What are you listening 2 now?

[Karl Henning]

Varèse - Nocturnal.

Nice!

[Mirror Image]

I've really liked the Craft, John, I've not done a head-to-head with Boulez.
I'm approaching a state of organization which might make it possible, though.

Very nice, Karl. I should revisit this Craft series. I own the whole series that were issued as box sets:

[Karl Henning]

Very nice, Karl. I should revisit this Craft series. I own the whole series that were issued as box sets:

I applaud Naxos for reissuing these!

[Mirror Image]

NP: Strauss Symphonia Domestica, Op. 53 (Kempe)

From this Tower Records Japanese hybrid SACD set:

[Mirror Image]

I applaud Naxos for reissuing these!

Yes, indeed. They're actually just cardboard boxes which house the individually reissued volumes, which is typical of Naxos. Still, it was cheaper for me at the time to buy them in these box sets than individually.

[Karl Henning]

Yes, indeed. They're actually just cardboard boxes which house the individually reissued volumes, which is typical of Naxos. Still, it was cheaper for me at the time to buy them in these box sets than individually.

Aye, I did the same with the Schuman Symphonies

[Mirror Image]

Aye, I did the same with the Schuman Symphonies

Oh, I'm sorry, Karl. I didn't word this correctly. Let me try my hand this again: I bought the two Naxos volumes of Schoenberg I posted from above, but these sets are nothing in the world but cardboard boxes that house the individual recordings in their jewel cases --- how they originally came. Sorry for the confusion!

[Karl Henning]

Oh, I'm sorry, Karl. I didn't word this correctly. Let me try my hand this again: I bought the two Naxos volumes of Schoenberg I posted from above, but these sets are nothing in the world but cardboard boxes that house the individual recordings in their jewel cases --- how they originally came. Sorry for the confusion!

That's how I read you. All is well.

[DavidW]

[Mirror Image]

That's how I read you. All is well.

[Karl Henning]

(* pounds the table *)

[vandermolen]

The Miaskovsky SQ No.13 (his greatest IMO) is the highlight of this excellent disc for me.

Now playing:
Wagner: Parsifal, Prelude and Good Friday music:

[Karl Henning]

Schoenberg
String Quartet № 1 in d minor, Op. 7
String Quartet № 2 in f# minor, Op. 10
New Vienna String Quartet
Evelyn Lear

[Karl Henning]

The Miaskovsky SQ No.13 (his greatest IMO) is the highlight of this excellent disc for me.

The best Myaskovsky piece I've heard so far.

[Que]

Hi Que - I've seen that big Locatelli box but had been collecting the 'smaller' Ruhadze boxes all along; SO, had to take a look - 2nd pic on the bottom shows what I own from the 21-disc box - the 'white boxes' are Ruhadze + Wentz and the 'red boxes' are Wallfisch and the Locatelli Trio (2-CD set) - appears that I'm mainly missing the 3 CDs of Violin Sonatas, Op. 6; Amazon has a single Wallfisch disc of a portion of Op. 6, way overpriced and of course incomplete - may check the DL sites and see what's on Spotify for a listen?  Dave

 

Dave, I guess I got ahead by being behind! 

My return to the set confirmed that it is really wonderful, with splendid performances.
The only "complete composer" set I own, and totally worth it and certainly not a waste of space.

[amw]

The only pianist I can think of who recorded op 106 before 1940 is Schnabel! Is there one from Gieseking? the earliest I have is 1949.

It is a particularly hard sonata to pull off IMO, and for that reason what you say is not implausible when you think about it. I'm not sure it would be so plausible for, e.g., op 109.

I think it's accurate for every Beethoven sonata to be honest. Like you have to assume the metronome marks for the Hammerklavier and the string quartets etc are typical of what he would ask for. That also then has to be extrapolated to the character of the sonatas. For example the first movement of Op. 10/3 should be fifteen to twenty percent faster than the first movement of the Hammerklavier, the adagio of Op. 111 should be slightly faster than the adagio of Op. 18/1, the allegretto moderato of Op. 53 should be either slightly slower or slightly faster than the allegretto of Op. 92 and so on.

In general early 20th century pianists left very few recordings or piano rolls etc because it was new technology, not in wide use, and had technical limitations. Additionally performance tastes at the time often precluded the complete performance of longer works. But I've been listening to a lot of the surviving recordings from the era—Hofmann, Lhévinne, Paderewski, Friedman, Petri, Pachmann etc, along with the 1920s and 30s recordings of Serkin, Horowitz, Backhaus etc, and in most cases there is really no comparison possible to any pianist active today (or for that matter to the later, stereo recordings of pianists like Serkin, Horowitz and Backhaus, when they were old men).

