YouTube: the thread for interesting video links

[cloughie]

Thanks for posting that, seabright. I've long regarded Leopold Stokowski as a misunderstood and misinterpreted conductor. CD reissue boxes some years ago gave me a chance to reappraise him, and to appreciate him not merely as a pioneer of neglected music, but as a serious interpreter of the classics. I find him a conductor well-worth returning to, presenting an original view of music away from the recognised traditions.

Just before I logged in now I was listening to his lovely Grainger disc from 1950, performances still, I think, unsurpassed..

Indeed I can remember a time when he was regarded scathingly by many reviewers being chastised for his meddling with orchestrations eg his recording of the Planets was not regarded well. His tinkerings for ‘Fantasia’ probably didn’t help. I must admit that I find much of his music making fun and recordings such as his Everest recordings of Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss terrific!
Few conductors had his connections with and knowledge of recording techniques and he made the most of them particularly his participation in Phase 4!

[Bryn]

[seabright]

Thanks for posting that, seabright. I've long regarded Leopold Stokowski as a misunderstood and misinterpreted conductor. CD reissue boxes some years ago gave me a chance to reappraise him, and to appreciate him not merely as a pioneer of neglected music, but as a serious interpreter of the classics. I find him a conductor well-worth returning to, presenting an original view of music away from the recognised traditions.

Just before I logged in now I was listening to his lovely Grainger disc from 1950, performances still, I think, unsurpassed..

Glad you like the 'Legends' documentary. One thing that wasn't mentioned was Stokowski's instructions to string players to bow independently. This "free bowing" as it was called is particularly noticeable a few minutes after the start of the "Mastersingers" Overture. The camera then focuses on the 1st violins and you can see John Georgiadis and the rest of his section bowing entirely at will. This produces what critics often called the "Stokowski Sound." I wonder if other conductors also adopt free-bowing. It may look untidy but it does result in a rather radiant refulgence!

[smittims]

Unison bowing, as with many other features of precision, was a 20th-century innovation, as far as evidence goes. It made the old 'free style' seem sloppy and amateurish, which is why many people who have grown up with the precise style cannot listen with pleasure to historical recordings (string portamento, for instance , is a sticking-point).

But some musicians, like Stokowski, saw that the old free style had virtues of its own. When well done, it can produce more spontanaeity and passion ; Elgar's recordings, and those of Robert Kajanus, Cortot, Thibaud and Casals, are good examples.

[Serial_Apologist]

Arnold Schoenberg giving a lecture at UCLA Royce Hall on 20 November 1949, in which he speaks (in broken but comprehensible English) about the early stages in his creative development, up to the inception of the 12-tone method. My boundless gratitude to whoever chose to submit this historic document. The only downside is in the laborious presentation of the examples chosen by the composer from his music: without the needless repetition we could have been given longer and more meaningful excerpts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_4LnBU8e_w

[seabright]

Tchaikovsky "Manfred" - Finale (Soviet Version) ... Here is a rarity ... Temirkanov conducting the fourth movement's ending of the "Manfred" Symphony Soviet-style which cuts out the organ entry and the quiet closing bars. Instead, the Proms audience was treated to the end of the first movement, complete with Toscanini's added tam-tam crashes. It seems that none of the critics who reviewed this concert for the next day's papers even noticed! ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3hXgvJOUEE

[gradus]

Tchaikovsky "Manfred" - Finale (Soviet Version) ... Here is a rarity ... Temirkanov conducting the fourth movement's ending of the "Manfred" Symphony Soviet-style which cuts out the organ entry and the quiet closing bars. Instead, the Proms audience was treated to the end of the first movement, complete with Toscanini's added tam-tam crashes. It seems that none of the critics who reviewed this concert for the next day's papers even noticed! ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3hXgvJOUEE

Its fabulous and works incredibly well imv.

[Jazzrook]

Ivo Pogorelich - Scriabin - Deux Poemes, Op 32:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=7XoPAdPGNck

JR

[seabright]

There's been an appropriate addition to YouTube on Vaughan Williams's 150th Birthday ... It's a 1989 radio broadcast in which John Steane discussed Sir Henry Wood's 1938 recording of the "Serenade to Music." The interviewees were three of the surviving soloists - Eva Turner, Mary Jarred and Roy Henderson - along with Ursula VW. Steane illustrated the work by introducing the various singers as they made their solo entrances, their initials being printed in the score at the appointed moments. He does say the "Serenade" was one of RVW's loveliest compositions and he's right about that ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ6yZWSo8Ck

[smittims]

Thanks for the link. I remember hearing the programme when it was broadcast.

I wonder how many times the work was performed with at least some of the original sixteen singers. There's an Albion CD (ALBCD 009) containing a performance from 1951 conducted by VW himself and featuring eleven of the originals with substitute singers making up the sixteen.

Another interesting recording is of a performance at the opening concert of Lincoln Center, New York, in 1962, conducted by Leonard Bernstein: it's sung by twelve, not sixteen , solo singers (no choir) and they include some famous opera singers such as Eileen Farrell, Shirley Verrett, Jon Vickers and George London.

VW recognised that the original version wouldn't be done often so he made, or approved, three arrangements:

four soloists and choir;
choir only;
orchestra only.

These have all been recorded over the years.

I know one should not look for 'meanings ' in VW's music but I can't help feeling that the extraordinary serenity of this piece has something to do with his just having fallen irrevocably in love at the age of 66 .

[Bryn]

I'd very much welcome a rebroadcast of the Radio 3 production of the radio drama production of The Pilgrim's Progress with RVW's incidental music. I have a rather poor cassette recording of it but feel it deserves to be broadcast again.

[seabright]

It's always fascinating to hear a non-British orchestra play English music and here's what I think is a splendid performance of "The Planets" from the North German Radio Philharmonic under its Chief Conductor, Andrew Manze. The comments under the video of the TV transmission tend to agree ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mJQliEacCI

[ardcarp]

There's been an appropriate addition to YouTube on Vaughan Williams's 150th Birthday .

And another, rather different. Voces 8 plus violinist Jack Liebeck doing The Lark Ascending. It's a remarkable feat, and strangely affecting. I've never much liked the violin + piano version, as the piano is just too percussive to evoke the right atmosphere (IMHO of course) Voces 8 are mainly vocalising wordlessly, but at certain points a few words emerge, I imagine from George Meredith's original poem. The orchestral version is still tops for me, but this is very much worth a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4rt4-JIKbA

[seabright]

I just came across an 8mm reel of the "Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra" from 1959, evidently one of several short 10-minute cartoons based on Gerard Hoffnung's drawings. The quality is pretty dire but it has its amusing moments. They were produced for the BBC so would have popped up on the telly. I wonder if all of them have survived in good quality and whether some enterprising BBC executive could dig them out for a new audience after all these years ...

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

[smittims]

That would be wonderful, but sadly the BBC seems not to be interested in their own archive material. For them, the 1990s are 'history'.