Such a lovely morning that I couldn't resist playing the Romanza, it is indeed a most wonderful string choir but why does Slatkin drag it out losing all the transcendent quality of the piece at its climax however I will listen to the rest and many thanks for posting it. Just listening to the beginning of the last movt and those strings ...
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My 'go-to' for the 5th is still Previn/LSO, what wonderful recordings he made then (late 60s - early 70s).Originally posted by gradus View Post
I didn't have a lot of money back then, but I always managed to scrape together enough to collect this cycle of the VW symphonies.....the Walton 1st too!
The 5th is going on right now......without the lovely morning alas!Comment
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Thanks for posting that. I heard part of this performance a few years ago on Chicago’s WFMT radio station while driving home from work. When I arrived at home I sat in the car and listened for a few moments until my wife interrupted (she thinks I’ve been car jacked or something when I do that, despite my pointing out that a carjacker would probably be speeding away from the crime instead of sitting and listening to Classical Music)…anyway thanks for posting itOriginally posted by seabright View PostIt sometimes happens that a "live" performance of a work is superior to a "studio" recording under the same conductor. Here are a couple of examples, in which each work is played by an American orchestra under an.American conductor. Here first is Andre Previn and the Houston Symphony on a visit to Carnegie Hall, New York, on 30 April 1969. To some ears I fancy this will be considered vastly superior to his Kingsway Hall recording with the LSO of a few weeks earlier ...
And here is RVW5 from Leonard Slatkin in a 1988 broadcast with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, two years before he recorded it with the Philharmonia. There are over 70 "comments" under this video, including such praise as "glorious" and "fabulous" with the Chicago strings particularly being singled out for their "wonderful playing" ...
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I'm glad that these American performances are of interest. Here are two more, though these are "historic," being 1940s broadcasts. First is Stokowski and the NBC Symphony in No. 4. Toscanini had withdrawn from conducting the orchestra which had been specially created for him but he left the door open for an eventual return. Stokowski was engaged on a 3-year contract in his place and his concerts featured an enormous number of works he conducted just once for a single broadcast and to which he never returned. RVW4 was one of them, given on 14 March 1943. The work was not new to the orchestra, as Boult had performed it with them on a visit to New York in 1938. Perhaps Stokowski had heard Boult's broadcast and wanted to conduct it himself. At any rate, his performance was highly praised in the New York Times ...
Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony played RVW5 three times in 1947 and here is their broadcast of 4 March 1947. This performance has also been praised for what one critic describes as the "sheer fire and brimstone of Koussevitzky's reading which fairly seethes with intensity." It's certainly speedier than other British performances from the same period and probably none the worse for that. The 2nd movement for example is more "Prestissimo" than "Presto" though one has to put up with some wretched coughing in the "Romanza" ...
I look forward to your comments on these two USA RVWs!
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I'm particularly grateful for the Koussevitzky: I didn't know he'd conducted any VW (except possibly the Fantasia) . But then it's not often remembered now that VW's music was popular in America and several of hs works were first recorded there. Stokowski is a different case in that he knew VW slightly in the 1890s when they were both at the RCM, VW as a post-graduate and Stokowski as a boy wonder organist (he was of course a Londoner despite many legends). He made a recording of the D minor (eighth ) symphony which is interesting despite some odd tempi, and his sixth was made just shortly before Sir Adrian Boult's first HMV version. .Comment
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The Previn is very fine but the Bryden Thomson on Chandos is a wonderful sonic bathOriginally posted by Roger Webb View PostComment
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The Bryden Thomson is wonderful, as you say - in fact VW has been lucky in respect of recordings...my other 'much played' although not 'go to' is Vernon Handley, which I think won a Gramophone award.....at least it got a 'cabbage' in the Penguin Guide.Originally posted by richardfinegold View Post
I'm a fan of Bryden Thompson, not least because of his Bax recordings with the LPO (and Ulster Orch.).
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Review of Pappano's recent RVW 5 with the LSO, from Bachtrack, a concert which has already been discussed in the R3 in Concert thread, to be sure (and which I need to catch up with at some point before the end of the 30 days on BBC Sounds):
But the reason for posting this link is this bit at the very end of the review:
Pappano's album of RVW 4 and 6 has already appeared. So he's "starting in the middle", so to speak, with this LSO Live cycle."This account of the Fifth was a superb achievement by Pappano and the LSO, and it is good news that it will form part of a cycle on the LSO Live label."Comment
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This thread is old and when I wrote the quoted remark a few days ago I had forgot that I had previously praised the B.T. Chandos recording up thread.Originally posted by richardfinegold View Post
I’m surprised that RVW was favorably regarded in the USA in the 1940s. When I expressed interest in his music in the mid seventies I was informed by some academics that he was reactionary, regressive, third rate, and that anyone who listened to English cow pat music deserved to have their ears stuffed with the cow droppings. As I mentioned up thread this delayed me from exploring RVW for a few decades. And while the academic dogma that held sway then seems to have been routed, it’s still rare to encounter his music on a program.Comment
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I sympathise. I've come across this terrible anti-intellectualism before. I once tried to play some Percy Grainger ot a friend and she said 'Ive been taught to despise this type of music.'Comment
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