Listening to piano music of Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz (1860-1909): Iberia. Tonight I'm playing "books" (actually suites) 1 and 2, consisting of six movements. Such lovely, colorful music! And not really anything ominous like the cover art on the album. Mathew Shorter on the BBC website describes it best: "Isaac Albéniz's piano work Suite Iberia is arguably the greatest masterpiece of Spanish music of any age. Its twelve movements, a series of picturesque pieces evoking the Spanish landscape and loosely based on traditional dance rhythms and folk material..." Beautifully performed here by Michael Block on a first-rate Connoisseur Society LP from 1976. Recorded by Pathé Marconi/EMI.
Wes H, I hope one day you and I can physically meet in person. You have great taste in music, and in fine audio. And a kindred spirit. I am listening to Sir Arnold Bax/Symphony No 1 in E Flat. London Philharmonic Orchestra (Leader Rodney Friend) conducted by Myer Friedman. Lyrita (UK) SRCS 53. (Decca UK pressing made in New Malden, Surrey, UK). Thinking of you as I play this superb British symphonic work. $4 near mint, from a now local used record shop, which will be "Opening Soon". Who's owners are friends of mine.
Thank you for your kind words! I've had a couple of Forum members over to my house for listening sessions--including @drh (David), a veteran of this esteemed thread-- and we had a great time. If you're coming through central Virginia (after this virus is squashed), give me a shout. Looking at what you're playing, I particularly like the Bax Symphony No. 7 and his Tone Poems.
I finally found this Connoisseur LP a few years ago, but it is a bit scratchy. Later, I also found it included on a Pathe Marconi CD box of Spanish composers. Michel Block is a pianist I like.
From five years ago, here is my post about one of the best recordings of the Goyescas. Michel Block of course. Michel Block presents a beautiful live recording of Granados Goyescas. From 1981 on ProPiano Records dale 88, Oct 13, 2015 SteelyTom, Juan Matus, Bachtoven and 1 other person like this.
If you're near Knoxville, Tennessee, start a conversation, I'll give you my phone number and you can come visit me. And hear my system.
Yes, I had the very real pleasure of meeting and spending an afternoon with Wes two or three years back--coupled with the very real non-pleasure that the afternoon was over far, far too soon. Wes has a top-notch audio system; a terrific collection of music to play on it; and the gracious, welcoming manner you would expect from his contributions to life here on the forums. I grew up in Knoxville, and I have some back-burner plans to travel there again sometime after all the COVID issues sort themselves out, assuming they ever do. Wouldn't it be great fun to do a mini-CMC-convention? Not that the logistics would be likely to work out, but I can dream, right? As to Arnold Bax, I can't claim to have very much of his music in my collection. I suppose I really should drag out a set of Bax 78s I have but have never gotten around to playing. They came to me from a friend who got out of 78s after years of assiduous collecting; he had been looking for that set, and in those pre-Internet days rushed to buy it, when it showed up on a sale list, by sending a facsimile order form to the seller. Ever after, we referred to the set as "Bax by fax." The set contains a viola sonata (William Primrose with pianist Harriet Cohen), a Nonette (Griller Quartet and assorted hangers on), and "Mater Ora Filium" (BBC Chorus under Leslie Woodgate). Otherwise, on 78s I have some two-piano music performed by Bartlett and Robertson and an oboe quintet played by its dedicatee, Leon Goossens, with the International String Quartet, both those sets being on the National Gramophonic Society subscription label; on LP I have that "Mater Ora Filium" again (John Oliver Chorale on Northeastern--this must be Bax's "greatest hit," I guess), "The Garden of Fand" (Halle Or./Barbirolli on Mercury), and Three Irish Songs on Town Hall (O'Brien/Mayorga). Two of my four CDs with music of Bax came to me not by choice but by virtue of a subscription to the BBC Music Magazine; of the others, one was a conscious choice made out of interest in two-piano music and the other--I don't remember how I came to have it. The piano disc (Tanyel and Brown on Chandos) has some overlap with the Bartlett and Robertson set, specifically a Hardanger and a two-piano sonata; I remember playing the disc once, and it didn't do much for me. Maybe a revisit is in order.
Martino Tirimo Schubert: Complete Piano Sonatas 8 CDs Warner, 2013 from EMI, 1996. I liked a lot of this set, but the church acoustics are not to my liking. Tirimo completes the missing segments like Paul Badura-Skoda in his RCA Victor set. Now on to the Schubert set by Michel Dalberto on Brilliant which I believe is from a set recorded for Denon. For some reason this Tirimo set is currently hard to find. I found a set for around 25 dollars, but the three copies currently available on Amazon range from $500 to over $900.
I don't have this SACD, but I can imagine it sounds amazing-- especially given that the sonics on my standard LP edition are impressive. As for the performance, I like it... though with some reservations. I know it's considered a "Standard" of sorts, but I'm curious what others think about it. Opinions?
I've been curious about that set for some time, wondering how his completion of D. 840 stacks up against the one by Ernst Krenek that featured in Friedrich Wuhrer's "complete" cycle, a contemporaneous one-off by Ray Lev for Concert Hall, and more recently in a recording by one Stanislav Khristenko (2014, Toccata TOCC 0298, part of a complete Krenek cycle). At those kinds of prices, however, I think I'll just keep wondering! Not too long back I latched onto a copy of the Badura-Skoda LP set, but I haven't gotten around to listening to it yet. I take it the Tirimo set is in a resonant acoustic?
