The Classical Music Guide Forums

Modernistfan

Sorry, I disagree with the use of the term "no-name performers." The exalted status of some performers in an earlier era, such as Heifetz, Rubinstein, or Horowitz, stemmed from the relatively fewer performers performing to a high technical standard as compared with the situation today, the high leve...

Modernistfan

The reports of the death of classical music, to paraphrase Mark Twain, have been greatly exaggerated. Yes, the genre has significant problems (when hasn't it?). The issue of costs and financial support has been with us ever since the days in which the audience shifted from the nobility and the estab...

Modernistfan

It has just been announced that Esa-Pekka Salonen will replace Michael Tilson Thomas as music director in San Francisco when MTT retires. It seems like a great hire for San Francisco, who should delight in Salonen's repertoire and support for various modernist tendencies. Unfortunately for New York,...

Modernistfan

Actually, Schoenberg was living not in Hollywood, but in Brentwood, a relatively affluent community to the west of Hollywood. Stravinsky was living in Beverly Hills, about four or five miles from Schoenberg. Apparently, they never met (Stravinsky did not begin to explore the twelve-tone technique un...

Modernistfan

If I am not mistaken, that recording of the Gerhard Violin Concerto is on Chandos, not Naxos (I have it in my collection). It is coupled with the Gerhard First Symphony.

Modernistfan

Actually, I would go for that. I love some of that stuff, especially Fats Waller (even though I am now actually listening to Olivier Messiaen's "Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum.") That music is presented for what it is and does not insult the listener's intelligence the way the junk on KUSC does.

Modernistfan

Well, Thanksgiving was one day ago and the turkey is barely cold and, already, the local station, KUSC-FM, has already decided to junk up their programming with all sorts of holiday slop. I just fired this note off to them on their comment line: With the holiday season starting, I urgently request ...

Modernistfan

I just listened to the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony in the recording on EMI (now Warner) conducted by Mariss Jansons, and I now am taking the view that he takes the last movement too slow. It makes me want to go back to Bernstein, who rolls through the last movement as though he were the engineer on ...

Modernistfan

Finally, there is going to be a reissue of the Columbia Black Composers Series of LPs. issued from 1974 to 1978, but mostly absent on CD. This is a 10-CD series mostly conducted by Paul Freeman with several major orchestras, including the Detroit Symphony and the London Symphony. Chamber works are a...

Modernistfan

Please see the material being put out by the American Constitution Society, the liberal counterpart to the Federalist Society. I am a member (yes, I am also a lawyer, doing predominantly intellectual property law, particularly patents (I have a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology in addition...

Modernistfan

Yow! I am convinced that much of the Right would like to completely scrap America's common-law-based legal system and replace it with a civil law system. Please note that the law of most European countries is a civil law system as distinguished from the common law system prevailing in the United Ki...

Modernistfan

No, it wasn't the Nazis who invented the "stab in the back" myth, but that myth was widely propagated by all sorts of ultra-right groups after the Armistice, of which the Nazis were only a small proportion. The myth then fed directly into anti-Semitism when it was apparent that some of the supporter...

Modernistfan

A very explosive letter from Arthur Schnabel describing a meeting with Wilhelm Furtwangler that occurred in 1947 (therefore, after the war), has just surfaced. The following are quotes: Last night Furtwängler and wife came to see me. . . . It was partly pleasant, partly opposite. So far it seems ...

Modernistfan

Maybe so, but he still bailed out of the Thirteenth Symphony, and that apparently caused a substantial break in relations between Shostakovich and Mravinsky.

Modernistfan

Shostakovich probably authorized the revised, bowdlerized version because he felt he had little choice. The option would probably to have had the work completely banned at that point, with uncertain consequences for him. His health problems had started to surface, and he had already faced off with t...

Modernistfan

Watch out with respect to earlier Soviet recordings of the Thirteenth Symphony. Because of government pressures, the text in the first movement ("Babi Yar") was changed to soften the emphasis on anti-Semitism after the original premiere. As far as I can determine, all recent recordings, as well as a...

Modernistfan

My point exactly. This issue should cut across party lines. Remember that Democratic senator Al Franken of Minnesota, a flaming liberal by most standards, resigned as a result of allegations of sexually improper conduct.

