General Harpsichord and Clavichord Thread

Started by Geo Dude, January 15, 2012, 10:22:56 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Mandryka

#460
Andreas Staier demolishes Mahan Esfahani - I know that musical people can often be extremely bitchy in real life, but Staier must have been very badly pissed off with Esfahani to feel the need to put this on the web


https://van-magazine.com/mag/patchwork-history/?amp
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

vers la flamme

Quote from: Mandryka on October 30, 2022, 02:05:39 AM
Andreas Staier demolishes Mahan Esfahani - I know that musical people can often be extremely bitchy in real life, but Staier must have been very badly pissed off with Esfahani to feel the need to put this on the web


https://van-magazine.com/mag/patchwork-history/?amp

Wow, this is juicy stuff. I guess I did have some awareness that the harpsichord world was subject to some cliquishness, but this was an entertaining example of it. The article is old, published over 5 years ago. I wonder if the relevant parties still feel the same way.

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: Mandryka on October 30, 2022, 02:05:39 AM
Andreas Staier demolishes Mahan Esfahani - I know that musical people can often be extremely bitchy in real life, but Staier must have been very badly pissed off with Esfahani to feel the need to put this on the web


https://van-magazine.com/mag/patchwork-history/?amp
Re the article:  Youch!

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

Herman

This is called The Pathology of a Shrinking Market. It's a given, alas, that fewer and fewer people play classical music, and even fewer are into early music, so naturally the audience shrinks, too. Just go to and early music festival and you'll see baroque and early m. are typically babyboomer pursuits, even more so than classical music as a whole. There is no Yuja W. effect in EM.

My GF is shopping for a good baroque model alto recorder, so I checked where we should go and it turned out the number of makers has halved in the past ten years. We visited a wonderfully nice and open person; my experience with instrument builders is they are crazy jealous of their territory, whether it's harpsichord builders (GF) or violin luthiers (me), anxiously guarding their shrinking market.

This is what I sense in the linked article, not necessarily in Staier's attitude, but the whole climate he describes.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: Mandryka on August 07, 2022, 07:51:16 AM


https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8908155--bach-and-friends

Nice instruments here - the organ is new, neo-baroque or almost, beautiful sound, it's in a place called Ciboure near Saint Jean de Luz. The harpsichord is a copy of an 18th century German harpsichord. Lovely recording and playing I'd say, de Camboulas is well aware of the contrapuntality of the music - including in the aria Sebaldina  - and he has chosen some gorgeous registrations for Muffat.

You need to hear this one.

Excellent recording. Thank you for the info.

Mandryka

Quote from: (: premont :) on June 01, 2021, 01:03:31 PM
Looks as if it is impossible to find (unknown Polish label?). I have heard his GV, which wasn't just my cup of tea. Too much polish and too deliberately "sensational" approach I think. But the one you posted may be more interesting.

Did you get it?
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

premont

Quote from: Mandryka on November 03, 2022, 07:58:23 PM
Did you get it?

I have only found it at an AMP seller. Price: 133 Euro. Add postage to this. A cost like this is self-forbidding.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: (: premont :) on November 04, 2022, 01:59:33 AM
I have only found it at an AMP seller. Price: 133 Euro. Add postage to this. A cost like this is self-forbidding.
I found a copy for sale online.  I'll send you a pm with the details.

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

premont

Quote from: Mandryka on November 03, 2022, 07:58:23 PM
Did you get it?

Update:
PD was very helpful and found it on ebay (13 Euro's from a German seller) and I have ordered it from there. Should arrive in about a week.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

milk

Quote from: Mandryka on October 30, 2022, 02:05:39 AM
Andreas Staier demolishes Mahan Esfahani - I know that musical people can often be extremely bitchy in real life, but Staier must have been very badly pissed off with Esfahani to feel the need to put this on the web


https://van-magazine.com/mag/patchwork-history/?amp
That's something.  Wow. I've no idea what I think of Esfahani as my tastes and understanding is constantly updating. I relistened to Rondeau's Goldberg recently and while I'd enjoyed it before I found him a little too busy and pushy this time. But I wouldn't doubt his musicianship. Has anyone read the interviews of Esfahani that Staier refers to?

Mandryka

#471
Quote from: milk on November 13, 2022, 12:08:34 AM
That's something.  Wow. I've no idea what I think of Esfahani as my tastes and understanding is constantly updating. I relistened to Rondeau's Goldberg recently and while I'd enjoyed it before I found him a little too busy and pushy this time. But I wouldn't doubt his musicianship. Has anyone read the interviews of Esfahani that Staier refers to?

https://van-magazine.com/mag/mahan-esfahani/

We really are at the bottom of the barrel here and you may feel the need to have a shower after reading it - look at the populist non sequitur in the the transition from a very value laden and pejorative account of French performance style in harpsichord music to an opera


For our readers, could you clarify what a "French" style is to the harpsichord world?

