Dvorak's Den

Started by hornteacher, April 07, 2007, 06:41:48 AM

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Mirror Image

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on June 18, 2021, 09:47:44 AM
Yes, that's a very nice one too.  You might check to see whether or not someone has already posted a link in the Sibelius thread and if not post it there?  :)

PD

Good idea. I believe I've already posted a link to this site on the Sibelius thread several years ago. 8)

Madiel

Quote from: Mirror Image on June 18, 2021, 06:59:49 AM
Just a follow-up, I also like the Sibelius website:

http://www.sibelius.fi/english/index.htm

Yes, it's also a very good one.

Another excellent one, especially for knowing about recordings, is for Medtner: https://www.medtner.org.uk/
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Mirror Image

Quote from: Madiel on June 18, 2021, 08:33:04 PM
Yes, it's also a very good one.

Another excellent one, especially for knowing about recordings, is for Medtner: https://www.medtner.org.uk/

If only I were a fan of Medtner. :-\ But yes, that does look like a nice site.

Madiel

Quote from: Mirror Image on June 18, 2021, 08:36:59 PM
If only I were a fan of Medtner. :-\

With the right resources you could become one!  :laugh:
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Mirror Image


aligreto

Dvorak: Slavonic Dances Op. 72 [Szell]





Both the music and the presentation of it are always strong, assertive and terrifically energetic and exciting in the two works on this CD.

Madiel

As mentioned in the WAYLT thread, I'm trying the early quartets again for the first time in several years. I own the Prague Qt box (Deutsche Grammophon), but these days with access to streaming I thought I'd try elsewhere.

And goodness, maybe I thought that early Dvorak was interminable because the Prague Quartet play the whole shebang, without any edits. I've not listened to their performance of quartet no.1 again yet, but the difference in timing between the recordings of no.1 I'm aware of is pretty stark:

Panocha Quartet 33:31
Zemlinsky Quartet 34:03
Vlach Quartet 36:49
Stamitz Quartet 40:13
Prague Quartet 48:28

The Zemlinsky Qt are explicit in saying they're using a critical edition that makes cuts. Presumably at least some of the others are as well, and I've actually come across a review of the Vlach complaining at how they'd cut music in the introduction that the Prague include.

I'm quite enjoying the Panocha version. So next I'll have to go back to the Prague and see how I react to it. If I get no joy out of it then... well, maybe I need an alternate set to redeem the earlier quartets (because normally I only listen from no.7 onwards).
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kyjo

Dvorak's early quartets contains much fine - and characteristic - music in them. The Panocha recordings are superb.

I was listening to his Symphony no. 2 recently (a work which I hadn't paid much attention to before) - sure, the first two movements may be a bit structurally incoherent, but the scherzo and finale are in a whole different league! They're quite remarkable for their freshness of invention, life-affirming energy, and symphonic sweep. As I've said before, in these two movements one can really hear Dvorak "coming into his own". I listened to Otmar Suitner's recording with the Staatskapelle Berlin - a fine performance. 
"Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music" - Sergei Rachmaninoff

Brahmsian

Quote from: kyjo on September 02, 2021, 07:31:21 PM
Dvorak's early quartets contains much fine - and characteristic - music in them. The Panocha recordings are superb.

I was listening to his Symphony no. 2 recently (a work which I hadn't paid much attention to before) - sure, the first two movements may be a bit structurally incoherent, but the scherzo and finale are in a whole different league! They're quite remarkable for their freshness of invention, life-affirming energy, and symphonic sweep. As I've said before, in these two movements one can really hear Dvorak "coming into his own". I listened to Otmar Suitner's recording with the Staatskapelle Berlin - a fine performance.

Over time, it seems the schrezo to Symphony No. 2 has become my favourite schrezo of Dvorak's symphonies. Lately, the 2nd symphony has been the one I listen to most frequently.

DavidW

Quote from: Madiel on September 02, 2021, 05:04:54 AM
As mentioned in the WAYLT thread, I'm trying the early quartets again for the first time in several years. I own the Prague Qt box (Deutsche Grammophon), but these days with access to streaming I thought I'd try elsewhere.

And goodness, maybe I thought that early Dvorak was interminable because the Prague Quartet play the whole shebang, without any edits. I've not listened to their performance of quartet no.1 again yet, but the difference in timing between the recordings of no.1 I'm aware of is pretty stark:

Panocha Quartet 33:31
Zemlinsky Quartet 34:03
Vlach Quartet 36:49
Stamitz Quartet 40:13
Prague Quartet 48:28

The Zemlinsky Qt are explicit in saying they're using a critical edition that makes cuts. Presumably at least some of the others are as well, and I've actually come across a review of the Vlach complaining at how they'd cut music in the introduction that the Prague include.

I'm quite enjoying the Panocha version. So next I'll have to go back to the Prague and see how I react to it. If I get no joy out of it then... well, maybe I need an alternate set to redeem the earlier quartets (because normally I only listen from no.7 onwards).

And here I thought the Stamitz Quartet was overly long and tedious in this work!  I stand corrected!  I also prefer the Panocha Quartet.

kyjo

Quote from: OrchestralNut on September 03, 2021, 03:32:53 AM
Over time, it seems the schrezo to Symphony No. 2 has become my favourite schrezo of Dvorak's symphonies. Lately, the 2nd symphony has been the one I listen to most frequently.

