Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #6)

While I always like Christopher Hogwood and his AAM for baroque works. I think his Beethoven 9th was somewhat disappointed. I do have the entire LvB Symphonies cycle by Hogwood ...

 

Just grabbed one in Like New condition for $17. Thanks for the heads up.

 

I've been listening to Tennstedt's Mahler 5, 9, and 10 as the snow continues coming down. I don't think there's been a storm like this in Pittsburgh anytime in the last ten years.

 

I need to have more CD's by Furtwangler ...

 

I had wanted to get the Tennstedt's Mahler set last month but decided to wait so as not to blow my monthly music budget. Between Lenny and Klaus, the two sets should be more than enough for someone who is not a Mahler diehard ...

 

Now playing this CD from my Bach collection ...

 

Savall, along with Ton Koopman and Hopkinson Smith, do a terrific job with the material of one of my favorite early composers: Marin Marais.

The Pieces de Viole series on Astree are some of my most listened to discs. I had Books 3 and 4 of the series and now find they're out-of-print, so I just ordered Book 2 before it disappears.

 

Tastes Strange—Less Filling

Get the SACD re-recording of Book 4:



This issue has more pieces and is better recorded. Amazon has it in stock now for about $28. Indispensable.

 

Thanks, Robin. I do have SACD so it's woth considering. You're talkin' the Savall, Pierot, Lislevand, etc. disc on AliaVox? I see the "Etranger" Suite is there but wasn't sure it had more tracks. I'll look into it further.

 

Loose Banter

If you haven't picked up the SACD of



. . . you should while it's still around. It has the best of Savall's three versions of the dark and spooky Le Badinage.

 

"Bonus" Tracks

Yes I am and yes it does.

I still have the earlier issues of "Etranger" and Book five.

Nothing semi about Savall's early musicke.

Ever hear the Hopkinson Smith recording: Piéces de Luth du Vieux Gaultier? Extraordinary performance and sound. Long OOP, of course.

 

I bought this recording a few months ago ...

 

The Beethoven Symphonies by Andre Cluytens and the BPO appear to be available on both EMI and on Disky, a Dutch label. Does anyone know if they are exactly the same recording?

I only have the picture for the EMI set ...

 

People tell me that cd rot is a myth but I've had a few of them flake up on me,
Pretenders (s/t) and the DIDX-55 'Aja'.

 

Probably but I'd go for the EMI set, they've got the master.

Wonderful version of the Pastorale.

 

I have the vinyl box (Columbia/Odyssey) of Bruno Walter and the CSO doing all 9 Symphonies. Do you or Robin have any thoughts on these performances?

The box says 'produced by John McClure' within it and notes that Walter died in early '62.

The pressings are Canadian and very clean . . .

The sound is clean-to-congested mono, almost certainly direct-to-disc recordings judging by the lack of top end.

 

Walter is a superb Beethoven interpreter.

 

I have heard the same comment before. I think Walter may have a full cycle with the VPO but I am not 100% sure. I think I should really give Walter's set some consideration. I also like Reiner. Unfortunately, I have never seen the full cycle by Reiner.

 

Walter's Pastoral is considered one of the very best performances of that work. The 4th it's paired with is not to shabby, either. The CD is ridiculously cheap right now over at amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Sym...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1261282382&sr=8-1

 

If it's Walter and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra then the original recordings are stereo with smiley-faced EQ. I've owned the NYPO Ninth on vinyl but don't recall/remember a complete mono set with the New York Philharmonic. Bruno Walter's Columbia Symphony Orchestra is an L.A. based ad-hoc ensemble—lots of Hollywood studio musicians with a few ringers from the LAPO. There's SACDs [in my collection] of the fifth and Pastorale. Tempos, like most of Walter's, tend towards the moderately slow, ensemble is less than perfect. There's some fine "Viennese" interpretations in this set but overall critics tend to be a bit too kind to Walter's romanticization and inflation of these scores. My U.S. Odyssey copy of Walter's CSO Beethoven featured a zippy top and a boomy bottom with lots of tape artifacts and wide stereo. The Fourth symphony, Pastorale and the slow movement of the Ninth are highlights. Other than the aforementioned two SACDs, the original vinyl and the Bruno Walter Edition CD remasters from the 90's have the best sound.

