The Classical Music Guide Forums

John F

I don't expect you'll be hearing any of Mozart's arramgement of "Messiah," which is just as remarkable as his "Acis and Galatea"or even more so. Hére's "Every valley shall be exalted," with a starring role for the bassoon. iXe10oY1vtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXe10oY1vtA And "The Trumpet Shal...

John F

Back in the 1950s there was a complete recordng of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by the Old Vic theatre company, with Mendelssohn's music note-complete conducted by Malcolm Sargent. Mendelssohn composed a lot more music for MND than we ever hear, even in the recordings that go beyond the familiar suit...

John F

If "the likes of a Horowitz or Rubinstein" were to appear on the stage of Carnegie Hall today, I wouldn't care what instrument he played!

John F

Nobody "loves taxes," but New Yorkers (this one anyway) love the public services that the tax revenues are spent on, which few other states provide. For example, it costs the MTA more than $15 billion a year to run the region’s massive transit network of trains, buses and subways, 24 hours a day, se...

John F

This is great stuff, Lance.

John F

OK, I get it. Then if you can only play part of the Corigliano symphony it should be the first movement.

John F

The great Russian pianist, Sviatoslav Richter began using them much of the time I didn't know that. In earlier years, including his first American tour, Richter played a Hamburg Steinway, didn't he? Later on he asserted that pianists shouldn't make a fuss over the instruments they play but use what...

John F

You're doing 3-4 programs on Corigliano and you don't have time for all of his most important work? Unbelievable. The symphony runs about 40 minutes, less than Beethoven's 7th, and there's no other music by Corigliano that is more worth hearing than what you'd be leavng out. Play the whole thing unl...

John F

Back in 1970, Corigliano and David Hess created an "electric rock opera" based on Bizet's "Carmen" which they called "The Naked Carmen." If you want to shake up your group, play this version of the toreador song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSSvJycr6CM

John F

I used to go to Hamburg now and then, and always stopped in at Steinway Haus at Colonnaden 29, not to buy a piano but to buy records and books about music. The last time I was there they were having a clearance sale, and I still have a Steinway Haus tote bag which I sometimes carry when I want to sh...

John F

As I wrote on September 30, "One possibility for your group might be John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1. It's an attested masterpiece of the 1980s (winner of the Grawemeyer Award), it's composed in a listenable style, it tells a story and it relates to a major issue of our time. https://en.wikipedia.o...

John F

https://davidandersenpianos.com/hamburg ... fferences/

John F

This is all very interesting, but really, "Die Frau ohne Schatten" has nothing to do with postwar Europe in 1919.

John F

I wonder how much R. Strauss's mild-mannered conducting had to do with the limits of sound reproducing technology at the time, vs. Reiner et al who were able to capitalize on the newer stereo technology used to record them? Not at all. In 1928, Willem Mengelberg and the New York Phlharmonic recorde...

John F

There are indeed some hit tunes in Handel's operas. "Ombra mai fu" is world famous, Polyphemus's "O ruddier than the cherry" is a hoot, and "Love in her eyes sits playing" (in Mozart's arrangement - woodwinds!) is a wonder. M6p6lVVViaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6p6lVVViaU But it's not typical...

John F

The melody lines in these works, with their twists and turns, are what you find in the operas My point is that I don't find melody lines in the operas. Handel wrote the operas for the star singers of the day, and while I couldn't say exactly how this influenced the style of his many arias, I'm sure...

John F

Which clips wouldn't play? I can probably find substitutes that will.

John F

From the YouTube comments, it's an entrée from Rameau's Les Boréades. Don't know it at all. By far Handel's most popular music, and I mean really popular, is his orchestral works - the Water Music, the Royal Fireworks Music, the concerti grossi op. 6 and op. 3. His solo keyboard music is less well k...

John F

it questions the purpose of music. Should it entertain - should it communicate something - or (à la Cage) just be listened to without expectation? Music has no one purpose, of course. A large body of music has been composed for use in religious services, though today it may no longer serve that pur...

John F

I tend to agree regarding Kempff and van Kempen. I have both versions, too. The same with Kempff's two complete versions of the Beethoven piano sonatas. I prefer the mono version, and many others I know do, also. That makes two of us. The earlier sonata cycle I have on American Decca LPs, not ideal...

John F

Strauss's own recordings of his music tend toward understatement, though how he conducted that music when it wasw new we can't tell. The Strauss recordings are informative and I respect them but I don't often listen to them.

John F

barney wrote: ↑
Sun Oct 06, 2019 11:26 am
To which I'd add Wilhelm Kempff with Ferdinand Leitner, though some prefer an earlier set with Paul van Kampen, and Claudio Arrau.

I'm one of those who likes the Kempff/van Kempen recordings, as the remakes with Leitner are just a bit too dry. But I wouldn't be without either of them.

John F

In many cases, only repeated hearings will enable you to decide if you like a new work or not . And if one initially doesn't like a work, you should be willing to give it repeated hearing,s because you could begin to like it more this way . That wasn't Rossini's motto. He reportedly said "it is imp...

John F

For me, many of the Handel operas have lyrical highlights, arias on a level of melodic invention that no other composer before Mozart could match. And there are a few that I'm happy to listen to all the way through, like "Acis and Galatea"with the marvelous "Love in her eyes sits playing" and the co...

John F

="Lance" I know there are some on this board that would prefer not to listen to music performed by confirmed Nazi collaborators. And Artur Rubinstein refused ever to play in Germany again after the 1930s. I've no argument against such decisions of conscience, whether just or not. Nor against opposi...

