Exceptional recordings

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The final page of Gramophone always has a celeb interview, along with a recording he/she "could not live without" (which I always think is a little OTT).

But there are recordings of works that we might regard as so he and-and-shoulders above all others that we would never want to part with them.

My list would include:

Beethoven Eroica Symphony: VPO/Erich Kleiber
Elgar Symphony 1: Halle/Barbirolli 1957
Elgar Enigma Variations: Philharmonia/Barbirolli
Elgar The Apostles: Halle/Elder
Elgar The Kingdom: LPO/Boult
Mozart Symphony 40: VPO/Furtwangler
Puccini Madama Butterfly: Freni/Pavarotti/VPO/Karajan
Puccini La Boheme: Santa Cecilia, Rome/Serafin
Strauss Alpine Symphony: RPO/Kempe
Strauss 4 Last Songs: Popp/LPO/Tennstedt
Tchaikovsky Symphony 4: VPO/Maazel
Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony: LSO/Previn
Wagner Götterdämmerung: VPO/Solti
Wagner Tannhauser: VPO/Solti

[kea]

Unsurpassed (though not necessarily unsurpassable) imo

Schubert String Quartet #14 D810 & Beethoven String Quartet #14 Op. 131 - Juilliard Quartet
Schubert String Quartet #15 D887 - Hagen Quartet (the Beethoven Op. 95 on the same disc is more dispensable)
Mozart String Quintets K515 & 516 - L'Archibudelli
6CD set of Chopin piano music (Nocturnes, Waltzes, Scherzi, Ballades etc) - Claudio Arrau
Debussy Preludes I & II - Alexei Lubimov
Schoenberg String Quartets 1-4 - Arditti Quartet (+ Dawn Upshaw)
Bartók Piano Concertos 1 & 2 - Maurizio Pollini, Chicago Symphony Orchestra + Claudio Abbado
Beethoven Piano Sonata #29 Op. 106 - Friedrich Gulda (1967) (by default, as the only version that even attempts to be faithful to the composer's intentions)

[rauschwerk]

Beethoven Piano Sonata #29 Op. 106 - Friedrich Gulda (1967) (by default, as the only version that even attempts to be faithful to the composer's intentions)

That bold assertion needs some explanation!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I must give that one a spin. I'm just off in the car. I'll drop the CD in.

[Hornspieler]

Kindertotenlieder: Kathleen Ferrier, Bruno Walter, Vienna Symphony Orchestra.



HS

[kea]

That bold assertion needs some explanation!

I might have covered this before. Op. 106 is the only piano sonata for which Beethoven supplied metronome marks (while at the same time asserting that a metronome mark was no substitute for a nuanced performance, that a sensitive performer would introduce many imperceptible variations in tempo as suited the character of the movement and that the metronome marks could only be considered accurate for the beginning of each movement). It also has his most detailed pedaling instructions among the piano works.

The controversy over Beethoven's metronome markings for this movement is usually based on the first and last movements, which some pianists have asserted are unplayable at Beethoven's tempi (e.g. Badura-Skoda who advises a 10-15% reduction in speed in the first movement), and which have traditionally been interpreted in a broad, majestic style perhaps initiated by Hans von Bülow, typically at tempi of minim = 100 to 110. The performances of e.g. Emil Gilels, Alfred Brendel, etc, fall into this category. But actually the wilder, more capricious and joyous character implied in Beethoven's tempo of minim = 138 has been brought to the fore even by pianists without the technical acumen to play at Beethoven's speed (such as Schnabel and Schiff) as well as those with it (Gulda is somewhat conservative in this movement and the fugue—Michael Korstick and Stewart Goodyear come even closer, both exceeding minim = 126). Actually the real place where pianists tend to fall astray, sometimes grossly so, is in the Adagio sostenuto. At Beethoven's indicated tempo of quaver = 92—a slow two, rather than the slow six adopted by many pianists—this movement should last about 13-14 minutes, allowing for judiciously placed fermatas and ritenuti etc. Apart from Gulda, only Maria Yudina and Egon Petri stay close to this more flowing tempo, and their performances are somewhat more "interpreted" in other ways. Other pianists may extend the Adagio to as much as 29 minutes (in Korstick's case).

I am not denying that these "interpreted" performances can be as good of course. Gould's incredibly slow first movement and adagio are something special in themselves for instance. Often pianists slow the music down in an effort to draw more poetry out of the music, and some of the slower performances are indeed more successful in that regard (whereas more "correct" performances, such as HJ Lim's rather over-wilful attempt, sound rushed and trivial). But we should have the opportunity to also find the poetry in the music as Beethoven would have imagined it, rather than according to Bülow et al.

[rauschwerk]

Thank you for that lucid explanation, kea. I would have thought that Pollini's account also meets your criteria. Based on a timing of bars 17-32 of the Allegro, I find that nobody (not Rosen, Pollini, Schnabel or Solomon) goes at Beethoven's marked speed: however, all of those composer's marks are surely on the brisk side, at least in Allegros?

Glancing through my CD collection, the first recording I come to which I couldn't do without is Peter Hurford's account of J S Bach's organ works.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Kea - isn't it a smidgin unfair to suggest that Charles Rosen didn't "even attempt[] to be faithful to the composer's intentions", and that he lacked the "technical acumen" to succeed at tempi close to those in the "score"?

[kea]

Thank you for that lucid explanation, kea. I would have thought that Pollini's account also meets your criteria. Based on a timing of bars 17-32 of the Allegro, I find that nobody (not Rosen, Pollini, Schnabel or Solomon) goes at Beethoven's marked speed: however, all of those composer's marks are surely on the brisk side, at least in Allegros?

Modern pianos also have heavier action of course, making it more difficult to play a brisk Allegro, but Schnabel comes pretty close—about minim = 132 on average, in the passages that were within his reach. In the fugue, marked crochet = 144 (also a tempo rarely attempted by pianists), Stewart Goodyear at least manages to average crochet = 143 with Schnabel, Korstick and others not far behind. There's no reason to assume a great piano virtuoso (such as Beethoven himself, or Czerny who believed the tempi were practical) wouldn't have been able to play at those tempi on a Broadwood or Graf of the day.

[rauschwerk]

Modern pianos also have heavier action of course, making it more difficult to play a brisk Allegro, but Schnabel comes pretty close—about minim = 132 on average, in the passages that were within his reach. In the fugue, marked crochet = 144 (also a tempo rarely attempted by pianists), Stewart Goodyear at least manages to average crochet = 143 with Schnabel, Korstick and others not far behind. There's no reason to assume a great piano virtuoso (such as Beethoven himself, or Czerny who believed the tempi were practical) wouldn't have been able to play at those tempi on a Broadwood or Graf of the day.

Even if I could play the first movement at 138, I wouldn't do it. Have you tried setting a metronome to that speed and imagining the music played at it? I imagine a ridiculous scramble!

The next indispensable recording I come to in my collection is Bach's sublime Actus tragicus (Cantata 106) directed by John Eliot Gardiner.

[kea]

Kea - isn't it a smidgin unfair to suggest that Charles Rosen didn't "even attempt[] to be faithful to the composer's intentions", and that he lacked the "technical acumen" to succeed at tempi close to those in the "score"?

Charles Rosen's earlier recording of the Hammerklavier (the one more commonly reissued) takes significantly more liberties with the score (in an interpretive approach close to Pollini's), including drawing the Adagio out to the conventional length of ~18 minutes, and I think also predates his pertinent and thoughtful remarks on it in The Classical Style. His later recording is more faithful (particularly in the outer movements) but his technique was not at its peak by that point. You're right though, I can't accuse him (or Pollini, for that matter) of not trying.

Even if I could play the first movement at 138, I wouldn't do it. Have you tried setting a metronome to that speed and imagining the music played at it? I imagine a ridiculous scramble!

Yes. If played right it could be quite exciting, I imagine. I've heard performances at 112 that were a mad scramble as well. (And see Beethoven's remarks on metronome marks, cited above.) "Mad scramble" actually seems to describe a lot of Beethoven's faster movements: the first movement of the Fourth Symphony (semibreve = 80) and finale of the Eighth (semibreve = 88) for instance. He seems to have really liked fast tempi.

(I should add that as a composer I've often been forced to revise my own metronome markings downwards as it turned out the music didn't sound very good at higher speeds, and there seems to be a tendency among other composers such as Shostakovich and Skalkottas to overestimate their metronome markings. Whether Beethoven would have been among them is an open question. He wasn't completely deaf, but he also doesn't seem to have put much stock in metronome markings as opposed to the older principles of affect etc in the first place.)

[rauschwerk]

3. Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra: Budapest Festival orch/Ivan Fischer

[amateur51]

Twelve messages in and no mention of Ida Haendel?

There, I've done it!

[LaurieWatt]

The final page of Gramophone always has a celeb interview, along with a recording he/she "could not live without" (which I always think is a little OTT).

But there are recordings of works that we might regard as so he and-and-shoulders above all others that we would never want to part with them.

My list would include:

Elgar 1: Halle/Barbirolli 1957
Strauss Alpine Symphony: RPO/Kempe
Puccini Madama Butterfly: Freni/Pavarotti/VPO/Karajan
Wagner Götterdämmerung: VPO/Solti
Elgar The Kingdom: LPO/Boult
Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony: LSO/Previn
Mozart Symphony 40: VPO/Furtwangler

...I'll think of a few more.

My list would include these for a start:

Stravinsky - Rite of Spring: Markevich/Philharmonia (1957)
Tchaikovsky - Sleeping Beauty: BBCSO/Rozhdestvensky (BBC Legends)
Mahler - Symphony No 2: Tennstedt/LPO (LPO label)
Elgar - Enigma Variations: RPO/Del Mar
Chopin - Nocturnes: Arrau
Chopin Recital: Zimmerman
Handel/Beecham - Love in Bath: RPO/Beecham
Handel - Music for the Royal Fireworks: Mackerras/Pro Arte expanded Wind Ensemble! (1957)
Mozart - Clarinet Concerto: Jack Brymer/Beecham/RPO
Dvorak - Cello Concerto: Rostropovich/RPO/Boult
Vaughan Williams - Job: LSO/Boult or LPO/Handley
Britten - War Requiem: Philharmonia/Giulini [with Britten conducting Chamber Ensemble]
Bizet/Ibert/Saint-Saens programme with Jean Martinon/Paris Conservatoire (no other Ibert Divertissement like it)
Verdi - Requiem: Jesus Lopez Cobos/LPO&Ch/Margaret Price et al.
Haydn - Symphonies 94 & 101: VPO/Monteux
Mozart - Horn Concerti and Quintet: Eastop/Hanover Band/Halstead [cond] - Hyperion not yet released

[LaurieWatt]

Twelve messages in and no mention of Ida Haendel?

There, I've done it!

I wanted to put in my off-air recording of Ida Haendel playing the Elgar Violin Concerto with Bernard Haitink and the BBCSO Proms in about 1977. A completely to-die-for performance which sadly I have not been able to persuade ICA Classics or anyone else to take!