 

Nope, he didn't.

There isn't a full set by Reiner.

 

The earliest Beethoven cycles in my collection are the 1955 Karajan on EMI and the set by Toscanini with NBC Symphony and I am really not a big fan of the latter. Robin is no doubt far more knowledgeable in the Walter's recordings ...

 

To each his own, I guess; I've built up a large collection of 78s over the years in large part because I almost never get sound as good from reissues. Yes, they can be scratch, but I find that my ears quickly sort the underlying music out from the surface noise and ignore the latter.

A couple of roughly contemporary versions that I have on 78s--Albert Coates on Victor and Max von Schillings on Columbia--have an oddity that I've heard nowhere else: when they reach the coda, they go into pronounced overdrive, maybe doubling the tempo over what you'd normally expect. Curious that they both would do that but nobody else seems to.

Again, I've learned to "listen through" the recording to the music below. Among my favorite recordings of Beethoven's 9th, for instance, is the Albert Coates version, despite its reorchestrated oddities (tubas for double basses, a legacy of the then-recently-ended acoustic era) and horridly congested sound. I have yet to hear a vocal quartet in the final mvt. that could better those on the Coates recording (Suddaby, Walker, Widdop, Robertson), crummy English translation and all.

I used to be a HIP partisan, but over time I've moderated my thoughts. These days, I see little point in the whole period instrument exercise after maybe late Haydn or so, and by Beethoven I think period instruments are actually rather counterproductive. I think B., maybe because of his deafness, may have been the first composer to embody fully the "onward and upward" outlook of the Enlightenment, writing not for the limited resources of his own day but for something better that would be available as progress improved them. I'm quite convinced, for instance, that the modern concert grand is what, without actually hearing one, he had in mind when he wrote his big piano works.

 

If you mean Toscanini's ca. 1950 commercial cycle, you may want to search out the 1939 series taken from broadcasts. Many critics find it preferable, and my own listening, while not systematic or complete enough to be conclusive, suggests that they are on to something.

 

The sound in the Karajan Philharmonia set could be better and the sound in the Toscanini set could hardly be worse.

I started collecting Bruno Walter's recordings about the time I started collecting records, around 1970. Odyssey LPs could regularly be found new for about two bucks a pop and Bruno Walter's CSO recordings stuck out thanks to their Hi-Fi eq. The Bruno Walter Edition CD remasters from Sony tended to straighten out the EQ, resulting in a more plausible sound. There were times when Walter could lay on the schmaltz with a trowel—a slo-mo Dvorak 8th comes to mind—but he also could be inspired. His Bruckner recordings—Symphonies 4, 7 & 9—and his Mahler 2 & 9 are particularly recommended.

There are two earlier recordings that must be mentioned. Whenever I hear the term "legendary" attached to a recording I have to ask—"what legend is it and who's telling it?" But Walter's debut recording of Mahler's 9th with the Vienna Philharmonic is the last recording of the VPO prior to the Anschluss. It's touching and heartbreaking and absurdly well recorded for the time. Walter returned, postwar, to the VPO in 1952 to re-record Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. Walter made the first recording in 1936 with the VPO and would make a final studio recording in stereo for Columbia with the NYPO. But the second recording with Kathleen Ferrier is the legendary performance. Ferrier was suffering under a 'death sentence' during the recording—she was experiencing a relapse of breast cancer and would be dead within a year. Hardly anything on record is a deeply moving as her singing on this record, particularly the final Der Abschied and the Rückert-Lieder - Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. Bruno Walter loved working with Kathleen Ferrier and it really shows on these recordings.