The classical music thread

You raise an interesting point. Although the BBC have changed CD Review back to Record Review they mainly seem to consider cd recordings and the occasional download. The recommended recording for Cosi Fan Tutte is a John Elliot Gardiner’s ?1993 cd. This is ok for me as I don’t have a record player but classical vinyl listeners seem to be a bit ignored.

I’m entirely with Graham. I’ve loved that set for fifty years and it would be on my Desert Island list. The Sextet at the end of Act 1 has me on the edge of my seat every time I listen to it.

Can’t comment on vinyl availability today, but I did have an LP box set for many years before I went digital.

Roger

On the whole, I’m not a big fan of Bohm. But that’s a great recording.

Found it, Bought it!
£20🤷🏻‍♂️
UK seller, for £20 I’m willing to risk an eBay purchase🙂
Thank you very much for the advice.

I agree that Böhm was often quite a stodgy character. But some of his recordings seemed to catch fire - the Bruckner Fourth (in Decca’s 2LP set), the EMI ‘Cosi’, the ‘Don Giovanni’ with Sherrill Milnes recorded ‘live’ at Salzburg for DGG, and the later Mozart Symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic for DGG.

Böhm’s Vienna Philharmonic recording of Beethoven’s Pastoral is very close to the top of my all-time favourite recordings of anything, so much better than any other recording of the work. He also developed a wholly unexpected love for the London Symphony Orchestra right at the end of his life, and made lovely recordings of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies for DGG with them. The love was mutual, and the London Symphony Orchestra appointed him their President, a title never awarded to any other person before or since. Sadly, those recordings disappeared from the catalogue long ago.

The Böhm/LSO affiliation also produced, quite by accident, one of the highpoints of the Orchestra’s history. Böhm was due to conduct them in two concerts of the same programme in Milan and London, but ill-health intervened, and none other than Carlos Kleiber stepped in as a last minute replacement to conduct the concerts. The London concert at the Royal Festival Hall was the only time that I ever saw Carlos Kleiber conduct - one of the highlights of my musical life.

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I always read these posts of yours with great fascination. I wish I had the depth of knowledge and experience that you have accumulated through the years.
Thank you for sharing it with us😊

Thank you, QS, that’s very much appreciated.

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I once heard Böhm conducting the Dvorak “New World” symphony. Very much to my surprise as I didn’t view it as naturual Böhm repertoire, it was a truly stunning perfomance and I wasn’t able to listen to that symphony for a long time afterwards.

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I am dining in great anticipation of tonight’s performance of The Magic Flute @ The Vienna Opera tonight…:hugs:

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I really need to try Wagner again.
I have carried a relatively irrational dislike of him for many years and as a result have steered clear of all his music.
I repeat “irrational”…
…I don’t really know where it started or why. I should try to listen to him.
Do you have a recommendation of where to start?:thinking:

One part of me wants to say go in at the deep end, and get Carlos Kleiber conducting ‘Tristan Und Isolde’, a DGG recording which is available on LP and CD.

But a gentler introduction would be the first of the (four) "Ring Of The Nibelung’ operas, ‘Das Rheingold’. The best recording is on Decca with Georg Solti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, recorded in the late 1950s/early 1960s in extraordinarily good stereo sound and produced by the legendary John Culshaw (NOT the mimic seen on TV!).

Decca are in the process of remastering and re-releasing new transfers of this famous set on LP and CD, with ‘Rheingold’ just released, and the rest to follow over the next several months.

So that would be my suggestion to start off with.

Incidentally, are you going to see a ‘live’ performance of the Mozart, or is it being broadcast somewhere?

Live… see the Gig/Concert thread😁
Row 4 seats 11 & 12 = €600😳
…I’m sure it’ll be AMAZING!!!

I know how you feel. I think the only really satisfactory answer to getting to grips with Wagner is to go to a live performance of a decent(ish) production; Die Meistersinger - all 5+ hours of it - transformed my enjoyment.

I would start with Der fliegende Hollander, very easy start, and wonderful music.

I think that ‘Rheingold’ is much easier to get into than the later operas in the cycle, and is therefore a good introduction to Wagner’s sound world…

And I haven’t found a wholly satisfactory recording of ‘Der Fliegende Hollænder’. Solti’s recording was the only one of his Wagner operas not to be engineered by John Culshaw, and is just not as atmospherically recorded as the others.

My intro (many decades ago) was Solti’s “Tannhauser.” But it is only a suggestion of what was to follow.

n.b. I never became a huge Wagner fan, but I listen and/or watch from time to time.

As I said above, Solti’s recording of ‘Rheingold’ would be an ideal introduction. Lovely high romantic music, great singers and sound that is unbelievably over 60 years old, and all on two or three LPs or CDs.

Every once in a while I go on a binge and listen to this entire box set of 11 LPs. Why? For one, the Bruckner symphonies are fantastic pieces of work, from #1 to #9. They all have great moments and deliver something new with every listen. Secondly, this is one of the best performances I’ve heard. It’s the Eugen Jochum/Staatskapelle Dresden on German EMI, from the late 70s/early 80s. It’s one of the gems of my classical collection.

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You cannot go wrong with Eugen Jochum in Bruckner. Not a superstar in the Karajan mould, very much an ‘old school’ German Kapellmeister, and none the worse for that.

He revered Bruckner above all other composers, and made two complete cycles on record, a DGG set recorded in Berlin and Munich, and the later Dresden EMI set which you have shown.

Jochum also made a couple of complete Beethoven symphony sets (Berlin and Munich, and maybe with Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw), and was in charge of the famous DGG ‘Meistersinger’ set with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau taking the Hans Sachs role that he was born to play. If you like Jochum’s way with Bruckner, you should seek out the ‘Meistersinger’ (assuming that you’re not allergic to Wagner).

He got on well with Furtwângler when he was chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and often conducted the orchestra, but things seemed to cool with that great orchestra when Karajan took over as principal conductor.

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Jochum also made a revered set of the Haydn London symphonies with the LPO.