Musical performers to avoid

[Nick Armstrong]

I feel slightly ill-at-ease to be starting another 'bête noire' thread (we've had composers, pieces you can't stand)... but then as a devotee of Ed Reardon, one feels a certain responsibility to keep the curmudgeonly side up.

Besides, this may serve as a useful 'aide-mémoire' of performers I would prefer never to pay hard-earned cash (or even spend precious time) to hear. Maybe this thread will die the death, in which case that'll show me, won't it.

I am moved to launch this thread having just heard on R3 I think the single worst... no, that's unfair... I know nothing about singing.. so I'd better say, I've just heard an example of singing as far removed as any I can recall from what I enjoy hearing. It was the singing of the 'Pie Jesu' in Duruflé's 'Requiem' by one Karen Cargill.

I found it so unbelievably awful that I couldn't even switch off - it was somehow fascinating how it ticked every box as to the sort of classical singing I can't abide.

The rest of the performance by choir, orchestra and Simon Keenlyside, under Robin Ticciati, was pretty good!

[pastoralguy]

Well, for me, it's Daniel Harding. I heard him CONduct Bruckner 5 with the LSO a few years ago and it was as if if he were conducting with a shovel. The playing was so insensitive, (the timpanist seemed to have swapped sticks for a couple of half bricks!) and the whole show screamed 'look at ME'.

Then there was his charade of the Dvorak 'cello concerto with Isserlis that missed out every glorious moment of that wonderful score. Coupled with the fact that a friend of mine who worked with him referred to him as a 'first class ****'.

And I write that with all due respect...

[Barbirollians]

Andrew Davis and Neville Marriner are two conductors who bitter experience has led me to avoid . Davis I find very dull in just about everything except Delius and Marriner in the 1980s made a string of such bland , inoffensive boring records with ASMF three of which I was foolish enough to buy and I have always avoided his work ever since .

Two pianists - Perhaps , unfairly after one clangorous and dreadful Brahms PC1 at the Proms - Garrick Ohlsson and Olli Mustonen who cannot resist mucking the music about a Grieg Concerto once had my teeth on edge throughout.

[Petrushka]

Roger Norrington. I'm sure I'll face death by Bryn but after that dreadful recording of the Mahler 9, never again.

Funny really, as I attended a couple of Proms of his, one with the London Classical Players (Beethoven 2 and Schubert 9 which I enjoyed) and I much admired his shaking the dust off the Beethoven symphonies in the late 1980s. But then it all went wrong somewhere along the line.

His dogmatic approach to Elgar, Bruckner and Mahler and others left me cold and that Mahler 9 was the last straw. It's the only time I've given away a CD that wasn't a duplicate and I'll never get any of his recordings again.

[Hornspieler]

I feel slightly ill-at-ease to be starting another 'bête noire' thread (we've had composers, pieces you can't stand)... but then as a devotee of Ed Reardon, one feels a certain responsibility to keep the curmudgeonly side up.

Besides, this may serve as a useful 'aide-mémoire' of performers I would prefer never to pay hard-earned cash (or even spend precious time) to hear. Maybe this thread will die the death, in which case that'll show me, won't it.

I am moved to launch this thread having just heard on R3 I think the single worst... no, that's unfair... I know nothing about singing.. so I'd better say, I've just heard an example of singing as far removed as any I can recall from what I enjoy hearing. It was the singing of the 'Pie Jesu' in Duruflé's 'Requiem' by one Karen Cargill.

I found it so unbelievably awful that I couldn't even switch off - it was somehow fascinating how it ticked every box as to the sort of classical singing I can't abide.

The rest of the performance by choir, orchestra and Simon Keenlyside, under Robin Ticciati, was pretty good!

Good morning Cali.

A challenging question. How long have you got?

Anyway, regarding the Pie Jesu, if you have a French Soprano, you will hear a lot of portamento. It does seem to be their style of singing. I remember one such recording years ago which reminded me of my late father-in-law's playing of his "musical saw" which he took to after severing two fingers with a band saw curtailed his ambitions as a violinist.
(Actually, he was quite good and I have him and his wife on tape.)

Generally, I tend to avoid `cult` singers and performers but they are too numerous to mention.

This thread might well take off and furnish us with some useful information about our fellow boarders.

HS

[Richard Tarleton]

I've just heard an example of singing as far removed as any I can recall from what I enjoy hearing. It was the singing of the 'Pie Jesu' in Duruflé's 'Requiem' by one Karen Cargill.

It's fascinating how people hear different things when listening to the same artist It can be difficult to describe - I have the same feelings listening to Ian Bostridge, whom I heard live in the 1990s (Britten Serenade) and have heard since in all sorts of things, from Britten and Schubert to Vasek in The Bartered Bride, culminating in that appalling Dowland recital with Fretwork and Liz Kenny at the Proms. I tried to tell Mary C (an admirer) what I hear when I listen to Bostridge - a sort of arch, over-thought, over-studied, over-produced voice which seems to originate somewhere in the tonsils. A world away from the sort of open, honest, natural tenor I enjoy (English tenors - think Wilfred Brown, Martyn Hill, Anthony Rolfe-Johnson, Philip Langridge...). Basically I can't bear to listen to him any more.

Didn't Ms Cargill do rather well in a BAL recently - was it Nuits dEté?

