Better Acquired via Box Set & Cheaper Releases

[admiralackbar74]

Ok, I have to ask several questions about this because DGs website is woefully lacking in helpful information.



Does the big box include these?



AND... are the solo piano recordings by Kempff in the big box the same as those included in this?


(Why can't DG put recording dates in the track list information?)

The Karajan Symphonies listed above are the 1970s ones, correct? Is that what's in the big box?

[PerfectWagnerite]

Ok, I have to ask several questions about this because DGs website is woefully lacking in helpful information.



Does the big box include these?



AND... are the solo piano recordings by Kempff in the big box the same as those included in this?


(Why can't DG put recording dates in the track list information?)

The Karajan Symphonies listed above are the 1970s ones, correct? Is that what's in the big box?

According to Amazon:

Product Description
...LIMITED EDITION - features Herbert von Karajan's 1977 complete Symphony Cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic - Orchestral works with Claudio Abbado & the Vienna Philharmonic - Piano Concertos with Maurizio Pollini - Violin & Double Concertos with Anne-Sophie Mutter & Karajan - Violin Sonatas with Pinchas Zukerman & Daniel Barenboim - Cello Sonatas with Mstislav Rostropovich & Rudolf Serkin - Chamber music with the Amadeus Quartet, LaSalle Quartet & Quartetto Italiano - Solo piano works with Barenboim, Wilhelm Kempff & Tamás Vásáry - Lieder with Jessye Norman & Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - Extensive vocal ensemble and choral works - Carlo Maria Giulini conducts Ein deutsches Requiem.

So it looks like it does contain the cds you posted. Not sure whether the Kempff is the same as the Kempff you linked since as you said no dates are given.

[jlaurson]

yep... from: http://www.weta.org/fmblog/?p=426
Aimez-vous Brahms... a Lot!? (Chamber Music - 3/3)

Looked at (and listened to) as a set, the merits are much higher, still, than
"leaves no complaints". Even if the DG and Philips sets were still available
(which they currently are not), they wouldn't be a threat to Hyperion's –
merely competition. DG has some spectacular highlights with the Rostropovich/
Serkin Cello Suites and the Italiano/Abbado Piano Quintet. But even DG has
stronger performances of some of the other works in their own catalog that
are not included on the compilation: The Hagen Quartett with Gérard Caussé
in the String Quintets and Emil Gilels with the Amadeus Quartet (or Argerich
'with friends') in the First Piano Quartet, for example. Philips has the Beaux Arts
Trio, who were caught at the height of their powers and are particularly effective
in the Piano Quartets with violist Walter Trampler. The Cello Sonatas with Sebok
& Starker are my (emotional) favorite, anyway, and Sebők / Grumiaux are fine in
the Violin Sonatas. But the clarinet works and the String Quartets (the Quartetto
Italiano on auto-pilot) are not top drawer.

Find fairly detailed information here:
http://www2.deutschegrammophon.com/cat/result?SearchString=brahms&ART_ID=&COMP_ID=&ALBUM_TYPE=&IN_XXSERIES=&javascript=1&x=33&y=9

[jlaurson]

Anyone know anything about this:



http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Haydn-Complete-Symphonies-Russell/dp/B001NBS5NE/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1250626728&sr=1-6

This one hit me totally by surprise. In an interview, DRD told me he was doing this just last February, but I didn't imagine that he was already finished. I'm SO looking forward to it, because I like his attitude toward Haydn. "Snatch Haydn from the Jaws of Period Instrument Groups." 

[DavidW]

I want to know if he's actually a good conductor, I haven't heard any of his work before.  Oh well, I doubt that I'll buy the cycle.

An anti-HIP Haydn attitude doesn't excite me because then it would simply be more of the same.  If you recall Fischer mocked the HIP movement in the liner notes to his Haydn cycle.  Dorati also took a traditional approach.  If Davies is going for the same approach, it would be Fischer redux.  I would prefer a fresh perspective.  As it stands none of the complete sets are HIP, and for the individual recordings of many of the HIP ones are oop.

Not really interesting to just do the same thing all over again.

[Lethevich]

If Davies is going for the same approach, it would be Fischer redux.  I would prefer a fresh perspective.  As it stands none of the complete sets are HIP, and for the individual recordings of many of the HIP ones are oop.

I'm not sure about this - traditional performances can be as different from each other as HIP ones. The Fischer itself is pretty unusual, with the gloss of the Vienna Phil, but in a chamber setting.

DRD is a good conductor, and his Bruckner and Holst's Planets have both impressed me. I have a disc of his Haydn (Nos.9, 36, 63) - I could rip and upload a few movements if you'd like to sample?

[DavidW]

I'm not sure about this - traditional performances can be as different from each other as HIP ones. The Fischer itself is pretty unusual, with the gloss of the Vienna Phil, but in a chamber setting.

That's not unusual, Haydn's symphonies (excepting perhaps the very late ones) are scored for chamber sized orchestras.  Traditional performances are really not that different, people only think so because they project their biased perception on top of it.  The Karajan wall of sound, the Kondrashin russian intensity and so on.  Traditional performances are based on literal score reading to such a degree that they usually only differ in subtle nuances.

[jlaurson]

I want to know if he's actually a good conductor, I haven't heard any of his work before.  Oh well, I doubt that I'll buy the cycle.

An anti-HIP Haydn attitude doesn't excite me because then it would simply be more of the same.  If you recall Fischer mocked the HIP movement in the liner notes to his Haydn cycle.  Dorati also took a traditional approach.  If Davies is going for the same approach, it would be Fischer redux.  I would prefer a fresh perspective.  As it stands none of the complete sets are HIP, and for the individual recordings of many of the HIP ones are oop.

Not really interesting to just do the same thing all over again.

