Brahms Piano Quartet N0 1 orch Schoenberg- BPO/Rattle

[tony yyy]

I have yet to find anyone who finds it objectionable.

I'm afraid I don't like it, or at least I didn't when I heard Rattle conduct it in London many years ago. I've generally avoided it since then. As far as I remember, it starts off innocuously enough but becomes ever stranger as the piece progresses. Nothing necessarily wrong with being strange, I suppose, but I didn't like the way it split the melodic lines between different instruments. Perhaps I ought to try it again.

[Chris Newman]

Quite possibly the great Siegfried Palm on cello, Chris, if it was the same broadcast (ca 1970) but I can't now recall orchestra or conductor.

You are spot on, Serial_Apologist.

Siegfried Palm, one of the cello world's splendid players (and very loud sniffers ). Sadly, he died five years ago. I do remember him at the Proms in 1968 playing Boris Blacher's Cello Concerto with Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt (Palm had led the cello section in HS-I's old NDR SO) and later in 1972 Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Canto di speranza [Song of Hope] with Norman Del Mar as conductor. I have a record of him playing Ligeti somewhere.



UK premiere

[Serial_Apologist]

You are spot on, Serial_Apologist.

Siegfried Palm, one of the cello world's splendid players (and very loud sniffers ). Sadly, he died five years ago. I do remember him at the Proms in 1968 playing Boris Blacher's Cello Concerto with Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt (Palm had led the cello section in HS-I's old NDR SO) and later in 1972 Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Canto di speranza [Song of Hope] with Norman Del Mar as conductor. I have a record of him playing Ligeti somewhere.



UK premiere

I also had him performing Zimmermann's extrardinary Cello Concerto En Forme de Pas de Trois from 1966, from another broadcast around that time, Chris. Boy, you rarely hear avant-garde works of that originality from the composers of today!

[BBMmk2]

Schoenberg was the master craftsman, when it came to transcriptions. Perhaps its my brass band heritage is the reason why I respect the way in which Schoenberg made these transcriptions?

[silvestrione]

Damn damn damn I've been fighting shy of getting this - I love the piece, and have SR's first go at it (the filler (!) to his Bournemouth Mahler 10 )... I've been telling myself ' in these straitened times you don't need a new one...'

But damn it, I have to have it! Heard a bit on the radio a week or two back, they sound to be doing incredible things with it.

:

I now have a copy of this disc and have been playing it repeatedly. What a wonderful piece (I don't yet know it at all in its Piano Quartet version) and what a wonderful performance! If you have been hesitating over this, I'd say, don't. The first movement feels truly symphonic, the second a scherzo very Brahmsian, and the finale is stunning, just takes off at the end. (Yes, I missed out the slow movement which so far strikes me as a little less memorable)

[Chris Newman]

I have at last got Rattle's BPO version, having adored his BSO version which was the third CD I ever bought. It is much brighter and has so much space and can be found for far less than I paid for the BSO one years ago.

[Alf-Prufrock]

DVD

Sir Simon also produced a DVD from a concert six years ago at which he conducted the Brahms-Schoenberg. It was at one of the Berlin concerts abroad, this time Athens. It was coupled with a stunning account of the Brahms first Piano Concerto played by Daniel Barenboim. A DVD worth getting.

[silvestrione]

Look, keep quiet will you, I'm trying to save money!

[BBMmk2]

Look, keep quiet will you, I'm trying to save money!

You can't with music!! you just have to keep on buying! Its a disease, as my mother wiould say!! :)

I am hoping to have this for Christmas!!

I am going to write an arrangment for brass band of the Rondo a la Zingareza. Should sound pretty good!

[mathias broucek]

Bump

Just got 'round to listening to this. Love the arrangment which I've only heard once before.

But........ for me the sound is terrible. There is NO depth to the sound or discernable bass. I appreciate that this orchestration lacks the autumnal warmth of Brahms's own orchestration but to my ears this just sounds wrong. I did wonder if my ears had gone funny but 2 mins of Celi and the MPO in the 2nd symphony reassured me that they're no worse than they ever were.....

Interestingly, UK crits love it but Fanfare is VERY rude (but not about the fill-ups). http://www.fanfaremag.com/content/view/47618/

[jayne lee wilson]

Actually it's not the BSO but the CBSO - some reissues may have confused you because it is indeed the BSO in the Mahler 10th with which the Brahms/Schoenberg was originally coupled.

I must say the original issue is particularly fine-sounding, and I have a soft spot for it - the CBSO reading is fresher and spikier, more challenging! In Berlin things can be just a little too comfortable...in Birmingham the orchestra is exploring the piece, in Berlin they're showing off a little ( well, can you blame them...). I could put it a little crudely and say that the Berlin reading is more Brahmsian, the CBSO one more Schoenbergian! But both have their validity. But it's the curse of the unremastered reissue to adulterate the SQ sometimes.

Mathias - of the ones referred to in the Fanfare review, the CSO/Craft sounds thin and even a bit scrappy to me, as if conductor and orchestra weren't getting along; the Dohnanyi/VPO is glorious-sounding, and pretty fine as a reading too, not suffering the rather strict, literal interpretational approach that CVD sometimes brought to his Cleveland tapings.

I have at last got Rattle's BPO version, having adored his BSO version which was the third CD I ever bought. It is much brighter and has so much space and can be found for far less than I paid for the BSO one years ago.

[mathias broucek]

Mathias - of the ones referred to in the Fanfare review, the CSO/Craft sounds thin and even a bit scrappy to me, as if conductor and orchestra weren't getting along; the Dohnanyi/VPO is glorious-sounding, and pretty fine as a reading too, not suffering the rather strict, literal interpretational approach that CVD sometimes brought to his Cleveland tapings.

Thanks Jayne. I have a download of Crafty Robert (the time I'd heard the piece before) and agree with your comment about scrappiness. I'll look out for CVD but it's currently £20 2nd hand on market place! Perhaps I should just get the CBSO version.