Indeed, it's a remarkable movement that, rather unusually for a scherzo, has a long-breathed melodic sweep and keen sense of pacing that's so engaging to the listener.
"Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music" - Sergei Rachmaninoff

Madiel

#671
I've confirmed for quartet no.1 that the Prague Qt are using a different edition to everyone else. The introduction to the 1st movement has a whole pile of extra music. Similarly in the finale it doesn't take long to find the Prague are playing extra bars.

As far as I can gather from comments elsewhere, this means that most quartets are following Dvorak's later revision, where he heavily cut 3 of the movements, but the Prague must be playing the original version.

I don't yet know what's going on in quartets 2 and 3 because as far as I know Dvorak didn't revise those. If anything he didn't want them around...
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Pohjolas Daughter

Just ran across this story (stumbled on it when I was googling a record store's name to see where my LP was originally sold).  You might appreciate it in a cringeworthy way):

Gregor and Jacqueline Piatigorsky / Incident at a Westwood Record Store
Written by Tom Schnabel Jul. 26, 2012 RHYTHM PLANET
I chuckled last night as I read the obit of Jacqueline Piatigorsky, wife of the great Russian cellist, who died at the ripe old age of 100.  She was as good a chess player as her husband was a renowned cellist.  The both had to leave Paris during the Nazi occupation, and came to Los Angeles, where Piatigorsky secured a teaching position at USC, where he taught alongside Jascha Heifetz, the great violinist.  The Piatigorsky's lived in Brentwood at the time.

In 1971 I was working at a great record store called Vogue Records in Westwood (many of my musical friends worked in record stores at some time or another).  A fellow Vogue worker told me about an incident at another record store where a woman came in and wanted to buy Gregor Piatigorsky's recording of the sublime Dvorak cello concerto, considered by many the most demonically virtuosic of all cello works—-sort of the cello version of the Rachmaninov 3rd piano concerto.

The store clerk–who must have been knowledgeable about classical music—- told the woman, who had a French accent, that the Piatigorsky version was inferior to many other recorded versions:  those of Jacques Fournier, Rostropovich, Starker, DuPré, and others.  She stubbornly persisted.  He told her that Gregor's stumbling version sounded like he was drunk, or just hadn't learned the score.  She insisted on getting that version.  He After all his entreaties failed,  clerk and customer walked to the register and she wrote out a check.  It was signed "Mrs. Gregor Piatigorsky".


PD

https://www.kcrw.com/music/articles/gregor-and-jacqueline-piatigorsky-incident-at-a-westwood-record-store
Pohjolas Daughter

Maestro267

Is the thematic material for Quartet No. 3 worth 65+ minutes of it? Nobody bar the most eccentric of composers has even attempted anything remotely on that scale in the string quartet realm.

Symphonic Addict

Well, Morton Feldman's two string quartets are the longest ones ever written, I think.

As for the Dvorak, the last time I listened to it, I thought it held relatively well (perhaps that day I was in the mood for it, though).
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Maestro267

I mentioned eccentric composers who did stupidly absurd stuff.

Madiel

Quote from: Maestro267 on January 28, 2022, 07:29:01 AM
Is the thematic material for Quartet No. 3 worth 65+ minutes of it? Nobody bar the most eccentric of composers has even attempted anything remotely on that scale in the string quartet realm.

Not really, no.

In that period of his career Dvořák knew how to write a tune but he didn't know how to shape and structure it. This was clearly Dvořák's own view, given the way he revised certain pieces later on (and destroyed some too).

So the music is nice but it outstays its welcome.
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amw

Dvořák did make significant cuts to the Third Quartet—cutting it down to just over half its original length—although these are rarely observed on record for whatever reason. I think they help though. The Zemlinsky Quartet observes them on their set of his early quartets (on Praga).

Madiel

#678
Quote from: amw on January 28, 2022, 01:10:54 PM
Dvořák did make significant cuts to the Third Quartet—cutting it down to just over half its original length—although these are rarely observed on record for whatever reason. I think they help though. The Zemlinsky Quartet observes them on their set of his early quartets (on Praga).

I think it was only the first 2 quartets where I found a score to read and uncovered that the reason the Prague Qt are so much longer in no.1 is simply because they're using the uncut version and everyone else is using the cut version. Whereas for no.2, it seemed that the Panocha Qt were shorter than everyone else just because the Panocha were playing rather fast. And maybe sometimes some groups aren't following repeats.

But I only had evidence of Dvorak editing no.1.  Numbers 2 to 4 are, as far as I know, works that only survived through copied parts that Dvorak had forgotten about when he destroyed the scores.  I know the Zemlinsky Quartet have shorter, cut versions, but are you sure it was Dvorak that did the editing? Because I rather suspect it wasn't. From the blurbs I remember reading, someone else decided to do the cutting.

Which is not necessarily a bad decision. But I would have thought that if it was known Dvorak himself had edited it, most people would be doing the Zemlinsky's 35 minute version. Just as most people do the shortened version of no.1 that Dvorak prepared.
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amw

That's a good point—I have the score of No. 3 in an urtext edition, with cuts, but "urtext edition" in the 1960s had a looser definition than it does today and it's quite possible the cuts were introduced by the editors.