Recordings That You Are Considering

[kishnevi]

BTW, to revert to Tchaikovsky for a moment:  my favorite individual recording of a Tchaikovsky symphony is Solti's Fourth, which among its other virtues truly puts the fuoco in allegro con fuoco
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[DavidRoss]

Re. Tchaikovsky: there is so much to love that it scarcely matters where one begins. Start with the genre nearest your heart.  Thnaks to this thread, I plan to spin his 5th Symphony later today, performed by the LPO under Gatti. 

I don't own one Bach disc and I'm all the merrier for it.

For someone who claims to know and love classical music that's like claiming to love theatre yet proudly proclaiming complete willful ignorance of Shakespeare.

I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. I really can't think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that — its humanity.

Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all.

I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach.

You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers: They simply define what music is.

In Bach the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can play weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Bach is the supreme genius of music....  To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervor, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine; such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time.

JS Bach--a benevolent god to whom all musicians should offer a prayer to defend themselves against mediocrity

Music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder.

Bach...the most stupendous miracle in all music!

Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass?

[Mirror Image]

For someone who claims to know and love classical music that's like claiming to love theatre yet proudly proclaiming complete willful ignorance of Shakespeare.

How many times do I have to go down this road? I like what I like. Whether it's ignorant or not is not your judgement to make. Besides this, I could make the same points to you about Schoenberg or Berg, music you have willfully ignored and don't bother to acknowledge as influential. In fact, didn't you cite Schoenberg as the destroyer of all things classical? You said something to the effect that Schoenberg destroyed what Sibelius had done with music, which is, quite frankly, an absurd opinion to hold.

This said, I admire and acknowledge Bach's influence, but this doesn't mean I have to like the music.

[Karl Henning]

. . . This said, I admire and acknowledge Bach's influence, but this doesn't mean I have to like the music.

I honestly don't see how anyone could not like some of Bach's music.

[Mirror Image]

I honestly don't see how anyone could not like some of Bach's music.

I've read great things about the cantatas, which seem to be up my alley. Gardiner's set on DG seems like a good place to start, but this is music that's not terribly important to me right now. As I progress with classical music, who knows? That I can't predict, but I don't like the implication that I am ignorant because I don't like something that others enjoy. I think Dave Ross was completely wrong in his judgement there.

[Karl Henning]

For someone who claims to know and love classical music that's like claiming to love theatre yet proudly proclaiming complete willful ignorance of Shakespeare.

Those are all fabulous, delicious insights. If these musical sages don't show him sense, no one can : )

[TheGSMoeller]

Thanks for the Tchaikovsky recommemdations, everyone. The trio I've never heard, so that might be worth checking out. And it seems time to visit with old friends (symphonies 4-6).

[Mirror Image]

Those are all fabulous, delicious insights. If these musical sages don't show him sense, no one can : )

Yeah, but it's certainly fine that Dave completely maligned Schoenberg as "the destroyer of all things classical" when this couldn't be further from the truth. I didn't say anything bad or demeaning about Bach's music. Why would I? I've called it boring before, sure, but also I said that I don't particularly care for the Baroque Era many times. Does this make me a criminal? Does this make me the most misinformed person in the world? Can I listen to what I like without being told I'm ignorant?

Again, I listen to what I enjoy, but apparently this just isn't what I need to be doing. I need to be listening to music does that absolutely nothing for me, which is always a good way to spend one's time on this planet.

[Brian]

I honestly don't see how anyone could not like some of Bach's music.

I have a friend who's both a pianist and an oboist, neither professionally, and she is driven up the wall by performances of Bach because she has perfect pitch and, she says, Bach demands immaculate tuning so much that if an instrument is even slightly off she starts getting irritated.

[TheGSMoeller]

Once I went Bach, I never went back. True story.

[Karl Henning]

I have a friend who's both a pianist and an oboist, neither professionally, and she is driven up the wall by performances of Bach because she has perfect pitch and, she says, Bach demands immaculate tuning so much that if an instrument is even slightly off she starts getting irritated.

Interesting! Though I take it that if she found the keyboard(s) tuned to her liking, there's plenty of his organ and Klavier work that she'd like just fine . . . .

[Mirror Image]

Once I went Bach, I never went back. True story.

I like my coffee black, like I like my women.

[DavidRoss]

How many times do I have to go down this road? Only as many as you choose.

I like what I like. Whether it's ignorant or not is not your judgement to make. ?  Apples and crowbars. Liking is one thing; knowing is altogether different. Ignorance is not a matter of opinion, but a state of being. Although our own ignorance is rarely visible to us -- at least until we step out on the path of wisdom -- it's usually painfully obvious to everyone around us. And whatever we learn from another usually starts with our judgment about what he might have to offer.

Besides this, I could make the same points to you about Schoenberg or Berg, music you have willfully ignored and don't bother to acknowledge as influential. Huh? This is not only false, but bizarre even for you to make things at such odds with reality. In fact, one of my last posts on this site was in praise of Isabel Faust's recording of Berg's VC. Go figure.

