The Classical Music Guide Forums

barney

Ego te absolvo, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. I've been following this thread as best I can-glad to get a translation! Regards, Len Deinde, ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, + et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. May our Lord Jesus Christ absolve you; and by His auth...

barney

Well done remembering all those details. I was a late starter, obviously, at 7 or 8 - but my father built the speaker system we had only after several years of marriage. Before that it was the radio and no record collection. The first house was way too small (2 bedrooms for 4 kids) to fit a piano, ...

barney

As a child, I remember being impressed so much by classical music (then on 78RPM discs) that I vowed to become a conductor when I grew up! My fascination with classical music continued to this day..... Here's a list of the classical sets we had when I was a toddler as best I can remember: Rachmanin...

barney

Yes, it will take some time, but you don't have to complete the entire oeuvre to start comparing. The two selected comparisons, Rubinstein and Cortot, are obviously two of the finest Chopin interpreters of whom we have a record; the former is far and away my favourite, taken overall.

barney

lennygoran wrote: ↑
Fri Jul 06, 2018 11:26 am

jbuck919 wrote: ↑
Fri Jul 06, 2018 9:19 am
except maybe Guam.
You got me there! Regards, Len

This is ambiguous, Len. Jbuck got you to travel to Guam? Or his riposte has you stumped? I hope it's the former.

barney

Re books, I have the opposite problem. floor-to-ceiling shelves are stacked two deep in a number of rooms, and there are piles of books and CDs on the study floor that my wife is frequently exhorting me to tidy up. This I do by arranging neat piles in the living room, the one room in the house that ...

barney

That post was "beautiful", Sue. :wink: I must remember that remarkably apt approbation when next you post a link... As a child I loved Peter and the Wolf, also Carnival of the Animals, and there were several works, especially Mozart and Schubert, that I asked my parents to put on the turntable inces...

barney

I hope you will share your conclusions.

barney

Magaloff was judged a good enough pianist to have a volume in the Philips Great Pianists of the Century collection.

barney

Perhaps orchestral musicians should be played on a per-note basis. Might be tough on 3rd trumpet or piccolo, but a rate of say 2 cents per note played would see violinists quite well off.

barney

Thanks John for that massive amount of very helpful work.

barney

The other was assembled quite expensively (5 figures) by an expert friend. Whew! Did the 5 figures have any periods in among them-for example $100 . 00! Regards, Len [fleeing] :lol: That would have been nice. I can now demonstrate the figures (and my age): Sophia Loren, Michelle Pfeiffer, Bridget B...

barney

I got it, but with my reviewer's hat on, so I didn't have to pay. I probably wouldn't have, as I already had a good proportion of the material. And I have always found Arrau among the most stately and magisterial of pianists, but not the most intimate. But I think he plays with utter integrity, and ...

barney

Not sure about the more budget end. Barney yeah-that's the kind I have always gotten-I may have to spring for a higher priced one at some point. Regards, Len I have two hifis at home. One is in the "music room", and is pretty good but almost never used. The other was assembled quite expensively (5 ...

barney

I don't think there's any diminution in top-end CD players. Not sure about the more budget end.

barney

Decca's Austraian budget label, Eloquence, did a large number of her recordings, especially the Spanish stuff. I probably won't be in the market for this one. But none of the recordings I have listened to of her have her just going through the motions. I like her enormously, including in some Mozart...

barney

A fine pedagogue. I would not have had the imagination to answer that way, I would just have talked about musical notation (and probably made the comparison with letters). She would have had an answer but no chance of being inspired. That's why I am not a great teacher.

barney

Yes, I've read all of Gerald Moore's books. They are wonderful reading and very hard to put down once started. There was also an EMI recording (reissued on a Testament CD) called Am I Too Loud. Very precious recording with Moore's own vice and musical examples. Now there's a good thought/idea/sugge...

barney

Discs "two" and "three" are the two 100-CD volumes that together make up the 200-CD Philips Great Pianists series. Four might be the complete Verdi operas. I'm up to nearly 500 CDs already.

barney

Lance, what a dreadful cheat you are!

If you can take the 32, "one" of my desert island discs is Mozart 225, the 200-CD collection of his entire oeuvre. It is, after all, in one box.

barney

It is unusual to make a comment like that about Schumann's Piano Concerto. I love it too, but ... it's really more of a personal opinion. Some of the items on WQXR's list are good, but there many others totally left out. Even for me, a pianophile, it would difficult to select 10 recordings of the m...

barney

When played with feeling, as with Artur Schnabel, Rudolf Serkin, and Clifford Curzon, the slow movement of K. 595 is some of the most moving music I know. When played by the HIP types, well, you know what I was going to say. Here's Curzon in the Decca recording with Benjamin Britten: fEiH-EWbD2Q ht...

barney

Alas, I wrote too soon. What I get are 60-second previews, not the whole recording. Never mind - there are inexhaustible depths on YouTube, so I'll let the BBC go.

barney

... is there some trick? Sorry for the trouble. I have followed BBCR3 for years, and no longer recall what steps I had to go thru, if any. I now have no trouble with the links, nor do I recall ever registering or using "My Music " , but as I say it has been years. Try this : Rather than the link I ...

barney

I love Paul Lewis.
I went to your link, registered, then the site said "go to my music" to play the tracks. I can't find that on the page. Am I just incompetent, or is there some trick?

barney

jbuck919 wrote—>"What IMO is not apt is a comparison between odious character flaws in famous creative artists and behavior of the kind we are likely talking about." I agree. James Levine is the one under discussion here, an otherwise admirable interpretative artist accused of egregious violation o...

