used. In a generic jewel box with no liner notes. Did I buy it at Amoeba Records in Hollywood? At Moby Disc in Sherman Oaks? Anyway, utterly lovely music. Shockingly good 3D fidelity. A DG EQ but still eminently inviting. I'm listenin' pretty via my Sony player.

IMO Janacek is one of the best  modern  composers .

He's certainly miles better than the junk we have to put up with today's "composers" and I am not in the least bit apologetic for that comment.

Right you are 204, many are trying to mix classical with rock and roll  and call 

it talent .On Tv a lot.