Is this a decent recording of Strauss' tone poems?

[M forever]

I have it (surprise!  ). It is very solid, but not one of their best albums. I know you already have SD/Sinopoli so if you want a newer lean and mean Heldenleben, buy this:



It also has the added interest of having the original, quietly fading away ending. And/or the recording with the WP and Karl Boehm, if you can find it, because the idiots from DG never released that on CD in Europe. But there is or was a Japanese edition. That is a very, very good recording, too, and in very good 70s stereo.

[rubio]

I have it (surprise!  ). It is very solid, but not one of their best albums. I know you already have SD/Sinopoli so if you want a newer lean and mean Heldenleben, buy this:



It also has the added interest of having the original, quietly fading away ending. And/or the recording with the WP and Karl Boehm, if you can find it, because the idiots from DG never released that on CD in Europe. But there is or was a Japanese edition. That is a very, very good recording, too, and in very good 70s stereo.

Thank you for the comments. The Luisi recordings with SD is already on the wish list, and it would be nice to hear an excellent recording of this work with the WP. I see the Bohm CD is still available at HMV Japan.

[M forever]

There are also recordings with them conducted by Previn (Telarc) and Thielemann (DG), and while both are very decent and the orchestral playing is on the very high level expected from the WP, neither come close to the Böhm recording musically, and also sonically. That is the best representation of the WP playing this piece that I have heard so far.

BTW, the Luisi recording is both CD and SACD, but IIRC, there was something messed up with the tracks in the SACD version. I don't really know because I don't do SACD, but a friend of mine who does told me about it. I don't remember exactly what it was though and if Sony corrected that in the meantime. But if you listen to the CD version, there are no problems. In fact, the sound is very good, they really captured the sound of the orchestra in the Lukaskirche very well. There are also recordings with Don Quixote and the Alpensinfonie with this team. And you can never have too many of the SD's Strauss recordings.

[drogulus]

     M forever, what's your top recommendation for the Alpensinfonie? Right now I have the Solti/SOBR and the Kempe/SD and I prefer the Kempe by a good margin.

[Bonehelm]

     M forever, what's your top recommendation for the Alpensinfonie? Right now I have the Solti/SOBR and the Kempe/SD and I prefer the Kempe by a good margin.

The Karajan Gold on DG is as good as it gets.

[M forever]

No, it's not, completely irrespective of where Karajan stands in the spectrum of Strauss interpreters - and he certainly was a very eminent conductor of this repertoire - because it doesn't even represent well what Karajan's take on the Alpensinfonie was. What he did with that piece was amazing, but this recording reflects next to nothing of that, sadly. You don't know anything about Strauss and his music and its interpreters, its cultural context, anyway, so keep out of this and don't spam the discussion with your uninformed nonsense, OK?

[head-case]

No, it's not, completely irrespective of where Karajan stands in the spectrum of Strauss interpreters - and he certainly was a very eminent conductor of this repertoire - because it doesn't even represent well what Karajan's take on the Alpensinfonie was. What he did with that piece was amazing, but this recording reflects next to nothing of that, sadly. You don't know anything about Strauss and his music and its interpreters, its cultural context, anyway, so keep out of this and don't spam the discussion with your uninformed nonsense, OK?

Perfect FIFTH.  M thinks that being the most abusive poster on the board makes him the smartest or the most knowledgeable.  It doesn't.  It wouldn't be polite to say what it makes him.

[hautbois]

Mind me that i pass by here without walking through the all the heat. 

If one can find the Bloomstedt/San Francisco on Decca, which should be out of print, grab it at all costs! It is really superb in every way. I bought it couple of years ago off a 2nd hand cd shop in Hong Kong, and i still listen to it. There is orchestral excellence here that is not in any way lesser than the SD, which i adore highly as well. Bloomstedt sure knows what he is doing, or maybe the enginners know their stuff, either way, the product is one that detracts the myth that in the 1980s-1990s, Decca was in the midst of the whole digital crisis, where clarity was being sacrificed for a warm sound that was accused to be of "fake" and "muddy". Absolutely not true. Listen to it, it really is better than those Previn, Thielemann, and because of the sound, maybe even superior to Kempe's.

