Classical music thread welcoming your suggestions and why...

I made an error creating this thread and i cannot correct it...And add an introductory post...

My introductory post dont exist...

Ok i looked for a classical thread and i discovered that there seems to be none...

And these posts of mine about Furtwangler in Schumann 4th had been posted at the wrong thead... Then looking for a thread there was none... I created one...

Feel free to give your ideas...To all...

Ah, a Classical Music thread that actually announces exactly what it is...😀

In any event, a good intro might be to say what I like like about the stuff...er...genre.

First off, the utterly excellent tunes. Or the exciting, mind-bending lack of same...

How it can express drama, danger, comedy, or romance to beat the band.

The utter beauty of the sound that's produced.

The complexity and sophistication that hides within the music's accessibility. Putting it another way, the sheer joy of being caught up in the profundity that lurks within the prettiness.

😊😊

Reading these posts I was reminded of the Toscanini quote about the famous first movement of Beethoven Fifth:  “For some, this represents Fate Knocking at the door: for me it’s just Allegro Con Brio”.   The point being that we can become so enthusiastic about a piece of music, or a certain performer, that we overload the language to try and express our enthusiasm.  Music is a language of its own, and it is difficult to place in a language that relies upon words instead of tones to describe it.  I once saw a You Tube of someone explaining a Debussy Chanson in Mandarin.  The attempt was earnest but didn’t survive the translation, and I suspect the recreation of classic Mandarin Poetry wouldn’t survive the reverse.

  Furtwangler had the effect of making Music escape bar lines.  The Orchestra seems to speak in paragraphs not in short phrases.  His Schumann Fourth sounds more like a Shakespeare soliloquy as delivered by a great tragedian than a series of emails (for contrast, try the same work conducted by Yannick Sezet -Neguin.).

  I was readin an article in the Gramophone the other day. A young conductor had been hired to rehearse the Luxembourg Orchestra in Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique.  He was a stand in for Gergiev, who was too busy having dinner with Putin or something to actually rehearse prior to the concert.  So this young pup is rehearsing the grousing orchestra until 20 minutes prior to the curtain, at which point Gergiev shows up.  The rookie is amazed that from the first downbeat the Orchestra sounds totally different.

    How does this happen?  What black magic do the really great conductors stash in their batons and transmit to players?  They have a vision and they communicate it, non verbally, to players who speak the language.  And imho, most of the greats phrase like singers

You are right :

Furtwangler had the effect of making Music escape bar lines. The Orchestra seems to speak in paragraphs not in short phrases. His Schumann Fourth sounds more like a Shakespeare soliloquy as delivered by a great tragedian than a series of emails (for contrast, try the same work conducted by Yannick Sezet -Neguin.).

The "black magic" is linked to rythm and to the source of all rythms as primal pulsation as the heart beat not on a "beat" but on a music of his own...The heart is not a metronome... This is the root of musical achemy...And old jazz african musician say it is "rolli’n" or not, it must not be just extended in a repeated uniform way but spiralling...

What is rythm?

A conductor can direct by imposing an external order( metronome) on the set of timing interpreting written score indication, if there is one, in search for a PERFECT rythm which cannot be written anyway and KEEP ALL totally under his control as a maestro ...Musicians for him are as good as dead soldiers...

This is Toscannini in Beethoven 9th ...Complete perfection... But a mechanical perfect one ,sometimes, all along the piece ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr2mcEtCxnY&t=633s

A conductor can direct by listening the music INTERNAL un-written and un-writtenable order first and let this order surge in him and happen by not so much commanding it over the head of the musicians but letting them feel this internal duration extended as an organic rythm coming DURING THE PLAYING ITSELF Which can never be repeated and this at the risk to lose the control or at the risk of IMPERFECTION...

This is Furtwangler genius recognized By Gergyev or Ansermet themselves great conductors and recognizing Furtwangler as a master...

It is easy to prove if we use the circonstances during which Furt’ was recording the 4th of Schumann and ask the sound engineers to never interrupted it anymore and he directed it NON stop IMPROVISING IT for 32 minutes ... One of the greatest maestro recording of all time...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4mW2Mc9is

The direction of Furt. dont reach perfection at all, and he dont look for perfection at all , as Toscanini aim at and in some admirable way reach ( there is a reason why Toscanini is so great among all maestros ) Furt, aim at something over perfection, called LIFE which is never perfect sound and beat but an imprevisible singing beauty who he is let herself free to speak in his own way to the heart ... The source behind behind the song melody is the archetypal rythm of life...Not the beat of a metronymic measure imposed... So perfect it is...

And speaking about music and some work of music any good writer must use METAPHORS and the poetic language and not only the prosaic one with exact knowledge from musicology...I am by no means a knowleageable musician anyway... I am a listener thats all...Not even well informed... But i love some music too much... For sure... But someone can speak well only about what he love over anything else...

In language there is two working levels at the same time: the prosaic and the poetic...None of these levels are to be reducible or prefered to the others...Music is not science...

And anyway the root of all rythm as it is felt even in improvising African rythms, is the body itself and the spoken language moved by no EXTERNAL command but by a spontaneous living each time new improvised order...Each ceremony is a divination and linked to the incoming future... Music is sacred as these old immemorial rythms ...

Furtwangler transform his musicians imitating him in dancers around a never felt before new dance coming from the Beethoven beating heart ashe felt it this day , not from the dead score...Beethoven spoke for each new day... He is not dead...

In a word the wand is a metronome or an improvised gesture coming from the song with always changing suggesting "hues" on the playing spot this day at this hour to the musicians ... The musician listen or not, BUT they never merely obey to Furtwangler because it is not enough to obey for him , they must give their soul to the music WITH Furtwangler and not UNDER him and never only playing the music well and perfectly ; because even written, classical music ask for improvisation especially in time and this improvisation surge FIRST through the conductor ... This is not a beating wand ordering commands , this is more a gesture asking to be ACCOMPANIEDin something completely new and resembling a revelation ..

