The finest performance you have personally attended.

[smitty1931]

Which one performance stands out in your memory as being close to perfection, either concert, opera or ballet? Mine was a performance of Faust at the Met in the early 60s- magnificent production with Ghiaurov as the devil incarnate!

[some guy]

I try to attend all performances personally, even the bad ones.

[Seán]

In classical music? Gergiev/LSO in the National Concert Hall in Dublin perform Petrushka, it was mesmerising. When they had finished Stravinsky's masterpiece I wanted to hear them do it again.

[nut-job]

Bruckner, Symphony No 8, Carnegie Hall, New York, February 26, 1989, Herbert von Karajan, Wiener Philharmoniker.

[Seán]

Bruckner, Symphony No 8, Carnegie Hall, New York, February 26, 1989, Herbert von Karajan, Wiener Philharmoniker.

Oh, you lucky man.

[pizza]

Martinon/CSO, Mahler 10 in 1966; Reiner/CSO, Bartok Concerto for Orchestra, 1956, (substituted at the last minute in place of Shostakovich 7 when Budapest was suddenly occupied by Soviet tanks); and a spectacular performance of Tchaikovsky 5 by Koussevitzky/BSO in 1949.

[stenka razin]

Nilsson, Vickers, Janowitz and Stewart conducted by Karajan. 'Die Walkure' at the Met in 1969. A night to remember. I have seen so many great artists, in the past 55 years, but, this was a very special night. +++

[karlhenning]

In classical music? Gergiev/LSO in the National Concert Hall in Dublin perform Petrushka, it was mesmerising. When they had finished Stravinsky's masterpiece I wanted to hear them do it again.

I still get goosebumps recalling Gergiev and the Mariinka performing the Leningrad in Worcester's Mechanics Hall.

Cheers,
~Karl

[karlhenning]

(Worcester, Mass.)

Cheers,
~Karl

[Barry]

Rattle/Philadelphia Orchestra performing Gurrelieder at Carnegie Hall around 8-10 years ago.

A couple runners-up:
Abbado/BPO Mahler 9 at Carnegie Hall about a decade ago and a Sawallich/Philly Brahms 4th from early this decade.

[some guy]

Fine. Ignore my joke. See if I care. Oh, wait. Just writing this means I DO care. Oh piffle.

Anyway, my first response to this was to say that I go to a lot of concerts, how can I choose, but that seemed too much like bragging. The joke was much funnier!

Most perfect opera performance of not really an opera was a concert performance of Berlioz' Damnation of Faust (the only way to do this work, I think) by David Zinman and a cast of three. Mephistopheles was superb. They all were, really. At one point Mephistopheles didn't stand to do his bit, he just remained seated, nonchalant, to tell Faust that well, um, sorry old chap and all that, but I'm in control here.

Most perfect opera that was a solo multimedia event was Miguel Azguime's Itinerario do Sal, which I saw in Bourges in 2007. (When I saw him at the ISCM festival a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that, and he pulled a DVD of it out of his satchel and handed it to me. Sweet!!)

Two concerts are about equal for most perfect. Cage's Renga with Apartment House 1776, which I saw in LA in 1976 (or 77--west coast premiere, anyway) after meeting him and playing chess with him that afternoon, and a concert in San Francisco with Zbigniew Karkowski's "Orchestral Music," which was an almost perfect performance of a terrifically exhilarating "piece," preceded by a lovely set by Ulrich Krieger and a set by Phroq (Francisco Meirino). An extra little thrill, as Francisco and I had conversed via email after I'd published a glowing review of one of his albums. Great person in person as well, as composers almost uniformly are.

There. Am I back in the band now? Or do I have to mention the perfect performance of Brahms fourth by Harry Newstone and the Sacramento Symphony back in the late sixties? Because I will if I have to. Newstone's no Karajan, but he really nailed the Brahms that night. Whew!

[karlhenning]

I try to attend all performances personally, even the bad ones.

; )

[Chalkperson]

Jordi Savall with Montserrat Figueras and Hesperion XXI at the Metropolitan Museum in New York...

[Donaldopato]

Recently:

Bruckner 8th Stanislav Skrowaczewski St Louis SO October 19, 2008

Earlier:

Mahler Symphony # 7, Solti Chicago SO Urbana, Il 1972 My first classical music concert.

