You don't feel like everything should be sold to you as if it's the greatest ever. I like totally get that.
Anybody have a suggestion for a good recording (preferably one w/ a vinyl pressing) of Dvorak's American string quartet? I've been absolutely hooked on that piece recently and would love to have it on wax.
The Juliard String Quartet on Columbia from 1968 is great and easy to find. It is paired with Smetana's "From my Life."
One of the main pleasures of Janacek Quartet's box set of complete DG recordings are the Dvorak performances: https://www.amazon.com/Janácek-Quar...id=1529338793&sr=8-1&keywords=janacek+quartet The American quartet is also available on vinyl: Dvorak*, Janacek Quartet* - String Quartets In F Major, Op. 96 & D Minor, Op. 34 But I highly recommend the box set.
Michael Gielen - Wikipedia Looks like he is mostly a conductor of "modern" classical music, a genre I do not dig at all ...
Pulled this out of the attic. Les Contes D'Hoffman Jacques Offenbach Araiza, Norman, Studer, Ramey, Von Otter, Lind Jeffrey Tate/Staatskapelle Dresden I remember my Upper West Side HMV (long gone) purchase; back in the days when you could walk into a store and be blown away by a new recording. This opera was on the overhead when I walked into the classical room. It was at a time when I bought any-and-everything that included Jessye Norman in the ensemble. Turns out her turn here was not one of her best; the great performance of this comic work (though he plays the straight-man) comes from Francisco Araiza as Hoffman. The other principal singers are very good and the orchestra is competent. Due to the fantastic nature of Hoffman it's an opera better seen first in order to appreciate as a purely aural pleasure (IMO), and though aspects of this recording have been harshly criticized (wiki doesn't even list it) there aren't many versions that sound as good.
Sure. But I feel that it is not the primary reason they’re upset. Karl Böhm for instance had even stronger ties to the Nazis, yet he is pretty much universally lauded on those forums and his pro-Nazi letters ignored. Yet Karajan’s use of party membership in order to advance (or at least maintain) his career is used just as an excuse to dismiss his work entirely, when in fact that dismissal is probably based on disliking him for his success. At least that’s my theory from reading between the lines I may be wrong, though. Wouldn’t be the first time
Maybe I'm just a nihilist at heart, but there's a part of me that reads this and kind of shrugs. No, not because the Reich wasn't horrific in word and deed, but more because we're talking about human beings here. Art is transcendent. Human beings usually aren't. Whether we're talking high art or low, the general observation that seems to hold true is that no government or movement misses the opportunity to enlist artists in propaganda coups and the like. Sadly, there's no shortage of musicians of all walks of life that have zero problem going along with this - whether honestly or, if I'm being charitable, out of a lack of honest appraisal of what they're hitching their proverbial wagon to. Obviously, collaborating with the Third Reich is pretty heinous stuff, even if just culturally, but the mechanism in play here isn't particularly unique as I read it. Mileage may vary here, naturally, and it's easy enough for me to be detached from this given some 80 years remove from the events in question, so take this interpretation with the necessary salt dosage.
This one, hands down. Dvorak*, Janacek Quartet* - String Quartets In F Major, Op. 96 & D Minor, Op. 34
On Spotify, disc 2 from "Anne Boleyn's Songbook - Music & Passions of a Tudor Queen" performed by Alamire on Obsidian. Alamire