It is what i hear ...

«What is prose ? A sum of dead hidden forgotton metaphors. Nothing more but nothing less»Anonymus teacher commenting Borges essay on old english and Old  Norse language  where a "beard" is "the forest of the jaws"..

Here a very humoristic video of Rubinstein called :

"Arthur Rubinstein being Arthur Rubinstein for 8 minutes straight":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPrXRzw0KU4

I never had never reservation or frustration to listen to him...

In the last minute of this video you will see why this man is a great soul...

I am very picky with pianists...very difficult... Because i love piano... My god is named Scriabin... Rubinstein is not a Scriabinian for sure...

But this master can play Scriabin with a mastery of colours existing only in the Russian school...And his playing sing without never being mere  "perfection " ...

I dislike crystalline perfection on piano without the soul singing ...

Because as said the famous french poet, René Char : "imperfection is the peak of the mountain "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSti8gu1VCc

Scriabin has always impressed me for his color.  He was vey interested in synesthesia, the pairing of visual colors and tones.  It can be heard to isolate the contours of his work, as it isn’t as driven by the traditional type of sonata form, with the usual ideas concerning development of thematic material.  My favorite Scriabin Piano Sonatas impress more for their musical pointillism, like a Serraut canvass.  All those beautiful musical colors, metaphorically turning in the wind.  It’s fascinating to hear the same piece played by Pianists as different as Horowitz and John Ogden.  Horowitz is like a black and white photograph taken by a master photographer that seems to play with light to achieve multiple shadings of grey.  Ogden plays with the colors more.  It’s hard to recognize that they can be playing the same work.

  I think that your comments about Furtwangler and my previous are discussing the same phenomenon, but here since I am talking about Pianistic color, let me discuss Furtwangler’s use of color.  It’s a pity that he died on the cusp of the stereo era, but he built his sound from the ground up.  Double basses, cellos, low brass all lay a rock solid foundation of sound.  Then within that supple phrasing that we have been referencing he could draw contrasting sounds that were part of the magic, because different choirs of instruments would phrase organically around that firm , enveloping scaffold

I concur with all your observations...

I thank you very much for all your posts and interesting reading...

I did not discovered Scriabin with Ogden nor Horowitz,,,

But Ogdon is very much more to my taste ...

But perfection about colors is not the only difficulty in Scriabin playing ...

The harder task after complete colors control is intensity, the playing must not be MERELY BEAUTIFUL, but trance like and hypnotic.... Scriabin as you know was not only a synesthetes but was a seer who use his art to seize the listener and put it out of his body... I learned to listen to Scriabin with Sofronistky, Zhukov, Neuhaus and many others unknown in the east from the Russian piano school...

( Ogdon a very great pianist is my best by far in Sorabji Clavicem Ballisticum where is more controlled mastery with intensity is there a more perfect match with the composer Sorabji , Scriabin unlike Sorabji does not CONTROL himself completely but let go of everything and immersed himself in a cosmic sea, an experience which is nowhere in the works of the completely cerebral genius Sorabji who i admire)

For example the great version of Michael Ponti which i like a lot in spite of his atrocious sound recording, is not the way i will prefer for Scriabin interpretation at first , because Ponti plays it as delicious beautiful liitle pieces of colors, but his mastery of the playing with his spontaneous IMPROVISATION feeling as in one fell swoop with no back thought impress me a lot , which playings i listened nowhere as it is under his finger, make him my best version out of the Russian school ...It is a pity for the sound , it is almost the worst recording of piano i listened too with alas! many bad sound recordings by Sofronitsky ... But music is not sound...And Ponti is a very underestimated Pianist...

My best pianist of all time with Scriabin is Sofronitsky probably in second Zhukov and What we have from Neuhaus who for example give us a "toward the flame" rivaling Sofronitsky himself ...Neuhaus is a giant but verry few recording available in the east, he work as a teacher and stay in the shadow but i never listened to a combination of supreme esthetic playing with supreme intensity in so perfect balance by any pianists ... Even if Sofronitsky is my favorite pianist because of his Scriabin understanding without match ( except Neuhaus beside him ) , for the piano playing itself not only Scriabin interpretation i had no doubt that Neuhaus is God too as said Richter about Sofronitsky...

This except from french wikipedia about this anecdote is very true:

«Although Scriabin himself never heard Sofronitsky play, Scriabin’s wife claimed that the pianist was the most faithful performer in the spirit of her husband’s works. His recordings of Scriabin are seen by many as unsurpassed. Pianists Svyatoslav Richter and Emil Guilels considered Sofronitsky their master. One day when drunk Sofronitsky declared to Richter that the latter was a genius, Richter retorted that he was God.»

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slv09szFHkM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy8MTTrh-Z8

The Russian piano school is so powerful and with so unknown masters  that no other school even compare... Think about that in the same evening listening, before 1920 Sofronitsky, Simon Barrere, Maria Yudina, and  young Horowitz on the same piano...

Listen to Simon Barrere, about who Horowitz said Barrere could do more with one hand than most of us can do with two.  For an example of unknown  unique pianist :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na1sXWfHaIQ

Scriabin the successor of Liszt and Chopin must be played like this...

This is why i love Sofronitsky playing Scriabin because he play it the same way as Ervin N. in Liszt ...

I forgot to say that the Liszt Oberman valley by Nyiregyházi give us twenty minutes of duration ...( a few second less)

The Arrau version 15 minutes....

Can you imagine how a pianist can master each note in a so slow physical duration time compared to anyone ?

