I have an early pressing that I paid less than a tenner for and it’s excellent.
Desperate Journalist. That is such a brilliant band name. - I will have to check them out now!
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That’s funny, because I bought an André Previn disc within the last week or so called ‘André Previn and His Friends Play…’
It must have been a series run by that record label.
And I see that your LP has the said Mr Previn and Leroy Vinnegar guesting.
Leroy Vinnegar went on to play bass on one of The Doors’ studio albums, maybe ‘Waiting For The Sun’. (I have the album upstairs, but it’s four storeys of stairs to climb.
That Dvorak LP was a very famous recording in its day. Karajan hated other conductors conducting ‘his’ orchestra, yet Kubelik was able to record a number of Dvorak symphonies with them.
The West German Chancellor had the power to invite guests to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, and he invited Leonard Bernstein to conduct Mahler’s Ninth with them - long before Karajan himself overcame his deep-rooted Nazi-ingrained prejudice against the music of the ‘Jewish’ Mahler.
In any event, Bernstein spent time with the orchestra, persuading them to swoop and slide in an ‘echt’ Mahlerian idiom, and the (magnificent) concert was taped by DGG, and was issued on as a 2LP ‘live’ recording, which is still available (but not included in Bernstein’s complete Mahler box - he conducts the Concertgebouw in the recording in that set) .
Karajan was dismayed when he took back control of ‘his’ orchestra, claiming that Bernstein had undone years of work on the sound that he (Karajan) had inculcated in the orchestra!
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This was the first time I’d heard this performance. On a scale of 1-10, the energy seemed to be at a 17!
And surely the horns were pushing the needles into the red. A pretty hot recording it seemed.
My fav performance of the Dvorak 9th has been Karajan/Vienna Philharmonic. I had a nice DG LP decades ago and I need to find another. It’s not quite as energetic, but still much more “up” that some others I’ve heard.
The Dvorak ‘New World’ Symphony has been lucky on record over the years, with the Kubelik/Berlin PO being near the top of the list.
Istvan Kertesz’s Vienna PO Decca recording is another one to look out for, as are recordings from Giulini, Karajan and others.
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Rolling in his week. Mad Season -Above. Cut t by Kevin Gray. A very fine pressing by Music on Vinyl.
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Not a huge classical fan Graham, but that does not stop me from finding your posts on the subject wonderfully interesting, with the history and background information.
Cheers.
Thank you, Neil, that’s very kind of you to write.
I have been a huge fan of Classical music, ever since my days at Oxford University, where I was fortunate to meet, and befriend, a number of people, who were into Classical music, and taught me so much about it.
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As Graham will doubtless know, this was reissued on the DG Privilege series and maybe easier to find but it is a favourite recording of this piece for me. I didn’t know the back story that Graham has explained.
Fantastic record, close to my favourite of the LPs that I have of Miles Davis.
First time I played it, I thought that I had a problem with my Naim amps, as I could hear a persistent ‘hum’ coming through the loudspeakers. After much to’ing and fro’ing, I realised that what I was hearing was the sound of the valve amps humming in the original recording studio.
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My first thought was that I used to work in the building to his right and in one just about obscured by his left leg!
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Blind Faith - Gothenburg '69.
I know of this ‘supergroup’, and of their infamous LP with the banned cover of a young girl, and Steve Winwood is a former client of mine. But I have never heard their music.
So I bought this live 2LP set to learn a bit more. I will give the LPs a spin later this morning, after I have listened to ‘Record Review’ on Radio 3.
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This surprised me as I wasn’t aware that it had been banned. Searching on Amazon, I’m pleased to find that it hasn’t.
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It hasn’t. You can still buy both versions. Discogs, Amazon., etc…it’s a photo.
Fair enough, we live in more enlightened times. It was banned at the time (1969?), though.