The Classical Music Guide Forums

Actually, consult ANY biography of Grieg & you'll find the two "incompatible" masters, despite an antipathy toward each others' music, found a common ground in their liking for Grieg, personality-wise AND music-wise.

Just re-read Abram Chasins's classic book on golden-age pianism, SPEAKING OF PIANISTS. He mentioned the (relative) popularity of his Four Chinese Pieces, the most famous of which is "Rush Hour In Hong Kong." Rather quaint little works, but ones that just might find a new audience if not for That Tit...

This isn't an actual SOLO work, but just a passage: One of my very favorite passages in all orchestral music is in Gershwin's American In Paris, right before the riotous coda where the tuba makes one final re-quotation of the last chunk of the "blues" theme. Beautiful beyond words. You'd think more ...

If you're like many, you'll prefer a smaller-scale taster of a new composer's music. Try Walton's "Crown Imperial" March (probably my all-time favorite march), or his "Facade" (done to poems of Edith Sitwell).

WELL! Sorry I took so long in my response, I didn't know this thread existed, but I've been heartily enjoying the new stylus I just bought. And I always commemorate the occasion with a nice new stack of UNOPENED VINYL--I keep around a nice big pile of new LP's to admire just how flawlessly & quietly...

Well, it was all I could remember to do to attend this concert, part of the mini-series of concerts entitled "Visiting Orchestras." MY chief motivation for springing for a package this year was the fact the Cleveland Orchestra's playing at the end of this month (for which I'll duly give a report als...

The GRIEG BALLADE. (Op. 24, in G Minor.) I did it in my first college recital, and many consider it Grieg's greatest piano work. It's in the form of variations on a particularly-devastated-sounding Norwegian folktune. What the composer does with the melody over 15 minutes' time is just incredible, a...

This site's been way, WAY overdue for a thread on these works. They're both quite remarkable, & they've been concert stalwarts for a quarter-century now. Even though critics harp on Ravel's "impersonal" or "unemotional" nature--even a "lack of depth"--the Concertos in D & in G turn out to be media f...

I really vacillate on favorite performances of this symphony, but....... Munch's lickety-split treatment (running barely over 23 minutes!) with the RPO is something special. And the old Ansermet mono disc rates highly, by virtue of the most bewitching oboe sound in the world, the gent who played in ...

Cortot was WAY too interested in German Wagnerian culture for his own good. His playing--as well as his visual style, both at the keyboard and conducting--were full of irrepressibly-Romantic gestures. I sometimes feel like putting on a Casadesus recording after hearing a Cortot disc, just so I remem...

One piece I've gotten belatedly hooked on recently has been Fritz Kreisler"s "Caprice Chinoise".....I've come across it on a number of old 78s. Clever little melody, it has a faintly-modernist feel to it and may very well catch some new listeners if only that title were changed. Also, a stalwart sec...

Let me cast my vote here for a long, LONG gone RCA Camden LP by Kjell Baekkelund, with Oivin Fjeldstad & the Oslo Philharmonic. About as youthful & fresh-sounding as you can get. (AND, never rereleased.)

There are scads of pieces which long since have kept a low profile on account of their dealing with subjects that are suddenly ultra-sensitive or taboo: Pieces like Morton Gould's mid-40s orchestral display piece, "Minstrel Show".....the only recording ever to appear was Dimitri Mitropoulos's RCA 78...

Apropos of Vanska, I fully intend on getting the new Beethoven Fourth CD he's done with the Minnesotans. And apropos of the Minnesotans: they've been just as good as ANY ensemble on earth these last 2 decades.....in fact, conversely, it's also been their shortcoming, IMO. Marriner & De Waart made it...

Yeah, but as someone who bought a goodly number of these CDs (mainly of pianists Alfred Cortot & Benno Moiseiwitsch), I still must say:

WOTTA BUNCHA BASTARDS!!

The Bagar-Biancolli volume was one of my early "bibles." Lots of richly descriptive stuff on the music itself, and seldom-told stories on the composers' lives. But any of you DIE-HARD ROMANTICS who love reading extra-musical details into anything and everything ever written (a favorite pastime of Ma...

No, I don't KNOW anyone presently. But it's a good bet I'm within a 100-yard radius of someone who considers it such. The kind folks who help run any major-metropolitan-area video emporium (the only kind worth patronizing, to my mind) probably espouse the film dearly. I've just returned a DVD (Class...

It's Filipi's Books And Records in downtown Seattle. A landmark for many people (and a very short walk from where I live), and as for myself I'm sorry I only discovered it four years back after a good friend sung its praises many times before. It was a great place (actually the ONLY place) for gazin...

Maybe if we're all highbrow here, we should be PROUD of it. It's frightening to contemplate what influence certain movie critcs wield over the masses--like that little egomaniac Leonard Maltin. I've always admired his books on animation & comedy shorts, but the renowned "Maltin Guide" to feature fil...

Breaks my heart, that's all I can say.

They put out many of the more creative issues among newer CDs.

Yes, AND, the 1980s home-video revolution hastened the feature-film's artistic demise. It's all but influenced the way we watch movies: like, for instance, the way all other business-as-usual in the household's taking place, like the phone ringing, any small emergencies, and the like. (Not to mentio...

Yeah, you heard me. I used to be quite the film buff. But after moving to Seattle 12 years ago, I've just become totally disenfranchised with the whole movie scene. I don't know if the industry's finally become too commercialized to be bearable anymore, or if--after so many decades--there's now a re...

Well, I've just heard Niels Wilhelm Gade's Symphony #1 in C Minor. MASTERPIECE. I've got a Chandos-label CD with CHristopher Hogwood & the DRSO; I also have an old Turnabout LP with Hye-Knudsen & the Royal Danish Orch. You can't go wrong with either performance. Mendelssohn was so enamored of this w...

While gazing thru Carnegie Hall's site the other day, I noticed something to make all you anti-Mozarteans' skin crawl:

2006 marks Mozart's 250th birthday. (Yeah, not a death date, but a bona fide birthday.)

I wouldn't make any real conclusions, but..... As a college junior, I found that slapping the headphones on with Schnabel's Beethoven Sonata recordings playing non-stop while I was desperately cramming for a class I thought I'd get a "D" in, really helped me absorb information faster to just squeak ...

Also: these days I'm groovin' on Kreisler's "Caprice Chinoise".......even if it IS rather dated & politically-incorrect. AND: Louis Moreau Gottschalk's "Le Banjo." If I could still play the piano the way I used to, I'd give it an EXTRA vulgarization: after the finale's final repetition of the "Campt...

ANYTHING by Benjamin Godard--especially his piano piece "Au Matin"......one of the most GORGEOUS melodies ever.

The LSO's "Classic Rock" efforts--so cheesy they're amusing.

Beethoven's "Wellington's Victory."

Mozart's round, "Bona nox, bist a rechta Ox"--ample testimony to his potty-mouth.