How many here were participants in Classicalinsites?

[Jo498]

Rappy was (is?) active on several fora; he was really young back then, *1988, real name is Ralph Bernardy

http://bernardynet.de/index.php?id=biographie

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I remember many of these and had good friendships with some. Ralph Stein and I went to many NYPhil concerts together. (He would buy two subscriptions, invite a friend, and our deal was that I would buy dinner.) Frank Berglas and I were quite friendly, and we often had dinner at a little Chinese place near Lincoln Center before an opera at the Met. I knew Ellie Edwards very well, and I still keep up with Steve Molino quite often.

I still remember dinner at a place near Carnegie Hall, with you, Barry, Ralph, and at least one other person (maybe Berglas). The occasion being the Abbado/Berlin Mahler 9. I think it was September or October 1999.

Yes, I'm blessed and cursed with a good memory. Sometimes I wish I could press the Delete button and fill the space with something more useful, but unfortunately brains don't work like that.

Mel Merkel

was a mean old man, but could be amusing at times.

Lynn Sislo and Auntie Lynn were I believe two different persons. Auntie claimed to be a pianist for the San Francisco Ballet. I could not verify this.

Yes, different and contrasting people. I liked Lynn S, but Auntie was annoying, mainly because of her constant boasting (usually a sign of insecurity).

[Spotted Horses]

There was also Rob Antecki from Michigan, who was obsessed by the music of Rodrigo and claimed to be a composer. He sent me some of his music and thus disproved his claim.

I remember Rob Antecki, and aside from his obsession with the Concierto de Aranjuez, he considered himself a technical expert and would espouse his views on hydrogen fuel cells, which he believed were free energy. He couldn't acknowledge the fact that it takes electricity to make hydrogen from water so the energy has to come from somewhere. I think I later came upon some web postings which indicated that he lost interest in Rodrigo, and became a punk rock performer.

Today I googled and came upon this shocking posting.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/robert-antecki-obituary?id=35684554

A resident of Michigan, and the date seems to match.

[Spotted Horses]

Lynn Sislo and Auntie Lynn were I believe two different persons. Auntie claimed to be a pianist for the San Francisco Ballet. I could not verify this.

There was a lady from Oklahoma (I think) of modest means and no particular education in classical music, but who exuded enthusiasm for it. Was that Lynn Sislo?

[(poco) Sforzando]

I remember Rob Antecki, and aside from his obsession with the Concierto de Aranjuez, he considered himself a technical expert and would espouse his views on hydrogen fuel cells, which he believed were free energy. He couldn't acknowledge the fact that it takes electricity to make hydrogen from water so the energy has to come from somewhere. I think I later came upon some web postings which indicated that he lost interest in Rodrigo, and became a punk rock performer.

Today I googled and came upon this shocking posting.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/robert-antecki-obituary?id=35684554

A resident of Michigan, and the date seems to match.

That is almost certainly him. Caledonia is in Wisconsin, which means nothing in itself, but if he was buried in Grand Rapids, that's where he grew up. Poor guy. I really did like him.

[(poco) Sforzando]

There was a lady from Oklahoma (I think) of modest means and no particular education in classical music, but who exuded enthusiasm for it. Was that Lynn Sislo?

I believe so.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Rappy was (is?) active on several fora; he was really young back then, *1988, real name is Ralph Bernardy

http://bernardynet.de/index.php?id=biographie

Thank you so much for this, Johannes!

[Spotted Horses]

That is almost certainly him. Caledonia is in Wisconsin, which means nothing in itself, but if he was buried in Grand Rapids, that's where he grew up. Poor guy. I really did like him.

There is also a Caledonia in Michigan, on the outskirts of Grand Rapids.

[Luke]

Rappy was (is?) active on several fora; he was really young back then, *1988, real name is Ralph Bernardy

http://bernardynet.de/index.php?id=biographie

Including this one. Don't remember him on any predecessors; he must have been very young. The compositions of his adulthood are hugely impressive. That link is enough to show how extraordinarily well he's done.

