Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #70)

Now playing CD4 - Beethoven 7th and Dvorak 8th by the VPO from the following box for a first listen ...

 

No.5-8 today. Vibrant playing and crystal clear sound.

 

Now playing the following CD from my early music collection ...

 

I played two old LPs...Berman's has rather clattery piano sound, but what amazing playing! Heifetz' has superb playing and sound.

 

Now playing the following CD from my Brahms collection ...

 

I keep replaying this, a good sign:



Today, sonatas 23, 24, 26, 27, 28 & 29. Arrau's conception of the Hammerklavier Sonata's slow movement is as great as Schnabel's, if a touch more human/less cosmic. This is one of the few versions of the opening movement of op. 106 that really makes sense to me.

 

You are breaking records here. I probably won't get to my second listen for a long time ...

 

I obtained a good number of the Living Stereo SACD releases at low prices including the Ravel. Of course, the recording quality does vary but all in all I enjoy all of them.

 

Now listening to "Mozart - Piano Concerto No.19 K.459/"Ch'io mi scordi di te" - "Non temer, amato bene" K.505 (from Idomeneo)/Piano Concerto No.23 K.488" performed by Helene Grimaud, soprano Mojca Erdmann, the Kammerorchester Des Symphonieorchesters Des Bayerischen Rundfunks led by Radoslaw Szulc on DG.

 

Amazon U.K. finally made a decision today and granted me a full refund. They didn't ask me to return the item; I'll not return it unless the seller pays for the postage, which I doubt they will.

 

This LP arrived today--I don't think it ever was released on CD. I bought it when it first came out in '81 or so, and stupidly got rid of it during my great LP purge in the late 90s! Anyway, it's a wonderful piece that freely mixes atonality and tonality--the Fugue is practically Brahmsian! Great playing and wonderfully ambient, rich sound--thanks to being recorded in a church.

 

New Lute CD's never let me down!

Beautiful stuff...

 

I NEVER purged any of my LP collection ...

 

I was running out of room and rarely played them, so I got rid of about 400 of them *Sigh*...what a fool!

 

Actually, I'm not. He didn't record that much. But I've heard some of his work. His most important contribution was in training conductors. In that job he's a legend (see Wikipedia list of his students).

 

My policy has been all the time to get rid off of less interesting records. And then I've cried after them ten or thirty years later... I had nice small collection of 1970's jazz (Garbarek, Jarrett, Stanko, Vesala etc.) and then I just got rid of them because at that time I wasn't ineterested sort of "ECM Jazz". Now I have some of it as CD's and those sound shrill, cold & uninviting...

 

I've noticed that while on computer, it's best to listen something quite familiar music so I can better concentrate on whatever I'm doing. So... it's Ravel time.

 

It's a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit, to say that I've never yet disposed of a record that I didn't eventually end up regretting it. Nowadays as I copy them to hard drive, I continue to store 78s as I always have, but I'm bulk storing the copied LPs and CDs in cartons at an off-site storage locker. (Badly as my 78s have outstripped available storage at home, my LPs are worse, and the CDs never had an adequate home. I guess you can see where my priorities are! ) How much longer I'll be able to do that I'm not sure--the monthly rent keeps going up-up-up--but.... If I can keep it from foundering on equipment failures, as has been the case more than once in the past, a pending project is an all-out assault on duplicates. We shall see.

 

Just listened to Miles Davis' Sorcerer MoFi SACD which I just received and am now listening to a set that also arrived today: Schubert: Symphonies 4, D417, 5, D485 - Neville Marriner/Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields - Schubert: The 10 Symphonies - 6 CDs, Philips; disc 3

 

Now: Brahms: Symphonies 2, Op.73; 4, Op.98 (including alternative opening) - Riccardo Chailly/Gewandhausorchester Leipzig - Brahms: The Symphonies - 3 CDs, Decca; disc 2

 

Not bad, but not great either. Can't put my finger on it after a first listen but something is missing from these performances. Otto Klemperer (with the Philharmonia Orchestra) is still my favourite conductor in the Brahms symphonies, closely followed by George Szell (with the Cleveland Orchestra).

 

Now playing:
Claude Debussy – La Mer, Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune, Jeux, Nocturnes
— New York Philharmonic – Leonard Bernstein (Sony Classical)

 

I had a little over 4000+ LP's in classical music and a few hundred in non-classical when I stopped buying LP's sometimes around 1988. My current CD collection surpassed the LP collection about 3 years ago ...

 

How do you like that box? I was a bit intrigued when I bought the box and noticed Symphony No. 10 ...

 

So far I've only listened to disc 3, but that was fine. Very enjoyable.