In fact, didn't you cite Schoenberg as the destroyer of all things classical? Not that I know of, though it's conceivable that I might have said something that you would completely misunderstand -- and then that you would mistakenly identify me as the author of whatever you imagine I said.

You said something to the effect that Schoenberg destroyed what Sibelius had done with music, which is, quite frankly, an absurd opinion to hold.Curiouser and curiouser. That would be an absurd opinion -- nearly as absurd as attributing it to me.

If you insist on posing as if garbed in the cloak of expert authority, you should not be surprised if someone points out your nakedness from time to time.

Note bene: The beginning of all wisdom, and the beginning of all learning, is the humble acknowledgment that we don't know. When we become enslaved to what we think we know, we render ourselves incapable of learning. Thus the old saying that "a little education is a dangerous thing." All too many who know but little lack the humility to recognize that the sum of their knowledge is but a tidepool beside the great ocean of the unknown. And all too many who know only a little confuse knowing about something with knowing the thing itself.

Pearls. If you but have the capacity to learn.

[Mirror Image]

If you insist on posing as if garbed in the cloak of expert authority, you should not be surprised if someone points out your nakedness from time to time.

Note bene: The beginning of all wisdom, and the beginning of all learning, is the humble acknowledgment that we don't know. When we become enslaved to what we think we know, we render ourselves incapable of learning. Thus the old saying that "a little education is a dangerous thing." All too many who know but little lack the humility to recognize that the sum of their knowledge is but a tidepool beside the great ocean of the unknown. And all too many who know only a little confuse knowing about something with knowing the thing itself.

Pearls. If you but have the capacity to learn.

Dave, you're grasping at straws here...I guess you forgot about this quote of yours:

My own candidate is Sibelius, for quality, consistency, breadth, and influence, but there are many others of nearly comparable merit: Stravinsky, Debussy, Prokofiev, Mahler, Strauss. Sad that the 20th Century's horrors (including the legacy of Schoenberg and his moronic disciples) derailed the explosion of creative genius with which the century began.

The bolded text tells me everything I need to know I think.

[Octave]

Total ignorance of Shakespeare would have improved not only countless works of literature, but countless works of theater in particular; not only that, but it would have improved lots of people as well.  Any institution/shibboleth so top-heavy can only become dead weight, even against its greater qualities.  Latin isn't essentially pretentious, for example; but it was put to pretentious uses, so frequently, in the modern world over maybe merely a few/several generations.  What's the phrase I'm looking for....."pretentions of timelessness"?  It might be good for his works to be totally forgotten for a few generations, so there can be another renaissance.  Shoot, even genius is tarnished by servility to "greatness".  The worst parts/aspects of Melville seem like he's trying for a "Shakespearean" idiom and just coming off a ponce.  And he's Melville (i.e. a genius)!

I'm for the abolition of pretty much all universals, especially when it comes to standards of literacy. 

Yeah, DRR, I don't think you're shedding much light on anything, lecturing people on the greatness and mandatoriness of Bach.  Courageous, that.  Nothing is mandatory anymore; nothing is essential.  Plus you make it sound like the 20c's horrors started after the beginning of the century and not before.  Plus you refer to Schoenberg's "disciples" as "moronic".  Are you talking about Hollywood film composers?  They might be the actual (unintended) fulfillment of his own intended legacy i.g. buying time for a (Germanic) tradition that he saw, with dread, as sinking.  That seems like a total continuity of 19c to 20c: a marginalized person trying to help out the tradition of a people who despises that marginalized person.  It's incredibly poignant.  It makes me think of Bach, in a sense; trying to serve a God who he knows despises him.

[Octave]

Pearls. If you but have the capacity to learn.

God, how pompous.

[Karl Henning]

Total ignorance of Shakespeare would have improved not only countless works of literature, but countless works of theater in particular; not only that, but it would have improved lots of people as well.

What a curious remark.

I'll repeat: It is very difficult for me to imagine that anyone should like nothing of Bach's; and the statement "I hate everything by Bach" does look much closer to ignorance, and a reverse-snobbery lack of taste, than it does to musical opinion.

[Mirror Image]

What a curious remark.

I'll repeat: It is very difficult for me to imagine that anyone should like nothing of Bach's; and the statement "I hate everything by Bach" does look much closer to ignorance, and a reverse-snobbery lack of taste, than it does to musical opinion.

Do you agree with Dave's opinion of Schoenberg and his disciples?

[Karl Henning]

Do you agree with Dave's opinion of Schoenberg and his disciples?

I missed it, so I do not know whether I agree.

I know more than one music-lover who likes Verklärte Nacht very well, but probably nothing else of Schoenberg's. That were hardly equivalent, though. You want me to detail why? ; )

[Mirror Image]

I missed it, so I do not know whether I agree.

I know more than one music-lover who likes Verklärte Nacht very well, but probably nothing else of Schoenberg's. That were hardly equivalent, though. You want me to detail why? ; )

Since you missed it:

Sad that the 20th Century's horrors (including the legacy of Schoenberg and his moronic disciples) derailed the explosion of creative genius with which the century began.