Here's a place to gossip about classical recordings - those performances
presumptuously preserved for posterity.  New releases, old releases
re-released, old favorites, old turkeys ... what's good?  What should
be avoided at all costs?

156 responses total.

Anyone know of a good recording of Bethoven's ninth I might get? I've never
heard the whole thing in one sitting, and I just thoght someone might know
of a recording that is worth listening to. 

I'm fond of Georg Solti's recording of the 9th Symphony, but then I 
seem to like Solti in general.

Pierre Boulez conducting almost anything.  He's made some immortal
recordings of Debussy, Bartok, Stravinsky and, recently, Mahler.
I'm not even a big Mahler fan and I'm crazy about his recording
of the 6th on DGG.  He's also recorded the 5th and 7th, but I
haven't heard them yet.

Lately I've been listening to Mozart piano concertos played by
Mitsuko Uchida.  She's beyond wonderful.  Must be heard to be
believed.

I recently saw a current classical Top 40 list, and was surprised
to see Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto in 1st place.  Does anyone
know which recording or recordings might be responsible for this?
(Everyone and his brother or sister has recorded it in the past
five years, it seems, so maybe that's the answer.)  I wasn't so
much surprised to see it on the list as I was to see ahead of
Beethoven's 9th, Rachmaninov's 3rd, etc.  It even beat out
Pachelbel's Canon.

Btw, what's the best recording of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde?
I recently bought Simon Rattle's version, and am not impressed.

Re Mitsuko Uchida, I recently read a review of her CD of Schubert's
Impromptus in which the reviewer predicted that in 30 years the
CD would be a collector's item.  I read another article about her
in which she was called a "priestess."  If you aren't familiar
with her, Mitsuko Uchida was born in Japam about 50 years ago,
moved to Vienna with her parents when she was 12, stayed there
to become a musician when they returned to Japan (she was 16 at
the time) and now resides in London.  She wears only black clothes
which her brother buys for her, she specializes in Haydn, Mozart,
Schubert & Beethoven, and has quite a cult following, it turns out.
Check out her recording of Mozart's 24th and 25th piano concertos,
or the Schubert Impromptus.

I'm hoping to use this item for a quick question.  I'd
like to know if anyone has (or knows of) a recording
of Vivaldi's Concerto in g minor (F. XII, n.4)  I'm part
of an ensemble playing this piece and although I don't
think I'm going to want the recording when it's over,
the violinist does.  She says she has been looking all
over and asking about without success.

Anyone know how to read the "F. XII, n.4" part or know
something of the piece?  It has three movements, allegro
ma cantabile, largo, and allegro molto.

(No wisecracks about Vivaldi, Michael.)  ;-)

No help on the recording.  We have more than one concerto in Gm, but they
don't match.  As for the F. XII, n.4 part, that's new to me (& not on any
recording or listing I've ever seen, I think), but from our Encyclopaedia
Britannica entry on Vivaldi, part of the little section at the end labeled
"Bibliography:":  "(General catalog): The complete thematic catalog of
Vivaldi, _Catalogo_numerico-tematico_delle_opere_strumentali_, was published
by the Instituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi under the direction of Antonio Fanna
(1968)."  So I'd hazard a guess that it's #4 in volume XII of Fanna's edition,
or something like that.  Just a guess, but not quite a *wild* guess, this
time.

Of course, anyone who really *knows* anything about it is more than welcome
to jump in & explain where I'm confused!

Looks like a good guess. According to the Fanna listing on the net, at 
http://www.classical.net/music/composer/works/vivaldi/lists/fanna.html

 Fanna     Ryom    Pincherle  Ricordi   Type        Key          
 XII/4     103      402          23   Concerto    G minor

Perhaps this will help you locate a recording via the Ryom, Pincherle or 
Ricordi number.

I'd never heard of Fanna listings.  Thanks, Steve!  

In doing a little browsing thought our bookshelf, trying to find out more
about this piece, I looked up Vivaldi in _The Record Shelf Guide to
Classical and CDs and Audiocassettes_, by Jim Svejda, and found the
following (which I'm entering for Michael Delizia's amusement). 

