Past Purchases (CLOSED)

[Gurn Blanston]

I would be surprised if there weren't English translations of those stories.

Wiki has a fair bit on it, including the entire text. In Czech    This is English, though:

Kytice (Czech for Bouquet; original full title was Kytice z pověstí národních - A Bouquet of National Legends) is a collection of ballads by the Czech author Karel Jaromír Erben, first published in 1853 and considered a classic. It is made up of 13 poems:

   1. Kytice
   2. Poklad (Treasure)
   3. Svatební košile (The Wedding Shirts)
   4. Polednice (Lady midday) (The Noon Witch)
   5. Zlatý kolovrat (The Golden Spinning-Wheel)
   6. Štědrý den (Christmas Eve); made into a melodrama by Zdeněk Fibich
   7. Holoubek (Little Dove) (The Wood Dove. I have a version somewhere where Dvorak's work is called this)
   8. Záhořovo lože (Záhoř's Bed)
   9. Vodník (The Water-Goblin)
  10. Vrba (Willow)
  11. Lilie (Lily), added in the 1861 second edition
  12. Dceřina kletba (Daughter's Curse)
  13. Věštkyně (Seeress)

Kytice was a 1972 loose adaptation to a theatre musical by Jiří Suchý and Ferdinand Havlík (music), one of the most popular pieces in the history of his Semafor theatre.

Kytice (international title Wild Flowers) is also a 2000 Czech film directed by F. A. Brabec based on 7 best-known, most epic and least explicitly Christian of the poems; while relatively successful commercially, it was deplored by critics for its crude literalism of depiction.

OK, though, it's a start, and I will find a translation, else learn some Czech.



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Listening to:
Chausson - Dallas SO / Mata - Chausson Symphony in Bb Op 20 1st mvmt

[SonicMan46]

(Unless I had a cranio-rectal inversion and they had it back ordered too... )

Gurn - LMAO!    Can just imagine that scene!  However, I've reviewed that recording - just one CD w/ four works?  May be good but certainly does not offer a complete sampling of these Dvorak works; I own a 2- & 3-CD set of Dvorak 'tone poems', so I guess the question is whether one wants a 'sampling' or a more complete representation; OTOH, my eye is still on obtaining that recording! 

[Gurn Blanston]

Dave,
Well, they are only 21, 20, 15 and 22 minutes, so fitting on one disk is no problem. 78 minutes, a perfect disk full. Dvorak was a visionary, I tell ya! 

Actually, it looked rather more like this, well dressed as I always am:





----------------
Listening to:
Chausson - Dallas SO / Mata - Chausson Symphony in Bb Op 20 2nd mvmt

[M forever]

I own a 2- & 3-CD set of Dvorak 'tone poems', so I guess the question is whether one wants a 'sampling' or a more complete representation

It contains all 4 tone poems he wrote after folk tales by Karel Erben, so while it may not be a complete collection of all his tone poems, it is complete in that respect.

BTW, Mahler totally dug the pieces (not surprisingly) and he conducted them in Vienna.

[Brian]

It contains all 4 tone poems he wrote after folk tales by Karel Erben, so while it may not be a complete collection of all his tone poems, it is complete in that respect.

BTW, Mahler totally dug the pieces (not surprisingly) and he conducted them in Vienna.

I believe the tone poems were intended to 'go together,' in a fashion, anyways; they take up consecutive opus numbers and are often viewed as a cycle, which is why many interpreters do not include Dvorak's other major tone poem, A Hero's Song.

[Wanderer]

After all the good publicity here and listening to soundbites here and there, I decided to take the plunge with this one (as if I needed yet another Mahler cycle...). 
I'd have liked to get the individual issues due to the very interesting fillers, but the expense would've been comparatively enormous (75 vs. 200 euros!). I'll still get the Tenth issued individually (the set, traditionally, only has the first movement Adagio; by the way, is this a different performance or they've just drawn the first movement from the recording of the Tenth?) and eventually some of the other individual issues (e.g. No.4 coupled with Schreker's Vorspiel zu einem Drama and No.2 coupled with Kurtag's Stele and Schönberg's Kol Nidre) when prices drop sufficiently to make duplication worthwhile.

I also got...



I have quite a number of the included performances but even 10 or so discs' worth of unknown repertoire/recordings per set make the meagre investment worthwhile.

[Harry]

That are a lot of cd's Tasos!
Have enough time on your hands, have you?
Both boxes are on my list too, so if you ever have the time, let me/us know what your findings are.

[FideLeo]

[The new erato]

I have had the Elgar box for 6 months but seem to be unable to make it past CD 16. He has written some great music, but beyond a handful (or slightly more) of masterpieces it soon becomes predictable, undramatic and boring.

[71 dB]

I have had the Elgar box for 6 months but seem to be unable to make it past CD 16. He has written some great music, but beyond a handful (or slightly more) of masterpieces it soon becomes predictable, undramatic and boring.

Just out of curiosity, what works do you find the most predictable, undramatic and boring?

[Drasko]

This:


ordered these (though Martinu is listed as out of stock)



And almost bought Giulini's LAPO Rheinische at the second hand shop. First I was pondering whether to get it or not since the coupling was Sinopoli's Unfinished which I already have and when finally decided to go for it anyway found out that the disc and the case don't match Inside was some DG sampler whose first two tracks were indeed Schubert Unfinished (by Abbado/COE) and the rest was some Sibelius and Tchaikovsky by Karajan. Somebody sold the them wrong disc and they didn't bother to check more thoroughly
CDJapan here I come.

