Chez Stravinsky

[snyprrr]

Sorry, but I'll be pounding this Thread like a cheap hooker until I get what I want.

[snyprrr]

Symphony of Psalms

How can I forget that opening, that minor key piano figure, and that semi-tone on the strings? As I've been looking for an alternative to the classic Columbia/CBS recording, I'm finding too many variables. Really? Should it be so hard to get everything right?

Just from the first "lightning round", Solti seemed to make an impression... MTT??, I don't know what quite to make of that one... I see neither Salonen or Dutoit have one... Chailly gets critical marks for low-wattage... Celibidache plays it soooo slow... Karajan a bit too polished?... Shaw?...Shaw?...is it really that flabby?... Gardiner seemed a bit trimmed and polite?...


I totally expect one of you to come to my rescue here- surely you have already settled this one... (oy, if you tell me that Igor's is the best@!!)

[Karl Henning]

I do really like Boulez and Craft in the Symphony of Psalms.  May have a marginal preference for the following, with boy trebles in the choir:

[North Star]

It is decades since I listened to this, and I should revisit it . . . the Sarge (among others) bespeaks the Prokofiev:

I recall enjoying that, but having doubts of Chung's intonation.

Symphony of Psalms

How can I forget that opening, that minor key piano figure, and that semi-tone on the strings? As I've been looking for an alternative to the classic Columbia/CBS recording, I'm finding too many variables. Really? Should it be so hard to get everything right?

Just from the first "lightning round", Solti seemed to make an impression... MTT??, I don't know what quite to make of that one... I see neither Salonen or Dutoit have one... Chailly gets critical marks for low-wattage... Celibidache plays it soooo slow... Karajan a bit too polished?... Shaw?...Shaw?...is it really that flabby?... Gardiner seemed a bit trimmed and polite?...

I totally expect one of you to come to my rescue here- surely you have already settled this one... (oy, if you tell me that Igor's is the best@!!)

It's criminal that this is OOP now, but at least there's a cheap 'used - good' copy at Amazon.
[asin]B000002ZO4[/asin]

[snyprrr]

Requiem Cantiles- Knussen/DG or (Jarvi?)

Variations- Knussen/DG or MTT/RCA
Canon on Russian Tunes- MTT/RCA

Fanfare for A New Theatre- Boulez/DG(special promo) or Orpheus/DG or MDG

Elegy for JFK
In Memoriam Dylan Thomas      .........all these Boulez/DG
4 Songs
3 Songs


THE RAKE'S PROGRESS DG or Decca    ??   ??    ??


(Tango)
Septet- I only know that the Ashkenazy/Decca seems to be the most high profile release??
(Concertino)- I only know of MTT/RCA

general choral works- all I really know here is the Igor/SONY, all-in-one... can you give some recs on Mass/Cantata/Cant.Sacr.



That's what I have for 1950-1966. Technically, not a great variety needed here... and, if you already have MTT and Ashkenazy and the Boulez 'Songs' for other things, the only expenditure for Igor's 'Late Period' would be the Knussen and 'Rake'.

You gotta eat an elephant one bite at a time!

[Mahlerian]

Requiem Cantiles- Knussen/DG or (Jarvi?)

Variations- Knussen/DG or MTT/RCA

Knussen for both!  That's one great disc.

That's what I have for 1950-1966. Technically, not a great variety needed here... and, if you already have MTT and Ashkenazy and the Boulez 'Songs' for other things, the only expenditure for Igor's 'Late Period' would be the Knussen and 'Rake'.

You gotta eat an elephant one bite at a time!

Herreweghe's Threni is a must.  It's the longest work of his late period, and in my list of Stravinsky's top 5 or 10 works.  Stravinsky/Sony is iffy, Craft/Koch is dull, but Herreweghe/Phi is passionate and accurate!

[snyprrr]

I do really like Boulez and Craft in the Symphony of Psalms.  May have a marginal preference for the following, with boy trebles in the choir:

Boulez was...mm... "perfect", I thought slow, but the timing was normal... Craft I liked (Koch/Naxos?) but the sound seemed a little recessed?- you can here the nice violence of the first hit though, Craft seemed the ballsy choice?