Kissin, Richter, Berman, all played around 14 and fifteen minutes...Horowitz 13 minutes... Volodos 13 minutes... Etc

it is IMPOSSIBLE to play at this slow tempo as Ervin N. do it without a complete mastery of the relation between chord and musical vertical time, not physical horizontal time...

And when we listen the piece as played by him, we NEVER feel it as slow, the powerful succession of notes is more a fall or/and an ascension than a simple walk...

Read the biography of this pianist who quit concert life at thirty five , because after the exploitation by his mother whom he abandon after his 16 th birthday to live alone he was managed by american impresario who seems to exploit him too much for his taste, he never practice, and never own a piano for decades, and came back at 70 years old to concert after 35 years absence ONLY to win money for the cancer cure of his tenth wife...But then he regain celebrity for the years till his death... When he played at his highest power, i cannot compare him to any other pianist ...Save Sofronitsky at his height in Scriabin ...

Amazing... now ... Am i a fool ?

Who listened to Ervin N. at the height of his maturity ?

Arnold Schoenberg himself who wrote a 3 pages letter to Klemperer about his playings and urge him to take a boat and come to listen this prodigy...

We cannot accuse the Faustian creator of atonal music to be an afficionado of pianists for the sake of their playings , they only serve him as slave working for him in a way... 😁 a man who think of himself as a Faustian genius as Thomas Mann depicted him do not become a groupie for a favorite pianist,... There is a SOLID reason...

Here from an article :

«We also have the testimony of Arnold Schoenberg. Arnold Schoenberg was not a man to suffer fools greatly. Nevertheless, the letter in which he wrote to Klemperer, Schoenberg lavishes praise on this pianist just about unlike any musician he had before encountered. Schoenberg’s own students were sometimes victims of their master’s caustic comments. He did not bestow praise lightly on anyone. However, he seems to be absolutely captivated by Nyiregyházi and his playing.»

Or this from an other article... Alas! i did not recover back the letter of Schoenberg which is very long and totally under the spell of Liszt interpretation by the 35 years old Ervin N.

«Arnold Schoenberg, for one, was bowled over. “Such power of expression I have never heard before,” he wrote to the conductor Otto Klemperer. And then follows three pages of Schoenberg’s analysis of Nyiregyhazi’s “incredible” playing.»

My piano teacher was just recommending a Nyir….recording yesterday.  He then started giving me a brief bio of the performer.  I was thinking what are the chances that two people in my orbit would be extolling him a few days apart.   In the late 1970s I worked in a record store in Ann Arbor, Mi and I remember that one of his releases was in demand, particularly with the mMusic School faculty 

So how do you regard the art of Celibidache?  Another artist famous for going his own way, for conceiving of music as statements, rather than a series of notes?

You already know anything i will say if i read your posts...

But thanks to ask...

All interprets or composers need our understanding... And each of us may discover any moment or may discover any interpreter in musical history according to the many threasholds we had already pass by ourselves in our own consciousness evolution and in our own musical knowledge and experience...

At the time i was a young i will never had understood Celibidache...

He use the two dimensions of musical time, the vertical pulsative one and the metronomical melodical horizontal one as Furtwangler did to reveal the intrinsic transcendance of musical time over physical time...

But their two ways differ a lot...

As Toscanini but in a different way than T. who subordinate completely , by imposition, in some way music music vertical dimension to metronomical time; C. without breaking the relation between the two dimensions of time in a way separate them bit to reveal in his own way the transcendance of musical time, but where Furt. use vertical pulsative dimension to let the melodical horizontal time to happen as if coming from the vertical as his true origin , C. like T. impose, but in a complete reverse way that T., he impose the melodic horizontal time to go back to his source in the vertical dimension as his true destination ...To do this he must slow the metronomical time dimension ( this explain why i spoke about the way C,. separate the two dimensions first because this slowing tempo IS THE SEPARATION i spoke about ) ...

Then for me, F. and C’ they are among the greatest maestros ever , because F. and C. complement one another in opposite way but without negating or erasing the transcendance of vertical pulsative time over or for the benefit of the metronomical time dimension, as Toscanini did...

Read me right i did not claim that T. is not a great maestro in his own way, he did supreme direction , he is one of the greatest maestro who ever live but he stay on a road which will never travelled so far again as he did by anyone... Because T. was using his will to bend music to his personnality , In this he was the ULTIMATE MESTRO , he did this instead of putting his personnality and will at the service of music in a more humble way as F. and C. did after him .. I hope i am clear...I try to describe these maestros here i dont claim superiority for one or the other...

With T. we are always in a musical experience that stay in time so astonishlingly dynamical and hypnotizing it is and it is mesmerizing; but with F. and C. we go more for eternity in a contemplative way...

If the works "sings" with F. it "speaks" poetically more than sings with C.

Now take that with a grain of salt... I try to describe in conepts my own experience with them... I had no serious knowledge in music and i am not a musician at all...

I describe in words my felt experience... I am interested by the concept of musical dual time experience , there is two directions of time in music , and in the physical world there is only one...

Music express something so deep that our science even only begins to grasp it as in the works of mathematician Alain Connes..

By the way these three maestros, C. F. and T. are the three most characteristical maestro if we analyse them with time dual dimensions as methodological concepts to understand them... This does not means that the other great maestros are less genius or less great... Not at all... But no other meastro illustrate better than C. with his slow direction , or as F. with his internal singing direction or as T. with the way he bent music to his will , no other so great tghey are go to the same extreme with always the exact same motivation consistently and always in the same way ...