[Seán]

Mahler Symphony # 7, Solti Chicago SO Urbana, Il 1972 My first classical music concert.

Now, I realase how much that I have missed out of life.

[lmpower]

I can't say that one stands out as the very best, but I don't think that I've seen anything better than Schwarzkopf as the Maschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, and I had the good fortune to see her twice in the role.

[ravel30]

November 5 2000 has been quite a special evening for me (not at all because of the American Election date). I took the bus from Ottawa to Montreal and spend the night in Montreal so that I could attend a concert of the Orchestre Symphonique the Montreal back when it was still conducted by Charles Dutoit.

That concert was particular because it marked the 20th anniversary of the famous recording of Daphnis and Chloe by the OSM (conducted by Charles Dutoit) on Decca. It is said that it is this particular attention that brought a lot of new attention to the OSM as an orchestra. This was my favorite piece back then and the orchestra played the full ballet that night. It was simply amazing.

The orchestra played two other pieces that night. One choral piece by Francis Poulenc and another piece.

That piece was a violin Concerto by the american composer Richard Danielpour. I have only heard that piece on that occasion but I have been completely blown away by it. To the day, I still would love to own a version of that piece. Any help anyone ?

But back to that evening. It was one sure beautiful performance. The choral was amazing, the orchestra was amazing and the conducting was amazing. I still remember the huge ovation given by the crowd to the orchestra. I was sitting in the second row and I got to witness the complexity of the playing. During the ovation, Dutoit looked at me for about 1 second probably wondering what a 22 years old was doing in the crowd that night.

It was a night to remember.

[Wallingford]

Well, the best COMPLETE CONCERTS I've attended were 1) Ozawa & the BSO, on the orchestra's centennial tour stopping in Denver's Boettcher Hall--3/9/81---doing Beethoven's Seventh and Bartok's Concerto For Orchestra (with Afternoon of a Faun as encore); and 2) Lazar Berman's stop in Eugene, Oregon (eigtheen months after I moved northwest) in February '87, at the Hult Center. Berman did Pictures at an Exhibition, Liszt's transcription of "Ave Maria," and a bunch of other Liszt pieces I can't quite recall at the moment.

As for perfection in a single work, I'd leave it a tossup between Katims/Seattle or Sawallisch/Philadelphia doing Brahms' Fourth.

[Ken]

I'm young and my concert-going career has spanned only a handful of years, but I thought I'd nonetheless share my insights.

A few concerts I can qualify as truly special and memorable; though I have to give separate answers for chamber and orchestral performances since they affect me in different ways. On the smaller side of things, I was blessed with access to a world-class two week-long chamber music festival in my hometown that allowed me to see world-class musicians such as Augustin Dumay, Anton Kuerti, Angela Hewitt, Louis Lortie, Daniel Müller-Schott, the Leipzig, Moscow, Emerson, and Tokyo String Quartets, and so on. Over the years I'd seen dozens of concerts, though the one that pops out in my mind right now is a performance a few years ago by the Vienna Piano Trio featuring the Smetana Piano Trio and Beethoven's Ghost Trio. The former work was conveyed with a degree of sensitivity and emotion that left me feeling 'hungover' (at least musically) for days afterward.

On the orchestral front, I can nominate a few concerts as top contenders for the 'finest performance' title, but the one that sticks out for me the most is the performance of Mahler's Third Symphony that I attended in London two years ago, with Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducting the LPO. Somewhere in the bowels of the CMG archives there's a personal account of mine that describes my experience. I can remember not believing that musicianship could be so precise and honed while at the same time moving along to the romantic wildness that the score (and, of course, Rozhdestvensky's personal conducting style) demands.