John F

Do we dare to separate the politics from these artist's musical capabilities? We not only dare, we must, if we are to listen to her at all. No one has ever discerned a performance style that is unmistakably and exclusively National Socialist, and no one ever will because there is no such style. Aft...

John F

Zweden can also be heard anonymously in recordings by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, whose concertmaster he was for years.

John F

Anthony Collins's greatest success was as a composer of movie music. Other than that he was a serious musician, but that doesn't explain his many recordings. I believe that had to do with Decca's late start in classical recordings, after other established labels (HMV, Columbia, RCA Victor, etc.) had...

John F

Here's Klemperer's Jupiter Symphony from 1954, one of the earlier Mozart recordings I spoke of. The slow movement is taken quite slow, as was typical at the time, but the tempos of the other movements are not slow at all - indeed Klemperer has time to take the exposition repeat in the finale which n...

John F

In 1907, Mahler met Jean Sibelius, whose symphonies are the polar opposite of Mahler's: compressed, distilled, self-referential. The composers discussed the meaning of the symphony. Sibelius admired its "profound logic and inner connection". Mahler completely disagreed: "A symphony must be like the...

John F

After Mahler and many 20th century symphonies, it's no longer very meaningful to talk of following the 'symphony' in terms of form. A symphony today is an orchestral composition of a certain undefined length and weight, sometimes divided into movements but often not, which the composer chooses to ca...

John F

One possibility for your group might be John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1. It's an attested masterpiece of the 1980s (winner of the Grawemeyer Award), it's composed in a listenable style, it tells a story and it relates to a major issue of our time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._1_(Corig...

John F

Sheer magic. How else could 75-year-old flesh and bone do it? It wasn't just Mehta who was relieved to get to the end - I love it when Horowitz pumps the air at 41:42.

John F

Klemperer's recordings of Mozart symphonies in the 1950s are not noticeably slow by the standards of the time, though nowadays the HIP crowd race through them as if to catch the train home.

John F

Rach3 wrote: ↑
Sun Sep 29, 2019 9:05 am
I have not heard a lot of Judith Weir's music,have not much warmed to most that I have

I've been intrigued by some of her operas, "A Night at the Chinese Opera" and "The Vanishing Bridegroom." Haven't heard much of her since then.

John F

Another member of the Philharmonia Chorus, recruited and trained by Wilhelm Pitz, wa Suvi Raj Grubb. If you remember the name, I suppose few do, it's because he later became Walter Legge's assistant as producer of recordings for EMI, and eventually Legge's successor. He's written memoirs about that....

John F

Klemperer's recordng of the German Requiem for EMI is the version I prefer. It's actually quite fast in placesw, the singing of the Philharmonia Chorus is magnificent, and many details (the horns in "Den alles Fleisch") are exciting in ways you may not expect in this music. du4WF48fsZc https://www.y...

John F

Raymond Lewenthal didn't hop on the Alkan bandwagon, he started it rolling with a famous RCA Victor LP of representative selections. Ronald Smith was also ahead of the game (yes, mixed metaphors) and I still think his recording of Alkan's concerto for solo piano is the finest I've heard. Still older...

John F

Keeping the (633) Languages of New York City Alive Sep 24, 2019 · by Arun Venugopal For a long time, people (and Census officials) thought around 200 languages were spoken in New York. Not so, according to Daniel Kaufman of the Endangered Language Alliance. "What we found is there are more than 600 ...

John F

Maybe that's it, then.

John F

You've forgotten that just as Barack Obama became president the U.;S. economy suffered the worst crash since 1929 - it's called the Great Recession. If the President deserves credit or blame for the state of the economy, a doubtful proposition, then it was Republican George W. Bush who led us into t...

John F

She was the daughter of the baritone Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender who sang Mozart roles at the first Glyndebourne Festivals of the 1930s and recorded Figaro and Guglielmo under Fritz Busch.

John F

Elizabeth Anderson, Philosopher sujatha baliga, Attorney and Restorative Justice Practitioner Lynda Barry, Graphic Novelist, Cartoonist, and Educator Mel Chin, Artist Danielle Citron, Legal Scholar Lisa Daugaard, Criminal Justice Reformer Annie Dorsen, Theater Artist Andrea Dutton, Geochemist and Pa...

John F

I halfway remember having that Beethoven 3rd on a private LP and that Schnabel lost his place in the finale and he and Szell had to stop, regroup, and then contnue. But I can't verify that just now.

John F

For me, the Schnabel/Sargent recordings of the 1930s are his best Beethoven concertos, and they have good sound too. The later versons with other conductors, studio and live, aren't on the same level.

John F

My cable TV service (Spectrum), and I believe many others, has a bunch of channels devoted to various kinds of music, played without commercials and identified on the screen. The two classical channels are Classical Masterpieces, longer works played complete, and Light Classical, short pieces or ind...

John F

As I said, the study at a university in New Zealand found no sea-level rise in Pacific Islands. Perhaps the rate of sea level rise varies locally, but overall I would expect it to even out. February 13, 2018 By Katie Weeman, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, and Patrick ...

John F

Agreed. In music as in language, newness is created by combining the familiar basic elements (pitch, words) in original ways. After composing 100 symphonies, Haydn could and did still create original works in the form, as Shakespeare could after writing 100 sonnets.

John F

Last week I was informed that Verizon will shift my phone line, and all others in my building, from copper wiring to fiber optics. It's a forced change, I have no options. The claim is that normal phone service will be technically improved, but I have no complaints about the phone service I have. Th...

John F

mikealdren wrote: ↑
Tue Sep 24, 2019 3:11 am
Fischer-Dieskau and his wife, Júlia Várady

And his first wife, the cellist Irmgard Poppen.

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