All other maestro are more imprevisible or variable or flexible , and more complicate or less characteristical when we compare them together with the prism of the TIME dual dimensions and the way these dimensions interact internally and externally...All other maestro combine some aspect of these three directions in some mix unique recipe.... Ansermet is not Bernstein, and Giulini is not Klemperer... There is something of C. and T. in Klemperer more than of F. ...But here music is so complex that any formula will appear artificial... Human personnality is not an equation... But three great maestros because of their own personalities succeeded to isolate a particular road and way of being "musical" in relation with time and they succeeded in revealing to us ONE priviligied asopects in a way we can grasp it for its own sake... ...Thats is my point..

So how do you regard the art of Celibidache? Another artist famous for going his own way, for conceiving of music as statements, rather than a series of notes?

I made an error inversing the words... I reverse "origin" and "destination" writing the post ... I read my post anew only hours later... I apologize... We must read :

«where Furt. use vertical pulsative dimension to let the melodical horizontal time to happen as if coming from the vertical TO  his true destination , C. like T. impose, but in a complete reverse way that T., he impose the melodic horizontal time to go back to his source in the vertical dimension AS his true origin ...»

Instead of :

where Furt. use vertical pulsative dimension to let the melodical horizontal time to happen as if coming from the vertical as his true origin , C. like T. impose, but in a complete reverse way that T., he impose the melodic horizontal time to go back to his source in the vertical dimension as his true destination ...

I had read your previous posts on Celi but I was wondering if you could fit into the context of the present discussion.  I do like your analogy of Celi being sort of of the racemic isomer, to use a biochemical term, of Toscanini ; in two dimensions they are similar, but since music is more than two dimensional, they arrive at completely different results.

  Do you have any thoughts on one of our most prominent’ Furtwangler-wanna-be’ Daniel Barenboim?

Pardon the thread drift, but say what you will about pianist Maurizio Pollini possessing more finger speed than soul, more often than not he’s my go-to guy when I want to hear some Chopin. Out and out exhilarating. I might have mentioned it in another thread, way back when, but I saw him perform live, once upon a time in L.A. Hair flying, reach-out-and-mow-down-the-stars virtuosity.

I love Pollini.  I was asked recently who my favorite pianist was and after a lot of thought, and all the disclaimers that I couldn’t pick just one, etc, I settled on him.

The Gramophone did one of their pieces on their favorite recordings of a given work on the Chopin Etudes and I was apoplectic when they dismissed M.P. His recording  is supremely, eye poppingly virtuosic yet brings out Chopin’s harmonies, especially for the left hand, like no one else.

Music is not two dimensional at all for sure...

But musical time is two dimensional... vertical pulsative dimension and metronomical horizontal dimension... Physical time had only one direction : from past to future...

In musical time you may create a metronomical dimension which go from beginning to end.. And stay and live there... But there is a direction from pulsative origin in the vertical dimension toward the horizontal physically measurable dimension as a destination and the reverse two ...The road between horizontal and vertical is two-way...

jazz was invented by poor people looking not for a purely physical horizontal time ALREADY KNOWN dimension but looking for a vertical new pulsative dimension which must be FELT as an origin and a new road now toward a new destination in the horizontal time dimension ...

Celibidache imposed as Toscannini a metronomical time but unlike Toscanni which goal was TOTAL METRONOMICAL CONTROL with his will power, Celibidache looked for a the vertical origin of musical time in the pulsative dimension, but to do so he mustIMPOSED a slow metronomical time over his musician playing by force as Toscanni.. But his goal unlike Toscanini was never a complete mastering and domination of the orchestra for the sake of it, but to look for the spiritual origin of music in SILENCE in the pulsative verticas dimension as source...He is a dictator as Toscanini... But not with the same musical agenda...

Furtwangler was not like these two a dictator, but someone taking the musicians with him to listen the music in the act of playing it, to manifest the source of vertical time in the playing itself manifested in the horizontal measurable dimension of time...The measurable time dimension is the destination of F. but for C. it ishis point of departure toward the vertical silent origin in the vertical pulsative dimension the non measurable one...

Then Furtwangler and Celibidache are "racemic isomer" in a different way the two of them...Toscanini is not... This is why nobody will never surpass Toscanini in his his road with his bending of time dimension reduced to one direction only, under his iron will... ...

I had read your previous posts on Celi but I was wondering if you could fit into the context of the present discussion.  I do like your analogy of Celi being sort of of the racemic isomer, to use a biochemical term, of Toscanini ; in two dimensions they are similar, but since music is more than two dimensional, they arrive at completely different results.

i had a philosophical mind, but your knowledge of music is more large or deep than mine on many aspects, because more professional too if i analyse your past posts... i dont master any musical instrument myself as you... i spoke about my intuition... and my feeling thats all...

i cannot for example characterise really Barenboim, because i dont know him much about being a conductor ... i listen almost nothing from him  and a long time ago when i was less experienced than i am now... Then i am not competent to describe his maestro work...

I can speak of Klemperer or Celibidache or Furtwangler ONLY because i enter in ectasy with them in some works... i can understand ONLY those i experienced in love ...But if i did not discover the right work of them , i cannot speak of them...

But  there is exception, paradoxically, i dont like Toscanini and never will , but amazingly, i was so fascinated by him and will always be, i begun to understand why he is so great and why he will never be surpassed in his way... And doing so i begun to understand why my two heroes Celibidache et Furtwangler were also giants...Without Toscanini i would have never clearly understood them ...

For example Giulini in the 9th of Bruckner or Celi. or Bernstein in Mahler... etc i love and know them because i love them... Barenboim i cannot speak about him...

Do you have any thoughts on one of our most prominent’ Furtwangler-wanna-be’ Daniel Barenboim?

Pollini is a great pianist...

But he never put me in ectasy...

Ivan Moravec for example, i listened to ALL his albums

Moravec is really for me over most pianists...i put him over Horowitz...

Why ?

Because he is not a virtuoso on the level of Horowitz at all...

