Unplayed CDs - confess your guilt!

[Roehre]

In the end I am artist led: new recordings by favoured conductors and instrumentalists always get listened to.

Repertoire led recordings often have to wait - will I ever listen to those Gorecki String Quartets on Hyperion ??!!

I personally hardly do favoured conductors/instrumentalists, as I am generally speaking interested in the music itself. I want Beethoven's Beethoven, not Furtwängler's, Karajan's , Barenboim's, or whoever thinks he knows better than the composer.
My acquisitions are 99 out of 100 repertoire led, preferably in an acceptable performance and recording, but not necessarily so (try to get good recordings from e.g. pre-1989 Rumania...).

The way to tackle big boxes: having to making a choice stops you from chosing unknown pieces. Either do it structurally (i.e. the Bach cantatas according to their ecclesiastical use spread over the year, or Haydn symphonies by taking every fifth CD and listen to it from track one to track last or so e.g.) or by chance by using dices; and always place the played CD at the end of the box and not at its original place.

[visualnickmos]

Bruckner can be very turgid and boring. He apparently never had it off so his vision is one dimentional.

That would explain why in pics and photos he looks like the person at a party one would most try to avoid!

I can't quite get his symphonies - all remarkably similar - lots of outbursts, each one just marginally different from the last. Maybe I should revisit my EMI Jochum set - the only Bruckner I have, which I bought years ago in a ubiquitous HMV sale for a song, on a "for that price, it's worth a try" basis.

[Pabmusic]

Bruckner can be very turgid and boring...

Yes. 'Turgid' is usually a dangerous word to use, because many people confuse it with 'turbid' (dull, muddy, opaque). 'Turgid' was made for the poetry of William McGonagall - pompous, overblown, distended, swollen, congested. Which seems to me to sum up much of Bruckner - so 'turgid' is, in fact, perfect.

[jayne lee wilson]

No-one minds a listener saying "I hate Bruckner" but when you encapsulate a dismissive value-judgement in an opinionation all you reveal is an egotistical lack of understanding. How many performances have you heard of No.6 or No.8, or No.5? How many different readings? As Giulini said of late Bruckner and Mahler, "these things take time".
Wasn't the principle of classical listening supposed to be that of gaining a love and understanding through gradual knowledge? I speak from experience - I almost gave up on Roussel after a first attempt to listen to his work in 2004 - after some well-reviewed new releases a few years later I tried again - my only problem now is there's not enough Roussel to get to know!

I can't persuade you (I'm quite sure), but the level of harmonic and structural originality, melodic inspiration, and an astoundingly unique musical and imaginative vision (which many now share an appreciation of) should give you pause, and cause, for thought.

(As for the EMI Jochum, it's a bit like the joke about asking directions from an Irishman - "if I were you, I wouldn't start from here").

[Pabmusic]

No-one minds a listener saying "I hate Bruckner" but when you encapsulate a dismissive value-judgement in an opinionation all you reveal is an egotistical lack of understanding...

Oh dear!

You don't make it clear whom you refer to, but since mine was the post before yours, I'll assume it was me.

I do not hate Bruckner (why would you say that?). Among recordings I have complete sets by Wand and Tintner, and I'm not unfamiliar with them, though they're by no means the most-played. I've attended only two concerts (4th and 5th), but I have played in the 4th. So I have some awareness of Bruckner.

I do not enjoy Bruckner very much, and I find much of the music I have heard turgid, in the correct sense I talked about in post 63. Not all of it, of course, but quite a lot.

That you take such an aggressive stance because of my opinion suggests to me that I have unwittingly attacked a shibboleth of your music appreciation - don't criticise Bruckner! (Although, I note, hating Bruckner is allowable.) To be told that "to encapsulate a dismissive value-judgement in an opinionation all you reveal is an egotistical lack of understanding" is actually quite rude when you work your way through it (and in what way can a 'lack of understanding' be 'egotistical', anyway?).

If all you are trying to say is (a) you don't agree, and (b) I should try harder because there's much to enjoy, then I'll accept that willingly. But you don't need to make direct attacks in order to get that across.

[jayne lee wilson]

"Pompous, overblown, distended, swollen, congested"...

Bruckner's music is, audibly, none of those things to listeners who've come to understand his music and thus, love it. But if that was all you'd said I would have simply ignored it. But you go on to say:

"Which sums up Bruckner rather well."

At the very least that implies a judgement; and one based on what appears to be a lack of knowledge of the music, or at least a lack of affinity with it. Why not just ignore it?
Bruckenr is no "shibboleth" of mine, merely one of the greatest of composers - whose music I love very much (there's a personalised judgement for you) and whose long-gestated, agonised-over creations I feel bound to defend.

In his book "Criticism", Hans Keller wrote:

"...the noblest critical achievements of my life were the moments when I decided to shut up, temporarily or, in the case of most of the music of Debussy, Delius and Sibelius, for ever. The amount of nonsense I have thus not committed to print, the violence and posthumous torture which has thus remained unpractised, would have made me a serious rival of the most highly-esteemed members of the profession if all those pseudo-thoughts, those thin rationalisations of incomprehension, had been allowed an outlet."

This, from Robert Simpson, "The Essence of Bruckner":

"Though there are Hanslicks still with us, they can no longer trouble him. The frothing tide that often threatened his work and his sanity has long drained into crevices in the soft earth, but the hard and jagged rock of his life's achievement is still there. It has survived all seeming odds. The cracks in the stone are honourable scars on its mighty face."

[Flosshilde]

when you encapsulate a dismissive value-judgement in an opinionation

What does this mean? sounds like the rather pompous person sitting behind you who wants to show off how much he knows.


('opinionation' would appear to be an invention - the only reference I can find is in the dubious 'Urban Dictionary')

[Flosshilde]

Bruckenr is no "shibboleth" of mine, merely one of the greatest of composers - whose music I love very much (there's a personalised judgement for you) and whose long-gestated, agonised-over creations I feel bound to defend.

Perhaps so, but it's your opinion, not an irrefutable truth.

In his book "Criticism", Hans Keller wrote:

"...the noblest critical achievements of my life were the moments when I decided to shut up, temporarily or, in the case of most of the music of Debussy, Delius and Sibelius, for ever. The amount of nonsense I have thus not committed to print, the violence and posthumous torture which has thus remained unpractised, would have made me a serious rival of the most highly-esteemed members of the profession if all those pseudo-thoughts, those thin rationalisations of incomprehension, had been allowed an outlet."

This, from Robert Simpson, "The Essence of Bruckner":

"Though there are Hanslicks still with us, they can no longer trouble him. The frothing tide that often threatened his work and his sanity has long drained into crevices in the soft earth, but the hard and jagged rock of his life's achievement is still there. It has survived all seeming odds. The cracks in the stone are honourable scars on its mighty face."

They do seem to be made for Bruckner - equally "Pompous, overblown, distended, swollen, congested"...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

('opinionation' would appear to be an invention - the only reference I can find is in the dubious 'Urban Dictionary')

One for the Pedant's Paradise thread perhaps. I recall the word "Argentinian" emerging strongly at the time of the Falklands conflict. The questions were put even then - "What's wrong with 'Argentine'?" and "Where on earth is Argentinia".

[mikealdren]

I have yet to meet anybody who has a copy of the Simon Rattle Porgy and Bess,a few years ago there were piles of it in HMV grimly awaiting purchase as the price fell.!

I bought the highlights, not keen enough to buy the full thing. I do miss HMV's excellent sales everything in the remaining Oxford Street store shop is a shadow of it's former self.

Mike

[mikealdren]

No-one minds a listener saying "I hate Bruckner"

or a second violinist!

Mike

[visualnickmos]

...As for the EMI Jochum, it's a bit like the joke about asking directions from an Irishman - "if I were you, I wouldn't start from here").

I really would love to love the music of Bruckner - don't get me wrong! But if not with Jochum, where on earth to start? Solti, Haitink, Tintner? Barenboim...(please don't say Rattle) the list goes on. I would appreciate your thoughts? as this a serious question - musically speaking. I'm a sort of Bruckner agnostic, I suppose, and am looking for faith. Thanks.

[martin_opera]

I have never listened to Callas' first recording of Traviata or her second recording of Tosca that are in my big box of Callas and I can't ever see a time when I would be encouraged to.

Re: Bruckner debate. If I may politely suggest that this thread is in danger of getting a little like the Gramophone forum which I ran screaming from earlier in the year because of debates - such as "I don't like x", "that's because you don't understand x", "aren't I entitled to my opinion", "well yes, but you're wrong" - regularly popping up in threads about something else entirely. Far be it from me to criticise but you've just got to scroll through a lot of Bruckner to get to the unplayed CDs action!

[Alison]

Yes, I was enjoying the original thread very much.

[mathias broucek]

What about the highly praised issues that don't seem to sell at all? I have yet to meet anybody who has a copy of the Simon Rattle Porgy and Bess,a few years ago there were piles of it in HMV grimly awaiting purchase as the price fell.

I have this. Listened to it once and not since......