Topic: Revisiting old preferred works, and losing interest...

[m_gigena]

Having not heard Nielsen symphonies in a while (grammar?), I decided to listen to them again yesterday... Everything was fine with the third (still one of my favs), but whilst playing the sixth I realised it doesn't catch me as before. The opening bars I still find interesting, but the scherzo didn't appeal to me at all, the Proposta seria seemed not inteligible and the Theme and variations bored me to dead.
During the waltz variation my idea was "this is done better in Le festin d'Esope", and the last bars looked like a Marlboro tv ad.

Something similar happened while revisiting my Annees de Pelerinage by Ciccolini. Two years ago I would have listed it as the best piano cd I had. Now it's just sharing a shelf with many Marc-André Hamelin releases. ( ).

I'm kind of sad, because I did enjoy Nielsen in the past...

[carlos]

Stay with Nielsen concertos and chamber works. Have the
violin one by Telmanyi?

[DetUudslukkelige]

The same thing constantly happens to me. Sadly, It seems to have happened with Mahler's Eighth in my case. I still like it, it just doesn't make me hold my breath anymore.

And I wouldn't worry about the sixth too much. You're just one of many Nielsen fans - including myself, to a degree - who listen to it less than his others. It's no big deal. Besides, it's just one work - I still consider myself a Mahler fan. In any event, at least the third still gets you. I love how driven, yet beautiful, it can be.

[m_gigena]

Stay with Nielsen concertos and chamber works. Have the
violin one by Telmanyi?

I have Tellefsen, Varga and the guy on Naxos.

But coming from you, I somehow suppose that Telmanyi comes from an obscure LP, available only in the gift shop of a somber Romanian castle.

[gmstudio]

I just had this experience with a new (to me) recording of Mahler 6.  I picked up the Budapest/Fischer recording from the library, after drowning in his stunning recording of Mahler 2.  I put 6 on in the car on the drive home and it just hit me, "I'm really sick and tired of Mahler 6."   

[carlos]

Not so; it's an CD (but I don't know label because
it's a copy a friend sended to me). Has 3 first recordings
v.c. by Telmanyi and Egisto Tango (!) (1947), the flute c.
by Paul Birkelund (58) and the clarinet by Eriksson (54)

[Brian]

When this happens to me (as, at the moment, with Mendelssohn's Octet and anything by Grieg), I quarantine the music for a few months and then after try it, but only when it seems to be of interest. I actually went over a year without hearing Tchaikovsky's Fifth, and since I moved to Texas a year and a half ago I have totally ignored a Tchaikovsky / Dutoit CD which used to be one of my favorites (and is the first CD I ever owned).

[m_gigena]

When this happens to me (as, at the moment, with Mendelssohn's Octet and anything by Grieg), I quarantine the music for a few months and then after try it, but only when it seems to be of interest.

I'll do that then. I hope my change of interests are because my mind is melting.

[marvinbrown]

Having not heard Nielsen symphonies in a while (grammar?), I decided to listen to them again yesterday... Everything was fine with the third (still one of my favs), but whilst playing the sixth I realised it doesn't catch me as before. The opening bars I still find interesting, but the scherzo didn't appeal to me at all, the Proposta seria seemed not inteligible and the Theme and variations bored me to dead.
During the waltz variation my idea was "this is done better in Le festin d'Esope", and the last bars looked like a Marlboro tv ad.

Something similar happened while revisiting my Annees de Pelerinage by Ciccolini. Two years ago I would have listed it as the best piano cd I had. Now it's just sharing a shelf with many Marc-André Hamelin releases. ( ).

I'm kind of sad, because I did enjoy Nielsen in the past...

  So sorry to hear that you no longer enjoy recordings that once gave you so much pleasure Manuel.  I would like to offer the following observations:

   1) Your musical tastes might have changed since the last time you heard this recording.
   2) You know the old saying "Familiarity Breeds Contempt".....this happens to me quite often, hearing a piece of music over and over and over again could reduce the initial "Buzz" you once got.
   3) Perhaps you are overestimating the enjoyment you once had.  We as humans have a tendency never to remember things the way they ACTUALLY were....we have a romantic notion of how GREAT things were hence the expression "the good old days"......

   

  marvin

[m_gigena]

hearing a piece of music over and over and over again could reduce the initial "Buzz" you once got.

I was surprised with this Nielsen affair just because of that: I haven't even heard the 6th in the last year.

   1) Your musical tastes might have changed since the last time you heard this recording. 

This presented a new edge of my music appreciation, in general. Up to this point I thought of my musical tastes as strictly additive or cumulative. And I was fond of this, as it makes my life* sort of... consistent.
Now I'm affraid some works I listen again may not catch my attention as they did in the past, and the situation looks a bit unstable...

(After this considerations I suppose I should stop smoking my granma's pills...)

*Ok, life could sound as an exageration.

[Xenophanes]

"You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on."--Heraclitus

http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/Philosophy/heraclitus.pdf

According comedian Severn Darden, Heraclitus' wife, Helen, answered as follows:

"Don't be an ass, Heraclitus! Of course you can step into the same river twice-- if you walk downstream!"

In any case, change is a law of life and the first glow of enthusiasm often wears off.  Things become familiar. We change, and sometimes our tastes change.  There are lots of other things to listen to.  As you gain new experiences, you may later return to Nielsen with renewed insight.

[marvinbrown]

In any case, change is a law of life and the first glow of enthusiasm often wears off.  Things become familiar. We change, and sometimes our tastes change.  There are lots of other things to listen to.  As you gain new experiences, you may later return to Nielsen with renewed insight.

  I agree with this observation and I hope Manuel returns one day with renewed insight to the Nielsen  recording.


   marvin