jim204.

From here it looks like Boris Johnson is growing up .

Looks OK on US TV , what does the Scottish Gent think ?

Yeah, I love Janacek. A modernist but a highly accessible one. Plenty of spirit and life. Ravel meets Stravinsky.

jim5559     From where I stand I think Boris should open the gate and let those people come into this country instead of fudging about all over the place.

Thanks !

FInally got the Pires Nocturnes and am loving it.

I am so glad you are enjoying Pires, she sure has a special way with Chopin.

Jim204 , there is no way I could know anything you and twolefteas think., both good musicians , of what is at present great Chopin . And I mean that!

Nor is the piano my "wheelhouse" as they say .

But I do play around some times to see what I think MY poor ears like.

This is what I’m playing recently .

As we all know Ein Heldenleben is neither easy or short .

I heard it live at last , after I played 2 years of Self -Qurantine, I was good at ,

at the Minesota Orchestra Hall .

While I was gone some rich person had gifted them 4 ancient Italian Basse’s giving

more great base they already had , Cost, somewhere over 2 million,

I was upstairs with my 400$ deer glass, most folks don’t seem to know many musicians are tuning why playing , I love to watch the tiny flip of the little finger ,

which at times is talking to the conductor . This orchestra , right now, could play with the Wiener or Berlin . But they would need Klieiber .

@jim5559     Miss Fliter is a very fine pianist Ideally suited to Chopin and I have been watching her since her days as a BBC adoptee and some lovely Wigmore Hall recitals she has given.

I Love Ein Heldenleben, it has some gorgeous tunes in it as you would expect from Strauss. I love the beautiful finishing duo with the violin and French Horn, it's so tender.

Great minds think ............

Lang may yer lum reek, Mo Charaid

Ist for the Horn is fantastic in the Minnesota

And the same to you my friend. Hope you can land on Scotias fair shores.

Strong and Brave  always up from such others can not !

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

Laurence Dreyfus (in his wonderful “Wagner and the Erotic Impulse”) made me aware that Richard Wagner had a fetish for composing in silk lingerie, and he sent Nietzsche out shopping to get him new undergarments. The vision of Nietzsche browsing in the underwear store!

Friends , there is something on here with the NY Phi. and a Great Conductor,

something you well NEVER see again if you live to be 200 !!

In NY there are people that understand the worst of in war in  more than in any American City.

As one , no Soldier that been though real hell has nothing but praise for the Ukraine Army !

Amen to that. Charaid.

I've just finished listening to a first class SACD of Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony doing a spectacular, heart-rending rendition of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. All I can say after listening to it is that very little has changed in Bartok's corner of Europe in the eighty+ years since Bartok wrote it.

Thanks Jim .

Got the Ingrid Fliter Chopin disc with Sonata #3 and a miscellany of other pieces (3 Mazurkas, Barcarolle, Grande Valse Brillante, Ballade no.4). Very nice but generally not transcendent. The three Waltzes (op. 64) were what I liked best, so I’ve ordered up her CD of complete waltzes. Reviews on Amazon all over the place, so we shall see...

Fra Diavolo: Overture by Auber, Daniel this is a very good track to listen and test a system, the notes and frequencies are all over the place

@twoleftears    Although Fliter is a lovely pianist she is certainly no Maurizio Pollini or Krystian Zimmerman, no those two are safe.

For Piano I would add Domenico Scarlatti's piano sonatas.  Particularly k420.  Veronique Bonnecaze does a fantastic job.  

@likat     I am afraid I haven't heard your recommendation for Scarlatti but if you want outstanding pianism, wonderful dynamics and superb recording quality go to Mikhail Pletnev and I am sure you will love it. 

Thanks Jim!

I'm new to all this audiogon stuff but was really pleased to find this particular discussion! Thank you for the recommendation.  Now that I have things mostly set up I have been looking for more and more things that I can sit back and listen to. 

I will definitely check out Pletnev! 

