The Classical Music Guide Forums

Modernistfan

Maybe few people today will openly admit to such attitudes, but they are more prevalent than any of us would presumably like. Remember the Gramophone reviews of, for example, the Shostakovich quartets by the Emerson Quartet (and also some other reviews of recordings by that ensemble). At that time, ...

Modernistfan

I would not dismiss this as "tripe," but there are a number of serious issues here. First of all, there has to be a significant distinction made between the existence of racism among practitioners of classical music and more generally, in the commercial structure of classical music, on one hand, and...

Modernistfan

Well, I finally got the Henze "Heliogabalus Imperator" from Presto Classical in England and listened to it this morning. What a spectacular piece! Henze throws everything but the kitchen sink into that work (and the kitchen sink may well have been in it with the percussion).

Modernistfan

The young American conductor Jonathon Heyward, just 26, was recently appointed Chief Conductor at the Norwestdeutsche Philharmonie, starting January 2021. This was a post held at one point by Andris Nelsons. I am still at a loss to understand why Heyward has not gotten more engagements in the United...

Modernistfan

I am convinced that if Ted Williams had seen Jackie Robinson at the tryout, such as it was, he would have gone to Red Sox management and said that they had to sign him. He probably would have said that, if they had Robinson hitting leadoff, he would not only have hit .400 again, but would have broke...

Modernistfan

It was well known that the Red Sox did give some sort of a tryout to Jackie Robinson prior to his being signed by the Dodgers, but they did not take it all seriously and did not really attempt to follow up or sign him. It was not so well known that the Red Sox also blew a chance to sign Willie Mays....

Modernistfan

Subsequently, Furtwangler also did conduct the premiere of Schoenberg's Orchestral Variations, Op. 31, a strictly 12-tone piece, as well as the premiere of Bartok's First Piano Concerto in 1927 at the ISCM concerts in Frankfurt, with the composer as soloist. The Bartok First Piano Concerto is not a...

Modernistfan

I can certainly understand why Mookie Betts and other Red Sox players who are black or Hispanic will not go to the White House. However, I hope that this does not open up a racial divide in the clubhouse or between the fans and the players. Although Boston has a reputation as an extremely liberal to...

Modernistfan

I will not, and cannot, listen to recordings made by a conductor who, AFTER the conclusion of World War II and the Holocaust, would refer to Schoenberg's atonality as "biologically inferior." (Yes, I know that Furtwängler actually conducted the premiere of Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra, Op...

Modernistfan

Back to the Hans Werner Henze "Heliogabalus Imperator": According to the Naxos Direct website (Naxos is now the United States distributor for Wergo), this is to be released on June 14, 2019 in the United States. I also got and listed to the Cavalli opera "Eliogabalo"; it is definitely worth an occas...

Modernistfan

Well, the KUSC "Top 100" has been announced, and here it is: 1. Beethoven: Symphony #9 2. Beethoven: Symphony #5 3. Dvorak: Symphony #9 “From the New World” 4. Beethoven: Symphony #6 “Pastoral” 5. Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue 6. Bach: Brandenburg Concertos 7. Rachmaninoff: Paganini Rhapsody 8. Tchaik...

Modernistfan

Well, since this discussion was launched, I have been trying to find a recording of Cavalli's "Eliogabalo," about the cross-dressing Roman emperor. I finally found one on Amazon Italy, on the very obscure Recording Arts label, conducted by Roberto Solci. This is a 1999 digital recording. (If you are...

Modernistfan

I'm thinking about getting this. Sets of complete or nearly complete Tchaikovsky solo piano music are pretty scarce. There is the old Michael Ponti originally on Vox, Viktoria Postnikova (which I have) on Erato, and a set on Dynamic with Franco Trabucco (of whom I have never heard), and which has ga...

Modernistfan

From what I have heard on recordings, I am not a huge fan of Uchida in the Mozart piano concertos. I think that her playing is too "Dresden-china"-ish. Of course, that is only my opinion.

Modernistfan

William Schuman's "Witch of Endor" ballet, one that he wrote for Martha Graham, has finally made it to CD, on the BMOP/Sound label (the label of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project). It is coupled with "Night Journey" and "Judith," for which there are several modern recordings. (I wish that they had...

Modernistfan

For political reasons, DeBlasio has sucked up to the medievalist, backward-thinking Hasidic community for years. He has fought efforts to force the yeshivas to follow New York state Department of Education standards on education, with the result that many students, particularly boys, are graduating ...

Modernistfan

Well, Wergo has in fact gotten to it! The most recent new releases on the JPC website lists a recording by Oliver Knussen of "Heliogabalus Imperator," the Fantasy for Orchestra "Los Caprichos," "Englische Liebeslieder" for Cello & Orchestra, and "Ouvertüre zu einem Theater" with the BBC Symphony Or...

Modernistfan

The Democrats still do not get it. The reality is that no one outside the Beltway gives a rodent's posterior about the Russia investigation. The reality is that Trump and the conservative Republicans backing him are like a gang of pickpockets. Pickpockets generally work in teams; one distracts you b...

Modernistfan

I might add Francisco Lindor of Cleveland to that very short list if he can get his batting average up somewhat and to cut down on the strikeouts. It doesn't hurt that he can run and is an excellent defensive shortstop at a position where defense is very important.