But like Rubinstein, his playing is nuanced and in control of "hues" and so fluid , Horowitz beside that can sound too "perfect" to be as subtle in the expression and colors as Moravec is especially in spontaneous and natural melodical expression ...

For example; the cathedral under the sea of Debussy...try it... it was an amazing day the day i listened Moravec playing it... i was in ectasy why ? because for the first time ever, this piece i was not in love with speak to me, and i was able to SEE REALLY the cathedral under the sea... Why ? Total control of the hues of colors by Moravec... Unbelievable... it is not often being not a cenesthete that i can SEE musical object as REAL OBJECT in front of me... this holgraphic seeing is impossible for the listener if the pianist is not an absolute master of nuances and color over dynamic virtusity or even over perfection... Expression is NEVER perfection or perfect playing.. . Expression is OVER perfect playing because it know how to stay imperfect in a perfect way... Difficult to explain but easy to spot...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phq8soeZLLA

My three other favorite pianists, are Sofronitsky, Neuhaus, and Ervin Nyiregyhazi... But there is many others... Especially In the russian school... But some are unknown genius as Antonio Guedes Barbosa in my favorite Chopin work the Mazurkas...

The mazurkas being a dance of some kind of "limping " rythm, most pianist miss the limping they erase it sometimes because it is impossible to play a rythm if you dont feel it in you first ...Barbosa being brazilian dont miss it, and his playing is made of a fluid noble gesture and at the same time humble simplicity, it is very hard for me to listen other version... For example the great Yakov Flier did the mazurkas , but even him is under Barbosa heights for me so great it is and he is...

Russian dont limp- dancing as polish does it seems, and brazilian dance well any dance... 😊

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdFkWm-D5Sk

When i said in the post above : «Music is not two dimensional at all for sure...

But musical time is two dimensional... vertical pulsative dimension and metronomical horizontal dimension... Physical time had only one direction : from past to future...» Musical time then own two directions instead of one...

I forgot a very important precision to be rightfully understood...

In the metronomical horizontal dimension as in the vertical pulsative dimension, the two dimension and directions of musical time , THERE IS NO PAST and THERE IS NO FUTURE as in the physical time dimension...And no pure direction from a known past to an unknown future ...

in the two musical dimensions the "measurable" horizontal one and the non measurable pulsative one, only the present moment exist the now but not as a point as in the physical time dimension but as a sphere... In music a past note or a future note is always here or is BEHIND or forward not a past or future event but as participant in the eternal now which is a pulsative spiraling movement toward inward or outward never lost in the past or not there at all as a mere  future... The now moment is like a tree which is at the same times root, and canopy and seeds ...The now momwent is not an abstraction because it is music felt...In a way in musical time dual dimensions, the past and the future are known together , but only the now moment is FELT...

Then the two directions of musical time dont exist in physical time, when they are reduced to it though  , it is as a ghost, or as a spectral reduction of the eternal now  to metronomical time which is at the same time the grave  of music and the door of the awaiting musical resurrection...

Thanks for your post...

I cannot contradict you about Pollini... The search for perfection, when i feel it , kill for me the spontaneous playing imprevisible creation...

Pardon the thread drift, but say what you will about pianist Maurizio Pollini possessing more finger speed than soul, more often than not he’s my go-to guy when I want to hear some Chopin. Out and out exhilarating. I might have mentioned it in another thread, way back when, but I saw him perform live, once upon a time in L.A. Hair flying, reach-out-and-mow-down-the-stars virtuosity.

  I have been out of town for my mothers funeral so I haven't had a chance to keep up here.  I agree that Pollini and Moravec are two very different Debussy players.  Moravec has that warm buttery tone while Pollini has such fine etching and leonine strength.  The music however, can survive both approaches.  I prefer M.P. here, but for years the only recordings that I knew of the Debussy Preludes were those of Michelangelo, who was M.P. teacher.  Pollini very different Art does lead to equally exquisite poetry. 

   Barenboim has stated throughout his career that he wants to emulate Furtwangler.  He was the chief conductor here in Chicago for many years so I am very familiar with his work.  A recording that he made of Beethovens Third Piano Concerto, when he was a teenager and before discovering his Furtwangler Passion, was one of my earliest acquired ops.  Lets just say that D.B. has phenomenal natural musical instincts, but in attempting to superimpose the style of W.F., he frequently misfires.  He just doesn't seem to have that innate ability to convey his vision to others unless he slows things down to near stasis, but without the inner light that a Furt or Cell had, it just sounds slow and bloated

I wish you the best in these time of personal trials...

My sympathy for your mother lost...

I dont think that someone can imitate or be inspired by someone genius hoping to emulate him,... Each genius is unique...It is why Pollini is unique, liking him or not...

D.B. whom you know way better than me is for me as you described him...I cannot speak about him...

I dont believe that there is ONE METER to compare all musicians... We must learn to listen, at least me, to understand more with each passing years... At the end all geniuses are recognized by us , even those we dont like as much as others... because we  have learned even if we keep our biases and preferences...

Now for those who look for a not well known absolute treasury of piano "repertoire", the mighty Samuil Feinberg, whose fourth sonatas was praised by Scriabin himself...

As i already said, Scriabin nor Feinberg are for me secondary composers, but great one....Feinberg is a Scriabin disciple....

Here it is double CD BIS recording. Nikolaos Samaltanos plays the piano in the 1,4,5,9,10,11 sonatas. In the other sonatas (2,3,6,7,8,12) plays Christophe Sirodeau.

The two pianists to my heart and ears are more than just good....

