The Classical Music Guide Forums

THEHORN

I was a member of a summer festival orchestra in Pennsylvania in the 80s , where he played the Sibelius concerto . It was quite impressive .

THEHORN

Western classical music is "inherently racist ?" This is like saying basketball is "inherently racist" because there aren't more short, nerdy Jewish men on basketball teams . This is nothing but a straw man . None of our symphony orchestras and opera occupancies etc is trying to exclude anyone on th...

THEHORN

Oh well. Spectacular opera productions are nothing new . They were the norm in 19th century Paris during the heyday of Giacomo Meyerbeer . Is there anything actually wrong with this ?I don't think so . I'm sure some of those Paris productions might have made those of the late Franco look modest by c...

THEHORN

Happy birthday , Lance !

THEHORN

John, I'm only about 13 years younger than you and have been listening to Ring performances an recordings , not to mention all the other Wagner take works , since I was a teenager . While I admire great Wagner conductors of the past such as Furtwangler, Knappertsbusch and others , I've heard many on...

THEHORN

John, I didn't see or hear this Ring, but many others have great admiration for the way Philippe Jordan conducted it , including Anthony Tommasini . You are the only individual I know of who has called Jordan's conducting of the Ring "weak ". With all due respect, you have consistently shown here ho...

THEHORN

Heck, the kind of vibrato ridden , blaring trumpet sound may be ideal for Gershwin , but it's grotesquely wrong for composers such as Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler and Richard Strauss etc .
It's like an actor playing the role of a German or Austrian aristocrat and using a Brooklyn accent .

THEHORN

The main source of coarseness in sound in Toscanini's NBC symphony recordings are the crude, blaring ,vibrato ridden trumpets . The woodwinds also have an unpleasant fluttery rapid vibrato which may have been induced by fear of playing under him for all I know . This interferes with orchestral blend .

THEHORN

Furtwangler may have been an erratic conductor, but at his best, his performances were absolutely transcendent . I don't think orchestras such as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic etc played all that sloppily " for him . But he wasn't concerned with neatness and accuracy . I've always preferred Fur...

THEHORN

I have the Chandos recording with an English pianist whose name I can't recall off hand, with Richard Hickox and the Bournemouth symphony orchestra . It's couples with Tippett's first symphony . Excellent performances of interesting, rarely heard works by one of England's greatest composers .

THEHORN

MaestroB , Josef Suk was the great grandson, not grandson of Dvorak .

THEHORN

I haven't heard Cornelius Meister conduct yet, but he seems to be a rising name among the younger generation of conductors and he has had considerable success in Europe . So I wouldn't rush to judgment about his his presence in Stuttgart .

THEHORN

Thanks for the information !

THEHORN

Is Karina Canellakis related to the conductor Martin Canellakis, who regularly conducted concerts with a part time orchestra he had founded at the Colden center auditorium at Queens college, C.U.N.Y . when I was a graduate student there ?

THEHORN

I remember Osborne's reviews of opera recordings all the way back from the 1970s in High Fidelity magazine . While I respect his vast knowledge of opera and opera singing and expertise in judging singer's techniques , I rarely of ever agreed with him when it came to purely subjective evaluations of ...

THEHORN

Maestrob, the Slavonic Mass is actually a setting of the Mass in old Church Slavonic, which is actually an old form of Bulgarian which became the liturgical language of Russia, Ukraine, Serbia and Bulgaria as they were orthodox Christians . Modern Bulgarian has diverged a lot from the old language .

THEHORN

This article was written some time before the Met's acclaimed production of "L'Amour de Loin" .

THEHORN

"Passing fumbles in the brass ?" Das Rheingold is a killer for brass players . The other Ring operas are grueling enough for them, but Rheingold is two and a half hours non stop . One of my horn teachers, the late Arthur Goldstein , who used to play in the Met orchestra, said to me "When you play a ...

THEHORN

I think this story has possibilities as an opera . Another one which I think might make a really good opera is "Inherit the Wind ".

THEHORN

Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity . . . . . . . .

THEHORN

One of Adam's best recordings is his vivid portrayal of the cantankerous Sir Morosus in "Die Schweigsame Frau by Richard Strauss , a sadly underrated opera which deserves to be performed more often , on the EMI recording conducted by Marek Janowski with the Staatskapelle, Dresden . This is the only ...

THEHORN

In fact, there is a recent version of the Rachmaninov 2nd as a piano concerto, with a piano part added by someone whose name I can't recall off hand , and you can hear it on youtube . It's called the Rachmaninov piano concerto number five ! I posted it on Facebook for some of mu musician friends the...

THEHORN

Very sad news . He will be missed . My sincerest condolences to his family .

THEHORN

Nowadays, with supertitles and the Met's unique Met title system , the easy availability of librettos with translations in complete opera recordings and titles on DVDs etc , opera in the original language is no longer a problem . And with major international opera companies in New York, London, Pari...

THEHORN

I have the excellent Naxos CD of the Bliss piano concerto and two piano concert with Martin Roscoe and David Lloyd Jones conducting . The pain concerto is a real bravado virtuoso concerto and deserves to be better known .

THEHORN

I saw the NY Phil. new year's eve concert on PBS conducted by the new man Jaap Van Zweden , and to my ears the brass section was on its bets behavior and at least on television, nothing was harsh or too loud . They recently hired Chris Martin, who succeeded the legendary Bud Herseth in Chicago and w...