Some composers have gotten a fairly good deal with modern recordings, e.g. Stravinsky or Rachmaninov. But those are now the only performance styles in use. All standard repertoire is played like it's Rachmaninov if you're a non-historically-informed performer, and like Stravinsky if you're a historically-informed performer. The quality of Debussy, Ravel, Fauré (etc) performance is now very high, but the character of those performances would in most cases be unrecogniseable to Debussy, Ravel, Fauré (etc) themselves. With honourable exceptions of course. But the chain of transmission was broken after the first generation of students. With Shostakovich the situation is even worse; the chain of transmission was broken as soon as he died, and now everyone ignores his carefully calibrated tempo markings, dynamic marks, etc. You can only rely on recordings that were made during his lifetime and ideally under his supervision.

Of course most listeners prefer this kind of thing, because that's what they have been raised to think of as good performance, and find Shostakovich and Prokofiev and Stravinsky's recordings of their works impossibly crude and unrefined, etc. But most listeners have not studied the scores, or developed an understanding of the true character of a piece of music. And most performers who do study the scores have no capacity to comprehend the true character because they're mentally editing the scores in their head to be congruent with the recordings they've heard and the guidelines they've been taught by their teachers. So the only people who really care are, well, musicologists, and no one cares what they have to say, generally.

[Mandryka]

I think it's accurate for every Beethoven sonata to be honest. Like you have to assume the metronome marks for the Hammerklavier and the string quartets etc are typical of what he would ask for. That also then has to be extrapolated to the character of the sonatas. For example the first movement of Op. 10/3 should be fifteen to twenty percent faster than the first movement of the Hammerklavier, the adagio of Op. 111 should be slightly faster than the adagio of Op. 18/1, the allegretto moderato of Op. 53 should be either slightly slower or slightly faster than the allegretto of Op. 92 and so on.

In general early 20th century pianists left very few recordings or piano rolls etc because it was new technology, not in wide use, and had technical limitations. Additionally performance tastes at the time often precluded the complete performance of longer works. But I've been listening to a lot of the surviving recordings from the era—Hofmann, Lhévinne, Paderewski, Friedman, Petri, Pachmann etc, along with the 1920s and 30s recordings of Serkin, Horowitz, Backhaus etc, and in most cases there is really no comparison possible to any pianist active today (or for that matter to the later, stereo recordings of pianists like Serkin, Horowitz and Backhaus, when they were old men).

Some composers have gotten a fairly good deal with modern recordings, e.g. Stravinsky or Rachmaninov. But those are now the only performance styles in use. All standard repertoire is played like it's Rachmaninov if you're a non-historically-informed performer, and like Stravinsky if you're a historically-informed performer. The quality of Debussy, Ravel, Fauré (etc) performance is now very high, but the character of those performances would in most cases be unrecogniseable to Debussy, Ravel, Fauré (etc) themselves. With honourable exceptions of course. But the chain of transmission was broken after the first generation of students. With Shostakovich the situation is even worse; the chain of transmission was broken as soon as he died, and now everyone ignores his carefully calibrated tempo markings, dynamic marks, etc. You can only rely on recordings that were made during his lifetime and ideally under his supervision.

Of course most listeners prefer this kind of thing, because that's what they have been raised to think of as good performance, and find Shostakovich and Prokofiev and Stravinsky's recordings of their works impossibly crude and unrefined, etc. But most listeners have not studied the scores, or developed an understanding of the true character of a piece of music. And most performers who do study the scores have no capacity to comprehend the true character because they're mentally editing the scores in their head to be congruent with the recordings they've heard and the guidelines they've been taught by their teachers. So the only people who really care are, well, musicologists, and no one cares what they have to say, generally.

You know, the old piano people on rmcr would explain away the unexpected speed of those old recordings by saying that they needed to play fast to get it to fit onto 78s. Not Beethoven, but I remember exactly that being said to me about Brahms by Backhaus from the 1930s, and some early Schubert by Serkin (I think Serkin, I'll check tomorrow) which sounds crazily fast and irreverent if you approach it with expectations obtained from modern pianists. I loved that stuff but of course they all thought I was stupid, that it was only poor technology which made those pianists play in such a horrible, unromantic,  way.

Some pianists know how to play Beethoven -- think Paul Jacobs' Waldstein. I think Kocsis too.

[Todd]

Second disc.  Setting the standard in this rep.

[Stürmisch Bewegt]

D'Hoedt's Chroniques brèves de la vie bourgeoise, hopefully not too brief! 

[Karl Henning]

The late, great Wuorinen
Scherzo
Peter Serkin