Discoveries.

[Thropplenoggin]

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords!



Oops, wrong thread.

I, for one, hope this tête-à-tête between acronym heavyweights JLW and FHG takes a good long while to wind down...this is exactly the kind of intellectual back-and-forth that first drew me into these boards. It makes for absolutely fascinating spectator reading!

[amateur51]

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords!



Oops, wrong thread.

I, for one, hope this tête-à-tête between acronym heavyweights JLW and FHG takes a good long while to wind down...this is exactly the kind of intellectual back-and-forth that first drew me into these boards. It makes for absolutely fascinating spectator reading!

Two of our very best, I quite agree Throppers!

Let's be havin' it, you two

[EdgeleyRob]

I, for one, hope this tête-à-tête between acronym heavyweights JLW and FHG takes a good long while to wind down...this is exactly the kind of intellectual back-and-forth that first drew me into these boards. It makes for absolutely fascinating spectator reading!

Two of our very best, I quite agree Throppers!

Let's be havin' it, you two

Me too,I am in awe.

Seriously JLW's and Ferney's posts are always pure class.

[jayne lee wilson]

The listener. As we see every week on the Building a Library Threads, one person's ideal performance/recording is another's "worst ever" and a third's "'salright, but nothing to get excited about." Krivine's breath-taking readings of the Beethoven Symphonies (which miraculously reveal the joy of these scores in ways that nobody else would seem to have believed possible - and still presents their incendiary, earth-changing power) are an endless source of wonder and revelation to me. Every detail of the scores galvinized into fresh new life, making the planets dance rejoicing in the name of Beethoven. But not if you're Thropplenoggin or Highland Dougie, who really don't like them and much prefer Hogwood's - that I find plod along unremarkably.

I was minded, after my last post, of how dull I find Pinnock's Haydn - and yet there's nothing I can point to in the scores that I can say "Look! He doesn't do that!" And Pinnock's Haydn is many other people's ideal in the works. And there may well be some Berwald experts who prefer Goodman to Ehrling (presumably Goodman, for one!) - the point is that if neither Goodman nor Ehrling deviate from the score, your ears and head are as valid as theirs.

That's my point: to reproduce a score accurately isn't a simple matter - there is no "just" involved. It demands the deepest intelligence and imagination and belief in the work And it will never be the same twice. What need anyone else imposing their inferior ideas onto them? Haydn studied figured bass for years: by the time he wrote the "Paris" Symphonies, he knew what rallentando and accelerando and sforzando meant. When he wanted these effects he wrote them in the scores. If he didn't write them in (in these of all works) it's because the Music doesn't need them. There's plenty enough detail to realize without "improving" them.

But you're quite right that to suggest that it's a different matter with pre-Classical Music: there conventions which the composers took for granted have been forgotten and have to be re-discovered, re-thought and regenerated.

And, in response to your enthusiasm for Harnoncourt, I shall endeavour over the next week to listen to them again to see if they impress me more in the light of that enthusiasm. I see from my notes that I've played the Kuijken set eleven times - I'm in danger of coming to think of those performances as the works themselves.

I think you overstate the variety of opinion in the assessment of classical recordings - there is often a consensus. Which suggests something beyond the merely subjective. I agree with you about Krivine/Hogwood, the dullness of Pinnock, and most reviewers (well, OLD Gramophonians at least) seem to feel broadly the same. And I've not yet found anyone preferring Goodman to Ehrling in Berwald - listening to them, it's obvious why, which is why I can't accept that these differences are only in the listener's perceptions. The Leningrad and the Berlin Philharmonics DO sound objectively different and are "employed" differently by their directors. If "reproducing a score accurately" never sounds the same twice it can only be because of those differences - that subjective, personal input which brings a performance to life and tells you that the performers have something to say, not just the composer. And all the different traditions of performance (HIPS, Russian, German, etc) feed into that personal response. (But is every LISTENER's opinion equally valid? I would (obviously!) say not.)

Performers' ideas need not be inferior of course - without them and the differences between them, the ideal of fidelity to the score can produce more of those Pinnock-led performances that have evidently bored both of us, and which discouraged me from listening to HIPS-classical for ages. My Paris sets run from Ansermet, to Bernstein, K.Jarvi to Bruggen; all very audibly distinct in orchestral, acoustic and interpretative character. The shaping spirit is different in each.