But, yea, the Hyperion has always seemed like the champagne choice... I know I've had it from some library, but, somehow I know I must have compared it with Igor/CBS and come away liking the latter??? I'll try to find the Hyprn on YT...

Have you heard the Celibidache? oy- so slow!!



I am HACKING my way through this flippin Igor Forest!!

[Mirror Image]

Symphony of Psalms

How can I forget that opening, that minor key piano figure, and that semi-tone on the strings? As I've been looking for an alternative to the classic Columbia/CBS recording, I'm finding too many variables. Really? Should it be so hard to get everything right?

Just from the first "lightning round", Solti seemed to make an impression... MTT??, I don't know what quite to make of that one... I see neither Salonen or Dutoit have one... Chailly gets critical marks for low-wattage... Celibidache plays it soooo slow... Karajan a bit too polished?... Shaw?...Shaw?...is it really that flabby?... Gardiner seemed a bit trimmed and polite?...


I totally expect one of you to come to my rescue here- surely you have already settled this one... (oy, if you tell me that Igor's is the best@!!)

The O'Donnell performance on Hyperion is my pick here, but Stravinsky's own performance made an invaluable impression on me when I first-heard the work seven years ago. I like Craft and Bernstein a lot as well.

[Mirror Image]

general choral works- all I really know here is the Igor/SONY, all-in-one... can you give some recs on Mass/Cantata/Cant.Sacr.

O'Donnell (Hyperion) or De Leeuw (Philips) for the Mass. De Leeuw (Philips) for the Cantata. O'Donnell for Canticum Sacrum.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Requiem Canticles and Variations for Huxley are two of my favorite Stravinsky works, period 

Imagine if he had another 20 years 

He DID live till almost 90, NO REASON FOR COMPLAINT.

[Mirror Image]

He DID live till almost 90, NO REASON FOR COMPLAINT.

Hear, hear...if only we'd all be so lucky to live as full of life as Igor (and many other composers did).

[snyprrr]

Have you read the Amazon Reviews by the character who does the "Stravinsky vs. The Deserts"? Almost funny...

[Mahlerian]

Have you read the Amazon Reviews by the character who does the "Stravinsky vs. The Deserts"? Almost funny...

To me the funniest part was when he said that the Capriccio was a demonstration of the futility and aridity of serial writing, or something like that.  I can understand maybe thinking a weirder work like Zvezdoliki is 12-tone, but the Carpriccio?

[snyprrr]

Agon

I found the cache of 'Agon' recordings on YT last night: Rosbaud, Leinsdorth, Mravinsky, Gielen, MTT (which I have), but no Craft (which I have in storage).

Well, I found Rosbaud the clear winner- why the rest have inferior mic placement is beyond me, but with Rosbaud you hear everything crisply delineated in sections of the listening sphere. Leinsdorf's sound is no where near as good, and neither is Mravinsky's. Even MTT seemed muffled by comparison. Gielen was crisp and modern, but didn't have a particularly special feel to it, whereas the Rosbaud feels special. Eh?

I just finished listening through the MTT. Yea, I guess I could stand for a little more "competition" here. It sounds more like "music" than a "game". I can imagine how someone like Rosbaud can bring ouf the competing, sectional aspect more. Still, the "Greek" feel of the music is somewhat there, but I don't feel MTT keeps up the act, it comes and goes. More rigorous discipline, a la Boulez, might have yielded the correct feeling? I felt like there was a herky-jerky feeling that was missing from MTT.

Anyhow, the Rosbaud is available on that SONY Box, no? 'Great Masterpieces of the 20th Century', or something?

To me the funniest part was when he said that the Capriccio was a demonstration of the futility and aridity of serial writing, or something like that.  I can understand maybe thinking a weirder work like Zvezdoliki is 12-tone, but the Carpriccio?

Yea, he doesn't really have his analogy down, does he? LOL, but, yea, still kinda funny

[Karl Henning]

Agon

I found the cache of 'Agon' recordings on YT last night: Rosbaud, Leinsdorth, Mravinsky, Gielen, MTT (which I have), but no Craft (which I have in storage).