Feinberg sonatas are massage of the soul and spirit dialogue....The dual musical time dimension are together woven in a continuous flyings between heights and depths , the melody is born only to return different toward his original source....I cannot fault Feinberg... It is with Scriabin my prefered works in the Russian piano school... The greatest piano school on earth by far...For sure it is only my opinion, feel free to differ... 😁😉😊

One word can resume these sonatas for me :

"Enthusiasm" , which meaning came from ancient greek i studied in my teen and i remembered for all my life the stunning etimological spelling :ἐνθουσιασμός from ἐν (en, “in”) and θεός (theós, “god”) and οὐσία (ousía, “essence”), meaning "inspired by [a] god’s essence"...

The melody, rythm and harmony are only there to suggest a journey toward a never taken road toward a higher truth....

As claimed the Mathematician Alexander Grothendieck in his stunning 1000 pages book about God ," la clef des songes" untranslated alas! in English and even not officially published save as a PDF on the internet , "truth" cannot be defined....

The greatest Christian mystic before him, Dyonisos the Areopagyte demonstrated why and inspired completely Georg Cantor, who know him well because he taught also theology , for his set theory foundation and pre-axiomatization principle of lim itation of size , the greatest mathematician before Grothendieck...Cantor and Grothendieck are without any possible discussion the most influentials and deep mathematicians in mathematic history, on par with Archimedes, Newton, Gauss or Riemann...

Feinberg Sonatas

For those who like pianism...

The son of a god and himself a god of piano...

A top Scriabinian too...

And his Liszt is played by supreme expressiveness with the melody coming from vertical musical time...Then pulsating and not merely flowing...

Expressiveness is not about beauty but about truth to the emotion , it is moving before being felt beautiful, the indication in the pianism that expressiveness dominate is the pulsation over and guiding the melodic line... Only very great pianists can do it without fails... They often trade off for horizontal plastic beauty...

I will not give examples at the risk to hurt someone feelings...But listen carefully how some notes oscillate powerfully aimed at your heart like a rifle bullet... This is expression, it is not so much the melody that moves us but the pulsating  heart singing it ( the pianist)...

Stanislav Neuhaus (1927-1980), piano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9l-a0CFV2M&list=PL_FxhjClAeZfWH8k76xiIfO-pb6VjurVy

I've no doubt mentioned this sometime in the distant past on this site, but just in case I gotta say that Andre Watts is my favorite Liszt interpreter. His Columbia Masterworks LP hasn't got the greatest sound but his un-mannered, just-tell-us-the-story virtuosity never fails to catch me up in the narrative. When I daydream about playing Liszt (a composer whose works are perhaps just north of this would-be pianist's)  it's his versions that emerge from my fingers. Saw him once in concert, too.

Thanks i never listen to him... I will do...

😊

I am not much of a Liszt-o-philiac, as I think there is more style than substance there. Some of the Etudes are nice.  Claudio Arrau and Jorge Bolet are enough for me, and Brendel in the Sonata 

I never was nor i am a Liszt-o-philliac...

I never love Liszt at all...

I did not know why...

Till i listen pianists able to reveal it FOR ME...The first was Bolet...

Like Scriabin Liszt is not for everybody, he wrote music to be listen in intimate sacred moments ...These two are revelations or acquired taste...For me they were at the same time revelations and acquired taste because of Sofronitsky and E. Ny. who played them in a way no other could...

The music of Liszt and Scriabin on piano has one point in common, it is never first merely written to be pleasant and beautiful music, most of the times it is a moving intensely disturbing music written to reveal soul depth ... It is the reason why it is hard to play the right way by almost every pianists... To give an extreme example: LSD is not bread nor a cake...

Bolet and Arrau are tremendous pianist anybody can live with I discovered Liszt with Bolet perfect playing, it reveal poetry to me unique to Liszt ...But this dont nullify Neuhaus choices in Liszt or others who play it in a more intense way... ...

Music is a journey where the travellers meet but never goes together toward the next stay...

My favorite works of Liszt is not on piano, it is the Christus...With Bach, Haendel Messiah, Bruckner great mass, a work of supreme mastery away from the promethean Liszt ...

And in music thread it is better to speak about less known interpreters and less generally appreciated composers..

My favorite composer is Bach...

I am not much of a Liszt-o-philiac, as I think there is more style than substance there. Some of the Etudes are nice. Claudio Arrau and Jorge Bolet are enough for me, and Brendel in the Sonata

An example from the past of a highly disturbing expressive music and a composer who was a revelation when i listened to him at 25 years old, almost in ectasy, is the great and unique Carlo Gesualdo...

My favorite interpretation by far is by the Quintet vocale Italiano...They convey the emotion before trying to be perfect and plastically beautiful...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c60YJsL37d8

Here the music is saturated "plaint" as saturated Schoenberg Gurrelider will be, the composer goal is to move the listener more than relax him... it is very difficult to interpret...because the singers must not sing for the music to be mere beautiful but emotionnally saturated by chord between harmony and dissinance...

For me Gesulado is not a secondary composer but as Monteverdi and on paqr with him a unique moment in musical history...

For sure i loved poetry all my life and Gesualdo is a supreme poet as Schubert will be in his own masterful way...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGuRiuq_qfY

But la Venexiana ensemble impressed me too, they are more plastic in expression and very clear, less moving than Quintetto Italiano though... it is the same difference between Liszt Bolet and E. Ny. Liszt playing... I like the two pianists and the two vocal ensemble for different reasons...My favoritism dont erase the other interpretations good points ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRuy8UuRwyo

In a word the perfect description of an emotion is not the emotion itself...The image of an emotion is not the emotion... The pianist playing he can play the image in a perfect way or can imperfectly play the emotion, but it is way harder to play the emotion because we must feel it totally and forgot the notes...

The written score playing so perfect it can be cannot replace the emotion rolling from the interpreter hands...

