What performances would you witness using a time machine?

Started by Brian, December 04, 2022, 07:10:26 PM

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Brian

If you acquired a time machine and could travel anytime, any place, what historical concerts and musical performances would you attend?

You are allowed to acquire invisibility if necessary to enter a private space, such as a private performance hall or a concert venue where your 21st-century clothing might attract notice.

This post inspired by my recent post in the listening thread, where I noted that Jean Sibelius hosted Wilhelm Kempff at his house and Kempff played him the Hammerklavier on Sibelius' Steinway in the living room, and later he hosted Emil Gilels, who played through Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues. Would love to be an invisible time-traveling presence at those very private performances by one great artist to another.

It would also be fun to attend the premiere of the Pines of Rome, where Respighi's music was apparently booed and hissed in the first section because of all the dissonance, but by the end the crowd had gone from angry and cynical to overjoyed, and they burst into applause before the orchestra finished playing.

The concert where Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies (plus Fourth Concerto) premiered was a notorious disaster, but a disaster I'd like to attend. To make up for it, I could also drop in on the better-organized Haydn/Salomon concerts.

Also, I'd love to have been sitting in the recording studio for the "Kind of Blue" sessions.

Todd

1.) The December 22, 1808 concert in Vienna that saw the premieres of Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth symphonies, along with the Fourth Piano Concerto

2.) The May 29, 1913 premiere of the Rite of Spring

3.) The first performance of Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame

4.) The first performance(s) of Cristobal de Morales' 1544 book of masses in Mexico

5.) Be in the studio audience for the first performance of Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show

6.) Be in the street to witness the Apple Studios rooftop performance by The Beatles

7.) The first public performances of Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five

8.) Duke Ellington performing at The Cotton Club, on any given Saturday night

9.) The final taping session for Master of Puppets

10.) The most recent recital Yeol Eum Son gave in Corvallis



The universe is change; life is opinion. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

People would rather believe than know - E.O. Wilson

Propaganda death ensemble - Tom Araya

relm1

Mahler's 2nd premiere would be a significant event I wish I could have attended.
Rite of Spring
Shostakovich No. 7 because of its World War 2 Siege of Leningrad backdrop. 
Holst the Planet's premiere
Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra. 
Maybe Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 1 because it was supposed to be so bad a premiere, I'm curious about it.

Florestan

#3
A few otomh.

The premieres of The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, Il matrimonio segreto, Der Freischuetz, Robert le Diable, Les Huguenots, Le Prophete, I Puritani.

The August 25, 1830 Brussels performance of La Muette de Portici, which sparkled the Belgian Revolution.

The hilariously disastruous premiere of Il barbiere di Siviglia.

The allegedly dead drunk Glazunov conducting Rachmaninoff's First Symphony.

Mozart playing his 20th, 21st and 24th PCs.

Concerts of Liszt, Paganini, Henri Herz and Sigismond Thalberg.

the Liszt-Thalberg duel in the Princess of Belgiojoso's salon.

Chopin playing in private.

Concerts of Wieniawski, Vieuxtemps, Joachim, Sarasate and Ysaye.

And that fabulous evening in Vienna when Mozart, Haydn, Vanhall and Dittersdorf played quartets in a private salon.

For now.


Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Pohjolas Daughter

For starters:

La Forza del Destino at the Met 1918 with Rosa Ponselle, Caruso, and Guiseppe de Luca.  Her first performance on any opera stage.

Just about any opera with Maria Callas in her prime...what about Tosca?  :)

Same but with Fritz Wunderlich

Love the idea @Florestan about being a fly on the wall when Chopin is playing piano by himself.

Cortot playing Chopin with Barbirolli conducting (whether recording or in a live performance--which hopefully he did.  Anyone here know?).

Wilhelm Kempff playing some Beethoven sonatas--same

Gieseking playing some Debussy

Ivan Moravec at one of his performances in Prague

First performance of Aida (in Egypt)

Dvorak at home with some friends and family playing some music

Janacek working on his two string quartets with musicians present.  Also, Rudolf Firkusny playing solo piano pieces of Janacek either in concert or just for himself.

Bach's first performance of his Mass in B Minor and also of the cantata "Ich habe genug"


I'll think of more, I'm sure.  ;D

PD



Pohjolas Daughter

vandermolen

First disastrous performance of Rachmaninov's 1st Symphony, conducted by an allegedly drunken Glazunov.

First performance of The Rite of Spring.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Spotted Horses

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on December 05, 2022, 09:16:59 AMBach's first performance of his Mass in B Minor and also of the cantata "Ich habe genug"

Based on my extensive research (reading various LP and CD booklets) I think it is not clear that Bach's Mass in b-minor was every performed in it's entirety during Bach's lifetime.
There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind. - Duke Ellington

Cato

No doubts about this:

Rachmaninoff playing his Piano Concerto #3 with the New York Philharmonic...Gustav Mahler conducting!!!

Rachmaninoff wrote that he was very pleased by Mahler's attention to the score and that he gave the score a proper amount of rehearsal time.
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

Spotted Horses

I'd probably go back to 1780's Wiener and attend concerts in which Mozart performed his Piano Concerti. Then I could come back and finally tell you all who is doing it properly.

