Definitive Recordings...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Even better news: It's coming out on a Decca CD later this year (I've just been involved in writing notes for the series in question).

Better, indeed! With luck, the CD will also include Chronometer as did the original LP, but not the Download.

Erm .... you mention a "series in question". Without giving any trade secrets away, you don't happen to know if this series also includes the long-awaited Transit by wotsisname that was originally issued on a Decca "Headline" LP but never since re-released?

Pretty please?

[makropulos]

Better, indeed! With luck, the CD will also include Chronometer as did the original LP, but not the Download.

Erm .... you mention a "series in question". Without giving any trade secrets away, you don't happen to know if this series also includes the long-awaited Transit by wotsisname that was originally issued on a Decca "Headline" LP but never since re-released?

Pretty please?

I hate to get your hopes up... it's going to be a series of 20th century pieces, and the Birtwistle disc is planned to have the Boulez recording of "Earth Dances" and the Prom recording of "Panic". Hope that's not too disappointing. :)

[Petrushka]

I hate to get your hopes up... it's going to be a series of 20th century pieces, and the Birtwistle disc is planned to have the Boulez recording of "Earth Dances" and the Prom recording of "Panic". Hope that's not too disappointing. :)

Hmm, I have the other two recordings already so perhaps I should go for the download after all.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Hmm, I have the other two recordings already so perhaps I should go for the download after all.

Ditto.

(Although I'm sure the new release will have far better liner notes!)

[silvestrione]

This may be a personal failing, but I find that the first recording of almost any piece of music which I've bought and played regularly has become, as it were, hard-wired into my brain, so that later recordings, even ones which my conscious mind knows are superior, are somehow resisted. A friend of mine had a vinyl disc which had some defect, and when CDs came out he bought the same recording on CD. It was all wrong though – the click or whatever wasn't there any more! If even a defect can become part of one's inner experience of a piece, how much more do individual details of interpretation. When I go back to my first vinyl recordings, I often feel 'Yes, that's how it should be played'.

Do others find this, too?

With some recordings I do: in particular, Brendel's Benediction de la Dieu dans la Solitude. Even Arrau, whom I love as a Lisztian, sounds too ponderous, Hamelin too uninvolved, etc. Also, Brendel's Schubert G Major Sonata in his first Phillips recording. Pacing just right, wonderful use of tone colour throughout, superb sense of structure etc When the melody in the middle of the last movement comes back in the major, it's so poignant...one of the great moments of recorded music for me. For some reason Richter, Pollini (in concert: never recorded it), Uchida are all too slow.

On the other hand the early Barenboim recordings I loved so much don't quite do it for me any more. (Hmm...haven't listened to them for ages mind: probably time to try them again, Beethoven op 111, Brahms PC1 with Barbarolli...)

[Richard Tarleton]

With some recordings I do: in particular, Brendel's Benediction de la Dieu dans la Solitude. Even Arrau, whom I love as a Lisztian, sounds too ponderous, Hamelin too uninvolved, etc.

Funny, this was the recording that was going through my mind when this thread started - since when I've been off doing other things. I first heard him play it live, and soon bought the record, 36 years ago. I love this work, and his interpretation. I've since acquired Bolet and Osborne, both OK but both lack the magic of Brendel's interpretation. Brendel himself, in "The Veil of Order" (p. 145) says, talking about Liszt interpretation, "I am no longer so convinced by the pentatonic bliss of Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude - at least not by the recapitulation, which consists of nothing but harp arpeggios. Liszt sometimes had a fatal predilection for the sound of harps"

I recently had the misfortune to hear Llyr Williams play it in a recital. He banged his way through it in a most distressing manner. The people we went with had not heard the work before, and I later played them the Brendel record at home - they were astonished, it could have been a completely different work we were listening to. (He also banged his way through Beethoven Op 110 and Pictures).

Also, Brendel's Schubert G Major Sonata in his first Phillips recording. Pacing just right, wonderful use of tone colour throughout, superb sense of structure etc When the melody in the middle of the last movement comes back in the major, it's so poignant...one of the great moments of recorded music for me. For some reason Richter, Pollini (in concert: never recorded it), Uchida are all too slow.