[stickles]

Being marooned in Chicago, most of the concerts I attend are by the local bands plus the occasional visiting ensambles. I have seen quite a few technically perfect concerts, but technical perfection doesn not always speak to my heart. However there are exceptions as I remember the Cleveland Orchestra came in town and did a majestic Brahms 1st under Dohnanyi in the 90's, and more recently Haitink/CSO/Mahler 6, Van Zweden/CSO/Bruckner 5 (both of these were so good that I went again for a second helping), Kissin playing Brahms 1st concerto with CSO/Dutoit also stood out for me. I also recall the young Cecilia Bartoli showing off her goods in her american debut at the University of Chicago in a Rossini recital. And then there was Mullova playing Bach's unaccompanied partitas and sonatas for violin and keyboard just a few years ago. Lyric Opera's production of Billy Budd by McVicar six or seven years ago with Gunn/Begley/Ramey remains the pinnacle for me in terms of opera.

[John F]

Impossible to pick just one. Dozens, maybe hundreds, crowd the top of my list, each exceptionally fine in its own way. The 16th century Chinese opera "The Peony Pavilion" by Tang Xianzu, all 55 scenes and 19 hours of it, as performed at the Lincoln Center Festival in 1999, can't be compared with Sviatoslav Richter's performance of Prokofiev's Sonata #6 in Boston back in 1961, or Berg's "Lulu" in Stuttgart with Anja Silja in the title role and Wieland Wagner as producer in 1968, or the Prokofiev Symphony #5 as played by the London Symphony under Valery Gergiev in Avery Fisher Hall last March at the end of the orchestra's American tour. Just for starters.

I can't imagine any of these being done better - though there's no reason why that couldn't happen next week. (Well, maybe not the "Peony Pavilion," which hadn't been performed complete for 4 centuries and may not be again.) And even if they could be compared, how could they possibly be ranked, with just one "winner"?

[val]

BRUCKNER: 7th Symphony / Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Eugen Jochum

MAHLER: First Symphony / BRO, Kubelik

WEBERN: Work for string Quartet / LaSalle Quartet

LISZT: Sonata in B minor / Emil Gilels

MONTEVERDI: Orfeo / Eric Tappy, Corboz

[jserraglio]

sorry, cant choose just one:

Sessions, Symphony 7 with Martinon/CSO 1967 world premiere, Hill Aud., Ann Arbor.
Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, also with Martinon/CSO 1967. Ann Arbor.
I have the b'cast recordings of these two and listen to them often. Spectacular performances.

also--
Rudolf Serkin recital - LvB Diabelli Variations - Jordan Hall? early 70's.
Leonid Kogan - Brahms Violin Concerto - Jordan Hall? early 70's.
John Adams, Naive & Sentimental Music - Severance Hall 1990s
Mahler, Symphony 7 Boulez/Cleveland Severance Hall 1990's
Nielsen, Symphony 4 Louis Lane-Cleveland Institute of Music Orch c. 2002
Britten, The Rape of Lucretia - Oberlin and Poulenc, Carmelites - Cleveland Institute of Music c.2003.

[Istvan]

The most memorable recital for me was one at the Festival Hall in 1965 when Claudio Arrau played Schubert's last Sonata, D.960 in B flat and in a way a recording can never capture, since his glorious, rich sound seemed to spread over the whole auditorium.
One concert: Solti conducting the Elgar 1; Festival Hall 1972 - the first time, despite many previous hearings, that I realized what a masterpiece this was.
For opera, it would have to be Solti again and this is a very hard choice from so many great evenings at Covent Garden. For an evening of great staging, acting, singing and playing (and they are rarely all present on the same evening) l would choose Everding's production of "Salome" with Grace Bumbry in the title role. That said, I would be reluctant to put aside the Solti-Geraint Evans 'Falstaff' (Zeffirelli production).

[some guy]

Thanks Karl! I didn't want to think that I could only make myself grin!

Also good to see that so many of us have gone to too many fine concerts to choose just one. (Why, I've been to over a hundred since just this past August 18. And several stood out from just that small number. And there's about a hundred more to go before this trip is over. Mmmm, maybe less. Over fifty for sure. This weekend there'll only be eight. At least one of those will be very fine, indeed. But I anticipate.)

[Barry]

As for perfection in a single work, I'd leave it a tossup between Katims/Seattle or Sawallisch/Philadelphia doing Brahms' Fourth.

