I missed out on the original releases of Studio Der Fruhen Musik's albums and have been tracking them down over the last few years. I take it they were early music pioneers and I'm enjoying their 'raw'/sparse sound and arrangements.
Thomas Binkley was an academic musicologist who went to Europe and recorded the medieval repertoire mostly, starting in the 1960s for Teldec. He then moved into the late Medieval/Early Renaissance when EMI Germany picked him up. Part of the problem he ran into was that no one was trained as a Medieval musician at that time. Of course there were no Medieval school books for music performance to consult, only theories of music modes. So he had to grab willing musicians and repurpose them and experiment. Andrea von Ramm was actually an opera singer. I think his Medieval recordings sound better than the Early Renaissance which has more historical documentation, although not as accurate probably as Sequentia. So others got better choirs or soloists to sing these works by Dunstable forward. Binkley did have the advantage of audiophile sonics. There is sort of a line from Franceso Landini to Ciconia to Dunstable. These composers avoided the medieval non harmonic counterpoint and fleshed out the chords somewhat with sixths and 3rds. Landini and Machaut were contemporaries of each other and it is interesting to compare their music. Not much of Ciconia's music has survived. There was a complete 3 LP box in the 70s by a Belgian group led by Paul Van Nevel on an obscure label. I don't know if the few LPs of Ciconia were ever reissued on CD.
I meant Purcell. But perhaps, as with Pelléas et Mélisande, I will sample the various tributes to the patron saint of musicians. Thank you.
Are these the 20 best sopranos of the recorded era? Here is the list of the Top 20 1) Maria Callas 2) Joan Sutherland 3) Victoria de los Angeles 4) Leontyne Price 5) Birgit Nilsson 6) Montserrat Caballé 7) Lucia Popp 8) Margaret Price 9) Kirsten Flagstad 10) Emma Kirkby 11) Elizabeth Schwarzkopf 12) Régine Crespin 13) Galina Vizhnevskaya 14) Gundula Janowitz15) Karita Mattila 16) Elizabeth Schumann 17) Christine Brewer 18) Renata Tebaldi 19) Rosa Ponselle 20) Elly Ameling @bluemooze, Emma Kirkby and Elly Ameling are both on this list though they do not do opera ... Below is the link to the full article Are these the 20 best sopranos of the recorded era?
Issued 1983. Recorded 12/23/78, Royce Hall, UCLA (Suites) & 2/6/82, Dorothy Chandler Hall (Overture). Producer: Steven Epstein. Engineers: Bud Graham & Arthur Kendy. Remote technical engineer: Hank Altman. Overture recorded digitally using the Soundstream system. Soundstream engineer: Richard Feldman.
Issued 1969. Producer: Howard Scott. Engineer: Paul Goodman. A most pleasant LP. Anyone know about Rose Discount Records?
It was in downtown Chicago, on Wabash near Adams. In the 60s and 70s they had a fabulous selection of budget classical LPs and cut outs on the second floor. They had twice yearly sales on imported classics. I bought most of my DG LPs there when I was going to the Chicago Academy of Fine Art. I also got several RCA Victrola and London Stereo Treasury discs on the second floor along with some Mercury Living Presence and RCA Living Stereo cut outs for $1.99 a piece. I loved that place.
If you can't see the pic, go to Karl Richter, J.S. Bach* - Goldberg-Variationen , which created last week. It's Richter's Goldberg Variations from 1972. After two compare and contrasts with the 1980 Pinnock (part of the Archiv box and which doesn't seem to use A=440) I find Richter calmer. My classical ear isn't yet tuned to distinctions other than loudness and tempo (I'm in the middle of the Baroque section of Robert's Greenberg's Great Courses audiobook, where he is introducing the characteristics of instrumental music: so far, pitch, timbre plus homophony, polyphony (two kinds) and bringing consonance and dissonance in from earlier chapters) so I would say the Richter is slower and more disciplined and quieter. It seems to take a lot of work to make a harpsichord louder or softer since it's plucking rather than hammering. I can understand why the pianoforte caught on so quickly. [I have two piano Goldberg Variations: Glenn Gould's 1955 and Andras Schiff's 1983 from a Decca box. I got the Gould a long time ago (last August), which sounded like a lot of racket, but I haven't listened to it since then.] Addendum: I think my attraction to the Baroque is riot-in-order, which may also explain my equally strange appreciation of Robert Fripp. Not too much Fripp, which is wearying.
I just discovered I have three Beethoven's Ninth with the VPO: Schmidt-Isserstedt 1966 (from a Decca box), Bernstein (1980) and Abbado (1987). Most of my listens have been of the Abbado, which I have had since 1987. Just saying, not comparing.
I also wondered about the possibility that Ciconia was not his real name, as it was and still is highly unusual to see a common northern European first name like Johannes to be used with an Italian last name ...