The Four Seasons:
     With the possible exception of Pachelbel's Kanon, nothing makes me
want to start throwing things more, and I mean, literally throwing things,
than a half dozen bars of The Seasons.  I hate it with the same irrational
intensity that I reserve for peanut butter, for reasons which remain as
difficult to explain.  Like all of his other concertos, these four are
exceedingly inoffensive and exceptionally graceful.  In me, alas, they
stimulate nothing but violence, and if allowed to go on too long,
peristalsis. 

Gloria in D Major, R. 589:
     This is the sort of recording that almost makes on believe in
miracles, for, miraculously, I managed to remain conscious to the very
end. 

Svejda only reviewed these two works by this composer.  In his overview
(apology for paying so little attention to this composer) he refers to
Vivaldi as cocktail party music for yuppies and warns devotees to not
double-park their BMWs. 

CBC-Windsor, in an ad for one of their programs, used to feature a (fake)
announcer's voiceover on the tail end of The Seasons, saying something like
"... and we'll be back with more of Vivaldi's greatest hits right after ..."
(followed by sounds of dial moving through several other unattractive options,
followed by theme music & introduction for the program being advertised,
followed by a contented sigh).

Personally, I also like Vivaldi.  I prefer some other baroque composers, but
not because there's anything wrong with Vivaldi, for sure.  (But it was a cute
ad, & The Seasons is certainly overplayed among his repertoire.)

Well, Vivaldi's Seasons isn't in the same league as Pachelbel's
Canon.  In the category of Music for People Who Want the Music They
Play to Sound The Way They Want People to Think They Are, we've
dumbed down five or six levels from Vivaldi to Pachelbel.  Why can't
I conceive of someone loving Pachelbel's Canon just because they
love it?  I can, of course, but the problem is, as soon as you start
in on Pachelbel's (or Vivaldi's) yuppie fans they *all* claim to
love the music just because they love it.  It's MD's Uncertainty
Principle.  CeCe, the woman who founded AOL's Classical Chat, feels
the same way I do about this.  Saying you don't like Pachelbel's Canon
is like saying you kick kittens, to these people.  I wonder why?

Btw, for a public swipe at Pachelbel's Canon, see my "CultureBrief"
on Ravel's Bolero on the AOL CultureFinder site.

Isn't the usual form of ther expression "(the lesser) isn't in the same league
as (the greater)"? You gave me a start, there.

The Seasons is certainly inoffensive, and certainly overplayed. I like 
the genre, though. If you are bored by the same 4 concerti, but like the 
concept, you should try the 12 Opus 3 concerti (L'Estro Armonico). They 
are for 1,2,and 4 violins (in a cycle) and also alternate (for the most 
part) major and minor keys.  Bach loved them, and transcribed one or 
two for organ. That doesn't mean you should, though. You should 
love them only if you do. They're similar, but I prefer them to opus 8 
(4 seasons). Probably that's because they are a bit more varied, but 
certainly because they are a lot less often heard.

I love the canon because I love it, but it exceeds the 4 season in 
overplayedness, so even while loving it I get bored by it. Bolero is 
nearly tied with it for being overplayed, but I'd hate that one even if 
it weren't. Sorry, I guess I kick kittens.

I think (hope...) that md meant that the *Canon* is inoffensive but overplayed
(and, in my opinion, has very little musical content compared to a concerto
- any concerto - and especially Vivaldi's). 

I like the Canon. Heard an interesting performance of it out in
Wyoming a few years ago. The conductor's opinion was that
everybody play it about twice as slow as intended; the orchestra
took it at a really fast clip. It works well at the faster
tempo.

Yes, #14 is all I meant.  Re #15, the faster the better.  I think a
good prestississimo that got the thing over with in 30 seconds
would be perfect.

Foof. Oh well, guess I left myself open to that one...

I like canon (and fuge) type music.  It's a neat trick when done well. 
I'd bet Row-Row-Row Your Boat, done by a good acappella chorus, could
knock your socks off.  If you were cultured enough to be wearing socks,
that is. ;-) 

I guess I'm agreeing with others here that it's not Pachelbel's Canon that
is at fault but the way the piece has been overplayed by conductors who
believe there is no such thing as too much legato and who have gone on to
make it the theme song of weddings and elevators. 