For example here : the perfect description of some "nuage gris" from Liszt score by the great Zimerman ( my best interpreter of Brahms concerto no-2 my favorite concerto by the way ) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnkzBbuyy1M

But now no more a "description" so perfect it was, but the emotion itself so imperfect it was by Ervin Nyiregyhazi: Liszt: Nuages gris S.199

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHSF5oeg8k4

Here we see the clouds with our eyes because the emotion is all over the place... It is no more merely beautiful image or representation we see as with Zimerman... it is sadness through clouds we FELT ...No more a beautiful score marvellously played...But mere emotion flowing from the sounds..

But we cannot listen in a distract way the E.Ny. interpretation at all...Too disturbing to be listen in a distracted relaxed way...

We can listen Zimerman in a distracted relaxed way, because it is perfect...

We must understand music, there is no right or wrong here between the two versions... But one thing is certain Liszt could have never been able to mesmirized crowds and put them in trance with Zimerman playing here... He played like Ervin Nyiregyhazi, who was anyway direct Listz student through his teacher Lamond...

Music is not about our tastes only but about revelations...Animals had tastes human not only had tastes but  they may have revelations...

For me music history is consciousness history too...I explored it with my guiding tastes as anyone of us , but imprevisible revelations disturbed my road  and throw away few times  my past certainties...

Give the Academy of Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields chamber orchestra a try if you are looking for performances of Classical Era and Late Baroque Era repertoire, especially Mozart and Haydn. The fidelity of their recordings ranges from very good to downright excellent. Orchestral string tone is a particular highlight. The band's performances, most notably the ones conducted by Neville Marriner, are unfussy and insightful.  Their LP pressings are never less than excellent. I got a bunch of 'em.  And oh, yeah, I've seen them live a couple of times.

Very good recommendation...

I forget them a bit in the last decade... It is a shame... Marriner is a great conductor... I love everything i heard from him and his orchestra...

Thanks i will try it again soon ...

The only thing i listened a lot in the last years was his "art of the fugue" Bach version... Among my 5 favorite...I listened these 5 versions  one after the other...Impossible to choose...

Give the Academy of Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields chamber orchestra a try if you are looking for performances of Classical Era and Late Baroque Era repertoire, especially Mozart and Haydn. The fidelity of their recordings ranges from very good to downright excellent. Orchestral string tone is a particular highlight. The band’s performances, most notably the ones conducted by Neville Marriner, are unfussy and insightful. Their LP pressings are never less than excellent. I got a bunch of ’em. And oh, yeah, I’ve seen them live a couple of times.

For the past couple hours I've had Idagio randomly streaming Romantic Era violin concertos my way that, not only have I never heard, I've never heard of the composers, either. In any case, no matter who Gernsheim and Frohlich were, they came up some engagingly pretty, tuneful stuff.  Well-played by soloists and orchestras I've never heard of, either. Fine fidelity. Just call me a contented couch potato.

Thanks "couch potato" i will go for them...

My best regards ... I will wait for some other advices... I dont know them either...

I’ve been listening to a big box set of Musica Antiqua Koln. There are a lot of the Baroque “usual suspects” here but what is really grabbing me is the Telemann. That composer, who published a veritable ton, is frequently dismissed as being formulaic. Oh, but what a practioner of formulas! The invention seems inexhaustible. He wrote for every instrument of his time but his Violin and recorder pieces seem particularly daring.

I need to explore more Renaissance Music. I can’t comment meaningfully on Gesualdo at present. I’ve been meaning to turn my focus there for some time.

Marriner and the ASMF are frequently overlooked because they were non HIPP practitioners, but they did pioneering work in terms of popularizing Mozart and others for smaller ensembles. I cherish their records

Very interesting post ... Thanks very much...

No one can disparage Telemann...I know some piece of him that put him at Bach level...( His sonatas for oboe by Holliger ) The problem of Telemann is the same as with Vivaldi and Mozart... They dont need to work as others , musical inspiration comes too easyly , they seat and wrote or play... ... Telemann if i remember published many thousands opus ( in addition to composing more than 1000 cantatas and 600 suites, he also created operas, passions, oratorios, and concertos for a variety of instruments. He also penned numerous passions, ten oratorios, and more than a dozen masses, making him easily the most prolific composer of church music in history. Telemann’s instrumental works include about 125 orchestral suites, 125 concertos, 40 quartets, 130 trios, around 90 solo sonatas, and 145 keyboard pieces. It has been suggested that he may have written more than 3000 pieces)....

He never work hard and only wrote tirelessly ... Then disparaging Telemann after listening 100 hundred opus means not much... 😊 Almost nobody know really the music of Telemann... how many hours to listen only half of it ? would it be the best half ?

the only problem of Telemann is Bach continuous  perfection with way more less works  ... 😊

I will go for him too ...

Excellent suggestion...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NmRrrfaJB4

I’ve been listening to a big box set of Musica Antiqua Koln. There are a lot of the Baroque “usual suspects” here but what is really grabbing me is the Telemann. That composer, who published a veritable ton, is frequently dismissed as being formulaic. Oh, but what a practioner of formulas! The invention seems inexhaustible. He wrote for every instrument of his time but his Violin and recorder pieces seem particularly daring.

I need to explore more Renaissance Music. I can’t comment meaningfully on Gesualdo at present. I’ve been meaning to turn my focus there for some time.

Marriner and the ASMF are frequently overlooked because they were non HIPP practitioners, but they did pioneering work in terms of popularizing Mozart and others for smaller ensembles. I cherish their records

I've got my share of Musica Antiqua Koln LPs & box sets. Whether the stuff they perform is obscure or Greatest Hits, they do it with soul and panache. A particular favorite of mine is the three LP set Deutsche Kammermusik vor Bach, stuff J.S. listened to when he was a sprite. I've come close to wearing out Side One, the side that features the works of Johann Adam Reincken, an under-rated, under-heard composer if there ever was one. A kaleidoscope of moods. Great tunes.

