The Period in Romantic Performances

[j winter]

Greetings to all,

While I find it interesting and often rewarding to hear HIP techniques applied to Romantic composers, I must confess that sometimes my own taste runs the other way around.  I confess it -- I often enjoy it when someone applies a lush, Romantic technique to the Baroque and Classical repertoire, as was usually the case 50+ years ago.  Call it anachronistic or wrong-headed if you like, but the results can be beautiful to the ear, and IMO music as strong as that of Bach or Vivaldi can shine through, and often be illuminated by, many different styles of interpretation.

And so, a thread to celebrate some of our favorite recordings, be they grand recordings from the golden age or guilty pleasures of today, that view the music of the more distant past through an unashamedly Romantic lens....  I'm thinking of recordings along the lines of Stokowski's or Ormandy's Bach (and Purcell, and Handel, and...) transcriptions, baroque music from the golden age of conductors and pianists (Furtwangler, Toscanini, Cortot, etc.), the first pioneering 1940's-50's recordings of early Haydn and Mozart...

What are some of your favorites?

[Biffo]

Elgar's 'Handel in D minor' is my favourite in this genre. Usually I prefer period instruments or a modern chamber orchestra in baroque repertoire.  I don't like Stokowski or Ormandy's orchestral transcriptions at all.

[Florestan]

What a great idea for a thread! Excellent! 

I confess it -- I often enjoy it when someone applies a lush, Romantic technique to the Baroque and Classical repertoire

A man after my own heart! Where have you been all this time? 

What are some of your favorites?

Otomh:











and this:

https://www.youtube.com/v/ZOZ-8B9UuDc

(part 1 of 4, make sure to watch/listen all parts)

[Mandryka]

Scherchen, some of the Mozart and Haydn, the Matthew Passion. I'm not sure "romantic" is the right word for what he does.
Van Beinum in Haydn
Gilels Mozart PC 27, the one he conducts himself.
Pears and Bream/Britten singing Elizabethan stuff. Anything with Bream.
Segovia playing the Bach chaconne.
Klemperer Brandenburg concertos, Mozart symphonies, Gran Partita.
Furtwangler Gran Partita.
Alfred Deller singing Bach cantatas, Couperin's lecons.

[JBS]

I would nominate Ashkenazy's recording of the Bach Partitas.

[Jo498]

Bach Concertos and WTC with Edwin Fischer
Scherchen: Bach Passions and Art of the Fugue (Stereo Vienna on Westminster), Handel op.6, Haydn symphonies #45, 49 and 88

I don't really consider Mozart and Haydn as "period by default" and I don't think most or typical Mozart performances of the 1930-80s or so are "overly romanticized" (and maybe I simply have not heard enough such recordings), so I draw the line roughly after Bach, Scarlatti, Rameau and Handel.

[Mandryka]

I don't really consider Mozart and Haydn as "period by default" and I don't think most or typical Mozart performances of the 1930-80s or so are "overly romanticized"

Humph

[Florestan]

I don't really consider Mozart and Haydn as "period by default"

+ 1.

[Mandryka]

+ 1.

Humph

[Florestan]

Humph

I'm not surprised in the least by your reaction. ETA Hoffmann, otoh, might very well be, were he alive.

[Mandryka]

I'm not surprised in the least by your reaction. ETA Hoffmann, otoh, might very well be, were he alive.

Humph

[j winter]

Humph

   


Now this is what I like to see on the forum, arguments about *music.*    Carry on!   

[Florestan]

Humph

Tedious or sneerful is certainly not your usual self. A bad day perhaps?

[Mandryka]

My mother told me not to talk top people like you.

[Florestan]

My mother told me not to talk top people like you.

Your mother told you that 50 years ago. Most people your age have grown up long time ago.

[j winter]

Oh come now, gentlemen, it's almost Christmas, let's be jolly. 

Here's something beautiful to see and hear, Stokowski's transcription of Purcells' Dido's Lament.  Truly marvelous stuff, this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Mp-S985E8

[Florestan]

Oh come now, gentlemen, it's almost Christmas, let's be jolly. 

AFAIC, both Mandryka and I have been jolly.   

[j winter]

Regarding some of the above posts...

Horowitz Playing Scarlatti was my first exposure to that composer, and still a favorite of mine.  I also like it on harpsichord, but Horowitz's playing really is special here.

Scherchen's Haydn has also been a long-time favorite -- I pull that set off the shelf all the time.  That and Beecham's famous set of the London symphonies.  I may need to investigate Scherchen's Art of Fugue... is it done with a full orchestra or a chamber ensemble?

I also very much agree on Klemperer's Bach and Mozart -- both fairly recent acquisitions for me, actually, as well as Edwin Fischer's WTC.  And Furtwangler... his Bach that I've heard (a couple of the Brandenburgs, I forget which at the moment) is a very strange animal, but I do like it...

[j winter]

AFAIC, both Mandryka and I have been jolly. 

Well good, let's try to keep it that way....

[Florestan]

Horowitz Playing Scarlatti was my first exposure to that composer, and still a favorite of mine.  I also like it on harpsichord, but Horowitz's playing really is special here.

I really can't stand the harpsichord in solo keyboard music.  Give me piano or even fortepiano any day.