Brendel's Schubert recordings generally have this effect on me - I don't feel the need to listen to anyone else's Impromptus for example.

[silvestrione]

I meant to say, as a footnote, that I have to listen to the Brendel analogue Schubert G Major on vinyl: if it ever came out on CD I missed it. (The digital and live performances of the Schubert G Major are not nearly so good). Do you have it on CD, Richard?

(And, as a footnote to a footnote, while I'm getting Brendel issues off my chest, what a pity, in his Liszt-year compilation for Decca last year, that he chose the digital version of the 'Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Sagen' Variations. The entry of the chorale in the analogue version, on vinyl, is incomparably tender and touching, beautifully recorded)

[amateur51]

Brendel's Schubert recordings generally have this effect on me - I don't feel the need to listen to anyone else's Impromptus for example.

Shake hands up to the elbow Richard Tarleton!

However I recall Andras Schiff, not a pianist who gives me unalloyed pleasure, in recital at Wigmore Hall playing a Schubert Impromptu as an encore and I was just amazed at the Hungarian-ness of it. So perhaps ...

[Richard Tarleton]

I meant to say, as a footnote, that I have to listen to the Brendel analogue Schubert G Major on vinyl: if it ever came out on CD I missed it. (The digital and live performances of the Schubert G Major are not nearly so good). Do you have it on CD, Richard?

(And, as a footnote to a footnote, while I'm getting Brendel issues off my chest, what a pity, in his Liszt-year compilation for Decca last year, that he chose the digital version of the 'Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Sagen' Variations. The entry of the chorale in the analogue version, on vinyl, is incomparably tender and touching, beautifully recorded)

I have the G major on vinyl! Likewise the analogue Weinen Klagen.......Incomparable

[Richard Tarleton]

Shake hands up to the elbow Richard Tarleton!

However I recall Andras Schiff, not a pianist who gives me unalloyed pleasure, in recital at Wigmore Hall playing a Schubert Impromptu as an encore and I was just amazed at the Hungarian-ness of it. So perhaps ...

Ams, yes, I heard Schiff play the 4 D890 Impromptus in St Davids Hall on his Bosendorfer. The piano shifters got a special round of applause when they took it away in the interval......

[gamba]

Mozart - Divertimento k563 with Arthur Grumiaux & others.

Berlioz - Les Nuits d'ete. Regine Crespin

Shakespeare. Hamlet. Olivier. ( not music, I know, but it is my most treasured ).

[JFLL]

Mozart - Divertimento k563 with Arthur Grumiaux & others........

-- and add to that Grumiaux and Co's recordings of the Mozart string quintets. Can't imagine any of these ever being bettered.

And while I'm at it:

Haydn Complete Piano Trios with the Beaux Arts Trio (another Philips gem).

[DublinJimbo]

And while I'm at it:

Haydn Complete Piano Trios with the Beaux Arts Trio (another Philips gem).

A very, very loud Amen to that! A recording triumph.

[umslopogaas]

#71 gamba: Crespin in Nuits d'Ete. Seconded, definitely. And seconded too a previous poster who mentioned Brendel playing Schubert. I got to know D960 from Brendel's 1970s LP and it haunted me for weeks, I couldnt get the tunes out of my head.

For me, to name but two among many possibilities: Janet Baker singing Elgar's Sea Pictures, coupled with Jacqueline du Pre playing the Cello Concerto, wonderful disc. And a real tour de force, Callas in the last fifteen minutes of Cherubini's Medea. In that brief time Medea murders her children, sets fire to the temple, summons the Furies, shouts "To hell with the lot of you" and rides off with them to Hades. The people flee in terror, and so do I. I've heard other fine voices rising to the challenge - Rita Gorr and Gwyneth Jones, to name but two - but Callas is in a class of her own. She can make me want to cower behind the sofa.

[Pianorak]

Haydn Complete Piano Trios with the Beaux Arts Trio (another Philips gem).

A very, very loud Amen to that! A recording triumph.

Thirded.