I'm looking forward to hearing Ivan Fischer conduct Mahler's 5th on Wednesday with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Their accounts of Mahler's 4th and recently released 1st (Channel Classics) have been excellent.
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Just listening to this! Amazing stamina indeed.... It started just after I got home from work, just checked, and it's still going! Feels like I've been home ages.Originally posted by Kuhlau View Post
I have a feeling it's just about to finish.
Ah yes!
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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I was out and had to miss all but the last 10 minutes or so, so hard to judge the performance on barely 15% of the work, but whilst I appreciated the announcer's remark about "the piano concerto to end all piano concertos", his two - yes, two - references to the finale being "insane" struck me as most odd, whichever way one might interpret that word. Busoni completed it around 20 years before his death and it's interesting that, of the performances that took place during his lifetime, most involved him but were almost evenly divided between those that he played as soloist and those which he conducted. It's a truly astonishing achievement. Ohlsson recorded it years ago so it's been a staple of his repertoire for quite a while now. I first heard it when the Ogdon recording (thought at the time to be its first ever) came out. Marc-André Hamelin, who recorded it much more recently, tells me that he never tires of offering it and never loses an opportunity to perform it; it does need more public outings, although it's had quite its fair share or recordings over the past four decades or so. Sorabji, who described it as the highest point that the piano concerto has ever reached, once said of Alkan's Sonatine for piano that it was as though Berlioz was trying to write a Beethoven sonata; his remark inspired my perhaps questionable thought that the opening of Busoni's Piano Concerto sounds as though Verdi was trying to write a Brahms symphony...Originally posted by Caliban View PostComment
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Did you hear it? I thought the wayward tuning of the principal trumpet ("flat as ditch-water", as my school band-master would have said) made the first movement unlistenable-to - I wondered in fact if iPlayer was malfunctioning, it was so bad.Originally posted by Thropplenoggin View Post"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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I didn't, no, but had it on my list of things to do today. How disappointing! I have Fischer's 4th on CD - a sensual delight: exquisitely played, an especially rapt adagio, and fantastic detail in the recording. And I've just bought his Mahler 1, too, which, to these ears, sounds a bit more muffled or distant, as if one of the knobs on the mixing desk was turned down. He is just about to record the 5th - or so MacGregor said t'other day. I hope his trumpet was in tune then!
How did you find the adagietto?
Finally, I always thought the saying was: 'as dull as ditch-water'.Comment
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Didn't get that far... and the saying may have been adapted by the ex-Kneller Hall bandsman in question. But it works better as a flat/flat pun, don't you think?Originally posted by Thropplenoggin View Post
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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According to the announcer the orchestra arrived in Edinburgh that day and had a little time to acclimatise to the acoustics, and possibly too little time to relax and gather strength before the evening concert. I suspect the lack of money is at the root of it all.Originally posted by Caliban View PostComment
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We were at the concert and it sounded pretty fantastic! Didn't really notice any pitch imperfections.Comment
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A friend was at this concert, and told me that it was wonderful, and that he had really enjoyed it.
(For me, I am afraid, Mahler is not really my thing.)Comment
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