barney

I'd be very interested in this if it ever came here, which is unlikely. Mind you, I have been to Nixon in China here and Previn's Streetcar Named Desire, Floyd's Of Mice and Men, and Elliot Carter's What Next, so Australian companies sometimes do offer American operas. I believe the Met is going to ...

barney

That's what I said and repeated: The lack of a fully successful studio recording is underlined by Kenneth Furie's recommendation, in "The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera," of the live performance that reopened Munich's National Theater in 1963, though he says of its Sachs "The best that ...

barney

Levine's recording legacy will endure, no matter what anyone says or does. All of us here, I imagine, have many, many Levine performances that we esteem highly and will still listen to. When I listen to Siegfried's funeral march, I do not think of Levine or his activities; I am swept away by the mus...

barney

Thanks John for such a complete description of the various versions. By November I will know them all much better myself. Clearly, they are all flawed, but in different ways.

barney

Understand Barney, I have not even touched the Arrau yet. Too much (great) music for one man! Maybe you should wait until winter to attack the Arrau set ... and the Brendel ... and the Perahia ... and ... on and on it goes. Have you delved into the two exquisite Fricsay boxed set from DGG of late? ...

barney

I enjoyed that very much, thanks for posting it.
There are so many excellent Youtube clips posted on this forum, I don't get to most but this - for those who haven't looked at it yet - is not even three and a half minutes. I also appreciated the pianist's notes in the comments section.

barney

Everybody here knows what I think of collaborative pianists: they are HALF the performance. My idol has always been Gerald Moore, with whom I communicated with long before his passing. I'm glad you communicated before his passing, Lance. I'd be a trifle concerned if you told us you'd communicated a...

barney

I have these, but haven't played them yet.
You've reminded me to get on with it. I'm still trying to get through 80 CDs of Claudio Arrau.

barney

The six versions I mentioned: Jochum, discussed above Solti from 1976 Varviso's Bayreuth performance from 1974 And then three interesting ones that I wonder if any of you know and can tell me about: Kempe, Keilberth and Knappertsbusch. Perhaps I should start with the Keilberth (1963) as it has Hans ...

barney

Of the great Wagner operas, Die Meistersinger is by far the one I know least well. I suspect that is because I have only seen it on stage once, and that way back in 1994 when I didn't esteem him as I do now. I have six complete recordings, but I don't remember when I last listened to one - it goes s...

barney

I was there at the Pomodoro Rosso, and thought it was fine. Mind you, that might have been more particularly the company....

barney

In the recordings I've heard, Rattle has a consistent trouble with the shaping and tempo of Romantic music: I stopped listening to him in that repertoire many moons ago. Mahler X is a tough nut to crack: surprisingly, I think Ormandy got it right with his World Premiere recording for Columbia: Ratt...

barney

All this in the Blue Mountains? Or must you travel to the big smoke?

barney

I never thought of Klemperer as a talker - both his person and his performances seemed carved from granite. Permanently serious face. Per Wikipedia, "...after completing the 1939 Los Angeles Philharmonic summer season at the Hollywood Bowl, Klemperer was visiting Boston and was diagnosed with a br...

barney

This was Toscanini's NY Phil, then at its peak. I don't suppose Labate talked back to the maestro like that. :) LOL!! No way!! The NYPO did give Rodzinski a hard time tho - He was conducting Mahler's 1st Symphony - sometime in the 30s - rehearsal was not going well, and Rodzinski, he of the Vesuvia...

barney

It sounds as though it must have been marvellous. I have a weakness for Scarlatti sonatas, of which I have quite a number - maybe 50-70 - but certainly not 550. We are talking Domenico, I presume - yes of course we are, you mentioned born 1685.

barney

The Sutherland-Bonynge is the only version I have, somewhat to my surprise. It's not an opera I know well, but I don't feel the lack of an alternative account.

barney

Nevertheless, we all speak in generalities often. Of course there are large numbers of people who love contemporary art music, for all sorts of reasons, but the generalisation under discussion - whether by Kenny or the psychiatrist - does not seem unreasonable. Far more people listen to Beyonce or E...

barney

I was born in London because my parents were studying at the Royal Academy of Music. When I was nearly 4 I went back to New Zealand with my mother by ship, the Corinthic. For many years after that I cherished a rubber and wire Goofy the dog toy that I apparently won on an under 5-year-old race aroun...

barney

IMO, the problem is not so much with the selections, but with the practice of having some kind of solo as a bourgeois divertissement at a British royal wedding. If the Brits want the royals to be more like normal folk (as if wealthy but tasteless were normal), then they are getting what they want. ...

barney

Barney, ABC FM has shown zero interest in the Florence Austral story. This surprised us in our group, unless they've already done something on her (in which case they might have said that to our researchers). That's upsetting. I don't know anyone at Classic FM except Mairie Nicholson, but I suppose...

barney

I'm not saying that deliberately playing wrong notes to test the conductor is brave, but I would say it's pretty brazen. And there are those, such as Pierre Boulez, who have heard wrong notes in the most complex and dissonant modern scores, and corrected them. That's why the New York Philharmonic p...

barney

Richard Horowitz, long-time timpanist in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, told me once about rehearsals for "Elektra" in the early 1950s. Fritz Reiner was the conductor, and some of the players tested him in this way - and Reiner failed the test; he let the mistakes pass. The orchestration of "Ele...

barney

Not at all hostile to evolutionary theory. I get vastly irritated, as I indicated, at the fact that evolutionary psychology is a speculative discipline (I barely rate it as science) that always hides how much guesswork and assumption is involved and how disabling it is. We don't have much certain kn...

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