Modernistfan

Republicans, is this what you want for the highest court in the United States--a party-hearty frat boy? Don't you want a legal scholar who will fairly judge the cases before him on the law and the facts? The contrast with the late Antonin Scalia could hardly be more glaring. Yes, Scalia was a conser...

Modernistfan

Of course, I was kidding about the box set having only five works in 49 CDs. I was mocking Celibidache’s ridiculously slow tempos. Don’t take me seriously. The reality is that I wouldn’t spend a nickel on recordings by that fraud. Please see the online postings by William Osborne about what his wife...

Modernistfan

I don't know the contents as of yet. It probably is, as Warner has the rights to the previous EMI recordings with that orchestra. I certainly will not be buying it.

Modernistfan

Warner has announced a 49-CD box of Sergiu Celibidache recordings with the Munich Philharmonic. Of course, there are only recordings of five different works in the box. Seriously, though, I cannot see purchasing this. (There are boxes with Ricardo Chailly and Claudio Abbado coming out, and I might l...

Modernistfan

Agreed, but this has to do with a number of other things other than dress. It is interesting to note that, on the current Supreme Court, none of the liberal-leaning justices, Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor (three Jews and one Latina), ever worked for any of the major national large law firms.

Modernistfan

A story has just surfaced that a professor at Yale Law School had advised female students to dress in a certain way to exhibit a "model-like femininity" if they wanted to clerk for Kavanaugh. This does not surprise me in the least; when I have gone to meetings, I have noticed that most female assoc...

Modernistfan

Frankly, this doesn't surprise me one bit. This behavior is far from uncommon among boys of Kavanaugh's socioeconomic class and background, particularly if they are in prep school and especially if they are athletes. When I heard this story, I would have been willing to bet $100 that he had been an ...

Modernistfan

I remember Father Drinan quite well as a member of Congress from Massachusetts when I was a graduate student at Harvard. (He did not represent Cambridge; rather, he represented some of the suburbs to the west of Boston, starting with Brookline and Newton.) Ironically, he was wildly popular in the la...

Modernistfan

Yes, you can have it. By the way, when is Amazon going to start offering downloads in a lossless format? At least Presto Classical in England has that option for virtually all of their downloads.

Modernistfan

This has happened all too frequently. The coaches regard the players, particularly if they are African-American, as barely human expendable cannon fodder. Why are they holding these sorts of practices in August where the temperature is 95 degrees with very high humidity (I have been in Washington an...

Modernistfan

I am a huge Rimsky-Korsakov fan. I have that Chandos set and I have recordings of nearly all of his operas, although I am trying to get a recording of "Tsar Saltan"; it seems that there is no modern stereo recording (calling Valery Gergiev!). One of my all-time favorite operas is "The Golden Cockere...

Modernistfan

Although the statement that the arts are a protective factor against authoritarianism is a drastic oversimplification, to say the least, it is still noteworthy that virtually every authoritarian government winds up suppressing and censoring the arts, although they might not start out doing so; Lenin...

Modernistfan

I might look into this. His Vaughan Williams was excellent. (It is rather interesting that two of the excellent conductors of Vaughan Williams, Previn and Leonard Slatkin, were of Russian origin; all four of Slatkin's grandparents were born in that country, and Previn was born in Germany to parents ...

Modernistfan

It is a misconception based on previous history that Munich is a conservative city. The current mayor is a member of the Social Democratic Party, and Munich has been governed by the Social Democrats or a Social Democrat-led coalition for all but six years since 1948. Yes, rural Bavaria and the small...

Modernistfan

There are a number of musical Milsteins. There is also contemporary composer Silvina Milstein, born in Argentina and now living in England. I do not know if she is related either to Nathan Milstein or the sisters Nathalia and Maria Milstein, but it is likely that her family had emigrated from Russia...

Modernistfan

Although Anton Rubinstein and his brother Nicolai Rubinstein both were converted from Judaism to Russian Orthodoxy in their youth, Anton Rubinstein still retained some relationship to Judaism; according to Wikipedia, Anton Rubinstein later considered himself an atheist. He actually wrote two operas ...