[The new erato]

Just out of curiosity, what works do you find the most predictable, undramatic and boring?

The Apostles and The Kingdom to name two obvious examples. Some very fine scoring and the occasional good melody, but overall deadly dull. And the box contains lots of smaller works written for various occasions that were obviously never meant to be masterpieces but which I find pretty uninteresting. I intend to get through the box sometimes, but my interest are seriously waning. IMO there is a huge gap in quality between works like the eg violin concerto and gerontius OTOH and the lesser stuff.

[The new erato]

This:

You are aware that Minkowskis beautiful Gluck albums are on a current opera campaign at very good prices I presume?

[71 dB]

The Apostles and The Kingdom to name two obvious examples. Some very fine scoring and the occasional good melody, but overall deadly dull. And the box contains lots of smaller works written for various occasions that were obviously never meant to be masterpieces but which I find pretty uninteresting. I intend to get through the box sometimes, but my interest are seriously waning. IMO there is a huge gap in quality between works like the eg violin concerto and gerontius OTOH and the lesser stuff.

Well, The Apostles and The Kingdom are among the finest music I have heard in my life and examples of Elgar's genius. I engourage you to listen to them more and pay attention to all the little things that are going on (I think this is what most people miss about Elgar). I read The Apostles for example has richer thematic material than Wagner's entire Ring!

Yes, Elgar was lots of those smaller works but so have other composers. In my opinion Elgar's "miniatures" are always charming and well-composed.

[mn dave]

Purchases today last night.

1. GCOT20C - Reiner (EMI)
2. GCOT20C - Klemperer (EMI)
3. GCOT20C - Monteux (EMI)
4. The Theatre Music of Henry Purcell, vol. 1 (Naxos)
5. DSCH Sym 8 - LSO/Previn (EMI)

[The new erato]

Well, The Apostles and The Kingdom are among the finest music I have heard in my life and examples of Elgar's genius. I engourage you to listen to them more and pay attention to all the little things that are going on (I think this is what most people miss about Elgar). I read The Apostles for example has richer thematic material than Wagner's entire Ring!

They are very beatiful and I find them very skilfully written, but there are no dynamics to the action and the overall sound, and as a result I find them much, much less interesting than Gerontius, which I really love. Some day I will listen again.

Yes, Elgar was lots of those smaller works but so have other composers. In my opinion Elgar's "miniatures" are always charming and well-composed.

Some om them are very charming, but I find there's too many of them in this box.....That they are skilfully written I don't doubt, Elgar was a fine craftsman.

[Sergeant Rock]

Several shipments arrived today, including one from amazon.ca (Böhm Bruckner) that has been in transit since April 16th!!!

There was a lively discussion concerning the various Böhm recordings of the Bruckner Eighth. After weighing the arguments, and reading reviews, I opted for the Tonhalle performance:



I happened upon an online article about the 2002 Bruckner Marathon in Carlsbad California and read this about Welser-Möst's Bruckner 5:

"...this dynamic live Bruckner Fifth under Franz Welser-Möst qualifies for the "fast and furious" category. Gone are the quasi-religious aura and laboratory conditions that are now a standard part of most recent Bruckner recordings. Instead we have a daring recording that may not please everyone, but we consider it to be a knockout. It is interesting that Franz Schalk felt the need to add extra percussion during the final chorale of this symphony. Welser-Möst does not follow Schalk's score, but he did arrange for his timpanist to give just a bit extra in the end (to put it mildly). That combined with some fine brass work lead to an unusually rousing end to the symphony."

I like my Bruckner Fives fast and furious (Dohnányi/Cleveland convinced me). I heard W-M and the LPO perform the Seventh in Mannheim. The way he refused to pull in the reins for the Finale's coda again made for an "unusually rousing end to the symphony." The two works are now together on a mid-priced twofer:




Several members have already acquired this huge box set, and for various reasons. I already own Böhm's Ring (have LPs and CDs) but I'm interested in hearing the Sawallisch Lohengrin and Tannhäuser (with Bumbry as Venus...a singer I loved in my youth), the Levine Parsifal and the Böhm Tristan (which I've heard before but have never owned). Since just one of those operas would equal the price of this super-budget box, the decision to buy was easy:




Miaskovsky is a composer almost completely unknown to me (I had the 27th Symphony, nothing else) but the discussions generated about this box set forced my hand.




Sarge

[Novi]

A good handful of piano stuff :



Sorry about the small picture. I couldn't find a bigger one. It's the Sokolov box that includes his Diabelli, Chopin op. 25, Schubert, and various Russians. Since I missed him live when he decided not to come to the UK, I thought this set will have to do for now. At some stage, I will have to get his Paris(?) concert DVD.




My first Carter .

[Novi]

Several members have already acquired this huge box set, and for various reasons. I already own Böhm's Ring (have LPs and CDs) but I'm interested in hearing the Sawallisch Lohengrin and Tannhäuser (with Bumbry as Venus...a singer I loved in my youth), the Levine Parsifal and the Böhm Tristan (which I've heard before but have never owned). Since just one of those operas would equal the price of this super-budget box, the decision to buy was easy:




Sarge

Oh wow, Sarge! I was just thinking of buying this set the other day:



Is that the same Böhm Ring as the one in the monster box?

I must've missed the discussion about the box. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[Harry]

If Sarge trust this set I will too.