Maybe I'd bring my iPhone and let Mozart listen to one of Karajan's recordings of the 41st symphony with the BPO and see if Mozart pronounced it the most sublime thing he had ever heard, or an abomination.
There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind. - Duke Ellington

Lisztianwagner

Difficult, there could be so many choices:

The very first Bayreuth Festival in 1876.

The unfortunately booed premiere of Schönberg's Pelleas und Melisande and Zemlinsky's Die Seejungfrau in 1905 at the Musikverein.

Rachmaninov playing his Piano Concerto No. 3 with Mahler conducting; I agree, what a concert!!

A Karajan concert.
"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." - Gustav Mahler

Jo498

For scientific reasons one should probably pick mostly certain key dates before 1600 because there is so much guesswork involved in performances of medieval and renaissance music. But I am not sufficiently interested in such details I fear, so I'd go for other events with aspects lost in notation

- castrati singing, obviously 1720s or 1730 London with Handel and competitors writing operas for their star singers
- Bach playing organ improvisations
- Beethoven improvising a the piano
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Florestan

Quote from: Jo498 on December 05, 2022, 10:55:11 AM- castrati singing, obviously 1720s or 1730 London with Handel and competitors writing operas for their star singers

Actually, there is a castrato on record: Alessandro Moreschi.  ;)
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: Spotted Horses on December 05, 2022, 09:42:11 AMBased on my extensive research (reading various LP and CD booklets) I think it is not clear that Bach's Mass in b-minor was every performed in it's entirety during Bach's lifetime.
Oh, that's really sad to hear.  What did you read about it?  How much of it was performed whilst he was alive?  I'd love to know (being a bit lazy hear re checking my booklets).  Was he there and are there any records about how the cantata was received and also what Bach thought about it...what he thought about the work and also any observations as to how it was received?

PD

Pohjolas Daughter

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: Spotted Horses on December 05, 2022, 09:46:23 AMI'd probably go back to 1780's Wiener and attend concerts in which Mozart performed his Piano Concerti. Then I could come back and finally tell you all who is doing it properly.

Maybe I'd bring my iPhone and let Mozart listen to one of Karajan's recordings of the 41st symphony with the BPO and see if Mozart pronounced it the most sublime thing he had ever heard, or an abomination.
lol  ;D
Pohjolas Daughter

Jo498

Yes, I have heard this one but this was 150 years after the real age of castrati, he was quite old and it's poor recording quality. It seems a very feeble echo of what people at that time wrote about the performances 18th century castrati.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Jo498

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on December 05, 2022, 11:01:49 AMOh, that's really sad to hear.  What did you read about it?  How much of it was performed whilst he was alive?  I'd love to know (being a bit lazy hear re checking my booklets).

AFAIK we can be pretty sure that the complete mass was never performed as a whole before the 19th century. CPE Bach performed, I think, parts of it (probably something like the complete Credo or Kyrie+Gloria, but maybe less) after his father's death.
It's quite likely that the Credo was never performed during JS Bach's lifetime. The Sanctus and other parts that preceded the whole mass were probably performed. Maybe even the "Lutheran Mass" of Kyrie+Gloria but I don't think we have positive evidence for this.
So quite a few bits of the mass would have been performed as so much music stems from earlier cantatas but not the whole thing.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: Jo498 on December 05, 2022, 11:11:37 AMAFAIK we can be pretty sure that the complete mass was never performed as a whole before the 19th century. CPE Bach performed, I think, parts of it (probably something like the complete Credo or Kyrie+Gloria, but maybe less) after his father's death.
It's quite likely that the Credo was never performed during JS Bach's lifetime. The Sanctus and other parts that preceded the whole mass were probably performed. Maybe even the "Lutheran Mass" of Kyrie+Gloria but I don't think we have positive evidence for this.
So quite a few bits of the mass would have been performed as so much music stems from earlier cantatas but not the whole thing.

To say "Such a shame" is not enough...so very sorry to hear that.  Do we know why?  And thank you for the info...I do appreciate it.

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

Brian

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on December 05, 2022, 09:16:59 AMDvorak at home with some friends and family playing some music


Dvorak played viola in the first private performance of Smetana's first string quartet. There's one for the time machine!

Todd

Quote from: Brian on December 05, 2022, 11:43:07 AMDvorak played viola in the first private performance of Smetana's first string quartet. There's one for the time machine!

Indeed.  Also for the time machine, whatever musical experiences Dvorak had while he lived in the US that later informed his compositions and led him to say that American music should incorporate Native and African American music.
The universe is change; life is opinion. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

People would rather believe than know - E.O. Wilson

Propaganda death ensemble - Tom Araya

premont

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on December 05, 2022, 09:16:59 AMWilhelm Kempff playing some Beethoven sonatas--same

Here I don't need the time machine as I actually have heard him play Beethoven sonatas at a recital (op. 31/3, 57, 78 and 101). Great experience - he was much more free than in his stereo recording from the same time and also more technically secure than in his live recordings from Japan. 
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