Howard

[Sean]

One thing in these Strauss discussions often lack is how people might explain or understand the music's sheer strangeness. It's quality lies in the inner logic of the rhapsody, that eludes so many other similar fantasia composers: Strauss's genius was to look into the logic of music's relations and create fantastical yet inevitable structures.

I was recently at a seminar given by a research student working on Strauss's contemporary Stanford and Stanford's contempt for composers' technique overreaching itself: there's a Stanford article trying to trash Heldenleben, and the researcher did play and show the score of the opening bars. What completely eluded Stanford, the researcher, and the rest of the moronic academics at the seminar was that wayward music can have absolute logic and powerful inevitability.

(These people are a real experience to sit with. They just don't listen to any music- they've never had the experience of getting to know any work or be moved by it, yet study it intellectually and become Doctors and Professors of music, in their ivory towers cut off from reality. They have no interest in music as the listening experience whatsoever.)

[Lethevich]

For somebody who hates academics, you sure go to a lot of lectures.

[Bonehelm]

Perfect FIFTH.  M thinks that being the most abusive poster on the board makes him the smartest or the most knowledgeable.  It doesn't.  It wouldn't be polite to say what it makes him.

Oh yeah...thanks for reminding me, head-case. Well maybe he IS the most knowledgable when it comes to trolling skills, bullshitting, flaming people for trivial reasons, making arrogant comments...I can go on...


But thanks for ur reminder.

[Renfield]

Let me also root for that Luisi Heldenleben, since I'm passing through again. I heard him and the Dresden Staatskapelle perform it live around when they recorded it, and it was a memorable experience to say the least.

I'm now hoping for great things from his Alpensinfonie, due to arrive with the post in a few days.


Also, let me note that M forever is abrasive, can be offensive, but he is certainly not the idiot a few of you like to picture him as being. There are actually quite a few well-educated and intelligent abrasive and obstinate people in this world.

And though I've expressed my opinions before on his sometimes-questionable method of argumentation (which I still maintain), I don't think this conversation devolving into outright school-playground level does anyone any good.

End of digression.

[Hector]

For somebody who hates academics, you sure go to a lot of lectures.

One day one of them is going to burst his cynical elitism and punch him on the nose.

What a pompous git!

[Sean]

One day one of them is going to burst his cynical elitism and punch him on the nose.

What a pompous git!

I very nearly had to start a fight at a restaurant a few months back, this Dr was so extremely rude, simply due to fear and the intrusion of genuine musical awareness and common sense into his little clique that he'd decided to join years before, to give him an identity.

[drogulus]

If one can find the Bloomstedt/San Francisco on Decca, which should be out of print, grab it at all costs! It is really superb in every way.

    Perhaps this will do as an answer to my question. I only know Blomstedt from his excellent Hindemith disc for Decca.

    ArkivMusic says this is their own CD-R reissue of this recording with original artwork and notes.

   

[M forever]

