Nikolaus Harnoncourt R.I.P

[Bryn]

http://slippedisc.com/2016/03/sad-news-nikolaus-harnoncourt-is-dead/

[Nick Armstrong]

http://slippedisc.com/2016/03/sad-ne...court-is-dead/

Oh crikey, that was quick...

Opened my ears to lots of things - (yet another) end of an era

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Opened my ears to lots of things

[verismissimo]

Opened my ears to lots of things - (yet another) end of an era

A genuine revolutionary.

[Stanfordian]

Schumann
Complete Symphonies
Mass No. 5, D 678 & No. 6, D 950
Alfonso und Estrella, 3 act opera, D 732 (concert performance)
Soloists:
Christian Elsner (tenor)
Bernarda Fink (mezzo)
Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Jonas Kaufmann (tenor)
Hanno Müller-Brachmann (bass-baritone)
Luba Orgonášová (soprano)
Birgit Remmert (mezzo)
Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)
Jochen Schmeckenbecher (baritone)
Kurt Streit (tenor)
Rundfunkchor Berlin/Uwe Gronostay
Berliner Philharmoniker/Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Recorded live 2003/06 Berlin Philharmonie
Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings (Blu-ray video & audio/CD)

In honour of this great conductor who was passionate about period performance practice. R.I.P.

[richardfinegold]

I was listening to his Brandenburg Concertos a few weeks ago and was surprised that they seemed so mainstream now, not all pungent and spiky as when they were first released.

[MickyD]

Such sad news. His interpretations were so often controversial and thought-provoking, but he was never dull. I cherish his Bach cantatas and also the two New Year Concerts from Vienna.

[Black Swan]

Another sad loss to the world of music.

[french frank]

The young revolutionary. Sobering how quickly time catches up with us.

[Beef Oven!]

A sad loss to music.

RIP NH.

[Dave2002]

Very sad to hear about this. I can remember when his set of Beethoven symphonies with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beethoven-Co.../dp/B000095IUM came out, and how he tried to modify performance practice even with more modern style orchestras. Sometimes his approach worked very well, and other times perhaps less so, but his performances were hardly ever less than interesting. I would have liked to have heard him in a live concert, but the opportunity never arose.

I have very few of his recordings, and probably not the most representative ones, including his Brahms symphony set on Elatus, which is good, and some Haydn Masses (probably Teldec Das Alte Werk).

Nikolaus RIP

[pastoralguy]

A sad loss to music.

RIP NH.

[Richard Barrett]

This is indeed very sad. I lost the thread of what he was doing somewhat from the 1980s onwards when he shifted his attention towards non-HIP orchestras, but before that his recordings from the early 1960s onwards defined for me the sound of so much music - Monteverdi, Biber, Bach, Rameau, Handel - and indeed in some ways the sound of my own too; and more recently there have been further moments of revelation like his return to the Concentus Musicus for Haydn's "Paris" symphonies, Mozart's last three, and others. While as I say I have been most interested in and inspired by his work with baroque music, he is one of the very few conductors active in the 21st century in "standard repertoire" whose performances can be identified usually within a few seconds - owing to his bold rethinking of everything in the music he conducted, from the smallest details to the overall architecture, based not on personal whims (as some might have it) but on a deep knowledge of the music and its performing resources in their cultural context.

I would also strongly recommend his books on performance practice, Music as Speech and The Musical Dialogue, both of which back in the day I struggled through in German before they were translated and before my command of that language was anywhere near sufficient.

[MickyD]

I've been listening to this fine performance of one of my favourite Haydn symphonies - I think that here Harnoncourt and the Concertgebouw manage to surpass any period recording of it - everything seems just right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGzrkBQgxIU&ebc=ANyPxKoDiRdTgeN5BRtG-pFKLa9kQt-TFCfeH3IU-gu3o6AvHY0ltG_E0UwuXMs6mb9zGS9CD2vThZEiYCVH3ovkgwgXBtOcEA

[jayne lee wilson]

One of my conductor-heroes, from the moment I bought his unsurpassable CMW Telemann TWV 55s... then the COE Beethoven, the RCOA Haydn, the Berlin Phil Brahms set, the COE/Schumann Cycle with the supplementary Berlin Phil 4th, the VPO Bruckner..what profound adventures in listening he took me on!

The Matin/Midi/Soir Haydn 6-8 with the CWM is one of my most special Pet Sounds....then those last late rapprochements, the CMW Paris Symphonies (with Harnoncourt's remarkable "working notes", especially those to No.83***), the astonishing Mozart 39-41 Instrumental Oratorium.... he had a wonderful, unique gift for making it new, too often dismissed as "mannered" or wilfully different, when he was searching for ways to characterise the music more truthfully, expressively and vividly - to make us listen again, and keep listening, to over-recorded classical repertoire.

I hadn't yet found time for the last-issued Beethoven 4 and 5. Now I shall, but I love so much of his work I would find it hard to choose any kind of "memorial" from such vividly alive performances - perhaps the adagio-andante from Le Matin, to which he brought an ethereal sublimity I've never heard any other performance approach. (His erstwhile Baroque collaborator Frans Bruggen was perhaps the only other conductor who could bring that sense of vision to Haydn's music).

He's given me so much pleasure, excitement and insight I simply feel grateful to have "Lived in the time of Harnoncourt..."



(***)"The finale is a hunt: all energetic and jolly - but the shots are real, the prey takes flight, and at bars 85-87 some listeners will make out the sound of a wounded beast..."