BaL 9.04.11 - Beethoven: Violin Concerto

[amateur51]

Well, EA, even I nearly turned off at the anecdote of the Hanover Band singing words about Jell-O to the works's finale tune.

I once heard tell that Mrs Oistrakh said that hubby used the words "Thank God it's over, Thank God it's over, Thank God, Thank God, it's over at last"

Apocryphal I'm sure

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I once heard tell that Mrs Oistrakh said that hubby used the words "Thank God it's over, Thank God it's over, Thank God, Thank God, it's over at last"

Apocryphal I'm sure

You mean he too was listening to BaL with Roy Goodman and his chum?

[Keraulophone]

Should listeners wish to hear what Roy G really preferred, they can, of course, obtain Tetzlaff/Zurich/Zinman online without much difficulty, despite its deletion (...took me less than a minute to detect & buy).

I, too, prefer the monologue to the twofer format for BAL, though thought this particular one wasn't quite so irritating; but can we now have a pre-2000 comparative choice as well? Perhaps it would warm up the discussion a bit if there were two experts in the discussion, minus AMG.

PJPJ - The Big River indicated they had only one Tetzlaff CD left, which has now been bought, so customers may have to wait ('3-5 weeks') for more to be delivered from upstream.

[amateur51]

No, I've been listening and enjoying.....

Tetzlaff is still available from Amazon on CD and low bitrate mp3.

I agree PJPJ ... a fascinating insight into recent recordings and into the piece itself from an experienced violinist and conductor. I thought that Roy Goodman was lucid and full of understandable comments about the performances, but he also clearly enjoyed some performances that confounded his 'rules' - and did so with a delightful giggle.

Andrew laid out the reason for cutting out so many earlier performances from the start, and Roy Goodman did mention some of his favourite performances from times gone by at the end too. You may not agree with Roy's 'rules' and his choices but I felt that I had learned a lot by the end and that I wanted to explore further a piece that I thought I knew pretty well.

Good news about the Tetzlaff PJPJ!

Well done CDReview!

[DracoM]

More and more of AMcG preading himself more and more thinly. At least Goodman made sure we heard what HE wanted. He seemed to take mroe charge than other pairings. But AMcG sounds so like a sort of musical floppy labrador puffing and snuffing and nosing around the guest chivvying for a walkie. Why the heck doesn't he just leave the guy to get on with it? I genuinely do NOT see what his presence adds to the clarity or thrust of the slot at all - nay, it blurs it. OK, so he's a fiddler too, but honestly, Goodman showed detailed knowledge, used it, illustrated it, and think how much more he might have been able to if he didn't have fussing AMcG at him all the time.

It's what the Beeb does - get a presenter and then over-expose him / her until the audience get sick of them. The change of voice is like a change of programme - it refreshes the mix, adds a new angle, adn ac tually, I find myself listening better to a new voice. All the time the producers don't get that message, the more CDR is going to become The Andrew McGregor Show. The guy is a very fine presenter, but honestly.......!!

Zehetmair for me. Faust is very fine, but I think Tommy boy still just shades it.

[pilamenon]

Exactly so, amateur. A most enjoyable and informative hour. It's not as if the older recordings haven't been covered in previous BaLs.

[Pianorak]

I must admit I never liked this piece; maybe the wrong kind of introduction to it when young? Yet by the end of the programme Roy Goodman had convinced me that I should go back to it and explore further. I think the BBC should give him a regular "Discovering Music"-type slot. He'd be absolutely brilliant! As amateur said: Goodman was "lucid and full of understandable comments about the performances".

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Exactly so, amateur. A most enjoyable and informative hour. It's not as if the older recordings haven't been covered in previous BaLs.

Well I still think it was about as bad as it could get - a lot of self-indulgent twaddle, as though Roy Goodman was more important than Beethoven's Violin Concerto. As for older recordings having been covered in earlier BaLs - that relies on (a) the listener having already heard it, and (b) the listener remembering it. What is the point of making a choice only from performances in the last 10 years?
Surely the point of BaL is to help new listeners. To help new listeners, it is hardly appropriate for the judge and jury to have an "agenda" as RG clearly does, i.e. to rule out anything un-HIPP, including nearly all the greatest violinists ever recorded.