You may have misunderstood my quotation-fragment. He's not interested in Karajanesque Haydn, he is interested in ensuring that modern symphony orchestras remain ABLE to play Haydn, because it's a skill that's rapidly being lost--and yet it's the sine qua non of any orchestral playing. The best Haydn I've ever heard performed live was a performance by Heinz Holliger. Holy cow, did he rock through that thing... it was pure joy. I'm hoping for something similar with RDR... I'll certainly review the set sooner or later.

I know I've loved his Mozart concertos with Jarrett and his Glass. (Though one can't really judge from Glass on how he might do Haydn.)

(See: http://www.weta.org/fmblog/?p=340
Why Haydn Should be Mandatory

[Lethevich]

I think I'm misreading a point, but if traditional performances are all much the same for playing with a full-sized orchestra, how are HIP ensembles not all the same for playing with a small-sized one?

Hybrid cycles like Harnoncourt have their own interest, and it is unlikely that any modern instrument cycle recorded post-2000 could be made without utilising some of the insights made in the past few decades from the HIPsters. Not taking this and running down the "hybrid" route for some cynical HIP-cred I find kind of refreshing.

[jlaurson]

I think I'm misreading a point, but if traditional performances are all much the same for playing with a full-sized orchestra, how are HIP ensembles not all the same for playing with a small-sized one?

Hybrid cycles like Harnoncourt have their own interest, and it is unlikely that any modern instrument cycle recorded post-2000 could be made without utilising some of the insights made in the past few decades from the HIPsters. Not taking this and running down the "hybrid" route for some cynical HIP-cred I find kind of refreshing.

All true and seconded. Not even Karajan used the full string section of the BPh to play Haydn... Haydn has never been totally Straussified, really. That's not to say that there are great differences between how Haydn was done by a Philharmonic Orchestra in the 70s and now. But at least it was still done then... whereas now, most conductors don't dare or don't care... because Mozart and Haydn have become incredibly difficult to re-teach to an essentially romantic orchestra... and the appreciation (and ticket sales likelihood) is less than cranking out another Mahler symphony. What matters in the end is the enthusiasm of the conductor and band. And getting the balance right. Not what kind of bow is being used on the double basses.

[DavidW]

I think I'm misreading a point, but if traditional performances are all much the same for playing with a full-sized orchestra, how are HIP ensembles not all the same for playing with a small-sized one?

I don't see the point, because there is almost no competition for HIP recordings, most of them are oop and there is no complete HIP cycle.  They are so thin on the ground it doesn't seem worthwhile to compare them.  But there still is an answer to that question:

Some adopt legato phrasing (especially those pesky brits), some don't, some emphasize the differences in beats, some use the more traditional metronome like pacing.  There exists a spectrum in HIP playing on to what degree it's close to the modern style of playing.  Also the instrument choices have a great deal of variety since instruments changed quickly in that era.  Different fortepianos sound different, ditto the harpsichord for early classical.  

[DavidW]

You may have misunderstood my quotation-fragment. He's not interested in Karajanesque Haydn, he is interested in ensuring that modern symphony orchestras remain ABLE to play Haydn, because it's a skill that's rapidly being lost--and yet it's the sine qua non of any orchestral playing. The best Haydn I've ever heard performed live was a performance by Heinz Holliger. Holy cow, did he rock through that thing... it was pure joy. I'm hoping for something similar with RDR... I'll certainly review the set sooner or later.

Well that does indeed put a different spin on it!   Yes I did misread it.

[DavidW]

Anyway my point is that a HIP cycle offers something new because it would be a chance to hear all of the symphonies on period instruments.  Another traditional cycle couldn't offer something that staggeringly different.

[jlaurson]

Anyway my point is that a HIP cycle offers something new because it would be a chance to hear all of the symphonies on period instruments.  Another traditional cycle couldn't offer something that staggeringly different.

Exhibit A in questioning that statement: Paavo Jaervi's Beethoven Cycle.

[DavidW]

Exhibit A in questioning that statement: Paavo Jaervi's Beethoven Cycle.

Oh there is no way that yet another freaking Beethoven cycle offers anything remotely different from the past 100!   It's been played slow, fast, on period instruments, on current instruments, with rubato, without, Wagner's edition I'm sure, every score edition that has ever came out.  It's mined out, it's done.  So boring, so very very boring.  They kill Beethoven's genius with these easy cash projects.

[jlaurson]

Oh there is no way that yet another freaking Beethoven cycle offers anything remotely different from the past 100!   It's been played slow, fast, on period instruments, on current instruments, with rubato, without, Wagner's edition I'm sure, every score edition that has ever came out.  It's mined out, it's done.  So boring, so very very boring.  They kill Beethoven's genius with these easy cash projects.

Don't be quite so jaded, DavidW. While much has been said about Beethoven, it is the presence of music-making--especially classical music that so relies on interpretation--that keeps the genre alive; a perpetual cycle of discoveries and rediscoveries; present musicians and artists introducing their craft and ideas to these works. It would be horrid if classical music was indeed something that had been sucked dry in the late 70s (or 90s, if you wish) with recordings by X, Y, or Z being definitive, or the cumulative catalog meaning it's been covered exhaustively... and nothing of value and indeed yearning importance added to since.

And yes, Wagner's edition (one of them, at any rate, and at least of the 9th) has made it onto record. 

[Grazioso]

The Karajan Symphonies listed above are the 1970s ones, correct? Is that what's in the big box?

According to the booklet in the set, the symphonies were all recorded in the 80's.

[PerfectWagnerite]

According to the booklet in the set, the symphonies were all recorded in the 80's.

Not that it makes any difference as far as HVK's Brahms Symphonies are concerned. One sounds exactly like the next other than  details in the recorded sound and some of the least provoking Brahms out there.