I believe that tour you saw Sawallisch/Philly perform Brahms 4th on took place just a few months after the performance I mentioned as one of my two runners-up in my above post. They played it with such tremendous intensity, with the Orchestra's sound making a huge impact. I still remember the impact the opening note made on me. The strings came in so seemlessly and Sawallisch held it a little longer than I was used to. I was immediately jolted up to the edge of my seat, where I remained until the last note of the final movement.

[JackC]

An impossible question, but I do have a particularly fond memory of a performance of Bruckner's 4th Symphony by the Boston SO under Klaus Tennstedt back in the early 80s.

It was thrilling and I was awestruck. Bruckner is not my favorate composer, but Tennstedt made it sound like the greatest piece ever composed.

[Anders Wik]

Manfred Hoeneck with the Gothenburg Symphony at New Years Eve 1999. He took his family up to Sweden from the Continent and step into rehearsel just a day or two before the concert. The other conductor (don´t remember who ?) became sick.And they performed a tremendous Mahler Second just some hours befor the Millenium night.

[Lance]

Artur Rubinstein in concert. Always a thrill to hear such an artist live, in the flesh, and especially to converse with the man afterwards! What a presence Rubinstein brought to the stage - and what music!

[stenka razin]

Artur Rubinstein in concert. Always a thrill to hear such an artist live, in the flesh, and especially to converse with the man afterwards! What a presence Rubinstein brought to the stage - and what music!

Lance, you and I are in total agreement. Rubinstein's concerts were at the top of my list. What a great performer, mate!

[Ricordanza]

Like others who have posted, I can't pick just one, so I'll offer a handful that come to mind, starting with solo piano performances and concluding with orchestral performances:

1966 Liszt, Vallee D'Obermann, Vladimir Horowitz

1971 Bach/Busoni, Chaconne, Alicia DeLarrocha

1998 Liszt, Sonata in B Minor, Evgeny Kissin

2004 Chopin, Sonata No. 2, Krystian Zimerman

2004 Albeniz, Iberia, Marc-Andre Hamelin

2009 Beethoven, Diabelli Variations, Anton Kuerti

late 60's Debussy, La Mer, Ansermet, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande

2003 Beethoven, Symphony No. 9, Sawallisch, Philadelphia Orchestra

2005 Mahler, Symphony No. 9, Eschenbach, Philadelphia Orchestra

[barney]

In classical music? Gergiev/LSO in the National Concert Hall in Dublin perform Petrushka, it was mesmerising. When they had finished Stravinsky's masterpiece I wanted to hear them do it again.

I still get goosebumps recalling Gergiev and the Mariinka performing the Leningrad in Worcester's Mechanics Hall.

Cheers,
~Karl

Me too. Well nearly. Gergiev and the Kirov doing the Leningrad at the Melbourne Festival in 2001. Flawless, riveting. They also did the Fiery Angel and Elektra at the festival. Quite astounding.

But there are too many candidates to pick one. Freni/Maazel doing Falstaff at La Scala, Pavarotti/Caballe/Haitink doing Masked Ball at Covent Garden, Vickers/Pritchard Peter Grimes in Paris, Mahler with LSO/Abbado or NYPO/Bernstein, LPO under Ashkenazy or Jurowski (the latter two concerts this week, Tchaikovsky 4 and Ravel G major with Thibaudet), Andras Schiff doing the WT Clavier at the 1988 Adelaide Festival in two concerts, or Marc-Andre Hamelin in a recital earlier this year. No actually, I'm not going to think about it any more. I can't possibly choose.

Never heard Karajan, to my regret, or Klemperer or Kleiber or Szell (my father's hero) or so many more. Thank God for recordings.

[John F]

The Kirov Orch and Gergiev played Shostakovich 7 in New York as part of the complete Shostakovich symphony cycle, and it made a big impression here. One friend said it was the first time she'd ever been able to listen to the piece as music, all the way through.

[CharmNewton]

Mahler Symphony # 7, Solti Chicago SO Urbana, Il 1972 My first classical music concert.

Now, I realase how much that I have missed out of life.

That was just before they recorded it. London/Decca liked the Krannert Center as a recording venue, but it got too expensive and they settled on Medinah Temple instead.. Those concerts sold out in Chicago and I wasn't able to get a ticket. Solti may have taken the work to New York and possibly to Europe, but he never programmed it again in Chicago.

John