Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #16)

Last night, I looked up the cost of this and the Mahler box sets on amazon.com (USA). The 12-CD DSD Mahler box set alone was ~$60. The 60 CD set is ~$95. So you get 48 CDs for $35. Not a bad deal.

 

Yep, kind of "The Complete Mahler Symphonies plus a couple of bonus [hard drive] discs".

 

Chortle.

 

Now Playing



Op. 10

First time through this set. He sounds a bit more unbuttoned than he does on his Amadeo/Brilliant set, but the mono sound isn't as good.

 

I like Hewitt's latest WTC:

 

Decca’s engineering was one of the best for early digital recordings.

 

I am expecting the set any day now. I also have her earlier version ...

 

Well Tempered Costume?

 

Is this entire set mono?

 

Yes.

 

It doesn't. Just checked my copy.

 

I don't know. I only own the Solti.

 

Well, depends on the critic. Of course you are right, at least up to a point: all that any critic can offer is a (we hope!) educated opinion about the merits and demerits of a performance or composition. A really *good* critic, though, can teach you and help you develop your own taste, even if you don't agree with him--or, seemingly more rarely, her. For example, I by no means always agree with the old volumes by B.H. Haggin, but Haggin, however trenchant, no matter how idiosyncratic, never hesitated to turn a sacred cow into a tasty beef roast and never left the reader in doubt about what he thought or, more importantly, *why*. Thus, for instance, I can hear exactly what led him to his famous dislike for the music of Brahms. It's right there in the music, once Haggin points it out. What bothered Haggin does not bother me, at least for the most part, but I learned something about Brahms, and about my own taste, by reading Haggin's criticism.

You have my condolences for your misfortune! Maybe you'll have better luck later.

Thank you ! In general, I tend to like Walter better as I go earlier in his career. His mono PSONY Mahler 1 has been my "go to" account for years; I'll definitely need to check into this yet earlier account. Incidentally, there's a 1948 broadcast recording of Walter and Horowitz in the Tchaikowsky 1st Cto. (with the NYPO) that certainly gives the lie to Walter's repuation as a perpetually "genial" conductor.

 

This request was met with thunderous silence, so let me try to get the ball rolling. Have you listened to any Vladimir de Pachmann? Yes, he had a reputation for being, shall we say, *eccentric*, and I therefore paid him little attention for years, but eventually one volume of a reissue series on Arbiter came my way and made a believer of me. (One of those very rare instances when I came to an artist through a reissue instead of through original 78s.)

You might also profitably sample some Paderewski. Again, critical hindsight has not been especially kind to him, but then, critical rectitude is one reason that life-breathing rubato, and all the other 19th century practices now long gone, fell by the wayside. When my wife was once teaching the Chopin "Revolutionary" Etude to one of her students, I put together a disc of 25 accounts in order of the performers' birth years, starting well back in the 19th c. and running through to fairly recent. An interesting study in the evolution of style, but more to the point for our purposes, Paderewski, whose technical ability to meet the etudes' challenges has been pretty much a matter of critical dismissal forever, made the music come truly alive in a way that by no means all the others (and particularly few of the more modern contenders) managed. Again, that made a believer out of me. The man wasn't the classical music superstar of the late 19th c. for nothing.

 

I actually have this twofer, which really highlights Solti's style, brisk and impulsive. I believe these were also Solti's mid-career recordings ...

 

Jed Distler (classicstoday.com) on Barenboim's WTC Book 1: "No doubt a strong personality is at work at the keyboard, yet for less pretentious manifestations of 'old fashioned' Bach pianism I prefer Edwin Fischer and Samuel Feinberg."

 

I have the complete WTC by Edwin Fischer and generally enjoy the recordings, ever mindful they were from a different era. I hope to get the Feinberg version shortly. Not every pianist that has tried his/her hands on Bach has come away with resounding success. I was not particularly impressed with this recent attempt by Helene Grimaud, though she is an excellent pianist in most other works and I have many of her recordings in works by classical composers ...

 

Ah, the price we pay as Richter fans though . . . Didn't someone once have to stick a mic in a plant to capture one of his performances? I remember coming across that somewhere.

 

I like Angela Hewitt too, though I haven't heard it.

Hyperion really has a great Web site. Downloads in FLAC and mp3 and the notes in .pdf are all available via link.

 

I thought her earlier version of WTC was quite good as well. I have not heard the latest version to be able to make any comment and hopefully my set will arrive shortly ...

 

Symphony #107 in A-flat major—"The Cough", Hoboken # II

I guess that Richter's more or less "Live"* performance of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is one of classical music's great hair-shirt recordings.

*—judging from the bronchial action there must have been a couple-two-three hundred zombies in the Sofia, Bulgaria audience that night in 1958—

 

I agree, this is one of her worst...but even her worst is not bad enough

 

Agree. A friend of mine played this for me and it was some of the worst Bach I have heard in a while. Totally misses the point of what Bach is about. She has yet to impress me with any recording I have heard.