The Art of the fugue of Bach is one of the rare pieces of music where i cannot stand and stay or vouch by only one interpretation....I collect them all...It is the greatest piece of music ever written... Not the most beautiful piece of music ever written no, think about Vivaldi four seasons or the Barber adagio or the 14 th Beethoven quatuor or a Nikhil Banerjee raga... But the Art of the fugue is the deepest one ....

It is a work of cosmic proportion and of deep mathematical meaning....

One version i like among others without being able to choose only one is this one:

Why this version?

Because the brass fill the room encompassing me....

If the horn sound especially, coming from the right speaker, outside of it and dont feel like a wall of sound closing on you, there is a room acoustic problem, if this horn dont fill your room enveloping you, you have a room who need acoustic treatment and mechanical acoustic control, sorry....Dont upgrade, think about acoustic...In the meantime enjoy the music anyway because music is not only good sound after all...

The Everest of Occidental musical history....

@likat   You are very welcome, if there are any more music suggestions you feel you need please do not hesitate as most anyone on the thread will be pleased to chime in with their favourites. Happy listening Jim.

Barber is so great! He is able to redefine what a violin concerto must be in his own term... Poetry rule over music here, like spirit rule over music in his quatuor adagio ...

If not, why am i able to put these pieces all along with Bach, Beethoven , Mozart and few others giants ?

Isaac Stern so much of a poet here....

And Bernstein the right maestro so much times, here too...

Incredible original creation... With all other musicians sounding like walking gods...

My favorite composer is Bach for sure for my day to day life...

But nothing can beat the Barber adagio with Bernstein if someone dream about the meaning of death...Listen to it ....

For years I've been using the first movement of the Barber concerto, with Gil Shaham on DGG, as a loudspeaker and audio system test CD.  If Shaham's violin sounds strident, then there's something wrong; likewise, if the falling bass figures in the background aren't clearly discernible, then something else is wrong.

Another great violonist for sure... I will listen to him ... Thanks...

If Barber is a genius and Bernstein too, we must add Charles Ives...

soul of American creativity by 3 americans free  souls....

Russia give Scriabin who anticipate with his heart the frontier between tonal and atonal WITHOUT a recipe but by heart...

America gives us Charles Ives who wrote music to free humanity too like his Russian brother...

I love these two...

Behind the music of Ives there is a question, it is not a man who decided to be a composer here, he worked unrecognized as an insurance company executive ,it is a man who happened to be composer, after being a church organist like his father, but obsessed by a deep  question...

He was an "amateur" of all genre of music, instruments,new sound, unusual ideas, unusal statistics, and strange mysteries, like Leonardo Da Vinci happened to be an artist "amateur" of plants, minerals, chemistry, mechanics, etc ...

They were ARTISTS in the deepest sense...Investigative free souls....

What i retain of this analysis, which makes us understand better what feel deply Ives, is that the world is the encounter of an indefinite numbers of free events without any synthesis, a musical self organized chaos, why? The answer is the emerging beauty of the question itself ...Amazing....

This is "the unanswered question" posed by Ives for me ...

A general remark: Music must be investigated, not only tasted, music must be understood at a deepest level than his syntax or grammar, music must be lived through...Music then is not about tastes so much but about the release of the human spirit from his chain, prejudices,limitations, and attachment... It was Scriabin idea to do so with his music and Charles Ives idea too...These two unrecognized or underestimated geniuses, Ives and Sciabin live at the same time in two difdferent country and express the same freedom ....The two explored  tonal/atonality frontier  and the cosmic enigma... 

«Imperfection is the peak and the apex» René char

I use Gil Shaham as a standard much as twoleftears .

I was using Barber here and Bernstein because i discovered the WORK with them... Stern play with Bernstein here... Anyway Shaham is a genius too...But my point was related to the composer which is a great one for me...

And when i like some work i am sometimes unable to choose...

For example these interpretations of the Well tempered Klavier... at first i think i was able to choose... I was wrong...

The Russian master play with a delicate sensibility, like improvising that is sublime...