Me and the wife saw the ensemble live when they did a concert in Pasadena. After the performance, they joined the concertgoers in the lobby to share drinks & snacks. My wife considered it an imposition to ask the band to mingle with us but I was in seventh heaven. I mumbled a few words in German to 'em and shook a couple hands.

@edcyn Interesting, I had read the Goebel could be a bit standoffish, nice to see something to the contrary.

  @mahgister No one is disputing that Telemann was to prodigious for his own good, in the Historical Appreciation sweepstakes.  He worked on the model of great painters of the day, in that he had a room full of apprentices.  How that system worked is beyond me. Perhaps he whistled a tune he had thought up while using the water closet and told them “Use formula IIIb on this and show me what you have before lunchtime “. Presumably there is a fair amount of chaff in there, and we rely upon the likes of MAK to be sort of a quality control expert.

  However, we can only judge the results. At the end of the day I don’t care if a canvas by Rembrandt has 20% or 80% painted by an apprentice with the great man supervising.  One cannot imagine Beethoven or Brahms using Telemann’s compositional method (actually, there is some evidence that a substantial amount of Beethoven’s Works without opus—the stuff that he churned out to make a living-may largely be the labor of students such as Ferdinand Ries), but ultimately one should accept the music on it’s own terms.  It may not storm the gates of heaven like J.S. Bach, but it paves the streets leading to those gates, if you will accept that mixed metaphor 

You are completely right....

Telemann worked after the era where music was merely Church order or Prince order, but now middle class and bourgeois commands and demand was enormous and the musicians amateurs numbers too, and Telemann was a self taught musician and did not come from a musical dynasty , he taught more to amateurs musicians not like Bach who was busy with his multiples children...He then used the amateurs playing musicians and apprentice composers around him like Bach use his children ... Half of the work of Telemann is lost... And of the remaing half, half had never been performed...

i like your sentence :

It may not storm the gates of heaven like J.S. Bach, but it paves the streets leading to those gates, if you will accept that mixed metaphor

i too like the sentence :

It may not storm the gates of heaven like J.S. Bach, but it paves the streets leading to those gates, 

It resonates with my (short) impressions of his work -- which include the oboe sonatas (Holliger, I agree of course).

Sorry to join in so late, but I would like to add to the discussion on D Barenboim: I propose to rephrase the question as,

DB,  a conductor or a pianist?

I have heard DB both as a conductor (Elgar, Brahms, etc) and pianist (Brahms 1, 7 other recordings). 

My response is, definitely much better pianist than conductor... I am not a music professional so mine is an amateurish approach.

My experience with the discussion, re maestros, resonates with the thoughts expressed above, especially regarding Furt & Celi & T... to add a short comment, both F & C succeed in touching the listener's inner soul and, by their conducting, let out the humanity hidden in many compositions (many examples; Celi: Mozart Requiem, Furt: Beethoven 3 recording of 1944 (?) in Vienna...)

In this respect, trying to emulate Furt, for example, is a limitation in itself, in that 

a) we already have Furtwangler, the original item😉

b) following endlessly in someone else's footsteps often leads one away from discovering their own path

Whereas, as a pianist, DB played an exciting /interesting Brahms under Celibidache & recently under Sir Simon Rattle. (Although for this piece I would prefer Gilels)

Regards

Another conductor worthy of mention for his passionate dynamics, tender adagios, and understanding of soloists, is Sir John (born Giovani Battista) Barbirolli. When I first listened to Barbirolli's Mahler 2 & 4 I was transported. 

A contemporary who seems to be on a (relentless) path of discovery is Theodore Currentzis. While many are suspicious of his approaches and his affectations (spending the night at the music hall with the orchestra, rehearsing in the middle of the night, analysing together the score with the composer's personality, the moment in time of the composition, and the emotional content he wishes to inspire...) -- I don't care. I the listener, am only subjected to the result, and the result can be magical at times (take the Mozart Requiem Lacrymosa, for example).

At the end of the day, I believe that what attracts me the most is the conductor\s personality and their psyche which emerges through the music; T was a powerhouse and, although he was a master of timing and score, what I get from his music is ultimately the power, the strength, and a sense of huge confidence. Furt OTOH was an amateur philosopher, very knowledgeable in ancient Greek philosophy (which he apparently read in the original text...) and his sense of humanity is evident in the music - i think.

A note re, Pollini - his technical prowess is beguiling. The only thing for me is that he seems to attack pieces of music as if he is solving a mathematical equation...

There is a large Barbirolli box that has been released, with many 78 recordings.

My impressions of J.B. Are from his stereo recordings, in his last decade or so.

His Mahler is impressive, but ultimately just to slow and world weary for me.  I like the Sibelius stereo set with the Halle Orchestra, but  the Orchestral deficiencies are wearying.  It would be interesting to hear the younger J.B.

  Re Curentzis, I admit that I am one of those that is off put by his relentless P.R. Machine.  The one recording of his that I did stream, Tchaikovsky 6, didn’t begin to live up to the hype.

  I second the comments about Barenboim as a Furtwangler wanna be.  The young D.B. was so phenomenally talented.  It just seems weird to want to ape another musician to the extent that he has, and to alter the natural growth curve that he may otherwise have experienced.  Furtwangler make it seem as though he was playing the Orchestra like an individual instrument, exercising complete command, apparently able to manipulate the musicians to follow him wherever he went.   I think it was that improvisatory feel that D.B. the Pianist wanted to bring to his conducting 

This thread takes me back to my Tower Records days at the Panorama City branch, where the classical music department was up the squeaky stairs to the second floor. There was the customer who pronounced Deutsche Grammophon as "duchesses grab-a-phone," and Daniel Barenboim as Daniel Bound-boom. He was a good guy, though, who always bought one or two albums.