Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte
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Record Review: non-BaL discs reviewed, etc.
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Originally posted by HighlandDougie View PostThat's always the downside of hearing performances as bleeding chunks - or gobbets or whatever. I was really disconcerted on first hearing by Barenboim slamming on the brakes but it needs to be heard in the context of the performance as a whole.
Still is - and I was listening on less-than-state-of-the-art equipment; perhaps Barenboim brings out the lower lines more urgently than I could hear? Oh, stop it! I'm getting all tempted again![FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]
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Originally posted by Thropplenoggin View PostI heard the clip on CD Review this morning, which merely served to remind me that I just don't get his symphonies whoevers playing them. Apart from the opening melody of the First, they really don't make sense to me. I can't get into them, finding them a sort of aural pot pourri (I can hear Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Brahms, etc.) whose elements, counterpoint and internal logic I can't seem to fathom.
Elgar creates his own sound-world that's not really like anything else (late Faure, perhaps) but in which the moment-to-moment feelings of the composer are nested within strong architectural structures. It is anxious, 'fussy' even, and is very seldom relaxed, as if the composer is embarrassed - or surprised - to have shown his inner self. Neither of the two symphonies makes for comfortable listening.
At least, that's what I think.
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Originally posted by Pabmusic View PostThat's sad, because so many people do. I don't think it's useful to 'hear' Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Brahms, etc., in the music because it's palpably not by those composers. I'd say that Schumann, Delibes, Saint-Saens, Massenet and Parry were more obvious, but that's no more helpful.
Elgar creates his own sound-world that's not really like anything else (late Faure, perhaps) but in which the moment-to-moment feelings of the composer are nested within strong architectural structures. It is anxious, 'fussy' even, and is very seldom relaxed, as if the composer is embarrassed - or surprised - to have shown his inner self. Neither of the two symphonies makes for comfortable listening.
At least, that's what I think.It loved to happen. -- Marcus Aurelius
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Originally posted by Thropplenoggin View Post...And when the First's 'nobilmente' theme comes back at the very end (a neat trick, but also quite a cliched one by that time) I find it submerged behind lots of brash crashes and not foregrounded as, say, Sibelius might have done…
You may be right about Wagner, except that Elgar's opportunities to hear Wagner before 1908 had been limited to a series of holidays in Bavaria in the 1890s. It's easy to forget that people couldn't download the latest version of Parsifal then!
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Originally posted by Pabmusic View PostConsider the scoring when the 'big tune' comes back at the end of the first symphony (fig.146). Oboes, cor anglais, 1st bassoon, 1st horn, and last desks (ie: the only strings playing it) of 1sts, 2nds, violas and cellos are all marked ff - as they'd perhaps have to be, with the crashes ff and sf in the rest. But 3rd trumpet (which also has the tune) is mf. Clearly, Elgar doesn't want a loud, triumphant return - at least at first. He probably wants the impression of a struggle - most of the orchestra wants to drown out the big tune. Things don't right themselves till 147.
You may be right about Wagner, except that Elgar's opportunities to hear Wagner before 1908 had been limited to a series of holidays in Bavaria in the 1890s. It's easy to forget that people couldn't download the latest version of Parsifal then!It loved to happen. -- Marcus Aurelius
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Originally posted by Thropplenoggin View PostThanks, Pabs, although I felt the highlighted comment condescending, bordering on the facetious and wholly unwarranted. I would have thought you of all people would understand the way such experiences as hearing Wagner (even if only once) can stain the subconscious for life, imprinting themselves in ways the listener perhaps isn't even aware of until much later. Especially for a composer. But I'm also thinking here of crypto-amnesia and other ways these experiences re-emerge in the creative life of composers, writers, etc. It seems to have happened to Nabokov with Lolita.
I still think my point has merit, though.
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amateur51
Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View PostBut I disagree about N-S; I was really taken up by the verve of what was played yesterday morning.
That'll be my ears again
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Originally posted by Pabmusic View PostOh dear! Surely, I needn't answer the point directly, because you can't think I was being condescending towards you..? But it's a point I have made before and people have been genuinely surprised to realise that it was very difficult to hear Wagner at the time. It's not condescending, either. To be so would require me to think something like "stupid proles, they don't even realise that…" which would be utterly reprehensible, and is completely untrue to boot.
I still think my point has merit, though.It loved to happen. -- Marcus Aurelius
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Originally posted by Thropplenoggin View PostMuch obliged for the clarification. I read it wrong. I now see your meaning. But even if they couldn't hear it performed, surely they had access to the scores? All those inky dots and volutes are, sadly, lost on me, but as for composers, don't they hear the music when they read the score? You are well placed to answer
* And Schumann ("my ideal!") whom he'd discovered in 1883.Last edited by Pabmusic; 19-05-14, 09:38.
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Originally posted by amateur51 View PostI agree about the verve which was delightful but as Andrew was comparing two sets of recordings I was surprised that he didn't comment on how recessed the N-S recording sounded compared to the Rattle.
That'll be my ears again
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amateur51
Originally posted by silvestrione View PostHe did most definitely comment, calling the N-S 'distant', or some such.
I could happily live with both sets of performances ... but that's me
I've had several symphonically Schumann earworms ever since - what do the neighbours think?
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amateur51
Originally posted by Pabmusic View PostYou're right. And Elgar attended a performance of Parsifal at Bayreuth not so many years before he started Gerontius. He also owned a score of Die Meistersinger. Augustus Jaeger said that (rightly in my view) Gerontius could not have been written by someone who didn't know Parsifal. But (and it's a rather big 'but') he was 42-3 when he wrote Gerontius. Most of his music before that has echoes of Delibes, Saint-Saens and Massenet - composers he had known from his youth (and whom he'd played in orchestras)*. Dvorak too (known since he played unfer him at Birmingham in 1884 (6th Symph & Stabat Mater).
* And Schumann ("my ideal!") whom he'd discovered in 1883.
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I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
I am not a number, I am a free man.
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