The Hungarian master play with a controlled WAY that is sublime too...

( i was unable to retrieve his SECOND interpretation recording, here he play in concert but like he played in his second recording though. my favorite one by far, which is way more mature and more controlled playing than his first recording of the work)

One interpretation is more related to my feeling, the Russian one, who play intimate and make our heart participate more a fascinating and pulsating singing interpretation , the other one is more "cosmical", the Hungarian one, almost a fragment of eternity , a block of perfect ice, an HYPNOTIZING interpretation .... Impossible to choose one and forget the other...

Then Shaham is a genius, Stern too in Barber ....

And Barber created a piece Bach would have loved very much too...That was my point... Barber genius...Bernstein and Stern like Shaham are great musicians...my preference here goes to the Bernstein version because the duo violin orchestra is more well contrasted...It is not the violonists which determined my choice but the way Bernstein work the dialogue violin and orchestra over Previn...And anyway if Shaham make his violin sing , Stern make it speak...It is less romantical than Shaham and more "classical" in his intonation...

We can debate interpretation without being able to reach an agreement, but works like the well tempered klavier or Barber quatuor are UNIVERSALLY agreed upon... We can debate about the importance or the level of impact of Scriabin versus Stravinsky for example, but the genius of the two is universally recognized...But some prefer Stravinski and other like me Scriabin...

Never trust a Russian because Russians don't ever trust themself's .

Otto Von Bismark

Music is a spiritual phenomenon, not a political one....

Yes but music can be hijacked for political phenomenon !!

For Pires fans, I recommend here recording with the violinist Dumay of Beethoven's Violin and Piano Sonatas on DG (3 CDs).  This is a terrific recording in all respects.

I used to but few on here were interested .

That Chamber Czech Orchestra is indeed a winner !

mahgister , Music in a land with no soul will want Music with no soul.by at least

90 % of the people .

In North America Mexico is the exception .

mahgister , Music in a land with no soul will want Music with no soul.by at least

90 % of the people .

Sorry but if i used the same stick as you to judge others there will be a problem...

I will stick to Jesus parable about the Straw and the Beam...

And i dont like to be intimidated in my taste for culture especially if this culture is a great one..

Stay out of politic in a music thread...

I will stick to the Russian school of piano anyway...

I will present this extraordinary pianist and composer in a piece i never listen before today amazingly played ....

«All lands  have soul, only some people sell theirs soul to propaganda on the two sides of the same coin: hate »-Anonymus Journalist

Yes 5559 you stay out of politics because politics is how Russia invaded Ukraine and hardly anybody is interested now. I wonder if the pacifists would be interested if the Russians came up their street and kicked their door down !!!

Would they pick up a gun and start shooting at the invaders like the Afghans didn't do when the Taliban surrounded Kabul ?

Sod it Len Don't let them get you down mate. Best Jim.

Listening to Dohnanyi's Symphony no. 1 on the much loved and lamented Telarc label.  Leon Botstein (not Leonard Bernstein!) conducting the LPO.  Lovely music, and the soundstage here is arrayed from speaker to speaker.  This tells me my system is telling me how different recordings are engineered, as some trio sonatas I was listening to recently sounded quite clustered towards the center.

We can defend ourself without hating and without using propaganda...

I dont like hating condemnation of CULTURES...Russian or American one here...

Biden is not America nor Putin is Russia...

I reacted to an insane remark about my musical post...

I like russian school of piano...

And i dont like to be intimidated...

I dont have the intention to ban Russian Samuil Feinberg from here , one of my favorite piano sonatas ... Period ...

Feinberg was a disciple of the great Scriabin and his 12 sonatas are spiritual journey where the piano vertically  spoke and not only sing horizintally  like in poetry...

I was in shock when i listened to him the first time few years ago... I cannot imagine someone composing at the level of Scriabin... I was wrong...

😁😊

I wonder if the pacifists would be interested if the Russians came up their street and kicked their door down !!!

«True warrior act without hate»- Anonymus gladiator