Loving all these trips down memory lane. When I arrived at CI it was in full flow and I assumed it had been a long established community for years. It was populated by all these big characters you've all been mentioning, including lots of alpha males roaming the plain showing off their enormous ... record collections .... as a penniless youngster I was a bit intimidated back then to start with! Larry, Al, Utah Bill and Springrite Paul were the first to make me feel welcome (I don't think Karl was there till a bit later)

Now I'm over a quarter of a century older my record collection is MUCH bigger. So, unfortunately, am I.

[(poco) Sforzando]

There is also a Caledonia in Michigan, on the outskirts of Grand Rapids.

Oh! that makes more sense.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

There was a lady from Oklahoma (I think) of modest means and no particular education in classical music, but who exuded enthusiasm for it. Was that Lynn Sislo?

That's definitely her. Let's keep going! Some other posters I remember:

JR Robinson: Wasn't there very long, but a highly erudite, amusing writer with eclectic tastes, but mostly modern. Always a pleasure to read. He was also on some of the successor forums.

Mark Parta (Geschwitz): He was a doctor in NYC. Obviously highly intelligent, but could get very prickly about certain things. I met him once, and he struck me as a rather tormented personality.

THE_ROCK: A 100% troll. Like most of the species, could be entertaining if you didn't take him seriously. His main obsession was how much he hated Mahler.

Karl Henzy: I think he joined CI very late, and was more active on SiteTronics. One of the premier "atonal crappers," big fan of Carter and Lutoslawski. Excellent in-depth writer (was an Eng. lit. professor).

Joe Henry: Similar to Henzy, down to having almost the same last name. Great modern music enthusiast and excellent writer on the subject. Again, I think he was more of a SiteTronics guy.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Including this one. Don't remember him on any predecessors; he must have been very young. The compositions of his adulthood are hugely impressive. That link is enough to show how extraordinarily well he's done.

Loving all these trips down memory lane. When I arrived at CI it was in full flow and I assumed it had been a long established community for years. It was populated by all these big characters you've all been mentioning, including lots of alpha males roaming the plain showing off their enormous ... record collections .... as a penniless youngster I was a bit intimidated back then to start with! Larry, Al, Utah Bill and Springrite Paul were the first to make me feel welcome (I don't think Karl was there till a bit later)

Now I'm over a quarter of a century older my record collection is MUCH bigger. So, unfortunately, am I.

I can only say the same, Luke.

I remember Al Moritz very well, though he seems to have disappeared too. We had dinner several times. On one of his trips to Stockhausen-land he had the great Karlheinz autograph several of his scores for me including Gruppen (which is a huge tome, although even so the staves are so small as to be unreadable). Some of my other scores by major 20th-century composers (Carter, Boulez) I obtained directly from meeting the composer. (Carter grumbled: "I shouldn't be writing my name; I should be writing music.") I will always regret not asking Boulez why he had never performed "Pli selon pli" in New York.

[(poco) Sforzando]

That's definitely her. Let's keep going! Some other posters I remember:

JR Robinson: Wasn't there very long, but a highly erudite, amusing writer with eclectic tastes, but mostly modern. Always a pleasure to read. He was also on some of the successor forums.

Mark Parta (Geschwitz): He was a doctor in NYC. Obviously highly intelligent, but could get very prickly about certain things. I met him once, and he struck me as a rather tormented personality.

THE_ROCK: A 100% troll. Like most of the species, could be entertaining if you didn't take him seriously. His main obsession was how much he hated Mahler.

Karl Henzy: I think he joined CI very late, and was more active on SiteTronics. One of the premier "atonal crappers," big fan of Carter and Lutoslawski. Excellent in-depth writer (was an Eng. lit. professor).

Joe Henry: Similar to Henzy, down to having almost the same last name. Great modern music enthusiast and excellent writer on the subject. Again, I think he was more of a SiteTronics guy.

I still keep up with Joe Henry. He wrote an excellent essay on Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maitre. He was also an excellent artist who did sketches of many important modern composers. As for Karl Henzy, for some reason he just stopped contributing and ghosted anyone trying to contact him.

[Karl Henning]

I remember Al Moritz very well, though he seems to have disappeared too.

I was briefly in touch with Al. I think he was even in the Boston area but we never managed to get together.

[Karl Henning]

THE_ROCK: A 100% troll. Like most of the species, could be entertaining if you didn't take him seriously. His main obsession was how much he hated Mahler.

