The classical music thread

I had help to ‘migrate’ info from the stolen Mac to this one, just not thorough enough, it seems. I have a neighbour with daughters who are of an age to give help to ‘restore’ all the Settings. So we shall get there!

But thank you!

Oh, yeah, teenage girls. The new IT. Good luck with that. Now all your logins will go to SnapChat. LOL :rofl:
(that really doesn’t sound like a good idea to me)

I do all our own migrations (for wife and me), but I’m a software engineer and can deal with it. For all else I recommend Apple support.

Buying direct from DG is easy, as my Abbado Rite arriving from Germany in one week ( 6 days I think ) proved - though I had no email confirmation from DG themselves (paid through PP). Direct from source, good paperwork.


Pentatone’s La Traviata gave us a fantastic Violetta in Lisette Oropesa (I saw her in Rigoletto in Amsterdam) in an otherwise undistinguished recording, and the same template applies to the new Ballo: Freddie de Tommaso is an outstanding tenor and sings a memorable Riccardo; the rest of the cast and crew are by and large unremarkable. For a GTKY with this great work, Solti’s second recording (with Pavarotti and Margaret Price) or Schippers (with Bergonzi and Leontyne Price) are more consistently impressive.

Cheers
EJ

Just downloaded this. If it’s as good as their recording of Rachmaninoff’s 1st symphony recently issued, I’ll be well pleased.

4 Likes


Mahler’s 9th is a recent fascination, sparked by the discussion on this forum a while ago, which centered around Karajan’s Berlin '82 recording, which I subsequently found out is considered a benchmark. This recent recording, by Vanska at the end of 19 years at the helm of the Minnesota, is very different. Measured and calculated in a way that downplays the struggle and conflict and instead seduces by episodic beauty. I don’t think this is what Mahler had in mind but I really enjoy the result, nonetheless. Sound is just spectacular.

Cheers
EJ

4 Likes

Abbado’s Mahler 9 with his own Lucerne Festival Orchestra is a remarkable recording - one of his last, if my memory is correct.

(I think that it was his third, perhaps even fourth, recording of Mahler’s masterpiece. It has had many great recordings ever since Bruno Walter’s extraordinary 1938 Vienna PO ‘live’ EMI première recording, made in the shadow of the ‘lights going out over Europe’, as the Nazis seized power.)

You’re not confused with his Bruckner 9, perhaps?

I’m not sure, now that you ask. I have been able to find just now a video online of Abbado conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in Mahler’s Ninth, but I can’t find an LP or CD recording of them performing it at the Festival.

Someone more competent and I will tell me if I have imagined it - it would be the ideal piece of music for Abbado in one of his last concerts.

DVD via jungle

This recording of the second symphony is just incredible !

Agreed. I find Yannick a very good interpreter of Russian music.

I haven’t played the 2nd symphony yet, but I have heard no.3 which is most impressive.

Today I took delivery of the two final parts of Solti’s remastered Ring on Decca. Very happy with the sound (to the extent I was able to sample them) and they also look nice on the shelf together. Just curious why they would print the golden ring on the edges in such a way that it only works if you place them in the opposite order from right to left…

2 Likes

Yesterday, Asyl, the second part of Hanns Eisler’s Ernste Gesänge, sung by Matthias Goerne accompagnied by Ensemble Resonanz, was played on Dutch classical radio. Somehow I had never heard it before. I was blown away by it. Today I listened to all the songs in this cycle. Simply stunning. Issued on Harmonia Mundi in 2013.

1 Like

I really enjoyed the Philadelphia/Nézet-Séguin performance of No 1 and Rach 2 is one of my all-time favourites. I was really looking forward to their performance of that symphony and so all the more disappointed by what I heard. The Philadelphia strings are sleek and gorgeous as expected, technically everything is there and the recording is OK. But where’s the heart, where’s the soul, where’s the love?

Thinking I was, perhaps, just not in the right mood I did a movement by movement comparison with the classic LSO/Previn version.

In every case, Previn brought so much more to this ultra-romantic music. With Nézet-Séguin, I just listened. With Previn, I was emotionally engaged – tingles down the spine and air-conducting in abundance. And that clarinet playing by Jack Brymer in the slow movement – irreplaceable.

Roger

3 Likes

I really hope Warner Classics jumps on the Tone Poet/DG Classics/ECM/Concord bandwagon and starts a AAA reissue program of some of the great analog era catalog titles they own.

Because it works if you have a pile of the records and then the first one to play is in the top box and the last in the bottom box.

Basically the designer of the packaging knows nothing about vinyl or opera or the Ring, so it’s all back to front.

1 Like

It will be in the right order sitting in a normal record bin in a store, so that might be the reasoning for the graphic design.

That’s a more charitable explanation. Although I doubt any of these will find themselves in a record store bin.