My understanding was that Arkiv don't provide full copies of the artwork, just the cover, but I may be mistaken, or maybe that has changed since their first series of CD-R releases. In any case, there are some reasonably priced used copies on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Don-Juan-Alpine-Symphony-Strauss/dp/B00000E3S2/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1207505171&sr=8-4
I would stay away from the ex-library copies, but the two used ones for around $15 "look" OK. I would save the page with the descriptions and give it a try. This is indeed a nice recording to have although I would hesitate to include it in my "top" recommendations you asked for earlier. Blomstedt definitely knows what's going on and he has done a lot of very nice recordings in Dresden and San Francisco (and a few good ones in Leipzig, too, although he was there in a period when Decca didn't produce many recordings anymore). His meticulous and detail attentive preparation and thought-through concepts are evident from basically all these recordings (see also the excellent Nielsen and Sibelius recordings he made in SF), just as they are here. The SFS's fairly light and bright sound and the clear outlining of shapes and textures Blomstedt does make a very attractive, somewhat "scintillating" and transparent sound picture which definitely benefits this music which is scored for a very big orchestra but a lot of that is very fine and multi-layered detail. Strauss' music should be played like complex chamber music, not like big chunky orchestral blockbusters.
Still, as good as it all is, and as well as it is prepared and controlled by Blomstedt, the SFS simply doesn't have quite the weight and depth of sound needed for this music, and, more importantly, they just don't have the right tone and feel to play this music as "idiomatically" as some other bands, so while it is a first class orchestral and musical performance and definitely worth listening to, it can not be a "top" recommendation.
One word about the sound: I agree with Howard that it is well recorded, but I don't quite understand what he said about Decca's reputation of producing a warm, fuzzy, "fake" sound in the 80s and 90s. On the contrary, they were often (rightfully) accused of producing overly harsh and bright recordings, especially with Solti and the CSO, but that goes back before the beginning of the digital age. At the same time, they did some very nice stuff in Montreal and some other locations, like SF. The sound on the SF/Blomstedt recordings is generally very good which is surprising because the hall they made them in (Davies) really sucks pretty badly. It is very dry and compressed. But they used that well in their recordings to achieve some clarity and definition.

I will write a little more about my actual "top" recommendations that you asked for a little later. Right now, I have to take a nap because I had to get up at 7:00 this morning (oh, the horror!!!). Maybe in the meantime "Perfect Fifth" can write a little more about the subject because he is apparently a top expert when it comes to that. How you become that kind of expert when you are just a kid who has never even heard this piece played live by any relevant orchestra (and probably never heard a really good orchestra at all anyway) and how you become an expert on Karajan and his recordings when you are too young to have ever seen him live in concert completely eludes me. My own humble opinions are based on hearing not only Karajan and the BP, but a number of top orchestras and conductors in this piece and thousands of other concerts of Strauss and other symphonic repertoire live over a quarter of a century, plus studying and playing the stuff myself, and my opinion about Karajan in general and his recording of this piece in particular is based on seeing him conduct it live. I find it hard to understand what about that offends some idiots here so much.

[drogulus]

     M forever, your remarks about the SFSO accord well with my impressions from the Hindemith CD I have, though some of the lightness is due to the bright sonics. Since I converted to mainly headphone listening I find I need to reassess many recordings.

     

I find it hard to understand what about that offends some idiots here so much.

   Don't worry about it. I only pay attention to the idiots who have the good sense not to be offended.

[Sean]

and my opinion about Karajan in general and his recording of this piece in particular is based on seeing him conduct it live. I find it hard to understand what about that offends some idiots here so much.

Right on M! Karajan is it!

[M forever]

M forever, your remarks about the SFSO accord well with my impressions from the Hindemith CD I have, though some of the lightness is due to the bright sonics. Since I converted to mainly headphone listening I find I need to reassess many recordings.

Maybe *some* of it, but live, the orchestra does actually have a very light-weight sound, more like a bigger chamber orchestra really than a full symphony orchestra. The sound is nice and fairly cultivated, but it's simply not very "much". The strings have a slender sinewy sound which sounds quite nice, but it's also very thin and too bass light. Same about the brass, well, basically about the whole orchestra. This results in a nice shiny, bright and transparent sound which works very well in some repertoire and which is interesting to listen to as an alternative to bigger, heavier, and darker orchestral sonorities, but it is also simply not enough in some respects. That is not just a function of "loud" and "full", it is more the complexity and depth of tone, the specific expressiveness rather than just beauty of tone which is missing a little, richness of sound not in the sense of "fat" but in the sense of being very sonorous and expressive in itself.

[Brian]

My understanding was that Arkiv don't provide full copies of the artwork, just the cover, but I may be mistaken, or maybe that has changed since their first series of CD-R releases.

That is correct. Newly issued ArkivMusic releases - those which the store has made available for the first time within the last six months or so - include full liner notes and artwork. The albums that they started selling as CD-R's previously, which then did not have booklet notes, still don't.