Those were days when Mahler was far from my bag, but as a rule, I left the Mahlerophiles to their bliss,

[Gurn Blanston]

Ralph and Mark sound familiar... I wonder if they made it too cmg where I was before gmg.  Or rmcr, which is where I started pre-forums.

I started at rmcr too, as long ago as 1996. Anstendig was there and many other long timers, like Matthew Tepper(crazy about ducks and Berlioz), and some surprisingly cool people, given that it was the Wild West back then. I went to CMG ca 2001, about the same time as Ralph Stein. Interesting times. 

[Jo498]

Unfortunately, I cannot remember if I ever met Ralph/Rappy in real life as there were several IRL meetings of different German language classical boards, starting with the German language usenet group and later several others. But I don't think so, partly because I think I should remember otherwise and also because he would have been still a teenager at most of the meetings I remember to have attended.

Years ago, I also had brief email contacts with several rec.music.classical.recordings regulars, e.g. Lena/Lord Emsworth, and Ramon Khalona actually sent me a copy of a then introuvable Fricsay disc or two (and IIRC also some fotocopies of a partial discography) by mail from California to Germany; this was around 2003 when far less things were simply findable on the web. A very nice guy!

[Spotted Horses]

I remember how exasperating Mark Anstendig was, with his obsession with analog and his blanket claims that CDs stripped all of the expressive nuance out of music. If you disagreed with him he would smugly reply that your opinion was invalid because you listened on CD. Even if you agreed with him he would dismiss your opinion because you hadn't listened with his new phono cartridge, which he implied was custom made for him by some audiophile luminary. This invoked what I consider the best witticism I saw on classical music discussion boards. After a post in which Marked carried on about how the exquisite nuances in some-or-another Klemperer recording were revealed by his new cartridge, someone commented, "it is amazing that Klemperer got any recognition before Mark got his new cartridge."

I wasn't a very noteworthy contributor to CI, but I remember I started one thread I created which generated some controversy. It was called "Was Mozart Really that Good?" I had just encountered Mozart's Requiem and was taken by the fact that various "experts" on Mozart couldn't agree on what parts were by Mozart and what parts weren't. One would claim a certain movement was so mundane it must be by Sussmeyer, and another would claim that Sussmeyer must have had sketches from Mozart because he couldn't possibly have written something so brilliant. I asked the rhetorical question, "how good can Mozart be, if no one can tell his music from that of a nobody."

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I remember how exasperating Mark Anstendig was, with his obsession with analog and his blanket claims that CDs stripped all of the expressive nuance out of music. If you disagreed with him he would smugly reply that your opinion was invalid because you listened on CD. Even if you agreed with him he would dismiss your opinion because you hadn't listened with his new phono cartridge, which he implied was custom made for him by some audiophile luminary.

I remember how specific he got. He told you in detail about all the components he had, including super-strong magnets left over from the Soviet space program. He said that you had to do yoga and be in a certain mood before listening to anything; otherwise you weren't really hearing the music. On the rare occasion that he went to a concert, he wore earmuffs. He called his home "The Anstendig Institute," which sounded incredibly pretentious. He studied with somebody called Morel at Juilliard, and he referenced Morel all the time ("Morel told me this, Morel said we should never do that"). He listened on reel-to-reel tape. It was pointless to ask him for a recording recommendation, because even if you had a turntable, you'd still be listening to it wrong.

He would have made a great fictional character. Hmm, that gives me an idea...

[(poco) Sforzando]

I remember how specific he got. He told you in detail about all the components he had, including super-strong magnets left over from the Soviet space program. He said that you had to do yoga and be in a certain mood before listening to anything; otherwise you weren't really hearing the music. On the rare occasion that he went to a concert, he wore earmuffs. He called his home "The Anstendig Institute," which sounded incredibly pretentious. He studied with somebody called Morel at Juilliard, and he referenced Morel all the time ("Morel told me this, Morel said we should never do that"). He listened on reel-to-reel tape. It was pointless to ask him for a recording recommendation, because even if you had a turntable, you'd still be listening to it wrong.

He would have made a great fictional character. Hmm, that gives me an idea...

Jean Morel was in fact a highly respected conductor who led the conducting division at Juilliard for several decades. The wonder is that he accepted Anstendig, who of course had a brilliant conducting career no one's ever heard about.