Not sure if the CD editions of this include all the liner notes of the 1964 LP, but Gould originally wrote a sidebar explaining a minor issue with his piano heard in this recording. The instrument is the same 1945 Steinway he used for most of his recordings, but after the usual tweaking prior to recording these Inventions, it was found to emit "a sort of hiccup" in the middle register. Gould decided to press on with the recording session without fixing it, saying he had "grown somewhat accustomed to it," referring to it as a "charming idiosyncrasy" and rationalizing the effect "by comparing it with the [Bach-era] clavichord's propensity for an intra-tone vibrato." In the end, the mechanical "hiccup" is no worse than Gould's humming; his extraordinary performance simply transcends it all.
Now listening to "The Mirror of Narcissus - Songs by Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377)" performed by Gothic Voices led by Christopher Page on Hyperion. Featuring: (the lovely and talented) Emma Kirkby Margaret Philpot Rogers Covey-Crump
I can't comment on this recording, but it looks interesting with a full printed score, CD-ROM and other extras. I have posted on Kaplan's Vienna recording back in thread #38.
Now listening to "Handel - Acis And Galatea" performed by Les Arts Florissants directed by William Christie on Erato. Main vocalists are Sophie Daneman (soprano)/Patricia Petibon (soprano)/Paul Agnew (tenor)/Joseph Cornwell (tenor)/Alan Ewing (tenor).
Now listening to "Mendelssohn, Bruch - Concertos & Romance" performed by Janine Jansen with the Gewandhaus Orchester led by Riccardo Chailly on Decca.
I've been listening to my Beethoven violin sonatas sets... I have the Grumiaux/Haskil, Perlman/Ashkenazy, and I've been meaning to get the Oistrakh/Oborin... any other complete sets I should consider? I'm not a fan of the Kremer/Argerich or Mutter/Orkis.
The vocals are excellent and as far as the recording goes it sounded live to me (not as in 'it was a live recording' but as in 'I was right there with them')
Now playing the following CD from my Handel collection for a second listen ... For Tra Le Fiamme, HMW 170, the performance is not even close to what Emma Kirkby and Christopher Hogwood/AAM delivered even as the ensemble and the soprano were all Italian ...
Well, if you're historically minded, I think the first complete traversal on records was by Fritz Kreisler with Franz Rupp. I'll confess with a bit of a blush that I neither own nor have heard any of these, but a fellow 78-collector friend thinks highly of them. Oddly enough, when issued they drew something less than unqualified critical praise. I do have the single sonata (no. 8) that Kreisler recorded with Sergei Rachmaninoff at the keyboard; it's been too many years since I played it for me to offer more than a general recollection that it's no less fine a performance than one would expect from those artists. Other singles that I would consider include the Kreutzer done by Heifetz and Benno Moiseiwitsch (mono; not the stereo one with the excessively deferential Brooks Smith, and generally not the rest of the Heifetz complete set, which generally suffers from the same problem of subservient keyboard playing) and especially Adolf Busch with son-in-law Rudolf Serkin, which to my ear has never been matched for hell-for-leather intensity in the first mvt. Szymon Goldberg and Lili Kraus certainly don't hit that mark in their account of that sonata, but they find lovely things in several of the others. Too bad they never recorded the full cycle, probably because of the disruption of WW II, when Kraus was interned in a Japanese POW camp for several years. Coming to more modern recordings, my first "complete cycle" box--and, come to think of it, possibly my only one aside from the cycle included in the "complete works of Beethoven" box--was on CRD set 1115/9, 5 LPs by Erich Gruenberg, vln. and David Wilde, pno. I stumbled across it for $5 or so in the bargain bin of one of the old record store chains, and at the time I was pleased with it; my first encounter with much of this music, but not obviously underpowered or otherwise unsatisfying. The set drew good reviews when issued, but it's been many and many a year since I revisited it.
William Christie is supposed to be a baroque specialist. He is probably the best out there when it comes to French baroque. I enjoy the following box ...
Beautiful stuff....Quiet saturday....no choppers nor airplanes it seems...so I am indulging an afternoon of vintage strings.
These are the sets I have: • Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Wilhelm Kempff – 3 CDs, DG (recorded in 1953) • Zino Francescatti and Robert Casadesus – 3 CDs, Sony (recorded in 1958 and 1961) • David Oistrakh and Lev Oborin – 4 CDs, Decca (recorded in 1962) • Isaac Stern and Eugene Istomin – 3 CDs, Sony (recorded in 1969 and 1982-1983) • Itzhak Perlman and Vladimir Ashkenazy – 4 CDs, Decca (recorded in 1973-1975) • Augustin Dumay and Maria João Pires – 3 CDs, DG (recorded in 1997 and 2001-2002) • Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov – 3 CDs + 1 DVD, Harmonia Mundi France (recorded in 2009) • Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Thiberghien – 3 CDs, Wigmore Hall (recorded in 2009) plus the performances in boxes by Arthur Grumiaux and Clara Haskil, and Oleg Kagan and Sviatoslav Richter.
A pretty impressive list, I only have three of the sets as indicated above. Now playing CD1 - Violin Sonata op. 12 Nos 1 - 3 from the following Martha Argerich and Gidon Kremer box
