What were you listening to? (CLOSED)

[Wanderer]

[karlhenning]

All right, Tasos is out of the picture for three hours 

[Danny]

[Wanderer]

All right, Tasos is out of the picture for three hours 

Most certainly. 

[Harry]

Danny my friend that's a fine disc.

[Sergeant Rock]

That Friedrich painting is awesome! I really love it. Will need to get that CD for the cover alone.

Yeah, I love it, too, but you know: I've never been able to figure out what it has to do with Beethoven's sonatas   Maybe somebody here has an idea.

It's just so much more like the Vaughan Williams Sinfonia antartica.

Yes, I agree. I'm surprised it hasn't been used for that...at least I've never seen it paired with RVW's symphony.

Sarge

[Sergeant Rock]

All right, Tasos is out of the picture for three hours 

Minimum three...

Sarge

[George]

Yeah, I love it, too, but you know: I've never been able to figure out what it has to do with Beethoven's sonatas   Maybe somebody here has an idea.

They're both dangerous, bold, pure and beautiful. 

[Danny]

Danny my friend that's a fine disc.

It is, my friend, it is!   

[BachQ]

Waldstein, Les Adieux, Appassionata...Gilels:




Sarge

awesome

[BachQ]

Schnittke, Requiem (Stockholm Sinfonietta / Okko Kamu) lovin' it . . . . .

[karlhenning]

awesome

And both melt when they head out of their zone 

[Sergeant Rock]

Continuing with Beethoven:




This is a fascinating interpretation of the Hammerklavier. Of the five versions I own (Gulda, Rosen, Pollini, Arrau), Gould is the slowest (especially the last two movements) and for me his pacing works really well. He came to the Sonata fairly late, recording it finally in 1970 after years of aborted performances. There's a letter to a friend of his at the CBC that explains his hesitation and final solution:

"Dear Wendy, some thoughts on the Hammerklavier: it is the longest, most inconsiderate and probably least rewarding piece that Beethoven wrote for the piano. I say this with some reluctance because ever since my student years I've been determined to find some real rewards in it and to document them in a broadcast or recording, or both. On several occasions, years back, I scheduled it for public audition--usually in spots like Dry Gulch, Mont., or Los Yahoos, N.M. but inevitably, at the last moment, amended a discreet program change. The piece simply eluded me as a totality and I was determined to unravel its enigmas before letting it go public....

Well, I don't think I really managed to solve very many of them, but I did attempt some interesting methods of systems-analysis enroute. I decided that since the piece is hopelessly unpianistic--not just because it's horrendously difficult but because it's written with little or no concern for the sympathies and antipathies which exit between various regions of the keyboard--I would attempt an orchestral approach. I would try to link first note with last through sheer conductorial momentum--not speed but rather through tempi coerced into coalescence--and minimize all of the piano-speciality gestures which, annoyingly and perversely in veiw of Beethoven's essentially anti-instrument bias, still get in the way of the music much of the time....

Many of the problems occur in the first and third movments--the second is short and taut enough to breeze by unnoticed, and the fugue-finale for all its mathematical tomfoolery and its grimly vigorous attempts to break the neo-Handelian sound-barrier is both fascinating and fun...

Did my orchestral-overview, no-time-for-piano-conceits attitude really tie these four diverse structures together and make them one big work? Not really. There are some moments that work, I think, and some that don't--which, come to think of it, was more of less Beethoven's score too..."

Sarge

[Danny]

Continuing with Beethoven:

I confess..................I love his Beethoven!   

[BachQ]

Dry Gulch, Mont.,

There's an awesome concert hall there . . . . . .  I love performing in Dry Gulch . . . . .

[Steve]

Schnittke, Requiem (Stockholm Sinfonietta / Okko Kamu) lovin' it . . . . .

Excellent Choice 

[Sergeant Rock]

I confess..................I love his Beethoven!   

Do you? Really? Well, that makes two of us then...a grand total of two 

Sarge

[Danny]

Do you? Really? Well, that makes two of us then...a grand total of two 

Sarge

Hurray for us! 

[Sergeant Rock]

There's an awesome concert hall there . . . . . .  I love performing in Dry Gulch . . . . .

Really, dude...I think only the Concertgebouw rivals the hall in Dry Gulch...but of course the Dutch don't have those marvelous saloon girls which add immeasurably to the atmosphere.

Sarge

[Sergeant Rock]

They're both dangerous, bold, pure and beautiful. 

Indeed...you may have found the connection, George.

Sarge