(Currently I would prefer the gracious and spacious Bruggen to the beefier, more dramatic Harnoncourt).

[amateur51]

Performers' ideas need not be inferior of course - without them and the differences between them, the ideal of fidelity to the score can produce more of those Pinnock-led performances that have evidently bored both of us, and which discouraged me from listening to HIPS-classical for ages. My Paris sets run from Ansermet, to Bernstein, K.Jarvi to Bruggen; all very audibly distinct in orchestral, acoustic and interpretative character. The shaping spirit is different in each.

(Currently I would prefer the gracious and spacious Bruggen to the beefier, more dramatic Harnoncourt).

Nice turn of phrase, that jlw

[Tapiola]

Ahem. I find approximately 50% of this back-and-forth extremely tedious I will not say which half.

Back on thread...

A recent discovery is Kajanus' Tapiola, recently re-released on Naxos. Not what I expected at all in this work, being used to Karajan's classic Philharmonia recording, Berglund's, Vanska's, Sakari's...

[jayne lee wilson]

Ahem. I find approximately 50% of this back-and-forth extremely tedious I will not say which half.

Back on thread...

A recent discovery is Kajanus' Tapiola, recently re-released on Naxos. Not what I expected at all in this work, being used to Karajan's classic Philharmonia recording, Berglund's, Vanska's, Sakari's...

SUCH insight, SUCH articulacy, such awe-ful knowledge!

I shall never listen to Tapiola in the same way again.

[Bryn]

Nice turn of phrase, that jlw

Reminds me of Frank Zappa's remark to Ensemble Modern once they had got the notes spot on: "Now shape it".

[Tapiola]

SUCH insight, SUCH articulacy, such awe-ful knowledge!

I shall never listen to Tapiola in the same way again.

Ye shall know them by their fruits

[jayne lee wilson]

Ye shall know them by their fruits

I own to many an idee-fixe, but I'm not dogmatic about any of them...

I think we are all grateful to Tapiola for SO enriching this discussion.

[Sir Velo]

Time to revive this thread:

Enescu's third violin sonata: think cross between Bartok and Ysaye, with a little devil may care gypsy.

[Sir Velo]

Enescu's Octet -a new one on me I must confess. Incredibly impressive work for a teenager, almost as inspired as the one by that most precocious of teenage composers.

For anyone who enjoys the saturated string sound of Schoenberg's first chamber symphony, Berg's Lyric suite or Strauss' Metamorphosen, this piece is a revelation. The third movement, in particular reaches an ecstatic climax, while the finale showcases Enescu's astonishing technical mastery, as he brings together all the strands from the first three movements in a great fugue.

[Stanfordian]

Enescu's Octet -a new one on me I must confess. Incredibly impressive work for a teenager, almost as inspired as the one by that most precocious of teenage composers.

For anyone who enjoys the saturated string sound of Schoenberg's first chamber symphony, Berg's Lyric suite or Strauss' Metamorphosen, this piece is a revelation. The third movement, in particular reaches an ecstatic climax, while the finale showcases Enescu's astonishing technical mastery, as he brings together all the strands from the first three movements in a great fugue.

Hiya Sir Velo,

You are so right Enescu's Octet is a wonderful work. It's an impressive work for a composer of any age, not just for a teenager. I recall hearing it played during the Lake District Summer Music at Kendal Paris Church some years ago when two of the visting string quartets came together.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfxC0j9mbwQ

[Pulcinella]

Enescu's Octet -a new one on me I must confess. Incredibly impressive work for a teenager, almost as inspired as the one by that most precocious of teenage composers.

For anyone who enjoys the saturated string sound of Schoenberg's first chamber symphony, Berg's Lyric suite or Strauss' Metamorphosen, this piece is a revelation. The third movement, in particular reaches an ecstatic climax, while the finale showcases Enescu's astonishing technical mastery, as he brings together all the strands from the first three movements in a great fugue.

Have you discovered Enescu's Dixtuor, SirV?