THEHORN

This is sad news indeed . I hope he'll recover soon .

THEHORN

I agree, Lenny . You shouldn't pass up any opportunity to see "The Ghosts Of Versailles ".

THEHORN

No, orchestras do not sound like today . I've never hear things this way . There have been CHANGES in the way individual orchestras sound as their personnel changes , but they still do not sound alike . True, French orchestras no longer use the same instruments they used decades ago , but they still...

THEHORN

New name to me . Does anyone know if she is related to the Bulgarian conductor and composer Emil Tabakov , who has recorded a surprisingly good Mahler cycle with the Sofia Philharmonic for the Capriccio label ?

THEHORN

Mravinsky's Bruckner recordings are remarkable, but the rough brass playing full of vibrato is just not idiomatic . This takes some getting used to

THEHORN

I remember a CBS/Melodiya LP of this opera from long, long ago which was in my local library , before the CD era . It's a really interesting opera with a rather creepy plot , and I like the music very much .
I would welcome a revival by Gergiev and the Mariinsky opera and a recording .

THEHORN

This looks really interesting . Erkel's operas are totally unknown in America , although there have been recordings of them available herefrom Hungaroton for as long as I can remember . They're naturally very popular in Hungary , and I believe there have been some performances in translation in othe...

THEHORN

I agree . The Sibelius 3rd is a very underrated and unjustly neglected work . There are plenty of excellent recordings of it it , but it's rarely performed live for some reason . This is the sunniest and most cheerful of the Sibelius symphonies . Or as the composer put it , "clear, fresh spring wate...

THEHORN

Several years ago, Chandos released the world premiere recording of the "World Requiem" by Foulds, a large scale work written to commemorate the terrible effects of the first world war . It does not use the traditional text of the Latin Requiem used by so many other great composers , but the English...

THEHORN

Ho him. Critics never seem to be able to avoid saying nasty things about the Met , and for the most part, they never have . The company is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't . If they do a traditional , realistic Zeffirelli production, the critic sneer . If they do s non realistic, non-tradi...

THEHORN

I haven't heard much of Zweden's conducting yet , so I will have to reserve judgment about how his relationship with the orchestra will work out . Apparently the orchestra really likes and respects him, otherwise he would not have been chosen . From all reports, the Dallas symphony and Zweden have b...

THEHORN

Jbuck, I don't think the Met's repertoire is all that conservative . Within the past 20 years or so it as broadened and diversified its repertoire considerably , doing numerous operas you would never have expected them to do in its early years at Lincoln center . This year they're doing the US premi...

THEHORN

This is a wonderful symphony , but sadly neglected because most conductors never bother to program any of the Dvorak symphonies beyond the last three . A pity . Audiences would love it if they got a chance to hear it live . And too many concertgoers don't want to hear anything other than their belov...

THEHORN

Good news - there is a new DVD of "Tsar Saltan " out from the Mariisky opera with Gergiev conducting . Must get this as soon as possible .

THEHORN

Not too long ago , I was watching reruns of the Joan Rovers show on cable TV and she had Robert Merrill as a guest . He was a really funny guy and made all kinds of wisecracks . He had the timing of a first rate standup comedian ! I think he could have made a career as one .

THEHORN

Whatever his faults, Furtwangler was no Anti-Semite , and there is absolutely no evidence of him ever having Anti-Semitic sentiments . He enabled many Jewish musicians to escape Germany , and he he were an Anti-Semite, Yehudi Menuhin, who regularly collaborated with him on violin concertos and admir...

THEHORN

I have the Naxos recording of his large scale "Ocean" symphony , which is about the length of a Mahler or Bruckner symphony , and airports to evoke the various world oceans and seas . It's certainly an interesting and even different work, but is somewhat repetitious . It's still well worth hearing, ...

THEHORN

"The full blooded vitality of their conducting (Petrenko and Nelsons ) is certainly welcome in a time when there's not so much of it about " ? John, are you really suggesting that the work of most of the other conductors of the present day is "lacking in vitality ?" With all due respect, how can you...

THEHORN

Actually, the two conductors are not related at all .

THEHORN

Ranking orchestras is such a futile and subjective thing . Asking which is the "best" is like asking which would cuisine is the best ? Chinese? French? Italian ? Japanese ? The Vienna Philharmonic can be difficult for some conductors to manage, but when it's at its best , you can't beat them ! I rem...

THEHORN

The July issue of Opera News has a really interesting article on Kirill Petrenko , the rather mysterious and elusive Russian conductor who is set to succeed Sir Simon Rattle as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and who is currently music director of the Bavarian State opera . Petrenko avoi...

THEHORN

In the story, the reason why the empress cannot have children is because she is half human, and half member of the non-human spirit world . Her husband's fertility is not in question . In the end, her father Keikobad , ruler of the spirit world, grants her full humanity so she will be able to bear c...

THEHORN

Chris Martin, who had the difficult job of succeeding Herseth in Chicago but did an outstanding job, is now principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic, succeeding Philip Smith , who is also a terrific trumpeter .

THEHORN

On the contrary , I've found Rattle's recordings of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler etc to be highly insightful and fresh .Nothing " weak" about them . I've never heard a bad performance form Rattle or one that seemed just ho hum . You can disagree with him about the interpretation of this or th...

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