I remember what awakened me to the great classics was going to the movies. Back then , before the curtain opened, great symphonic music would play for several minutes. Our two theaters were beautiful sounding halls that made the music blossom. It was moving. Today what do the kids have at the movies? Television commercials and Rap blaring away at them.
If his last name looks somewhat familiar, that's because he is Tatiana Nikolayeva's grandson. I'd say he inherited her considerable gifts! He plays several short works by Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Scriabin and Prokofiev. Excellent sound.
Funny thing--I just heard for the first time a recording of Godowsky's "Passacaglia," which is based on the opening bars of the Schubert 8th. (Godowsky wrote it as a tribute pursuant to observances of the 100th anniversary of Schubert's death.) The story goes that Godowsky himself played it easily, but Horowitz spent a year working on it and finally gave up, stating "you'd need six hands to play that thing."
Ah, Godowsky. I have read that he played wonderfully in his home for visitors, but his artistry was never really captured on CD. I have the three volume set on Marston Records. I recall a quote of a statement to this effect from Josef Hofmann to Abram Chasins (or course, Popsy is Godowsky): “Never forget what you heard tonight; never lose the memory of that sound. There is nothing like it in the world. It is tragic that the world has never heard Popsy as only he can play.”
I've moved on to the Godowsky studies on Chopin's op. 10 etudes. I'm playing the recording in small groups, not from one end to the other, which would be just too much in a sitting. Some of them are quite witty, some frightening in their profusions of notes. Sometimes the bass sonorities are astonishing and fabulous. I hadn't realized that Godowsky wrote more than one study per Chopin etude, but it turns out that for most he wrote at least a couple; he wrote seven for op. 10 no. 5. In all or nearly all these sets, at least one is for left hand alone. David Stanhope, the pianist in my CD set, characterizes them as being like variations, and I think that's quite a useful way to think of them. Great fun so far, much more than I had expected; for one thing, for all the studies' overwhelming technical demands, they have much more the feel of serious "recompositions" than "virtuoso showpieces mauling simpler originals" like, say, most of the Liszt paraphrases (or at least the ones I've heard). Incidentally, Stanhope has recorded the op. 10 no. 5 set twice, once in the late 1990s on an Australian Stuart & Sons piano and again in the complete set, recorded in 2012, this time on a Steinway. Interesting the contrast between the tonal quality of the two instruments. The Steinway, on the whole, offers a "richer" sound, whereas the Stuart & Sons is brighter, lighter and airier, albeit by no means lacking in heft or power when needed. Stuart & Sons, by the by, has produced the world's first 108 key piano, spanning a full 9 octaves, although that instrument made its appearance well after Stanhope's recordings of the Chopin-Godowsky op. 10-5 studies. It also features four pedals, adding to the typical three a pedal like the "soft" pedal of an upright, which moves the hammers closer to the strings for a quieter but still full-bodied sound. Unlike, say, Bosendorfer, which adds keys in the bass only for its Imperial concert grand, Stuart & Sons extends the "standard" keyboard at both ends. An interesting discussion of how various mfrs. have addressed this issue, with helpful graphics, can be found here: WHY 108 Keys....
The third movement in particular is really immensely great. I live in one of the cities (Stuttgart) Kleiber made his home for a few years under W. Schäfer's directorship. He was undervalued then as now by the audience here. Almost impossible to fathom that they didn't understand who they had.
A landmark version of the 5th. Regarding his being undervalued... it's not the first time an extraordinary man has been without honor only in his own land.
His seven years in Stuttgart as Kapellmeister (Württembergischer Staatsorchester) brought continuity in the reknown of the live opera played in the city. He joined in the same year that Stuttgart's star tenor Fritz Wunderlich died from a horrible accident and the opera company at least had to come to terms with that. He may have lacked sensitivity to how the vaccuum was best to be filled amoung the singers. He certainly clashed constantly with stage directors and dramaturgs during rehearsals, but surely there was no earthly reason why he should have left in 1973 with such a hatred of the place. He refused all attempts to bring him back as a guest conductor. As far as live recordings of Kleiber in Stuttgart from 1966-73 go I have seen ultra rare CD compilations from the Schäfer era in our local public music library with one or two isolated arias. Can't find them to buy so far.
Like father, like son? In The Great Conductors, Harold Schonberg recounts how an official of one German house remarked that when Erich Kleiber came to the house, there was trouble with a capital T. He seems to have made a career of fighting managements, not to mention political establishments of which he did not approve (Hitler's bunch, then the East German Communists and the West German postwar government, which, if I remember Schonberg correctly, he dismissed as "small minded."). Erich K. supposedly uttered one of my favorite musical quotations: "The conductor must live in his house like a lion with its claws in its prey."
Don't have that one, but I have many of those EMI boxes that they have put out over the years. Good stuff.
He wasn't on the wrong side of the argument in any of those political examples you quote Schonberg on, for sure. The spectre of small-minded West German political conservatism didn't really ever change until the 70s with Brandt as Chancellor and the slightly more musically oriented Federal President Walter Scheel. Unfortunately, we had throwbacks to the Adenauer style of politics under Helmut Kohl, who seems to have been tone deaf to culture in any form.
I recorded a TV program which included a segment on the Goldberg Variations. Later I put on Gould, but this more successfully hit the Bach Spot. Tony
Decided to end the day with some nice, quiet, restful Janissary music. Weber: Overture to Abu Hassan (Hamilton Harty, 1927) Cherubini: Overture to Ali Baba (Arturo Toscanini, 1949) Mozart: Overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio (with Busoni's weird concert ending) (Daniel Barrenboim--CSO concert, 1986) Beethoven: The Ruins of Athens--Overture (Adrian Boult) and Turkish March (Willem Mengelberg, 1930) The Cherubini, as I think I've mentioned before, must be one of the silliest pieces ever written for the "serious" stage; all it lacks is trapeze artists and a few clowns doing cartwheels across the stage to be the perfect circus music.
A bit early but this version of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is (imo) surprisingly lucid. What I find in most versions are unevenly emphasized passages and "effects". This one, though, is nicely measured. From 2017, it's Simon Rattle leading the London Symphony Orchestra:
J.C. Bach Flute Quartets Op .19 Camerata Köln (1998, CPO) An excellent album. Light, bright, bouyant takes on these quartets. Recommended. On most streaming platforms as well.