Another artist I struggle with (having heard him twice live at close quarters in quite intimate venues and a number of times on the radio) is Llyr Williams. He's a marvellous pianist, formidible technique, but he doesn't speak to me. Unlike his near-contemporary Paul Lewis, who speaks to me very directly - and whom I first heard in one of the same venues. Whether it boils down to something technical like touch or phrasing or is just instinctive I'm not sure, but there's a sort of emotional disconnect between Williams's playing and me.

And while I'm on - was it Cali or Throppers who was a Belcea-phobe? I've been watching their complete Beethoven quartets from Vienna on Sky Arts, and comparing their Op 131 with that of the Takacs from the Wigmore, also on Sky - fascinatingly different approaches. Can't make up my mind about the Belceas, though I'd hear them live if they came my way (I did try when they were at Cheltenham).

[HighlandDougie]

Another artist I struggle with (having heard him twice live at close quarters in quite intimate venues and a number of times on the radio) is Llyr Williams. He's a marvellous pianist, formidible technique, but he doesn't speak to me. Unlike his near-contemporary Paul Lewis, who speaks to me very directly - and whom I first heard in one of the same venues. Whether it boils down to something technical like touch or phrasing or is just instinctive I'm not sure, but there's a sort of emotional disconnect between Williams's playing and me.

RT's reaction to Llyr Williams/Paul Lewis is the polar opposite of mine (and I have also heard both of them in the same venues - and playing some of the same works) but The Other Half's reaction is the same as Richard's - LW, "too clinical, too detached", whereas PL, "emotionally involving, speaks directly to me etc etc". Horses for courses I suppose.

[Flosshilde]

It's fascinating how people hear different things when listening to the same artist It can be difficult to describe - I have the same feelings listening to Ian Bostridge, whom I heard live in the 1990s (Britten Serenade) and have heard since in all sorts of things, from Britten and Schubert to Vasek in The Bartered Bride, culminating in that appalling Dowland recital with Fretwork and Liz Kenny at the Proms. I tried to tell Mary C (an admirer) what I hear when I listen to Bostridge - a sort of arch, over-thought, over-studied, over-produced voice which seems to originate somewhere in the tonsils.

can't stand Bostridge either. The only time I've liked anything he's sung was an aria in Handel oratorio - something about a tomb (sorry to be so vague). His sepulchral voice suited it, but nothing else I've heard him sing.

Karen Cargill, on the other hand, is a singer I always enjoy listening to. Perhaps it was the Pie Jesu that didn't agree with her - it's a piece (if it's the one I'm thinking of) that I think would make anyone vomit. (Do singers work in the same way as baristers - taking any job that's offered, even if they don't like a piece? Or do they have works they positively refuse to sing? Didn't Jon Vickers pull out of singing Tristan when he suddenly discovered he had moral qualms about it?)

[Suffolkcoastal]

I'm in agreement on Bostridge, I avoid his recordings too. I find his singing rather affected and I find he has little feeling for his own native language. I also cannot abide the clarinetist Michael Collins, whose style I find rather arrogantly smug. I remember him totally crucifying the Copland Concerto at the Proms back in the 80s, paying little regard to Copland's indications, preferring to simply show off.

[amateur51]

Ian Bostridge opened my ears to the post-Pears possibilities in Britten when he performed Peter Quint in Britten The Turn of the Screw at the Barbican with Sir Colin Davis. i shall be forever grateful

[vinteuil]

For me there is a schoolmarmish prissiness in the playing of Angela Hewitt which I find hard to like.

[Ferretfancy]

Well, for me, it's Daniel Harding. I heard him CONduct Bruckner 5 with the LSO a few years ago and it was as if if he were conducting with a shovel. The playing was so insensitive, (the timpanist seemed to have swapped sticks for a couple of half bricks!) and the whole show screamed 'look at ME'.

Then there was his charade of the Dvorak 'cello concerto with Isserlis that missed out every glorious moment of that wonderful score. Coupled with the fact that a friend of mine who worked with him referred to him as a 'first class ****'.

And I write that with all due respect...

I think he's improved a bit, maybe it's a while since you saw him. The thing I most disliked was the excessive antics on the podium, but he seems more restrained these days -not a favourite, but not a hate either.

[richardfinegold]

Roger Norrington. I'm sure I'll face death by Bryn but after that dreadful recording of the Mahler 9, never again.

Funny really, as I attended a couple of Proms of his, one with the London Classical Players (Beethoven 2 and Schubert 9 which I enjoyed) and I much admired his shaking the dust off the Beethoven symphonies in the late 1980s. But then it all went wrong somewhere along the line.

His dogmatic approach to Elgar, Bruckner and Mahler and others left me cold and that Mahler 9 was the last straw. It's the only time I've given away a CD that wasn't a duplicate and I'll never get any of his recordings again.

I second all of the above.
I also have an aversion to many musicians from the old USSR. Brass sections that sound like saxaphone quartets and singers with wobble the size of a Chicago pothole. Interestingly, both of those seem to be dissapearing in the decades after the fall ofthe USSR. Let's hope Putin doesn't reinstate them.

[amateur51]

For me there is a schoolmarmish prissiness in the playing of Angela Hewitt which I find hard to like.

I was fortunate on one afternoon to witness her practicing her evening recital of Beethoven piano sonatas. i was surprised and delighted by the physicality of her playing (a Fazioli of course)

[Ferretfancy]

Ian Bostridge opened my ears to the post-Pears possibilities in Britten when he performed Peter Quint in Britten The Turn of the Screw at the Barbican with Sir Colin Davis. i shall be forever grateful

Yes, and he gave a devastating performance of Our Hunting Fathers at the Barbican recently.