It's the sort of vague and limp-wristed style one hears on many recordings today, almost as if the players are afraid of their instruments. Christ! Gluck's "Orfeo" was originally performed with 12 double basses, eight flutes, and eight oboes, but if you performed it that way today, the historical performance world would get upset, because it doesn't fit the normative mold of a highly articulate and languid style—the style that makes you think "Get on with it!" when you hear it
.




or this creation of a culture war -

Yes, and that the cultural and musical insularity are intertwined. The obsession with articulation and with this "French" style of harpsichord playing has resulted in a "harpsichord language" that is largely disconnected from any other musical schemes. The language is disconnected from the larger world because those who speak it really don't speak other languages; experience other music; go to hip-hop performances, listen to bluegrass. Because they don't know black people, because they don't know diversity—many harpsichordists only know about food from the wealthy Dutch harpsichordists of the 1960s who supposedly knew about wine because they knew about the harpsichord.



these forms of argument are familiar after Trump etc put them onto the international scene, so it's no surprise to find them in the musical world, which in my experience can be no less factious and boorish and nasty and cutthroat than politics.  I myself understand Staier's anger, and I am nevertheless angry with the interviewer for not challenging Esfahani in the interview. I think it's good that the editor gave Staier the opportunity to publish his response.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

milk

Quote from: Mandryka on January 16, 2023, 10:22:38 AMScott Ross – Harpsichord Rebel

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001h4kh
Did you listen? I sampled the discussion a bit. It's hard because I lost interest in him. They say in this discussion that he had micro-management of his fingers or something like that. But his playing often comes off as conservative to me now. Admittedly, it's been a while. Have you listened to him lately?

Mandryka

#474
Quote from: milk on January 17, 2023, 01:29:34 PMDid you listen? I sampled the discussion a bit. It's hard because I lost interest in him. They say in this discussion that he had micro-management of his fingers or something like that. But his playing often comes off as conservative to me now. Admittedly, it's been a while. Have you listened to him lately?

Listened to about 15 minutes of the programme but quite frankly I'm not interested. I also listened last night to him playing D'Anglebert's 3rd suite and thought it was excellent playing. And I listened a couple of days ago to his Frescobaldi - which he made knowing that death was inevitable - the performances are feel a bit drab after a while but I still think it's valedictory - probably my overactive imagination.

Oh, and I checked a handful of sonatas from of his Stil Scarlatti, and it is occasionally lively and fresh, but too often ruined by the rigid pulse.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

milk

Quote from: Mandryka on January 17, 2023, 09:38:23 PMListened to about 15 minutes of the programme but quite frankly I'm not interested. I also listened last night to him playing D'Anglebert's 3rd suite and thought it was excellent playing. And I listened a couple of days ago to his Frescobaldi - which he made knowing that death was inevitable - the performances are feel a bit drab after a while but I still think it's valedictory - probably my overactive imagination.

Oh, and I checked a handful of sonatas from of his Stil Scarlatti, and it is occasionally lively and fresh, but too often ruined by the rigid pulse.
Things moved on since his time. Or maybe even back them artists like Leonhardt were much more compelling. I don't want to drag Ross. I'm sure he had flashed of brilliance. He must be some people's favorites.

Mandryka

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#477
Quote from: Mandryka on February 20, 2023, 08:57:33 AM

An exciting new release. Every bit as modest and deeply felt as Wonner's Sweelinck CD of 10 years ago. Andrea Gabrieli's art is nowhere more successful than in his transcription of Ciprien de Rore's lament  Ancor che col partire, which is my litmus test. Wonner's is a particularly expressive harpsichord rendition - expression in line with the text of the madrigal.

Ancor che col partire / Io mi senta morire - Although with leaving you / I feel myself die.

The music has three features which make it stand out in Wonner's hands

1. Ornamentation. This may not be written in the score, Wonner gets it and knows how to embellish that score beautifully.

2. Legato touch and at least in the canzons and transcriptions, cantabile phrasing  - each note flowing into the next, long song like phrases.

3. Expressiveness.

I'm listening through Qobuz, but it's frustrating because the booklet isn't there -here it is

https://www.encelade.net/images/livret/ECL2102%20livret%20num.pdf
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Que

Quote from: Mandryka on February 21, 2023, 12:25:30 AMAn exciting new release. Every bit as modest and deeply felt as Wonner's Sweelinck CD of 10 years ago. Andrea Gabrieli's art is nowhere more successful than in his transcription of Ciprien de Rore's lament  Ancor che col partire, which is my litmus test. Wonner's is a particularly expressive harpsichord rendition - expression in line with the text of the madrigal.

Ancor che col partire / Io mi senta morire - Although with leaving you / I feel myself die.

The music has three features which make it stand out in Wonner's hands

1. Ornamentation. This may not be written in the score, Wonner gets it and knows how to embellish that score beautifully.

2. Legato touch and at least in the canzons and transcriptions, cantabile phrasing  - each note flowing into the next, long song like phrases.

3. Expressiveness.

I'm listening through Qobuz, but it's frustrating because the booklet isn't there -here it is

https://www.encelade.net/images/livret/ECL2102%20livret%20num.pdf

Thnx agsin for pointing it out. I lined it up on Spotify!  :D

milk

Quote from: Mandryka on February 21, 2023, 12:25:30 AMAn exciting new release. Every bit as modest and deeply felt as Wonner's Sweelinck CD of 10 years ago. Andrea Gabrieli's art is nowhere more successful than in his transcription of Ciprien de Rore's lament  Ancor che col partire, which is my litmus test. Wonner's is a particularly expressive harpsichord rendition - expression in line with the text of the madrigal.

Ancor che col partire / Io mi senta morire - Although with leaving you / I feel myself die.

The music has three features which make it stand out in Wonner's hands

1. Ornamentation. This may not be written in the score, Wonner gets it and knows how to embellish that score beautifully.

2. Legato touch and at least in the canzons and transcriptions, cantabile phrasing  - each note flowing into the next, long song like phrases.

3. Expressiveness.

I'm listening through Qobuz, but it's frustrating because the booklet isn't there -here it is

https://www.encelade.net/images/livret/ECL2102%20livret%20num.pdf
thanks! Mesmerizing!