BaL 16.03.19 - Brahms: Piano Concerto no. 2 in B flat

[Barbirollians]

What is interesting is how this BAL describes itself - that TS picks a personal favourite rather than a library choice . Perhaps BAL no longer is that but building a collection of critics personal favourites which is not quite the same thing.

[edashtav]

What is interesting is how this BAL describes itself - that TS picks a personal favourite rather than a library choice . Perhaps BAL no longer is that but building a collection of critics personal favourites which is not quite the same thing.

That's a good observation, Barbirollians, but TS's favourite may not remain top of his pops fot long for I sense that he yearns to be knocked out by a HIPP, full period instrument interpretation. TS likes to be 'on trend' and in the vanguard.

[Bryn]

That's a good observation, Barbirollians, but TS's favourite may not remain top of his pops fot long for I sense that he yearns to be knocked out by a HIPP, full period instrument interpretation. TS likes to be 'on trend' and in the vanguard.

Surely, HIPP is the rearguard.

[edashtav]

Surely, HIPP is the rearguard.

Ha ha
With codpiece as the foreguard!

[richardfinegold]

... no view on your local band with Messrs Richter & Leinsdorf?

I last heard that one when I bought a large Richter box and was plowing through it a couple of years ago. It gets an airing on the radio here pretty frequently but I hadn’t owned it until then. It’s a great recording, with Richter having some of the kind of leonine energy as Horowitz, but Leinsdorf being more genial than Szell or Toscanini, not that that is necessarily a bad thing. The Gilels recording has always overshadowed it for me in terms of hearing a Russian Pianist of that generation...boy are we spoiled for choices here...

[verismissimo]

[SIZE=3][COLOR=#272727][FONT=Tahoma]Very good survey, not least for its recognition of the variety of approaches, neatly summed up as TS listed his stylistically wide-ranging favourites at the end, and mentioned again the lack of period-instrument performances (not many modern-CO versions either).

Today's and tomorrow's Schiff/OAE concerts at RFH: no plans to record, I'm advised by OAE CEO.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

...boy are we spoiled for choices here...

Ain't that the truth!

[Bryn]

Today's and tomorrow's Schiff/OAE concerts at RFH: no plans to record, I'm advised by OAE CEO.

Much to be regretted, indeed. Mind you, with the quality of microphone accessories for iPhones, etc. today, I bet there will be a good few bootlegs doing the rounds, and possibly even static videos, too.

[Mal]

March was basically the chief administrator of the Penguin, and would write reviews of the discs that EG and RL didn't fancy... I used to assume the Penguin Guides were a bible and could be relied on. As it happens, EG once admitted to a friend of mine that he didn't listen to the whole of all of the recordings he 'reviewed' - just the 'crucial moments'... it leaves me thinking that RL was the only heavyweight on the Penguin team, and the only one whose reviews one should trust...

Reading the recent obit. from the editor in chief you might have a point about March, it's damning with faint praise:

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/ivan-march-long-time-gramophone-critic-has-died

The few positive comments on his reviewing capability - "generous-spirited... a constant thread remained – namely, his astute reflection on a release’s sound quality" are not really great plaudits.

I certainly don't completely trust the Penguin guide, having bought several CDs on their recommendation before the days of online sampling and been gravely disappointed. I thought it might be just be a question of taste, and my taste being underdeveloped, but over the years, and taking comments like yours on board, I have come to suspect there might be a bigger problem.

All that said, March's comments on Bernstein/Zimerman seemed to concur with what I was hearing, and pointed to a performance (Gilels/Jochum) that I like a lot. So March isn't always wrong :)

[Tony Halstead]

