Musical performers to avoid

[Dave2002]

I think Groves also performed other unusual pieces with John Ogdon, such as Busoni's piano concerto and Gerorge LLoyd's concerto.

[Petrushka]

Messiaen, Turangalila Symphony
BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Groves with John Ogdon (Piano) and Jeanne Loriod (Ondes Martenot)
Broadcast from the Albert Hall, Wednesday 6 August 1969

can be found here

http://www.cliveheathmusic.co.uk/tapes.php

This is a quite magnificent performance and should be investigated by anyone at all interested in the work. Incidentally, in that very same Prom season, Sir Charles Groves gave the notorious world premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' Worldes Blis and let us not forget that it was a performance that he gave of the Mahler 2 that inspired one Simon Rattle to become a conductor. I only saw him the once in a 1977 programme that concluded with a terrific Tchaikovsky Francesca da Rimini which made me dash out to get a recording of a work I'd never heard before.

[Bryn]

This is a quite magnificent performance and should be investigated by anyone at all interested in the work.

Indeed it was, and, to quote Max Boyce, "I know, 'cause I was there". I attended the morning rehearsals on the day, and found them most illuminating, not just re. the work, but also as a lesson in conducting techniques.

[ahinton]

I think Groves also performed other unusual pieces with John Ogdon, such as Busoni's piano concerto and Gerorge LLoyd's concerto.

That was Lloyd's first piano concerto; he wrote three others and I'm not aware that John Ogdon ever played or Charles Groves ever conducted any of the others.

[Flosshilde]

Have a nice day!

(Captain) Hornspieler

Do you have that up your sleeve, ready to produce at appropriate (or not) moments? Or did you have to do an extensive Google search for it?

[Hornspieler]

Do you have that up your sleeve, ready to produce at appropriate (or not) moments? Or did you have to do an extensive Google search for it?

I have over 10,000 photographs on file - dating back to 1947. "The Captain's Rules" was taken at a farmhouse in St Kitts in 2009.

If you would like a copy, send me an email address.

HS

[Hornspieler]

Please be kind when you answer this as I'm just a brain damaged ex-string player, and not a brilliant brass (sorry, Horn) player ...

From one dog lover to another.

HS

[verismissimo]

I thought his performance of Elgar 2 at the Proms last year with the LSO would never end! Perhaps someone knows whether it did?

Was it VERY slow?

[Flosshilde]

I have over 10,000 photographs on file - dating back to 1947. HS

Most of my photos are of old ruins

[Hornspieler]

Most of my photos are of old ruins

Not self-portraits, I hope!

HS

[Lento]

Was it VERY slow?

Very inclined to linger, and not very well co-ordinated in places, as I remember.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

And Roger Norrington, for making the National Youth Orchestra play like a scratchy school band when doing Mahler 1 at The Proms in 2004.

Well he does no better with professional orchestras.
Others on my list would be Dame Gwyneth Jones, Helen Field and Felicity Palmer - all too wobbly. The same can be said of Peter Damm's horn playing.

[Ferretfancy]

I wish I could summon up enthusiasm for the playing of Stephen Hough. To me, he has an oddly splashy quality in faster passages, whatever he is playing. The trouble is that when you first latch on to something like that you find yourself looking for it every time.

No mention of Lorin Maazel so far. When he was young he conducted some marvellous performances, but he has replaced them with an insistence on a kind of clinical accuracy which drains the life from the music. He's the only conductor I know who could make the Miraculous Mandarin sound dull.

[Hornspieler]

Well he does no better with professional orchestras.
Others on my list would be Dame Gwyneth Jones, Helen Field and Felicity Palmer - all too wobbly. The same can be said of Peter Damm's horn playing.

Peter Damm's horn playing was simply in the style of all Eastern European and Russian horn players and it is only in recent years with the international mixing of musicians and conductors, that the non-vibrato style of playing became universally adopted (but some works, particularly by the French composers can still benefits from a little trembling in the right place - it's a matter of taste).

I dined with Peter Damm when I was in Leipzig and he and the entire Gewandhaus horn section dined at my house when the orchestra were in Bournemouth. They were a very fine horn section. So, whilst my preference is to leave the vibrato to the woodwind, I would say that it is not always out of place. Nobody complains about it in brass bands and the great Hermann Bauman, one of the finest horn players of his time
was universally admired for his musicality and impressive instrumental technique.

HS

(But I agree about the singers - especially Gwyneth Jones)

[DracoM]

Even in sycophantic Met, Maazel's morgue-like conducting of Verdi's Don Carlos last year had people walking out. His claque cheered as they always do, but there was a LOT of muttering and expostulation in the bars during the intervals, I can tell you.

Will never willingly go to a Maazel concert or buy CDs etc of him ever again.