Musical dreams and nightmares...

[pastoralguy]

Prompted by Le MartinPeucher's suggestion about musical dreams or nightmares, here are a couple of mine...

Elgar conducting his Violin Concerto with Kreisler as soloist. It's well known that this was planned but never materialised due to, afaik, Kreisler being indifferent to the composer's conducting. Of course, the 16 year old Menuhin got the gig and so history was made.

I'd also love to have heard David Oistrakh play the Elgar concerto. Again, afaik, he didn't record it commercially but I do hope there might be a tape somewhere in the Russian archives. (His dong, Igor, did record it and, as violin playing, it's phenomenal if not really idiomatic. I have a cd of Gidon Kremer playing it in a competition which is pretty good.

Nightmares? Not sure.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Thanks for the new thread pg, but I'm conscious that there have been previous ones for recordings that could/ should have been made but weren't, such as Ferrier's Britten Abraham and Isaac.

My suggestion on the Vier Letzte Lieder thread was slightly different and more limited: works you wish your favourite singer would have undertaken, given a change in vocal range or lung power.

Or dream/nightmare visions of operatic casting in a heaven where late great singers are no longer limited at all by in-life vocal range or gender

[pastoralguy]

Thanks for the new thread pg, but I'm conscious that there have been previous ones for recordings that could/ should have been made but weren't, such as Ferrier's Britten Abraham and Isaac.

My suggestion on the Vier Letzte Lieder thread was slightly different and more limited: works you wish your favourite singer would have undertaken, given a change in vocal range or lung power.

Or dream/nightmare visions of operatic casting in a heaven where late great singers are no longer limited at all by in-life vocal range or gender

Let's go with that then.

[cloughie]

I know he conducted performances of it on Radio but never did a commercial recording - Bryden Thomson and Job which would have been great add-on to his excellent Vaughan Williams symphony cycle.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I thought the title referred to those dreams where I have to go onstage to conduct - and play in - a concert in which I don't know the work!

(Both "dream" and "nightmare", in that whilst I'm terrified before going on and during the performance, I always manage to bluster my way through a decent effort. So, Dr Freud - what do we make of that?

Oh.

I see.

This one, too? )

[ahinton]

No particular nightmares - but, on the other hand, Vier Letzte Lieder sung by Sarah Leonard...

[cloughie]

No particular nightmares - but, on the other hand, Vier Letzte Lieder sung by Sarah Leonard...

...or Callas!

[gradus]

Prompted by Le MartinPeucher's suggestion about musical dreams or nightmares, here are a couple of mine...

Elgar conducting his Violin Concerto with Kreisler as soloist. It's well known that this was planned but never materialised due to, afaik, Kreisler being indifferent to the composer's conducting. Of course, the 16 year old Menuhin got the gig and so history was made.

I'd also love to have heard David Oistrakh play the Elgar concerto. Again, afaik, he didn't record it commercially but I do hope there might be a tape somewhere in the Russian archives. (His dong, Igor, did record it and, as violin playing, it's phenomenal if not really idiomatic. I have a cd of Gidon Kremer playing it in a competition which is pretty good.

Nightmares? Not sure.

My word, that would rack up some Youtube viewings.

[Richard Barrett]

I thought the title referred to those dreams where I have to go onstage to conduct - and play in - a concert in which I don't know the work!

Last time that happened to me I was the soloist in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, despite having a fairly sketchy knowledge of the piece and a mostly theoretical knowledge of the instrument. As I remember it didn't actually go very well.

[teamsaint]

Last time that happened to me I was the soloist in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, despite having a fairly sketchy knowledge of the piece and a mostly theoretical knowledge of the instrument. As I remember it didn't actually go very well.

Who was the conductor ?

[Richard Barrett]

Who was the conductor?

Now that's something I don't recall at all, maybe it will come back to me, this was a few weeks ago. Maybe there wasn't one!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Last time that happened to me I was the soloist in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, despite having a fairly sketchy knowledge of the piece and a mostly theoretical knowledge of the instrument. As I remember it didn't actually go very well.

You're kidding!!!! I've "done" the Mendelssohn Concerto, too! (I didn't recognise the conductor, except that he seemed very cross with me - presumably for not turning up to the rehearsals - but his mood improved when the performance - which in the dream I knew wasn't anything like the actual Mendelssohn Concerto, but everyone else seemed quite happy with whatever it was "we" performed - was a success.

(I've also sung improvised words and Music to Operas and Musicals - including, I remember vividly, leading "my" troops through a real stream onstage whilst singing the "Heavy Dragoon" song from Patience.) And there was the time when I was (really) writing a piece for Clarinet & Piano where I couldn't work out how to let the clarinettist take breaths in a perpetuum mobile section - in the dream it was played at a school concert by two clarinet students with me accompanying them on the piano - and having to make up the piano part as I played, because I couldn't play the original.

[MrGongGong]

Last time that happened to me I was the soloist in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, despite having a fairly sketchy knowledge of the piece and a mostly theoretical knowledge of the instrument. As I remember it didn't actually go very well.

Were you dressed as Mary Magdalene by any chance? (allegedly )

which in the dream I knew wasn't anything like the actual Mendelssohn Concerto

I didn't know you were Andrew Lloyd Webber's lawyer

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I didn't know you were Andrew Lloyd Webber's lawyer

If I were, I'd make sure he got a life sentence.

[Barbirollians]

Dream- Dvorak Cello Concerto - du Pre/Czech PO/Barbirolli

Nightmare any recording by Olli Mustonen .