[pilamenon]

Well I still think it was about as bad as it could get - a lot of self-indulgent twaddle, as though Roy Goodman was more important than Beethoven's Violin Concerto. As for older recordings having been covered in earlier BaLs - that relies on (a) the listener having already heard it, and (b) the listener remembering it. What is the point of making a choice only from performances in the last 10 years?

I simply don't get what you mean about "self-indulgent twaddle". He didn't talk about himself except to highlight briefly which older recordings he'd enjoyed when he was younger; other than that it was all about the music.

It's been said elsewhere, but there are so many recordings of this piece that they are probably wise to start narrowing the field down when covering such warhorses, and it would put far more backs up if they used other criteria, e.g. performance practice. At least sound is likely to be less of an issue on recordings from the last ten years. And previous winners are available to look up on the archive.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I simply don't get what you mean about "self-indulgent twaddle".

I was thinking in particular of the way the two presenters were pampering one another. The advantage of the twofer approach is that you can have more than one opinion. We didn't have this. And "performance practice" was the underlying theme throughout.

[PJPJ]

Is it just my problem, or is the "HD" service not working properly this morning?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i spent a most enjoyable hour in bed drinking me coffee and smoking like a chimney to this; a perfect start to the morning .... i enjoyed the detailed comparisons of the same passage for different musical points using several versions .... i thought the conversational tone perfectly acceptable ... and i have no problem with the logic of the selection modern available HIPP informed .... but i will stick to what is indelibly imprinted in my psyche the Schneiderhahn with Jochum and the BPO ... i also listen to Kremer and liked the Faust and the Dutch lady whose name escapes me .... all i needed for perfection was some comparison of the more favoured recent recordings against say the Schneiderhahn or other 20Cent classic performance ... then it might have lived up to a full BAL Standard

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

.... all i needed for perfection was some comparison of the more favoured recent recordings against say the Schneiderhahn or other 20Cent classic performance ... then it might have lived up to a full BAL Standard

But that was never going to happen.

I'm glad others enjoyed it.

Oh, and thanks for the Schneiderhahn link. It is rather good.

[Nick Armstrong]

I enjoyed the discussion, and found a lot of Goodman's comments illuminating, with some technical points of interest that enhanced my understanding of a piece I don't know particularly well (I'm more a piano concerto person... ) - especially about the first movement, which by my reckoning occupied them for as long as an entire 'usual' BAL, 50 minutes or so. I also follow AMcG's reasoning for focussing on recent recordings given the sheer weight of numbers of performances out there.

But I can also see what Alps is concerned about. It was very subjective, with anything that didn't correspond with "MY" view of how it should go being dismissed. I know BAL is supposed to be one person's view - but others achieve greater balance (stating a personal preference, but acknowledging that there are other approaches which others may value).

This subjectivity led to the slightly absurd situation of Goodman dismissing ALL versions of the slow movement under consideration, saying that none of them fitted HIS conception of the piece Thus it was dismissed with a couple of examples. Silly not to have given a more balanced appraisal of the versions of this lovely movement.

Also I thought that he revealed a shallowness, to my mind, by saying (as I understood it) that he had moved on from versions he had liked earlier in his life - as if they were aberrations of his youth, no longer to be given any value: Campoli, Oistrakh.... Does he really not rate them any more? Why not acknowledge their continuing qualities, even if he is fickle enough to have dismissed them now, so that listeners coming new to the piece might be encouraged to try them, and get the same pleasure he did at an earlier stage (isn't R3 supposed to be enticing people in who are new to classical music??). I didn't like the way that was handled, at all.

So a rather odd BAL, I thought. Interesting on its own terms, sometimes very interesting, but also very flawed.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Caliban, you have put into words, rather better than I did, many aspects of the review. I'd forgotten about the blanket dismissal of all the versions of slow movement. Wasn't that because everyone played it faster than the metronome marking? (Never mind that it might actually sound good.)

Most HIPP conductors are unfit for purpose as reviewers, because everything has to fit their tunnel-visioned agenda.