The music-making of Stanisław Skrowaczewski

[Beef Oven!]

We are lucky indeed that Stan. Skrow. is still going strong (I managed not to crush him when I gave him a semi-hug after the LPO Bruckner 5 last November reported on here.)

I hope that performance will be out soon on LPO Live - meanwhile you should definitely start with this on the same label:



(There's a Bruckner 7 from 2012 too)

That's the one I think I heard. Maybe.

I read your post back then, but for some reason it didn't resonate with me. Goes like that sometimes, I guess.

[vinteuil]

The performance was that good that I simply had to buy the complete set of symphonies 00-9!!!

... if you want Bruckner - and you want Skrowaczewski - what you want is

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00EXS4OVQ

which gives you all the Bruckner and a whole lot more...

[Nick Armstrong]

There have been various mentions of this grand old man of European music, and having found a couple of wonderful filmed performances, I thought it worth starting a dedicated thread about his work, pulling together some disparate comments from past threads.

I've been watching this film of him in Bruckner 9 with the Frankfurt Radio SO....

[Nick Armstrong]

Also this Bruckner 2 in Gothenburg

[Nick Armstrong]

And, movingly, his performance in the same Gothenburg concert of Mozart's 20th piano concerto with Jan Lisiecki - the latter's extreme youthfulness and the conductor's advancing years combine to make something rather magical...

[richardfinegold]

Coincidentally played his Bruckner 6th from his earlier cycle on the Arte Nova label yesterday . Outstanding

[P. G. Tipps]

There is also this on YouTube ...

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

Interesting the use of gentle percussion before the final glorious brass outpouring. I have never come across that before. Is it one of Skrow's own little additions/amendments, I wonder?

If so, a true Bruckner disciple indeed!

[Beef Oven!]

Coincidentally played his Bruckner 6th from his earlier cycle on the Arte Nova label yesterday . Outstanding

Yes, that’s a really good performance. In fact following Cockneysparrow’s steer to Skrowaczewski’s 8, it’s the 6th I got to first and was bowled over. Not sure why I didn’t pick up on the Skrowaczewski discussion earlier in the year.

[Beef Oven!]

Skrowaczewski was the Principal conductor of The Halle who did a great deal to increase my musical knowledge and appreciation during his time in Manchester. He will be 89 in October this year, by far the oldest conductor that I will ever have ever seen conduct. He last conducted The Halle in the 2009/10 season when he was 86.

Have any posters seen a conductor older than this and who is the oldest conductor you have seen?

I think Gunter Wand was the oldest conductor I’ve ever seen. He was 80 or 81 when I first saw him conduct, and about 86 or 87 the next time. He lived to 91.

(although I thought it was Franz Welser Most who was the oldest, during a couple of performances during the previous decade. A moribund Bruckner 8 and subterranean Missa Solemnis).

[Barbirollians]

It is an odd thing - he receives so many encomiums nowadays in advanced old age and I am sure well deserved but when he was the principal conductor of the Halle in the 1980s he conducted lots of of routinely played concerts . The Halle was going through a bad patch post Loughran but I can scarcely remember any of them . I don't recall any Bruckner from that time in his programmes in Sheffield.

[visualnickmos]

Coincidentally played his Bruckner 6th from his earlier cycle on the Arte Nova label yesterday . Outstanding

Absolutely. A superb Bruckner cycle. Re-released on the OEHMS Classics label... maybe still some very reasonably-priced ones to be had.....

However I wasn't aware that recorded yet another one even after this one!

[Beef Oven!]

Apologies if this has already been posted, I found it a wonderful life-affirming biography of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. What a man!

[Conchis]

I am very much looking forward to next year's Halle concerts - and the BBC Philharmonic's.

On March 14th, Stanislaw Skrowaczwski is to conduct a programme of Lutoslawski and Shostakovich. Skrowaczewski was the Principal conductor of The Halle who did a great deal to increase my musical knowledge and appreciation during his time in Manchester. He will be 89 in October this year, by far the oldest conductor that I will ever have ever seen conduct. He last conducted The Halle in the 2009/10 season when he was 86.

Have any posters seen a conductor older than this and who is the oldest conductor you have seen?

I saw Gunter Wand conduct a Prom concert of Schubert's 8th Symphony and Bruckner's 9th in the summer of 2001, when he was aged 89. He died, aged ninety, the following year.

[Beef Oven!]

I saw Gunter Wand conduct a Prom concert of Schubert's 8th Symphony and Bruckner's 9th in the summer of 2001, when he was aged 89. He died, aged ninety, the following year.

Same programme I first saw him conduct, when he was 80/81. Seems a combination of unfinished(s) that he favoured.

[Nick Armstrong]

Released last Friday - the concert I was at in October: