New Releases

Started by Brian, March 12, 2009, 12:26:29 PM

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Mandryka

Quote from: amw on October 16, 2021, 08:15:22 AM
That sounds more or less right. The tempo is Andante (a moderate tempo) and the beat is the whole note; there are two beats to a bar (not four and definitely not eight). I think I probably play it a bit slower but I'm also not a professional pianist lol. (That set of recordings looks especially interesting for the Fauré; I might have to get it as well. There's a lot of world-class Fauré recordings from that era.)


I'd be interested in what you have to say about Rudolph Serkin's D958 on this CD



I vaguely remember there were some other rapid early Schubert things from Cassadesus. But that Serkin is astonishingly . . . something. Fast. The rmcr heavy thought it was just an artefact of the medium, no one in their right mind would play like that blah blah blah
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

amw

Quote from: Mandryka on October 16, 2021, 08:21:06 AM
I'd be interested in what you have to say about Rudolph Serkin's D958 on this CD



I vaguely remember there were some other rapid early Schubert things from Cassadesus. But that Serkin is astonishingly . . . something. Fast. The rmcr heavy thought it was just an artefact of the medium, no one in their right mind would play like that blah blah blah

It's hard to judge from piano rolls. Serkin's first movement tempo is very fast by any standards. His last movement is fairly standard (just a few seconds shorter than Uchida or Katz for instance) and only sounds rushed probably as an artifact of the piano roll. In any case the main "issue" a listener might have is not the tempi but their invariance and metronomic nature, which I'm not sure Schubert would have approved of either. I will listen to the whole thing at some point, probably.

amw

#12422
anyway, an important new release for people of a certain persuasion



includes: The Oresteia, Mother Tongue, one scene from Yue Ling Jie (not sure why the whole thing isn't included but who knows), and The Navigators (first time on CD)

Que

Quote from: amw on October 16, 2021, 06:55:16 AM
and he also ignores Chopin's original tempi if timings are any indication. Pianists often say these things but in the end they're always guided much more by the pianistic pedagogic tradition (& their preference for modern Steinways, Faziolis etc) than the actual intentions of the composers. It's very tiresome.

People often comment on how unnecessary it is that we have 500 recordings of the same piece, but what's always lost is that we have 500 incorrect recordings of the same piece that are all based on listening to each other rather than going back to the score. It's an endless circle-jerk.

(While I'm here and on my soapbox: listen to Tobias Koch's recording of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata)

I will, I quite like Koch's Schumann. :)

And I quite agree with your view.
We can't blame the Old School: the appropriate instruments weren't available and they didn't know any better.
They had their day with some amazing performances as a result. But now? What is is the point to try improve on Rubinstein or Moravec, in their old ways?

Mandryka

Quote from: Que on October 16, 2021, 10:54:23 AM
I will, I quite like Koch's Schumann. :)


Yes by coincidence I listened to the Bunter Blatter a couple of weeks ago.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Artem

A new recording, I believe.


Karl Henning

Quote from: Brian on October 15, 2021, 06:52:09 AM


I'm interested in how the Clevelanders do with the Prokofiev.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

mabuse

Quote from: Todd on October 16, 2021, 04:37:21 AM


:o Twenty years after his first recording !

Release is announced for November 26.

Brian

Quote from: amw on October 16, 2021, 08:15:22 AM
Yes, that's the frustrating thing about him; one can never unreservedly recommend anything he records because he knows better than most what the music should sound like, but lets his personal taste [or in some cases technical limitations] run away with him. In this case, choosing a tempo for D960 that's exactly half of what it "should" be simply because of a modern interpretation of the 19th century belief in "heavenly lengths" (what people in the 21st century never remember is that in 1838 any continuous single movement over a quarter of an hour was already considered extremely long and taxing for audiences; a Bruckner symphony would have been unthinkable, until of course Bruckner did think it in the 1860s-1870s, and received the backlash. Today we have a much longer attention span and a very different way of looking at concerts.)
Thanks so much for this. And it is funny to think of ourselves in this century having a longer attention span in any field - but of course true as things like symphonies and sonatas expanded so far beyond their original forms. I think the strong negative contemporary reaction to Schubert Symphony 8 by the would-be performers, having to survive strenuous 15 minute movements, should be persuasive to an artist like Koch trying to figure out what "heavenly length" meant. But hey, what do I know!

Florestan

#12429
Quote from: Brian on October 16, 2021, 07:31:40 PM
Thanks so much for this. And it is funny to think of ourselves in this century having a longer attention span in any field - but of course true as things like symphonies and sonatas expanded so far beyond their original forms. I think the strong negative contemporary reaction to Schubert Symphony 8 by the would-be performers, having to survive strenuous 15 minute movements, should be persuasive to an artist like Koch trying to figure out what "heavenly length" meant. But hey, what do I know!

Both amw and you read too much into this whole "heavenly lengths" thing. One cannot take a single remark by Schumann (of all people) specifically tied to Schubert's 9th Symphony -as representative for a "19th century belief".Generally speaking,  Schumann's purple-prosed criticism  was quite at odds with the general beliefs of his time (a fact acknowledged by amw herself in the next paragraph). The bloated Late Romantic symphonies (occupying only a small time frame within the whole century anyway) are no more representative of the 19th century than Schumann's own piano suites and Lieder.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Mandryka

Quote from: amw on October 16, 2021, 09:06:51 AM
anyway, an important new release for people of a certain persuasion



includes: The Oresteia, Mother Tongue, one scene from Yue Ling Jie (not sure why the whole thing isn't included but who knows), and The Navigators (first time on CD)

Navigator sounds good!
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#12431
Quote from: Artem on October 16, 2021, 01:12:21 PM
A new recording, I believe.



This sounds very good indeed. And I think it's a nice piece of music. You can hear it on bandcamp.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Florestan

Quote from: amw on October 16, 2021, 08:15:22 AM
Today we have a much longer attention span

And yet concerts today are usually much shorter (and less varied) than the early 19th century ones.

Quote
and a very different way of looking at concerts.

The way we look at concerts is essentially the Late Romantic one. Its basic features, from programming to etiquette, have been established since before 1900.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Florestan

Quote from: Que on October 16, 2021, 10:54:23 AM
And I quite agree with your view.
We can't blame the Old School: the appropriate instruments weren't available and they didn't know any better.

A truly sad lot, those benighted souls...  ;D

Quote
They had their day with some amazing performances as a result. But now? What is is the point to try improve on Rubinstein or Moravec, in their old ways?

Are you implying that no contemporary pianist, much less the younger ones, should continue to play and record Chopin anymore?
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

jlopes

#12434
November.



The "third" sonata is a transcription of op.100














premont

Quote from: jlopes on October 17, 2021, 03:54:31 AM
November.



(1922 New York Steinway; Recording time: July 31st-August 2nd, 2021)

Well, anachronistic all the same.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

amw

Quote from: Florestan on October 17, 2021, 03:35:37 AM
And yet concerts today are usually much shorter (and less varied) than the early 19th century ones.
Early 19th century audiences were also not expected to sit in reverential silence and half darkness for five hours to listen to music. Concerts were social events, to see and be seen, converse with peers, occasionally listen to the music if the piece was sufficiently short or interesting, and request encores or ad hoc programme changes whenever one got bored.

Quote
The way we look at concerts is essentially the Late Romantic one. Its basic features, from programming to etiquette, have been established since before 1900.
Yes, but well after the time of Schubert and Schumann; the modern concert did begin to crystallise in the 1840s (while not displacing earlier concertgoing modalities) but had only taken more or less its present-day form by the 1870s-1880s.

Quote from: Florestan on October 17, 2021, 03:45:24 AM
Are you implying that no contemporary pianist, much less the younger ones, should continue to play and record Chopin anymore?
The discussion here is clearly about ways of performing the standard repertoire, with me and Que agreeing that it is largely a waste of time to continue to play it on modern instruments in the manner established by the famous "old school" pianists of the 20th century. If a performer isn't interested in playing the music in a way closer to the composer's intentions, and doesn't wish to bring any new and individual interpretation to the music, what is the point? Are young pianists (e.g. Cho, Grosvenor, Moog) recording Chopin and Liszt and Rachmaninov because they have something new and original to say, or just to prove that they can do it in order to satisfy the critics and build their careers, so that they can move on to whatever they're more interested in? (Ok, there are other possible reasons as well, but less defensible ones.)

MusicTurner

#12437
I see that Mejoueva recorded at least one of Bach's French Suites before, the 5th, in 2012:
https://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV812-817-Rec8.htm

Got a bit interested in her & found a small interview in a Chinese newspaper. It's not revelatory, but does contain a bit of interest, such as saying that she's a student of Heinrich Neuhaus but doesn't want to play in a 'Russian, ~highly emotional style'.
http://www.eyeshenzhen.com/content/2019-07/03/content_22230869.htm

Brahmsian

Quote from: jlopes on October 17, 2021, 04:16:58 AM
Thank God for the Ignore List. Another one added.

A peculiar comment.

Que

#12439
Quote from: Florestan on October 17, 2021, 03:45:24 AM
Are you implying that no contemporary pianist, much less the younger ones, should continue to play and record Chopin anymore?

On the contrary!  :) 

And artists make their own artistic choices, but they might try something else - like putting their money where their mouth is.  8)