Modernistfan

Well, KUSC-FM is running its "Top 100" again and voting is now open. You can make up to five selections, and they may be the same piece or multiple pieces. I have not given up the protest against their boring, blah, wimpy programming, and am using all five selections to write in Stockhausen's "Grupp...

Modernistfan

Trout is one of the few non-pitchers possibly worth this kind of money in a game seriously depleted of talent. Mookie Betts and Jose Altuve might be two others, but there are very few, if any, others. In my view, neither Manny Machado nor Bryce Harper is close to being worth that kind of money. Mach...

Modernistfan

I have posted previously about Norrington’s failings in the “Symphonie Fantastique” recording. For one thing, he cut the orchestra down to about 60 players, notwithstanding the fact that Berlioz had over 100 players in the premiere and his own writings said that he really wanted a huge orchestra. It...

Modernistfan

The Berlin Philharmonic label has just released a 22-CD set of Wilhelm Furtwängler’s wartime recordings with that orchestra, remastered in SACD. This is probably the most pointless set of recordings ever released. First of all, I cannot see the point of SACD remastering of 75-year-old mono recordi...

Modernistfan

I should get this. I also knew Pennario. He was a bridge player, and I played against him a number of times in tournaments in the Los Angeles area. He usually played with an expert player named Alfred Sheinwold, who wrote the bridge column for the Los Angeles Times.

Modernistfan

Definitely agreed about the quality of the CBSO under Rattie. I have that Adams disc and virtually all of their Szymanowski, including King Roger. His Benjamin Britten was also very good. I would like to see less negativity around classical music.

Modernistfan

Well, I have more complete information. The orchestra is the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Cello Concerto is the only work on the disc; no Karawane . That makes it rather a short CD, but I will definitely get it. Hopefully, Karawane shows up on another CD with Salonen conducting, most likely on Deut...

Modernistfan

Hysterical!! The singer, Merle Hazard (not Haggard), is probably the world's only economist/bluegrass singer.

Modernistfan

Well, a recording of the Salonen Cello Concerto is scheduled for release in March according to Presto Classical. This is, in fact, with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist and is on Sony Classical (not Deutsche Grammophon). I do not have full details as of yet; as the duration of the Cello Concerto is about 38 minu...

Modernistfan

More nasty comments sneering about the quality of the CBSO and suggesting that Deutsche Grammophon would be slumming to have them on their label. Seemingly, according to such comments, the only worthwhile orchestras for DG would be the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic (maybe the Bavar...

Modernistfan

The rising young conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, now music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (the post from which Simon Rattle rose to stardom) has signed a contract with Deutsche Grammophon, supposedly the first woman conductor to sign with that label. Her first recording is to...

Modernistfan

It depends on the cat, and it depends on the music! Some years ago, I was in Tower Records (R.I.P.) in Westwood in Los Angeles, and that store had a rather grumpy cat named Walter. Someone put on the opening of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's opera "Die Soldaten," which is some of the most dissonant music ...

Modernistfan

I heard some of her music yesterday, in particular her First Violin Concerto and the symphonic poem "The Oak." Her music is very well made but extremely conservative for the period; I could not hear a trace of jazz or ragtime, and could hear no influence of any contemporary idioms, such as neoclassi...

Modernistfan

I disagree strongly with Mr. Furedi. The reality is that the phrase "boys will be boys" used to be used to excuse minor roughhousing and other similar transgressions. (When I was about 12, I was playing baseball with one of my friends and smashed a line drive that went straight into a living room pi...

Modernistfan

This is a perennial problem. I can see why it might be desirable to present operas live in the language of the audience, but, for recordings, I always look for recordings in the original language. The accents and rhythms of the language vary greatly, and the composer, in nearly all cases, wrote for ...

Modernistfan

I worked in Watson's lab when I got my Ph.D., although I did not work directly under him. I also worked at Cold Spring Harbor one summer as an undergraduate, and published a paper in Nature on bacteriophage, and subsequently presented another paper there (also on bacteriophage). I never knew, when I...

Modernistfan

Meanwhile, Gramophone has just reported that the sales of classical physical CDs , not downloads, not streaming, increased 6.9% in the United Kingdom in 2017, this despite the wavering of the British economy in the wake of the murky Brexit issue. (Undoubtedly, this does include some British-style Kr...

Modernistfan

I do some downloading, always in CD-quality FLAC or better; I generally then burn the downloads to a CD for playing in my system. (I downloaded the entire Harbison symphony cycle from the Boston Symphony website; most of these works do not yet have a commercial recording on CD available.) I have no ...

Modernistfan

Agreed. That's why I kept the old Barenboim/Chicago Bruckner cycle on Deutsche Grammophon. I cannot stand the Bruckner Seventh and Eighth Symphonies with wimpy brass. (And that goes double for Mahler and Shostakovich!)

Modernistfan

I most definitely am no fan of Hogwood, particularly in the London symphonies (Nos. 93-104). I had the Hogwood many years ago and dumped it; like nearly all period-instrument recordings I have had the misfortune to hear, he badly underplays the "surprise" in the slow movement of Symphony No. 94, all...

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...

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