Modernistfan

I have posted several times regarding this. Furtwängler was not in fact a Nazi, but definitely did have some anti-Semitic and völkisch views. It needs to be remembered that, prior to 1933, there were several strands of anti-Semitism other than that of the Nazis, and many people sometimes labeled ...

Modernistfan

Unfortunately, that is probably true, but note that Sony Classical just released a recording of double concertos by Wolfgang Rihm and John Harbison, not exactly the sort of repertoire that they are generally emphasizing. Of course, that was not with their big stars. I am sure that Salonen will proba...

Modernistfan

Yo-Yo Ma has shown no inclination to record some of the significant new repertoire that he has actually premiered, but this failure may partly be due to the fact that the conductors of these works were signed to a label other than Sony and it may have been impossible to arrange the required accommod...

Modernistfan

At this point, Sony Classical seems to be a label of two completely disparate parts. One of these parts is recordings, typically of either very standard repertoire, transcriptions, or outright crossover, involving well-known and highly publicized stars such as Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Sol Gabetta, or ...

Modernistfan

If you want to try it, there are several available recordings. Claudio Abbado's recording, coupled with works by Kurtág, has been reissued on Deutsche Grammophon and is readily available at less than full price. Peter Eötvös's recording on BMC is available on Amazon but is out of print and very e...

Modernistfan

As a graduate of Harvard University (Ph.D., 1975, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and not subjected to these admissions procedures, which apply to undergraduates), I find this totally reprehensible. It sounds very much like what they used to do to keep the n...

Modernistfan

There are two recordings available: the NYCO production conducted by Krachmalnik on Sony, and, what is probably more complete, a Scottish Opera production conducted by John Mauceri on Decca. Strangely, the latter does not show up on Amazon (US) except used for a very high price, but it shows up at a...

Modernistfan

No knock on Luisi, but it seems from recent appointments in the United States that any random assistant vice-Kapellmeister of the Kleinmachnow Philharmoniker has the inside track over any American candidate. It seems that women and people of color don't even get considered.

Modernistfan

Right now, after losing two games to Miami, the Dodgers now have exactly the same record as the purportedly tanking Marlins. One problem with the watchability of these games is the overreliance on stat geeks in the front office to make player personnel decisions. For some reason, the stat geeks do n...

Modernistfan

Finally, an audio recording of Doctor Atomic by John Adams will be released on Nonesuch on June 29. This was recorded in England with Adams himself conducting, with Gerald Finley and Julia Bullock as the leads.

Modernistfan

Glenn Branca, one of the most significant figures of the New York "downtown" avant-garde scene, has passed away at age 69. I have a number of recordings of his symphonies for massed electric guitars and percussion, and, although I cannot figure out quite what is going on, I find them strangely inter...

Modernistfan

Yes, Lindor and Ramirez are very good players, but it is something of a stretch to call them stars by the standards that formerly applied. They will have to produce at that level or higher for a substantially longer period of time to rate that appellation. There are a lot of guys who have one or two...

Modernistfan

I respectfully disagree that the quality of baseball since the end of the steroid era (if it ever really ended) has never been higher. In April, there were more strikeouts than hits for what was probably the first time ever for a month. The games are virtually unwatchable--who wants to sit through a...

Modernistfan

I can't stand Boras' whining. Why should teams pay megabucks for declining performance? Remember the Angels a few years ago with Vernon Wells--he was making something like $18 million per year and he barely was hitting his weight. As far as the Cincinnati Reds go, they just finished sweeping the Dod...

Modernistfan

I have a lot of respect for Ms. Borda and think that she did a great job in Los Angeles. She has her work really cut out for her in New York, especially with the stodgy, snoozeworthy programming apparently favored by van Zweden. She had better get Esa-Pekka Salonen seriously involved with the orches...

Modernistfan

Bronfman conducted by Salonen with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Sony).

Modernistfan

Well, here is the result from the Top 100 Countdown this year: 1. Beethoven: Symphony #9 2. Beethoven: Symphony #5 3. Beethoven: Symphony #7 4. Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto 5. Beethoven: Symphony #6 “Pastoral” 6. Dvorak: Symphony #9 “From the New World” 7. Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto #2 8. Gershw...

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