The Snowshoed Sibelius

Started by Dancing Divertimentian, April 16, 2007, 08:39:57 PM

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longears

I'm not sure Salonen really has baldy's measure, anyway.  The recordings I've heard strike me as well-executed but safely mainstream without fresh insights.  Still, I'd jump at a reasonable opportunity to hear him in person!

karlhenning

"Baldy"? Oh the indignity . . . .

Dancing Divertimentian

Quote from: longears on October 31, 2007, 04:35:34 AM
I'm not sure Salonen really has baldy's measure, anyway. 

Quote from: karlhenning on October 31, 2007, 06:13:17 AM
"Baldy"? Oh the indignity . . . .

Might I give the thread title a tweak to reflect this new image of...baldy? ;)




Veit Bach-a baker who found his greatest pleasure in a little cittern which he took with him even into the mill and played while the grinding was going on. In this way he had a chance to have the rhythm drilled into him. And this was the beginning of a musical inclination in his descendants. JS Bach

Mark

Quote from: Greta on October 23, 2007, 03:20:11 PM
Right now, I would recommend Vanska/Lahti SO on BIS ...

Wow! I'm soooooooooooo glad I didn't wait around to pick up the symphonies as conducted by Vanska. I've only heard Nos. 2 and 3 so far, and while I'll quibble everso slightly with his reading of the central movement of the Third Symphony - I think this should be a touch 'icier' than Vanska conducts it - these two have pushed this cycle into pole position ... so far. ;)

I was particularly moved (almost to real tears) but the groundswells of emotion Vanska conjures up at several points throughout the Second Symphony; and I was impressed by the fact that, for the first time, I felt I could 'see' the structure of both symphonies, not just hear them. On this evidence, I'm looking forward to listening to the rest. :)

Mark

While cheating doing some comparative listening in order to join in M Forever's new Mystery Orchestra thread, I dug out Sanderling's account of the Second Symphony (Brilliant Classics reissue). Skipping ahead to the section which corresponds to that of the clips posted in M's thread - and with volume up all the way and headphones on - I noticed something weird: a fast string section playing something entirely different to Sibelius, only VERY, VERY faintly in the quiet point in the third movement between the fading of the timpani and the oboe theme's entry (1' 30" approx.). I 'rewound' a few times: it was still there. WTF? :o

Is this just a shoddy reissue fault, or can anyone with the original set confirm or deny the appearance of this 'ghost' string section. ???

Dancing Divertimentian

Quote from: Mark on December 02, 2007, 02:47:19 PM
While cheating doing some comparative listening in order to join in M Forever's new Mystery Orchestra thread, I dug out Sanderling's account of the Second Symphony (Brilliant Classics reissue). Skipping ahead to the section which corresponds to that of the clips posted in M's thread - and with volume up all the way and headphones on - I noticed something weird: a fast string section playing something entirely different to Sibelius, only VERY, VERY faintly in the quiet point in the third movement between the fading of the timpani and the oboe theme's entry (1' 30" approx.). I 'rewound' a few times: it was still there. WTF? :o

Is this just a shoddy reissue fault, or can anyone with the original set confirm or deny the appearance of this 'ghost' string section. ???

Are you absolutely certain it's not some kind of residual decay or echo or something?

What are the recording's origins? Is it live, or perhaps a radio relay? Sometimes performances taken from radio relays can have momentary fade-in from another station.

Live performances in general can have all sorts of intrusions (as we all know). If some unthinking person had their iPod turned up too high...



Veit Bach-a baker who found his greatest pleasure in a little cittern which he took with him even into the mill and played while the grinding was going on. In this way he had a chance to have the rhythm drilled into him. And this was the beginning of a musical inclination in his descendants. JS Bach

M forever

I don't have the recording handy to check right now - I have it, and that doesn't mean that it is one of the recordings I used in Mystery Orchestra, and it doesn't mean it isn't either, maybe it is, or maybe not, I just can't find it right now since I started reorganizing my CD collection yesterday which means it is now in greater chaos than ever before - but the effect described by Mark is probably an analog tape print-through. That may no be the correct technical term in English though. What it means is that sometimes over the years, layers of analog tape tightly wound against each other influence the magnetization of neighboring layers and leave such ghost images. Those who still know MC know this unwanted effect. It is really hard to get rid of, too. 

Mark

Quote from: donwyn on December 02, 2007, 05:45:14 PM
Are you absolutely certain it's not some kind of residual decay or echo or something?

What are the recording's origins? Is it live, or perhaps a radio relay? Sometimes performances taken from radio relays can have momentary fade-in from another station.

It's studio AFAIK, Don. :-\ I first thought of headphone 'spill', but that didn't make any sense. Then M said this:

Quote from: M forever on December 02, 2007, 06:20:59 PM
... the effect described by Mark is probably an analog tape print-through. That may no be the correct technical term in English though. What it means is that sometimes over the years, layers of analog tape tightly wound against each other influence the magnetization of neighboring layers and leave such ghost images. Those who still know MC know this unwanted effect. It is really hard to get rid of, too. 

This is precisely what it sounds like - I remember I used to get it with tape cassettes many years ago. Bloody annoying, but only perceptible at high volume through cans, so not the end of the world.

Siedler

As it's the 90th Independence Day of Finland, I think I'll listen to Finlandia, Op.26, now.  :)
What is your favourite recording of this  symphonic poem ?

Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich

#149
Well I'll have to listen to it today as well. I know a lot of Finlandias. There can be only one. Rozhdestvensky/LSO. A matter of taste though. It's conducted a bit different than most others (e.g. Ashkenazy). Some more staccato like passages, a bit slower, more dramatic. Excerpt: Here. Great sound.


karlhenning

Quote from: Wurstwasser on December 06, 2007, 09:32:47 PM
I know a lot of Finlandias. There can be only one.

I beg to differ;  but I do respect your admiration for that one recording.

Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich

#151
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on October 24, 2007, 06:14:07 AMThe Wood Nymph Op.15 is one. It's a tremendous piece and I can't understand why it's not recorded more often. It should be in every Sibelian's collection.
The wood nymph has always been top of the tops of my favorite Sibelius orchestral works, so mighty and traaaagic in the end!

A very good article about the wood nymph, --> here.

Currently I'm discovering En Saga, together with the Oceanides the last orchestral works I do not know. Oh, En Saga seems great. Especially the the conclusion, it's so peaceful und lovely...

71 dB

Quote from: Wurstwasser on December 12, 2007, 02:17:32 AM
The wood nymph has always been top of the tops of my favorite Sibelius orchestral works

Same here. Sibelius' style works well in tone poems.
Spatial distortion is a serious problem deteriorating headphone listening.
Crossfeeders reduce spatial distortion and make the sound more natural
and less tiresome in headphone listening.

My Sound Cloud page <-- NEW Jan. 2024 "Harpeggiator"

karlhenning

Sibelius's style also works brilliant well in his symphonies, Poju.  Once again, the fact that you do not care for something (for instance, the Rakhmaninov Vespers) is no indication — no indication whatever — of any "lack of musical merit."

longears

#154
In reading The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius, in Julian Anderson's chapter on Sibelius's influence on contemporary music, I found the following quote from Magnus Lindberg:
QuoteI have often said that it is a pity that Sibelius was Finnish!  His music has been deeply misunderstood.  While his language was far from modern, his thinking, as far as form and the treatment of materials is concerned, was ahead of its time.  While Varese is credited with opening the way for new sonorities, Sibelius has himself pursued a profound reassessment of the formal and structural problems of composition.  I do not think it is fair that he has been considered as a conservative...His harmonies have a resonant, almost spectral quality.  You find an attention to sonority in Sibelius works which is actually not so far removed from that which would appear long after in the work of Grisey or Murail...For me, the crucial aspect of this work remains his conception of continuity.  In Tapiola, above all, the way genuine processes are created using very limited materials is pretty exceptional.

Later Anderson quotes an anecdote related by Morton Feldman about how much he and Takemitsu liked Sibelius to illustrate his (Feldman's) dictum that "The people who you think are radicals might really be conservatives.  The people who you think are conservative might really be radical."

karlhenning


Kullervo

Quote from: longears on December 26, 2007, 06:08:28 AM
In reading The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius, in Julian Anderson's chapter on Sibelius's influence on contemporary music, I found the following quote from Magnus Lindberg:
Later Anderson quotes an anecdote related by Morton Feldman about how much he and Takemitsu liked Sibelius to illustrate his (Feldman's) dictum that "The people who you think are radicals might really be conservatives.  The people who you think are conservative might really be radical."

Interesting, I was thinking the other day how I get similar things from Varèse and Sibelius. In Ameriques, V. wanted to create the illusion of objects in space with his orchestration. I get that feeling in most Sibelius (esp. Tapiola), and as a bonus, it's actually musical. ;D

longears

Quote from: karlhenning on December 26, 2007, 06:13:07 AM
Beautiful!
He also cites a long letter from Per Nørgård to Sibelius in 1954 expressing Nørgård's admiration for him and surprise on discovering that Sibelius was composing with a metamorphic technique decades earlier:
QuoteIndeed, his letter continues, he is increasingly aware of the fact that Sibelius's music is virtually limitless in its depth and novel implications, in contrast to the work of other more recent composers.  "You may imagine, against this background, my feelings on discovering this new, genuinely symphonic principle fully blossoming in works normally labelled under the heading of an earlier historical period of music! ...It's very possible that you have known about what I'm trying to say for a long time--and understood that it was the way it should be."

not edward

Or, from perhaps an even less likely source of praise:

Quote from: Brian Ferneyhough
Sibelius' mastery of temporal architecture makes him a "composer's composer" par excellence.

(This being on why he regarded the 7th symphony as one of his favourite works from any time period.)
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music

Greta

Quote from: longears on December 26, 2007, 06:08:28 AM
Later Anderson quotes an anecdote related by Morton Feldman about how much he and Takemitsu liked Sibelius to illustrate his (Feldman's) dictum that "The people who you think are radicals might really be conservatives.  The people who you think are conservative might really be radical."

Just noticed - Alex Ross used this to cleverly close his chapter on Sibelius in The Rest Is Noise:D His chapter "Sibelius, An Apparition in the Woods"  is great reading, as he delves into Sibelius' place in the 20th century...in such a large and comprehensive book, it's nice to see Ross give such weight to him.

I have posted before about my affection for early Sibelius - in a discussion elsewhere, people were pondering the evolution of his symphonic self, and I had noticed that in the long foreword to the score for Kullervo (by Glenda Dawn Goss), it is concluded that Sibelius did indeed consider the work a "symphony", though unnumbered, and always referred to it as such.

And in addition, afterward came the 4 Lemminkainen Legends, which to me are so evocative of being a symphony in the structure and length, that I honestly have always thought of them as such. So, the case could be made that the Legends would qualify as his Symphony No. "0", and therefore, Kullervo his Symphony No. "00".

Because I think these works were extremely important in him leading up to, and finding his "symphonic self", at least that is how they seem to me. Thoughts?