The classical music thread

You’re absolutely right, of course. I had completely forgotten about that set, which was highly praised back in the day.

I’m not very well up on Haydn. Other than a few fillers on other LPs and CDs, the only recordings that I have are Thomas Beecham’s ancient EMI CD set of the ‘London’ Symphonies - very fine, although many would find them too well-upholstered in these HIP-informed times!

I also have the complete Karajan Bruckner cycle on DG (again vinyl LPs), and don’t think I’ve played it since aquiring the Jochum set. I should probably revisit, although the Karajan DG albums of the period often suffer from being overly bright. The engineers should have locked him out of the mastering booth.

I agree with that entirely. Karajan always tried to involve himself in the engineering of his recordings, and DGG’s engineers indulged him in that regard. His DGG recordings suffered as a result.

I can’t imagine that Walter Legge at EMI or John Culshaw at Decca would have allowed Karajan anywhere near the controls at their respective recording sessions. Karajan’s recordings on those labels are better as a result. His Decca Puccini opera recordings, the Berlin ‘La Boheme’ and the Vienna ‘Madama Butterfly’, are gramophone classics in interpretation and sonics. And Karajan’s EMI symphony recordings (Bruckner, Sibelius, etc) have better sound than the recordings that he was making for DGG at the same time.

PS Should add that I have most of these recordings on LP and CD. I play the CDs if I want music to accompany reading books or newspapers, but I prefer nothing better than making a cappuccino, turning up the volume, and letting rip with an LP or two.

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Bach Cantata BWV 51. It has an gem of an aria at the end - ‘alleluia’ that’s all the text. It’s on a similar level of Mozarts grand soprano aria in die Zauberflote. Turn up the volume and listen.

I don’t know what went into Bach but he was completely unleashed when he wrote this.

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I’m now listening to my Karajan DG version of Bruckner’s 7th. He must have lost a bit of his HF hearing by the time he interfered with the engineers on that one. The treble extension is rather cranked out.

Maybe Linn (since they like things with ‘K’) should introduce an equalizer. They can call it the Karajan Korrector.

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Actually, I couldn’t take it. Karajan’s performance is first rate – no surprise there – but it’s just too cranked up and grates on my nerves to hear it. Now I’m listening to my Eugen Jochum EMI recording again, and it’s just lovely. Sounds great, and I really enjoy the performance.

Best to stick to 60s and early 70s for Karajan DGG/DG recordings. I still love my OG 61/62 Beethoven Symphonies.

That’s the very sad thing about Karajan. As a young man, as joint chief conductor (with the older Otto Klemperer) of The Philharmonia, he could (almost literally) do no wrong. He made a fabulous complete set of the Beethoven symphonies, and wonderful opera recordings (‘Hänsel und Gretel’, ‘Rosenkavalier’, etc).

As his fame increased and he took over from Furtwängler in Berlin, so the quality of his recordings began to decline.

He was famous for making multiple recordings of his core repertoire (five complete sets of Beethoven symphonies, anyone?) and, in almost every case, the earlier recordings trump his later efforts.

Occasionally he would step outside this pattern of rerecording his ‘greatest hits’ and record something fresh (to him) and that would produce revelatory recordings - think of his late conversion to some of the Gustav Mahler symphonies or the fabulous 5LP box of the ‘difficult’ Second Viennese School (Schònberg, Berg, Webern).

He was, in short, his own worst enemy, but his immense fame led him (and his record companies) to believe that he was constantly at the crest of a wave. And in the end he suffered for his hubris. appointing Sabine Mayer as principal clarinet of the Berliners against the Orchestra’s wishes, and losing his cherished principal conductorship as a direct result.

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Karajan was most certainly an enigma. For someone who seemed to cherish the sound his orchestra produced when honing his rehearsals/performances, he seemed to be deaf to the often poorly judged manipulation of the recorded sound he oversaw. One of the worst offenders I heard was his recording of Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition, difficult to listen to what was otherwise a superb performance. For such a vast recorded legacy, it’s strange that there were so many notable omissions. For instance Sibelius Symphony no.3, Rachmaninov symphonies, other Mahler symphonies (though he made excellent recordings of 4,5,6, & 9). Others can fill in more gaps.

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The absence of Mahler in Karajan’s repertoire stems from the fact that Karajan’s early years as a conductor were in Nazi Germany, where Mahler’s Jewish ancestry meant that his music was banned. I don’t know whether Karajan knew the ‘entartete Musik’, but fair play to him for embracing much of it in the postwar years. His two recordings of Mahler’s Ninth are extraordinary.

As was his (to my mind, very strange) practice of learning music that was ‘new’ to him, Karajan got to know the Ninth by making a recording of it - and it’s a great recording (available from DGG) in its own right. But, once they started playing it in concert together, Karajan and the Berlin PO, got ever deeper into the music, and Karajan was able to re-record it ‘live’, and that recording is one of the greatest Mahler recordings that you could ever hope to hear.

Remarkably, the Berlin PO made another great ‘live’ recording at around the same time, with Lenny Bernstein on the podium. As I have written elsewhere, Bernstein was invited to conduct the Orchestra by the German Chancellor. and DGG taped the concert and issued it on LP and CD. (Karajan was reported to be furious that Bernstein encouraged the string players to scoop and slide around the notes and encouraged the brass to let rip, but the result is a fabulous recording.) Karajan complained that, in one concert, Bernstein had undone all the discipline that he (Karajan) had instilled into the orchestra over 30 years.