My favorite experience with hearing the piece was in Chicago, 
Christmas season of 1990, in the atrium of a grand old department
store, as played by a student orchestra.  It had heart.

I'm darned proud to kick kittens and push litte old ladies down stairs and
whatever other horrible things some one isn't a fan of Pachabel's Cannon in
D does.

Unfortunately, my opinion of that is colored by my experiences as a
performer-- I play the bass.  Do you have any idea how boring that is?  Its
teh same two measures over and over and over until the final cadence.  eep!

But, I will say that it isn't its fault that it gets over played-- that's what
makes it so despised.  It isn't a terribly impressive peice (as far as I'm
concerned, anyway... but what do I know?), but it isn't bad.

Another high on the list of overplayed peices is, assuredly, the William Tell
Overture.  In my bass lesson the other day, my teacher was talking about it,
and he said, "if I had $50 for everytime I've played that, I could have
retired ten years ago," my response was, "if *I* had $50 for everytime I've
played it, I could retire."  

the only real use I've gotton out of cannon would be as relaxation music...

Silly question: I've been made to listen to Pachelbel's Canon many
times, but I've never actually heard a canon -- the "Row, Row, Row
Your Boat" sort of thing Mary mentions.  It sounds to me like a
passacaglia.  Did "canon" mean something else back then, whenever?

<jessi scurries off to the _New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians_ to
find that out>

As I recall, it isn't really a true cannon, but was apparenly misnamed.  As
for what it is, I can only say that I hope faile brings us that definition
soon....

  I like the slowness of the Canon, esp when it's played with
deliberateness,(how's that for a word?) I hate the 4 seasons, but I love
Beethovan's Fur Elise and The Happy Farmer. My mother thinks I have all the
culture of a cup of spoiled yougurt, but I don't wear shoes and like West
Virginia.
  I also love most all of what Bach and Mozart wrote, including that
nauseating little Eine Kleine Nachmuzak. I love the Pastoral Symphony,
something I overplay in this house as well as Bach's Two-Part Inventions which
I also overplay.

The BBC Music CD this month is the first part of Handel's Messiah,
in an arrangement made by Mozart, of all people.  Mozart updated
the orchestra and did some interesting things with the vocal parts.
He rearranged "For Unto Us" so that the four soloists do all the
heavy lifting ("For unto us a child is bohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoho-
hohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoh-
hohohohohorn!") and the full chorus comes in only on "Wonderful
counsellor," etc.  It was so fascinating listening to the soloists
struggling that the first chorus entrance took me completely by
surprise.  It made my hair stand on end.

There are some well-known compositions of which there exist only
one or two decent recordings.  Pieces like Stravinsky's Rite of
Spring and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra have defeated such
conductors as Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan.  (I once
heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf fall
apart during Le Sacre at a Tanglewood concert.  Leinsdorf had to
stop them during the Danse Sacrale after the strings entered on the
wrong beat, and then start them up again.)  The best recorded
performance of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra is Fritz Reiner and
the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  Incredibly, it's held that title
for 40 years now.  I used to think it was just me, but lately I've
read a few reviews that confirm my belief.  Pierre Boulez and the 
Cleveland Orchestra come close, but no cigar.  Boulez/Cleveland 
do excel on Le Sacre, however.

(Hm, I will have to dust off my 40-year-old vinyl recording of
Reiner's rendition of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra one of
these years and listen to it again.)

Hey, you have that LP with the abstract scrawl on the cover?
That's an icon of my youth.  Mine is monaural, alas, so I had
to get the CD rerelease of it.

I believe it is that one, and that it is stereo. I'll have to
dig it out to be sure; haven't played it for years, and a lot
of my vinyl LP's are in a hard-to-get-at place.