Wes H, this 1954 recording (one of RCA's very first Stereo sessions) has been one of the best sounding recordings ever made, and has been stunning since it made it's 1955 Stereo debut on 2 track open reel tapes. The performance has also been regarded as one of the finest of these works ever since.
Afraid I'm not a big fan of any orchestration; the piece was conceived and written as a work for piano, in which guise it's unique, and turning it into another orchestral showpiece always strikes me as being like color tinting Durer woodcuts. I'm firmly convinced Mussorgsky knew exactly what he was doing when he scored the piece for solo piano, which in the hands of a master like Sviatoslav Richter or Benno Moiseiwitsch is more than adequate to bring it to life. Just call me Mr. Grouch, I guess.
Hi Mr. Grouch, I had one CD from that set. It didn't survive the cull during my last move. My favorite music professor once told me that the head of the piano performance department told him that she didn't think any pianist could truly play Schubert to her liking. An extreme opinion, but I would later find out that, while not as critical as her, I am also very particular about whose Schubert I enjoy. While I like many different pianists in composers like Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin, when it comes to Schubert there are a small handful of pianists that I enjoy; Richter, Pires and Lupu.
Yes, the church acoustic is too resonant for me. It was often off-putting. The microphone was too distant.
Now enjoying Beethoven's third piano concerto from the above CD. Ivan Moravec is at the keyboard. One of my favorite pianists. I am so glad I made it a point to buy every CD this man has released. Every one is a treasure. With quality like this, I feel that he didn't make nearly as many as he should have.
Next up on the TT: on January 12, 1958, two days after his debut at Boston’s Symphony Hall, Kogan joined the BSO and Monteux to record the music which is on this album. My record was released in 1965( probably as a reissue).
Talking about Ludwig van, I just made a pretty amazing purchase... I've been seriously obsessed with the Piano Sonatas lately and haven't listened to anything else for days now. I went through the whole cycle over and over, wildly mixing all kinds of performers from all sorts of periods (Brendel, Kempff, Gilels, Pollini, Kovacevich, Gould, Takács, Brautigam, Lewis, Kodama, Scherbakov, Levit, Biss). And when I dragged up an old thread with recommendations from 2008, I came across a glowing review of Annie Fischer's performances from you. I started searching the net and found the CD set of the complete Sonatas starting around € 100 and even the downloads were around € 80. Too much for yet another set. But then I found a FLAC download of the whole 9-disc set at 7digital for just € 12.49. Insane!! They sell the single discs for the same price. Probably a mistake, but I didn't hesitate and grabbed the set. The tagging was more than crappy, but there are tools and databanks for that, so it just took minutes to fix this. So, if someone's still looking for the Annie Fischer set, here is the link: Ludwig van Beethoven: The Comple... | Annie Fischer | MP3 Musikdownloads | 7digital Deutschland No idea, if 7digital works from the US, but it does for the UK. So I've been listening to Annie all day now and really like the performances. The sound is pretty good as well.
Random question: Do you think Mozart's music would have been significantly different had he had access to a modern piano instead of the fortepianos he played/composed on? What if Beethoven only had fortepianos to work with?
Actually, Beethoven did have access only to what we now call "fortepianos," which is just a modern made-up term to denote "period instrument" pianos predating, or modeled on those predating, the introduction of iron frames. Just like Mozart's, Beethoven's pianos all had wooden frames, and if they were a bit more developed than Mozart's, they were still a far cry from what we have today. The difference is that Mozart worked with the instruments that he had; Beethoven pretty much worked with the instruments as he imagined they might become--he was always pushing the envelope, trying to write beyond the limitations of straight-strung, wooden-framed instruments with limited carrying and sustaining power. If I'm not much mistaken, some of his scores even call for notes beyond the compass of what was available in his day, when the instrument had not yet grown to the 88-key standard configuration. If you want to hear what Beethoven's pianos sounded like, a number of performers have recorded his music on them or on modern reproductions; Anthony Newman is one, Peter Serkin another. Malcolm Bilson has recorded an entire sonata cycle on instruments of this type, although, unlike Newman's and P. Serkin's, I've not heard his recordings. If you can find an old CD of Anthony Newman playing the Appassionata, I think it may just give a hint of how Beethoven himself might have sounded as a performer--he was notorious for snapping strings and breaking hammers, impatient with the delicate mechanisms available to him, and Newman has the strings jangling off their bridges in the coda of the 3d mvt. [edit] Incidentally, as far as I know no one in Beethoven's lifetime called the instrument a "fortepiano." To Beethoven, it was a "hammerklavier"--which is just German for "keyboard instrument played with hammers," as opposed to the quills of a harpsichord.
I have a question about classical recordings. I am interested in learning more about 1950's classical, RCA red label albums. It is my understanding that a great deal of care went into these records. Are there any good resources for learning more, and any particular recommendations from the series? Were these the best sounding classical recordings of the 1950's? Thanks!!!
