I saw a new review for Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas played by Giuliano Carmignola on Gramophone today. So I pulled it up on Qobuz, beautifully integrated with roon, and began playing them as I went to read the review.
The reviewer talks about how Carmignola emphasized timing and reads the music off the sheet in a particular way, and I thought… with pop music people like having the lyrics in front of them while they listen. For classical music it would be wonderful to have the score in front of me while I listen. Following the piece from the sheet music would be a wonderful way of exploring the differences between interpretations of the same composition. Given that all the sheet music is in the public domain, this should be doable no?
Would make for a wonderful feature in roon for us classical music lovers. I’m asking roon to do this on that other forum, would welcome your support if you agree!
Neat idea, I’ll look over on Roon for the discussion. I’d be happy to support the proposal but it would be no good to me as i cannot read musical notation.
I heard the Carmignola a few months a go, I must revisit it.
I’m sorting through stacks of CDs that have been hidden away for a while. Mostly early music, like this one, William Lawes, konck’d on the Head, Concordia. It’s now back in the soon to be played stacks.
In the past couple of day’s I’ve been listening to the Karajan “Der Rosenkavalier”. I have to confess that since downloading it many months I ago I’d grown accustomed to listening only to the wonderful last half hour or so of Act 3. However, yesterday I listened to the entire opera and revelled in the glorious, lush Strauss orchestration, the magnificent voices in this performance and the beautiful autumnal atmosphere of parts of the first Act. Very highly recommended for those, like me, who love the high romantic!
Yes, an enigmatic photograph in an interpretative mode. The solid composer standing behind the interpreter of his work and she is the one who makes contact with the audience on his behalf. Yet the whole thing depends on their collaborative creativity - he is still behind her, helping her out. I do appreciate it when effort is put into an album’s visual presentation
I had the good chance to attend to Wozzeck live in Salzburg some twenty years ago, with Abbado and the Berliner Philharmoniker. It’s extraordinarily coherent and involving, but it took me a couple of days to dust away the intense gloom the opera conveys, and today I still wonder what drove Berg to conceive such a devastatingly depressing work. To think that the story comes from a play 94 years older makes it even more oneiric. I respect the huge control Berg has on the music material, but I won’t want to listen to it again; the characters are reduced to caricatures, the plot is uselessly cruel and unbearably sign of the future. Bruckner’s last completed score – the Adagio from his 9th Symphony - is as a desperate cry of pain as any part of Wozzeck, but Bruckner did feel that pain personally, and the Adagio, being 26 years older than Berg’s masterpiece, is a much more abstract but concrete open door on the 20th century’s music. Yet, my greatest admiration for Berg’s ability.
I belief I saw two reviews which have been critical to this version of the famous pieces, that’s why I have stayed away so far. Perhaps I should check it via Tidal.
Well he has his own way of playing. I don’t, for example, care for his four seasons at all. But I very much like this interpretation of Bach’s sonatas and partitas. Possibly better than the Grumiaux I use as my reference. Certainly better than Ibragimova. She plays very well, but lacks the emotion, perhaps the maturity to really dig past the technical excellence.
I am always wary of negative or low rated reviews. I will read them but then decide for myself. Sometimes you can come to trust certain writers, or, on the other hand, not trust. There is one writer who appears in The Guardian who I implicitly trust. When he awards an album a negative review I buy it straight away as I know I will find far more in it than he does. His star reviews I usually I find not to be of much interest.
Anyway, we no longer have to choose between one performance of a work or another based on how many CDs we can afford to buy. Virtually all is a available on a streamer somewhere. I have lined up about ten or more of the Bach solo violin works. Earlier I listened to Antoine Tamestit with a viola transcription of Partita 2 coupled with Ligeti. A powerful recording.
Max - it is difficult to reply to your reply. You touch so many points I would like to hear / say more. Only a pub would be an appropriate place.
Most importantly, music is a language - or beyond language: an idiom - which is used by composers to express themselves or express a perception to reality. You seem to have very good senses to receive this. Not many people are given to understand the theory and also live the music. Much to say here, but I will leave this out.
Regarding Bruckner, I do have a good understanding what his compositions are about - it is a journey of 11 years now since I was touched first by something written by him - and I become upset every time I read an review of a Bruckner concert. The guys keep talking about Bruckners heaven, Bruckners believe, Bruckners catholicism without understanding what the implication is of that. It seems to be a formality to write about that, a tick in the box.
Regarding Bruckners 9th - it is a quite progressive work looking forward to the 20th century. From our perception - who theoretically understand what is going on - the 9th is a progressive work, measured by the idiosyncratic chords he is using and also the rythimic pulse. From the innocent (innocense is either lazyness or a virtue when becoming older) listener though, the 9th is a romantic symphony whilst Bergs work is ‘modern’ pling plong music.
I must add here that I do understand Bruckners works, but do not understand Bergs work - I hear his idiom whilst not understanding the meaning of it.
Regarding Bruckners 9th Adagio: it is building up over time (usual Bruckner structure) and I need to stand before the amplifier to protect it against my wife trying to turn the volume down. She hates that chord. I still have not worked out if it is the Tristan chord, should do that.
A question to you Max: if you cannot stand Bergs work, what do you think of Mahler 6?
two short answers. If you’re talking of ‘that’ chord – the culminating point, the huge outburst of ‘Weltschmerz’ – I think it contains, like so many other structurally and expressively poignant moments in Bruckner, the so-called Tristan chord (a seventh of the 3rd species, used in a variety of harmonic and dramaturgic meanings) mixed with itself and with who knows what else. I’ll take a good look at the orchestral score.
Answer two: if you’re asking me, not a generic you, about Mahler 6th, well first I can ‘stand’ Berg’s work, only wasn’t able, up to now, to tell its intentionality from its unavoidability. As for Mahler’s 6th, it’s not my preferred one: in all honesty, the contrast (structural and descriptive) between the rigid, masculine 1st theme, almost self-mocking, with the ‘Alma’ second one, beautifully loving and lyric, is a tad too ‘postcard’ for me; and I find other Adagios from him more spontaneously rapturing. The finale of the 2nd one, with its indisputable, hence for once innocent, ecstatic grandiosity, never fails to make me shiver. It must be age.
I have a Milstein recital disc on which he plays the Chaconne from Partita No. 2, it’s my favourite recording of that movement ever. (Although I’d prefer the whole piece, the movement alone is sublime.)
Excellent. I played the whole album a few times today myself. I love the scale of the viola sound, it seems vast. Another Bach viola album is Kim Kashkashian’s version of the cello suites on ECM.
Playing the 1954 recording now. Holy cow it’s fast! The first four movements are in literally half the time of the Carmignola above… It’ll take some getting used to. Looking forward to the Chaconne.
Nope, don’t like it. I’m sure I’ll be struck down for not liking Milstein, but it’s just too damned fast for my taste.
In general, I’ve noticed that tempi on classical music have been slowing down comparatively from 50+ years ago. ( even against composer’s original markings )