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The absence of Mahler in Karajan’s repertoire stems from the fact that Karajan’s early years as a conductor were in Nazi Germany, where Mahler’s Jewish ancestry meant that his music was banned.

I don’t know for Karajan but the relationship between some conductors, suspected of being Nazi enthusiasts (truly or not is another debate that I am not qualified to decide) to Mahler’s works during the ideological context of WW2 doesn’t always seem to be univoque. For example, the Concertgebouw has always been a Mahler oriented ensemble and Willem Mengelberg conducted Mahler’s work until 1940.

I confess that I don’t know enough about this, but I have always understood that Willem Mengelberg was an avid Nazi collaborator after The Netherlands had been occupied, and that he was dismissed from his Concertgebouw post after WW II ended as a direct result of that.

Ahh Bach! His 100+ cantatas are such a treasure trove of wonderful music and mostly written while he was still relatively young. Your post led me to spend part of yesterday evening listening to a favourite album:

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Cantata BWV 170 is sung by the peerless Janet Baker who could make the telephone directory sound moving. But I find Cantata 82, Ich habe genug sung by John Shirley-Quirk even more involving. The recording is excellent, too, Decca at its best.

Historically informed? No. Musically informed? In spades!

Roger

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Bach’s ‘Ich Habe Genug’ is one of his greatest ever works. I have treasured for years an old EMI References CD of Hans Hotter singing it, which was made in the mid-1950s.

I have kept an eye out for it on LP, but I don’t think that that will happen.

John Shirley-Quirke was, I think, a bass-baritone, but Hotter was a true Wagnerian bass. I always imagined that it sounded as if Wotan had come down from Valhalla to sing some Bach for light relief. Do try to hear it, if you ever get the chance.

I knew of the Hotter version (the earliest recording, I think) but had never heard it, so tried it out this afternoon. I was in some trepidation as the central movement is, in effect, a lullaby and the thought of Wotan singing a lullaby excites cognitive dissonance in me!

There is no doubt that Hotter is a wonderful singer and he’s very moving at times, particularly in that middle movement. But, although my system is good at extracting the best from poor recordings, the orchestral playing comes across as far too well-upholstered for my taste. It’s very much of the concert hall rather than a church in Leipzig.

For comparison, I also listened to the fairly recent, historically-informed and highly reviewed performance by the Dunedin Consort. At first, it was hard to believe that they were playing the same score and I found it enjoyable in its way, but I also found it harder to access the emotional core of the music.

Overall, I did enjoy Hotter for his singing and the Dunedin for its clear-eyed view but as a performance it’s still the Shirley-Quirk version, which sits somewhere in the middle, that moves me most as a complete performance.

Roger

We’re lucky that there are so many different, but complementary, versions to choose from. I’ve known and loved the Hotter recording for so long now, I’d just really like to find it on LP.

My copy of the Bruckner always had a few nits and imperfections (small scratches here and there, ticks and pops, etc). Earlier this week I was looking for something else on Discogs and happened upon a sealed copy of the Jochum EMI box, so I bought it. It arrived this morning, after cleaning it on the Audio Desk I am now playing it from disc one. It sounds fantastic and I am thrilled to have a good copy. Hopefully all the records sound as good as the first three sides I have played so far.

One of the risks with buying sealed original copies that are decades old is that mold release compound on the records has had 40 years to harden and bind before ever being cleaned or played and that can translate to noise and ticks/pops. So far I hear some light ticks here and there, but hope they go away after a few plays, which happens sometimes. In any case, this isn’t one of those that’s hopelessly noisy.

The new box looks great, but has one very slightly crushed corner, and a bit of browning from age along the back near the spine. My other box might be slightly better, so I can just swap them. But for $70 for an 11-LP set I think I came out pretty good.

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That’s a bit of a coup for you there.

I have the earlier (DGG) set of Jochum conducting the complete Bruckner Symphonies. The recordings were made with the Berlin Philharmonic (where he often took over the Orchestra at Furtwængler’s invitation) and his own Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich, which was set up under US auspices after the end of WW II.

They are lovely, very natural recordings - Jochum was obviously talented in building an orchestra and nurturing its players.

Like so many of DGG’s best recordings from those years, the set has been deleted. (I’m lucky enough to have had the set for over 30 years.)

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I like Jochum. His Bruckner makes me wonder what his Mahler might have been. I know he did DLVDE for DG, so I need to see if I can find it to listen to (i.e. Qobuz). I also need to hear his Brahms. I don’t recall that I ever have.

I’d need to check, but I think that Jochum made a recording for DGG of the Brahms Symphonies which was part mono, part stereo (as it was made as the record industry was switching from one to the other).

And I think that he made a later Brahms set in London - he was on good terms with the LSO and LPO, and occasionally recorded with both of those orchestras. He made a great recording of Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations’ with the LSO.

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I have heard that the earlier monos of his Brahms are quite good.

I have the Karajan 60s and 70s cycles for DG on vinyl, and they are good, but I’m still trying to land on a set of Brahms 4 that I will love. So far I like Karajan’s 70 cycle, but that’s the one I bonded with originally decades ago. I’ve just been lazy about exploring, and I really prefer vinyl which makes the whole thing somewhat harder. But once again, Karajan’s 70s cycle has some engineering issues.