Well, I found Rosbaud the clear winner- why the rest have inferior mic placement is beyond me, but with Rosbaud you hear everything crisply delineated in sections of the listening sphere. Leinsdorf's sound is no where near as good, and neither is Mravinsky's. Even MTT seemed muffled by comparison. Gielen was crisp and modern, but didn't have a particularly special feel to it, whereas the Rosbaud feels special. Eh?

I just finished listening through the MTT. Yea, I guess I could stand for a little more "competition" here. It sounds more like "music" than a "game". I can imagine how someone like Rosbaud can bring ouf the competing, sectional aspect more. Still, the "Greek" feel of the music is somewhat there, but I don't feel MTT keeps up the act, it comes and goes. More rigorous discipline, a la Boulez, might have yielded the correct feeling? I felt like there was a herky-jerky feeling that was missing from MTT.

Anyhow, the Rosbaud is available on that SONY Box, no? 'Great Masterpieces of the 20th Century', or something?

Yea, he doesn't really have his analogy down, does he? LOL, but, yea, still kinda funny

The Rosbaud is primo.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[snyprrr]

Is there a French CD Promo of the Boulez 'Dunbarton & Ebony & 8 Miniatures', that also includes all the random Chamber Music, such as the clarinet and viola pieces, the 'Epitaphium' and 'Double Canon' This has the white DG cover of a line drawing of Igor- same as the LP. I also duplicates in the DG Box, but was never released? With Ensemble Intercontemporain

any availability?

[Mahlerian]

Yea, he doesn't really have his analogy down, does he? LOL, but, yea, still kinda funny

In the interest of correcting my mistakes when I ridicule others'...the quote I was referring to was about the Concerto for Piano and Winds.

"For instance, the first movement of the Concerto for Piano and Winds sounds like a parody of Chopin's Funeral March which has spent an unhealthy amount of time in a microwave? For sheer vapidity, its finale is unsurpassable. It's a vivid reminder that serialism turned out to be nothing more than a blind-gut in the lower intestines of Western Civilisation."

He doesn't say anything more positive about the Capriccio, though.

"The dryness intensifies in the Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra. Even scorpions would say that it's an ordeal. With nary a melody in sight, it expounds the hegemony of rarefied intelligence over anachronisms such as talent, vision and longing to live on something more than mere bread. Its remit is not beyond the resources of a cactus."

I still think it's funny that the people who purport to hate serialism the most have no ability whatsoever to identify whether or not something is in fact serial.

[Crudblud]

Rosbaud and Gielen do wonderful Agons. Both very different, but I would have a difficult time choosing between the two for my personal favourite.

I'll put in another recommendation for the Salonen recording of the Violin Concerto with Mullova. I couldn't really put into words what it is about this one in particular, but it feels like rhythmically, dynamically, in timbre, in overall sound, nothing is a hair out of place, and yet it is not at all mechanical. Total coherence. Where someone earlier said it was fluffy, I would say it is full of wit and invention.

[kishnevi]

Having listened the other day to Stravinsky's own recording (1957 LA Festival SO)--perhaps the sonics suffer by comparison, but the musicality itself is hard to beat.

[snyprrr]

MY MOST IMPORTANT STRAVINSKY QUESTION:

The very very ending of the Symphony in C, the final string chord,- in the Stravinsky CBS, the chord has a big big sound up close, and it is my most cherished IgorMoment,- I can't tell you how much it mean to me,-

but

I can't seem to find another. Of co. urse, no one is recorded as up close as that CBS, so, it would be fake sounding (as it is, I suppose in that one, but, you know, it sounds so great). Dutoit is very quiet.

Karajan caught me. He's quiet, but he lets the chord ring out a while.



Which brings me to Karajan's  c Symphony. I love it. The 1969 sound is spectacular, and, of course, it sounds better than the CBS. Japan pressing has it with DSCH 10- a great coupling!!

I just wanted to draw your attention to Karajan here. I had no idea. I rechecked his Concerto in D, and, as per its reputation as being a completely wrong interpretation, it does sound completely "teutonic", as opposed to Dutoit's quite charmingly French,... err, Swiss?, take. Karajan takes the 1st mvmt. a minute longer I think...

anyhow, Karajan = C

He also did the 'Circus Polka', lol!