I just picked up a CD of music by David Diamond, an American
composer now in his eighties.  It features the Adagio from his
recent (1991) Eleventh Symphony and his "Rounds" for string
orchestra.  The Adagio is a long Brucknerian or Mahlerian slow
movement.  It makes me want to hear the whole symphony.  "Rounds"
is absolutely wonderful.  Diamond composed it at the end of WWII
on a commission from Dmitri Mitropoulos, who said he needed "something
happy."  "Rounds" is a sort of cross between Aaron Copland and Roy
Harris, but with a wicked intellectual twinkle in its eye that you 
rarely get in either of those composers' music.  Definitely worth
trying out.  Now I have to start filling in my Diamond recordings,
which have been limited to a couple of chamber pieces.

Albany Records has a new CD of re-releases of three old monaural 
recordings issued by Columbia in the early 1950s: Walter Piston's 
Symphony No. 4, Roy Harris's Symphony No. 7, and William Schuman's 
Symphony No. 6, all by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.  

This is one of the few mono CDs I've acquired.  (The other ones are
along the lines of  Duke Ellington favorites from the 1940s, Stan 
Kenton's "Cuban Fire," and so on.).  I would much rather have spiffy new 
digital recordings of these three symphonies, but the sad truth is that 
this is the only CD of any of them currently available.  As far as I can 
tell these were the only recordings of them ever made.  If that's the 
case, then between 1960 at the latest, and 1997 when this CD was 
released, you could not get this music in any format.

So what was lost?  Well, the Piston and Harris symphonies are both 
lovely.  Piston's 4th is an easygoing work, very tuneful and memorable. 
It sounds lightweight to my ears, but no more so than, say, 
Mendelssohn's "Italian" symphony, and for the same reasons.  Harris's 
7th is a strange seductive work.  There's something sultry, almost 
tropical, about the way it opens.  There are irregular dance-like 
rhythms later on, and the music is violent in some places and almost 
childlike in others, but by that time you've been completely hypnotized 
and are ready to believe anything Harris tells you.

But William Schuman's 6th is the star of this show.  It consists of a 
single 30-minute-long movement in which Schuman takes a simple theme and 
repeats it in various harmonic, rhythmic and orchestral guises.  (The 
liner notes refer to the symphony as a "passacaglia," but I'm not sure 
it's exactly that.)  The tension of the slower sections is periodically 
shattered by up-tempo passages featuring big-band-like ensemble playing 
and jazzy percussion outbursts, complete with rim shots.  The symphony 
ends on a note of brooding desolation.  After the premiere in 1951, one 
critic wrote that Schuman's 6th "might well be called a requiem for the 
twentieth century...grim music, terrifying in its psychological 
implications, relentless as a Greek tragedy, and irresistibly logical in 
its development."  Eugene Ormandy called the symphony "one of the most 
wonderful and difficult I have ever played."  The absence of this 
masterpiece from the catalogues for nearly 40 years has always puzzled
me.  Maybe someone will record it again now?

The CD in the current BBC Music magazine is titled "Modern Classics," 
but it features only two actual classics: Stravinsky's Les noces and 
Barber's Adagio for Strings.  

The Barber Adagio is given a surprisingly out-of-tune performance by 
Eugene Ormandy and what sounds like fifteen or twenty of the 
Philadelphia Orchestra's strings.  It's interesting how the performance 
tradition of the Adagio has changed over the years.  It's a little like 
Madonna's journey from The Material Girl to The Diva.  This recording is 
in the older tradition and valuable if only for that reason -- although 
Arturo Toscanini, Vladimir Golschmann and Howard Hanson, to name only 
three, all did it better. 

The version of Les noces here is the one for solo singers, chorus, 
percussion, and four pianos.  What makes this CD valuable is that it's 
the legendary 1959 recording with Igor Stravinsky conducting, and the 
four pianos played by -- get this -- Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Lukas 
Foss and Roger Sessions.  I've seen snapshots of Stravinsky posing in 
the studio with the four American composers, but I've never heard the 
recording.  Alas, it's kind of disappointing.  This is due possibly to 
faulty engineering.  The voice solos are strident and the pianos and 
percussion are all but inaudible in places.  There was a wonderful 
definitive Les noces LP produced a few years later by Stravinsky/Craft 
featuring two or three different versions, including the one for 
cimbaloms rather than pianos, which I like best.  I think it also had 
the Symphonies of Wind Instruments.  Highly recommended if you can find 
it.

