What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? IV

[Mandryka]

Honegger
Complete String Quartets
Geneva Quartet
(Erato, rec. 1983)
Still the best recorded version of these three intense and deeply satisfying quartets, oddly underappreciated - like much of Honegger's output these days. The Geneva Quartet's intelligence, musicianly focus and application more than make up for their lack of 'virtuoso' sheen. Superlative listening.

Noted - will listen soon

[Mandryka]

I wonder if anyone else had an interest in thr complete Scarlatti sonatas set on Naxos? I have been collecting them for about 2 years and have found them addictive to the extent that I now have as many discs in this series as by Miles Davis. The discs are performed on piano with a different pianist on each CD. There is no order to the sonatas.

.

I found a Scarlatti piano recording just yesterday which really impressed me - and I'm not normally very taken by the music. The pianist was Homero Francesch. It's streaming.

[Mandryka]

Gave up on Andras Schiff's JSB Partitas.

I think his first recording is really special. Just so free and bold.

[smittims]

With so many recordings available these as its easy to forget, or take for granted, and therefore leave unheard, some famous and highly-praised interrpetations. Occasionally I return to them to see for myself. Today it was Karajan's 1964 Sibelius fifth, a favourite of many commentators including Glenn Gould. I felt that although it's , of course , magnificently played and recorded, it doesn't quite convey the spirit of Sibelius to me.

I felt Karajan was more at home with Also Sprach Zarathustra, the 1973/4 DG recording,though even here I wasn't quite swept away, the famous 'midnight bell' in particular souding rather crude and high-pitched. Getting the right bell in many orchestral works is a notorious problem , but I have heard it more satisfying than this. And of course Karajan too remains controversial, some listeners avoiding him altogeter. I've always tried to steer a middle course, though I'm never quite sure he's quite the right man for the music.

[Pulcinella]

I think his first recording is really special. Just so free and bold.

I assume that that's the winning Decca set.
I can cope with bold so maybe it's the freedom that didn't appeal to me.

[Roger Webb]

. And of course Karajan too remains controversial, some listeners avoiding him altogeter. I've always tried to steer a middle course, though I'm never quite sure he's quite the right man for the music.

Bernard Levin said Karajan was at his best in second rate music.

[Stanfordian]

Meyerbeer – 'L'Africaine' ('Vasco da Gama')
Opera in 5 acts (1865)
Michael Spyres (Vasco da Gama), Claudia Mahnke (Sélika), Brian Mulligan (Nélusko),
Andreas Bauer Kanabas (Don Pédro), Thomas Faulkner (Don Diego), Kirsten MacKinnon (Ines),
Bianca Andrew (Anna), Michael McCown (Don Alvar)
Chor der Oper Frankfurt,
Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester, Chor der Oper Frankfurt / Antonello Manacorda
Recorded Live 2018, Oper Frankfurt, Germany
Naxos, new 3 CD set

I'm really enjoying this set. It's a superb opera.

[Mandryka]

With so many recordings available these as its easy to forget, or take for granted, and therefore leave unheard, some famous and highly-praised interrpetations. Occasionally I return to them to see for myself. Today it was Karajan's 1964 Sibelius fifth, a favourite of many commentators including Glenn Gould. I felt that although it's , of course , magnificently played and recorded, it doesn't quite convey the spirit of Sibelius to me.

I felt Karajan was more at home with Also Sprach Zarathustra, the 1973/4 DG recording,though even here I wasn't quite swept away, the famous 'midnight bell' in particular souding rather crude and high-pitched. Getting the right bell in many orchestral works is a notorious problem , but I have heard it more satisfying than this. And of course Karajan too remains controversial, some listeners avoiding him altogeter. I've always tried to steer a middle course, though I'm never quite sure he's quite the right man for the music.

Is that the Philharmonia Sibelius 5? Sibelius was very enthusiastic about that one.

[Mandryka]

I assume that that's the winning Decca set.
I can cope with bold so maybe it's the freedom that didn't appeal to me.

I think that partita recording is possibly the only Bach I really enjoy from him. I can certainly understand why McGregor chose it.

[oliver sudden]

At the moment: the Somm CD with the premiere of VW 9. So far: a splendid Wasps and a blistering first movement of VW 6.

[silvestrione]

Bernard Levin said Karajan was at his best in second rate music.

Such as Beethoven 9, and the Missa Solemnis?
(Siegfried? As a Wagnerite, I can't believe he really thought that...)

[oliver sudden]

Bernard Levin said Karajan was at his best in second rate music.

I’m reminded of a dialogue between a musicologist friend and Harry Birtwistle. Harry asked musicologist if he ever composed himself (so to speak). Musicologist said no, he had realised he could only have been a second-rate composer and the world had enough of them. Harry replied ‘do you really think you could have been as good as Delius?’…

[Roger Webb]

I’m reminded of a dialogue between a musicologist friend and Harry Birtwistle. Harry asked musicologist if he ever composed himself (so to speak). Musicologist said no, he had realised he could only have been a second-rate composer and the world had enough of them. Harry replied ‘do you really think you could have been as good as Delius?’…

Third raters are often jealous of second raters! I'm reminded that Johnny Rotten once wore a tee shirt with 'I hate f****ing Pink Floyd' emblazoned upon it......what he meant to say was ....'I'm not good enough to play with Pink Floyd'!

[Roger Webb]

Such as Beethoven 9, and the Missa Solemnis?
(Siegfried? As a Wagnerite, I can't believe he [Bernard Levin] really thought that...)

I read Bernard Levin nearly every day when he did a column in The Times, I have in my library just about his entire journalistic output. I still marvel that such a man of obvious good taste and abundant good sense could harbour some of the most perverse opinions, particularly about music.

If you remember, when he was the guest on Desert Island Discs, he made some, to me, exquisite choices for his eight records, but for his luxury he chose another record, explaining that he promised not to play it, but that nothing would give him more pleasure than to leave a copy of Debussy's Pelléas and Melisande in the sun and watch it melt!

[smittims]

Some thought-provoking comments there, many thanks.

The Sib. 5 I heard was the 1964 DG Berlin Phil. Herbert recorded it twice on Columbia with the Philharmonia, in mono and stereo, the first being notable for including a very clearly-audible Dennis Brain. Sibelius' supposed preference for that recording is in an anecdote by Walter Legge which I have to say I treat with caution. Much as I am grateful to Walter for all his wonderful recordings, I have noticed that his anecdotes tend to have certain things in common:

The other person was dead
No-one else was present
The story redounds to the credit of a certain W.Legge.

But to return to Herbert, I found the Levin remark especialy interesting as I had just read a very different one by Richard Osborne, who said that Karajan was at his best in music which reflected his wartime experiences: I suppose he meant Brahms' Requiem, and those works which used to be considered the 'very greatest': The S. Matthew Passion, the Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, the Ring. And yet these recordings were among his most controversial and most criticised, whereas his more relaxed discs of Opera overtures and intermezzzi (e.g. Gaite Parisienne) usally had a warm welcome .

I heard him again today in the F major Divertimento, K247, a very glassy sheen on the string-playing and probably too sugary for many today), and Metamorphosen and the Four Last Songs with Gundula Janowitz (early '70s Berlin Phil). All beautifully done, but as Ted Greenfield used to say , it 'does not efface memories' of Furtwangler , Klemperer, Lisa Della Casa and Karl Bohm.