The late Ivan March was nothing if not consistent in his musical judgements...
In about 1964 when I was a 3rd-year horn student at the old RMCM, I played a concert as guest 1st horn with the BLACKPOOL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, conducted by Dr Robert Atherton (David Atherton's father). Maybe spurred on by the fact that, aged only 19, I had had the temerity to request a professional FEE (the princely sum of £5 in those days!), Dr Atherton devised a programme that seemed deliberately to tax the prowess of even an experienced 'pro' player let alone a student: Borodin's 'Prince Igor' overture, Mendelssohn's 'Nocturne' from 'a Midsummer Night's Dream' and Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony were included.
When I duly turned up at the concert venue, Blackpool's old 'Norbreck Hydro' hotel ballroom, I was welcomed by none other than Ivan March, also a guest horn player in the BSO. During the rehearsal and concert, Ivan, playing 4th horn, was very friendly and encouraging. I somehow 'got through' the concert without any major blunders ( I think); in the dressing room afterwards, Ivan said to me "you play really very well, congratulations" (very nice of him!) and then " may I suggest that you work on the idea of adding some 'charm' to your playing?".
I lost touch with Ivan after that.
Nearly 30 years later I made his acquaintance once again, this time 'in print', in the form of the 'Penguin Guide'. Of my first attempt at recording the Mozart horn concertos on the hand horn ( the somewhat notorious Nimbus CD that features a prominent harpsichord continuo in the middle of the 'sound stage', with the solo horn somewhere in the left channel speaker), Ivan wrote that my playing was 'seriously lacking in charm'.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The late Ivan March was nothing if not consistent in his musical judgements...
In about 1964 when I was a 3rd-year horn student at the old RMCM, I played a concert as guest 1st horn with the BLACKPOOL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, conducted by Dr Robert Atherton (David Atherton's father). Maybe spurred on by the fact that, aged only 19, I had had the temerity to request a professional FEE (the princely sum of £5 in those days!), Dr Atherton devised a programme that seemed deliberately to tax the prowess of even an experienced 'pro' player let alone a student: Borodin's 'Prince Igor' overture, Mendelssohn's 'Nocturne' from 'a Midsummer Night's Dream' and Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony were included.
When I duly turned up at the concert venue, Blackpool's old 'Norbreck Hydro' hotel ballroom, I was welcomed by none other than Ivan March, also a guest horn player in the BSO. During the rehearsal and concert, Ivan, playing 4th horn, was very friendly and encouraging. I somehow 'got through' the concert without any major blunders ( I think); in the dressing room afterwards, Ivan said to me "you play really very well, congratulations" (very nice of him!) and then " may I suggest that you work on the idea of adding some 'charm' to your playing?".
I lost touch with Ivan after that.
Nearly 30 years later I made his acquaintance once again, this time 'in print', in the form of the 'Penguin Guide'. Of my first attempt at recording the Mozart horn concertos on the hand horn ( the somewhat notorious Nimbus CD that features a prominent harpsichord continuo in the middle of the 'sound stage', with the solo horn somewhere in the left channel speaker), Ivan wrote that my playing was 'seriously lacking in charm'.

What a great story.

[cloughie]

The late Ivan March was nothing if not consistent in his musical judgements...
In about 1964 when I was a 3rd-year horn student at the old RMCM, I played a concert as guest 1st horn with the BLACKPOOL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, conducted by Dr Robert Atherton (David Atherton's father). Maybe spurred on by the fact that, aged only 19, I had had the temerity to request a professional FEE (the princely sum of £5 in those days!), Dr Atherton devised a programme that seemed deliberately to tax the prowess of even an experienced 'pro' player let alone a student: Borodin's 'Prince Igor' overture, Mendelssohn's 'Nocturne' from 'a Midsummer Night's Dream' and Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony were included.
When I duly turned up at the concert venue, Blackpool's old 'Norbreck Hydro' hotel ballroom, I was welcomed by none other than Ivan March, also a guest horn player in the BSO. During the rehearsal and concert, Ivan, playing 4th horn, was very friendly and encouraging. I somehow 'got through' the concert without any major blunders ( I think); in the dressing room afterwards, Ivan said to me "you play really very well, congratulations" (very nice of him!) and then " may I suggest that you work on the idea of adding some 'charm' to your playing?".
I lost touch with Ivan after that.
Nearly 30 years later I made his acquaintance once again, this time 'in print', in the form of the 'Penguin Guide'. Of my first attempt at recording the Mozart horn concertos on the hand horn ( the somewhat notorious Nimbus CD that features a prominent harpsichord continuo in the middle of the 'sound stage', with the solo horn somewhere in the left channel speaker), Ivan wrote that my playing was 'seriously lacking in charm'.

Was it a case of ‘Beware the chides of March’?

[Tony Halstead]

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What a great story.

-

[jayne lee wilson]

That's a good observation, Barbirollians, but TS's favourite may not remain top of his pops fot long for I sense that he yearns to be knocked out by a HIPP, full period instrument interpretation. TS likes to be 'on trend' and in the vanguard.

Well Ed., if you peruse his various Guardian Music Guides, you'll note his broad take on the wide range of interpretative possibilities (as shown by this very BaL) and recordings, and a generous-spirited attempt to see the positive features of them all. I instinctively do this myself, so no wonder I identify with it. I don't think it is just about being "on trend"... but there's nothing wrong, and everything right, about keeping up with newer recordings, especially from younger artists...

Returning to to the Penguin Guide and its forebears for a moment - just to get it off the ground there had to be an entrepreneurial spirit, surely; crudely, you could see March as the entrepreneur, Greenfield as the populist and Layton as the specialist; it is amazing just how much it got right, flipping through it now. It was a baedeker to this vast history, authoritative in a way that none of the later pretenders ever came close to.
Above all - above all - it had the essential openness to new and varied approaches, like HIPPs - so was able, with the monthly Gramophone, to welcome such as Bruggen, Norrington and Gardiner when few were responsive and many insulting ("the shock of the new!" and as this forum shows, many are still unresponsive even now, or simply too either/or).

They never let personal preference slide so-easily into interpretive prejudice, often including alternative reviews of the same recording.