There are two other listenable tracks on the CD: The "Maskarade" 
Overture by Carl Nielsen and a lushly colorful piece for baritone and 
orchestra called Les espaces du sommeil by Witold Lutoslawski.  Les 
espaces deserves to become a modern classic if it isn't already.  I 
can't say the same for the remaining music on the CD: two negligible 
hymns by John Tavener; a movement from a work called "Glasshole," I 
believe, by minimalist merdemeister Philip Glass; and an embarrassing 
item called "Song of Peace" from "Symphony 1997: Heaven Earth Mankind" 
composed for the Beijing takeover of Hong Kong last year by a composer 
named Tan Dun -- which is like being named "Blanche White" or "Melanie 
Black," although who knows (or cares, after listening to this) what it 
means in Chinese?

I just picked up the new CD of Pierre Boulez conducting the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's 9th symphony.  The last
time I heard this peice all the way through was at a Bernstein/NYPhil
concert 30 years ago.  It bored me to death with its schmaltzy
obviousness and its "ooga-booga!" pseudo-scariness in the scherzo,
rather like a tedious not-too-bright uncle who likes to tell
ghost stories you listen to because you're polite.  But, as always
with Mahler, the conductors add more scmaltz than the composer 
ever put there.  If anyone can make me appreciate this music (which 
is said to be one of the towering masterpieces of late romantic
symphonic music) it's Pierre Boulez.  I haven't gone past the
first two movements yet, but so far so good.  It isn't quite as
gripping as the 6th symphony, which is still my favorite, but it's
quite beautiful in places.  The sound on this DG CD is awesome.

We've discussed this piece before so my comments are going
around for about third time here, at least.  Mahler's Ninth
is a very personal piece.  I've enjoyed listening to it
in concert but where it works best is on headphones, in the
dark, all the way through (only breaking for the disk swap).
Once every few years is about right.  I pull it out for when
my heart needs to (again) understand death.

Of course, I'm a sucker for see-it-coming-miles-away ghost
stories too.

DG puts the whole thing on one disk.  I don't know if that
means Boulez's tempi are fast or what.  The timings are:

I.   29'17
II.  16'03
III. 12'38
IV.  21'25

Total performance lasts 79 minutes and 46 seconds.  I'm still
slowly working my way through it.  

I have the 1982 Berlin Philharmonic, at the Berlin Festival,
Karajan conducting.

I:  28'10
II: 16'38
III:12'45
IV: 26'49

I have to get up and change disks.  How rude.

Karajan lingers just a bit over the adagio, doesn't he?  Hmmm...
Boulez is such a my-way-or-the-highway sort of guy, I can't believe
he would speed up the tempi just to cram the whole thing onto one
disk.  Who knows, though?

The current BBC Music magazine is devoted to conductors.  Boulez is
mentioned only briefly.  I doubt if he's much to the editors' tastes.
They do recommend his recording of Bartok's Wooden Prince and
Cantata Profana as one of the top 50.  Karajan fares somewhat better,
at least in terms of words devoted to him, but one of the articles
is rather snide, claiming that Karajan "anesthetized" music in his
later performances and recordings.  Part of their rancor toward him
seems to proceed from the fact that he was an unapologetic Nazi before
and during the war.  Anyway, my impression of Karajan is that he was
much more literal and much less histrionic with his music than many
people think.  In other words, despite his jet-setting glamor-boy
image, he was closer to someone like Pierre Boulez than to Bernstein.
He respected the music too much to use the podium as a dance floor.

[In this same issue, Boulez is quoted as saying he would never
conduct Brahms because he felt Brahms was "bourgeois and complacent."
I know exactly what he means, but I think those characteristics are
virtues.  Good topic for an item, if I thought anyone in the world
but me was interested.]

I'm interested.  Not sure I'd have anything to add.  But
I'm interested.

Really.

Same here.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss