Building a Library - General Discussion

[BBMmk2]

Bring back the way it was!

[LMcD]

May I thank those who have come up with affordable recommendable CDs featuring the Stravinsky Violin Concerto? As usual, World of Books has come to my rescue when I follow their advice (and there's also Music Magpie and Amazon). It's nice to know that, even if BaL can't or won't bear its more cost-conscious listeners in mind, one can easily find help and advice on the Forum.

[cloughie]

Tim Hardin

Yes he wrote it

Joan was one of many who covered it inc Bobby Darin, Four Tops.

Just had a look - I didn’t realise quite how many!

https://secondhandsongs.com/performance/8696

The great, the good, the not so good and many I have never heard of!

[kernelbogey]

Most of us on the Forum have a high degree of knowledge of the record catalogue and have long ago decided on our favourite versions of the work under review, so we aren't the target audience for BaL in the way we were when impecunious students deciding how best to spend our hard-earned cash, in my case back in the early 1970s.

I really wonder if this is true. If you look at the guests/members figures at the bottom of the first Forum page, you can see that there are often a lot of guests - I imagine learning from the threads here.

The sheer volume of recordings of the classical repertoire now available renders the entire format of BaL as outdated and absurd. How can a 45 minute slot on, say, a Tchaikovsky or Beethoven symphony come to any meaningful conclusion about a 'winner'?

Having said that, I still think there is a place on Radio 3 for a comparative review programme that helps give guidance to those in the same position as I was 50 years ago but the BaL format as it stands now isn't it. Perhaps an 'Interpretations on Record' kind of programme, taken out of 'Record Review', without the concept of a 'winner' and given to a broadcaster with some authority on the work might fulfil these requirements?

I agree wth most of the rest of Pet's post. My record collection is tiny compared to many whose extent has been revealed in this Forum: about 300 CDs, counting sets as 1....

Risks could be taken elsewhere by Radio 3. Hannah French on Sunday could play a full symphony stiched together from 4 - 12 different performances. Now that could be interesting....

[french frank]

I really wonder if this is true. If you look at the guests/members figures at the bottom of the first Forum page, you can see that there are often a lot of guests - I imagine learning from the threads here.

When you can see a lot of guests, they're usually either spambots or search engines( (Google, Bingbot). The new applebot was busy crawling us yesterday, I noticed. I'm not sure it's that interested in BaL.

[gradus]

I'm surprised that BAL hasn't introduced a listener poll for our favourite versions in advance, to provide the reviewer with a guide to what he or she is up against in making a final choice.

[MickyD]

I'm surprised that BAL hasn't introduced a listener poll for our favourite versions in advance, to provide the reviewer with a guide to what he or she is up against in making a final choice.

What an excellent idea!

[DracoM]

But maybe they daren't..................just in case of what OTHER revelations / opinions / buzzes they may discover in the process............!

[LMcD]

But maybe they daren't..................just in case of what OTHER revelations / opinions / buzzes they may discover in the process............!

That may well depend on who's got whose private mobile number.
Mind you, a listener poll could produce some refreshingly different winners, such as Eric Morecambe's unforgettable rendition of the Grieg Piano Concerto (well, the first bit), Florence Foster Jenkins's Queen Of The Night aria, and Jim Morrison's Alabama Song.

[gurnemanz]

The positive reaction to the latest BaL demonstrates that it can work, even in twofer format, and the obvious truth that the presenter is essential to its success.

[Wolfram]

Listening to Richard Wigmore's superb contribution to BaL this morning I was reminded that BaL has always been a "twofer", only in the past it used to be a conversation with you, the listener, not a third party presenter.

[HighlandDougie]

I agree there didn’t seem to be much point in playing so much of the Mutter/Orkis recording for it to be dismissed.

I thought that the point of illustrating whichever one of the second movement variations it was with Mutter was to show that it could be played quite differently, rather than dismissing it out of hand. I like the fact that she included Goldberg and Kraus from the 1930s, as well as Busch. We all know by now that this conversational format requires a fairly short shortlist which I found to cover a reasonable range of styles and approaches. So, pace the "Disgusteds, Tunbridge Wells", I didn't feel that I had wasted 40 minutes of my life listening to it and have ordered the Mullova, which I greatly liked.

[Maclintick]

Occasionally a very well informed, very insightful and authoritative reviewer will be on "the approved list" for selection and will slip through.

Do you mean such as Jeremy Sams, Richard Wigmore or Iain Burnside, perhaps?

But generally its following the trend to the superficial and partial

Do you consider the above trio of BAL reviewers & those mentioned below to be prime suspects in the superficiality stakes ??

So thank goodness there is still this board and its knowledgeable members, Gramophone and other similar publications, and MusicWeb - as you say :

"...many of the older reviewers are not merely reduced in appearance but now utterly sidelined "

Regularly sidelined contributors such as Bill Mival, Jeremy Summerly, Jan Smaczny, or our own Makropoulos for instance ? or in the interest of improved gender-balance perhaps Lucy Parham, Gillian Moore & Marina Frolova-Walker -- all far too young and inexperienced to give us the benefit of their views....

[mikealdren]

I don't have any issue with NL's discussion, she made some good points and had picked up some unusual recordings and I certainly don't have any issues with female presenters, I couldn't care less about the gender or age (or race or anything else) of the presenters as long as they do a good job.

My issue is that we now have so few recordings discussed that when the presenter puts in a few interesting examples as NL did, they are then too limited in the recordings that they are realistically considering. We end up with a very short list of only 2 or 3 real candidates and, rather than being immediately dismissed, the likes of Mutter then need to be considered further. What we really need is a shortlist of real contenders (and half a dozen may be enough) and the freedom to add any number examples to make quick points.

Of course the twofer format continues to waste valuable time.

[edashtav]

I thought that the point of illustrating whichever one of the second movement variations it was with Mutter was to show that it could be played quite differently, rather than dismissing it out of hand. I like the fact that she included Goldberg and Kraus from the 1930s, as well as Busch. We all know by now that this conversational format requires a fairly short shortlist which I found to cover a reasonable range of styles and approaches. So, pace the "Disgusteds, Tunbridge Wells", I didn't feel that I had wasted 40 minutes of my life listening to it and have ordered the Mullova, which I greatly liked.

I felt much the same as you. There was a touch of ‘Interpretations on Record’ about today’s BaL To have achieved that aim would need added time and, possibly, fewer distracting, conversational interruptions.