BaL 31.10.15 - Berg: Violin Concerto

[Petrushka]

... this could be yet another BaL winner for Abbado as I think his recording with Isabella Faust will be hard to beat.

Wish I could pick my horses as easily as this! It's a great recording and the Beethoven coupling ain't half bad either

[Nick Armstrong]

That performance by Kavakos and Davis was issued on a BBC Music magazine cover disc, Volume 10 no 6, which I still have. Well worth grabbing if it ever appears on any auction site or such like.

That BBCMM disc is my only CD of the piece. Faust did seem to make great sense of it. Was tempted when it was released; more so now.

have to say that this could be yet another BaL winner for Abbado as I think his recording with Isabella Faust will be hard to beat.

You should have put a tenner on that, Pet - decent odds back on 23 October when you prognosticated so correctly!

I found her enthusiasm very acceptable, and her likes and dislikes to be sufficiently supported by the excerpts she played.

Me too.

[Keraulophone]

Knowing that a fair number of those reading this would have been at school at the same time as me, I wonder how many others were shaken out of their musical complacency by studying this as an A Level set work in the 1960s. Perhaps they also found that the work was a closed book to their Oxbridge organist music teacher and had to rely on the invaluable Ralph Hill paperback book for analysis.

This certainly happened to me when it was still a set work ten years later (O&C exam board). Although the Berg VC wasn't our FRCO music teacher's usual cup of tea, I seem to remember him being won over by it, and thereby three unsuspecting and naive sixth-form boarders came under its immense emotional power. It fitted in well with all that Bach organ music he was making me learn, and I treasured the page in 'Riemenschneider' where the Es ist genug chorale lurked in its renewed sadness...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow5u41dAy90

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ah, Riemenschneider ...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Ah, Riemenschneider ...

I still have my copy in the loft.

[pastoralguy]

I can confirm that Faust's Beethoven concerto coupling for the Berg is absolutely outstanding! IMHO.

I studied the Berg concerto whilst a music student in the 80's and my tutor was very impressed that I had invested in Perlman's new fangled cd of said work! In fact, she borrowed it to play go the class since the Uni's old LP was pretty beat up! It sounds just as fab today as it did 30 years ago.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I still have my copy in the loft.

Mine's by my bedside.

Honest! Those long, sleepless nights when the world seems a cornucopia of terrors - nothing like a good Bach Chorale or two to soothe away anxiety and remind you of what humans can achieve. (The Shakespeare Sonnets are also there for the same reason.)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Mine's by my bedside.

Honest! Those long, sleepless nights when the world seems a cornucopia of terrors - nothing like a good Bach Chorale or two to soothe away anxiety and remind you of what humans can achieve. (The Shakespeare Sonnets are also there for the same reason.)

Maybe I'll try it. I keep my Wainwright Lakeland Fells book by my bedside.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Maybe I'll try it. I keep my Wainwright Lakeland Fells book by my bedside.

[DracoM]

Have now listened to the YouTube of Faust / Abbado in its entirety - terrific. So not quarrelling with the final KM verdict.
Just recoiled from the way the CDR was handled.

[ardcarp]

I found her enthusiasm very acceptable

When you think about it though, the ratio of talk to music was about 10:1. So we didn't hear a great deal of other versions or of great swathes of the concerto itself.

[visualnickmos]

Crikey, talk about an OTT reviewer....the litany of way, way too thick descriptions, the swoonings and gaspings in a stream of cliches.
If a reviewer can make me never want to hear a piece of music again, this review was it. In a sense, this review was all about the reviewer.
AND
the adoration of Isabel Faust from the very first moments of the review and I bet you can't guess who was 'the winner'?


Blimey.

Agree! A pretty ghastly BaL for all the above reasons - no real objective comments at all.

[vibratoforever]

What a dire and dreadful 43 minutes listening to the podcast. The description on the webpage " ,,.,, chooses a recording of Berg's Violin Concerto" as opposed to "a survey of available recordings" tells the story. The broadcast was full of adjectives describing the reviewers feelings about a performance but virtually free of those describing the facts of it. Listen around 20 minutes to the verbiage about the Kramer/Davis performance - total nonsense. Add to that the small number of recordings sampled.

[visualnickmos]

What a dire and dreadful 43 minutes listening to the podcast. The description on the webpage " ,,.,, chooses a recording of Berg's Violin Concerto" as opposed to "a survey of available recordings" tells the story. The broadcast was full of adjectives describing the reviewers feelings about a performance but virtually free of those describing the facts of it. Listen around 20 minutes to the verbiage about the Kramer/Davis performance - total nonsense. Add to that the small number of recordings sampled.

Exactly. It was as if the review was almost no more an expert on the work than I am! And, yes - the small number of versions reviewed. Hardly worth bothering. Such a pity, as it's a work I love, but I gained nothing from the programme, which I had been very much looking forward to.

[mikealdren]

Did they play anything from the Suk recording chosen last time? Why was it dismissed, I don't know it but it's obviously good.