What were you listening to? (CLOSED)

[Mirror Image]

I also would prefer the younger generation violinists such as Andrew Manze and Gidon Kremer over Stern anytime ...

Me too, in fact, I do. I love Kremer. I have a few of Manze's recordings and he's a very capable violinist no question about it. The discs of his I own are the Vivaldi discs he's made. Great stuff.

[Coopmv]

Me too, in fact, I do. I love Kremer. I have a few of Manze's recordings and he's a very capable violinist no question about it. The discs of his I own are the Vivaldi discs he's made. Great stuff.

Gidon Kremer could be a speed demon in some recordings IMO ...   

[listener]

KAPUSTIN   24 Preludes in Jazz Style, op. 53  (1988),  5 earlier pieces: Dawn, Toccatina, Meditaition, Dound of the Vi Band, Moving Force
Nikolai Kapustin, piano
BRITTEN 4 Cabaret Songs (1937, texts by Auden), SCHÖNBERG  7 Brettl-Lieder (1901)
BOLCOM 12 Cabaret Songs
Joy Karin Applebaum, sop.      Marc-André Hamelin, piano

[Mirror Image]

Gidon Kremer could be a speed demon in some recordings IMO ...   

There's one performance that, for me, nobody has topped yet and that's Kremer's performance of Part's Tabula Rasa. Gil Shaham has a nice recording of it, but Kremer has him beat I think.

I agree though, Kremer, in many recordings, acts like he's in a hurry to go to the restroom. His Piazzolla recordings are most impressive.

[Coopmv]

Here is my very first CD by Gidon Kremer I bought in the mid 80's.  I was really impressed after I had heard it on the now defunct WNCN in NYC ...

[Mirror Image]

Here is my very first CD by Gidon Kremer I bought in the mid 80's.  I was really impressed after I had heard it on the now defunct WNCN in NYC ...

Kremer did a great Four Seasons recording too. I have not heard his first performance with Abbado however. Have you heard this recording?

[Coopmv]

Now playing CD11 from this set for a first listen ...

[Coopmv]

Kremer did a great Four Seasons recording too. I have not heard his first performance with Abbado however. Have you heard this recording?

No.  I have his complete Violin Sonatas by Schubert and a few Beethoven Violin Sonatas with Piano he performed with Martha Argerich ...

[Sid]

I absolutely hate it when people here deride great artists who are/were world class masters of their art. It was never easy to get on record with the major companies. I certainly don't accept just any performance on face value, but I think that 99% of the recordings we have (from today or the past) are top notch and any "evaluation" of them as above is purely based on subjective & personal opinion, not on any measurable or quantifiable facts. Collecting and comparing cd's does not make you an "expert" on anything. The musicians who play on these various performances really are/were the experts, imo...

*rant over*

[Daverz]

In my opinion, this is one of the worst performances of the Barber Violin Concerto I've heard. Slatkin really has no feel for the music, while Oliveira can barely make it through the last movement. He clearly isn't a virtuoso like Hahn or Bell

Oh, dear, Oliveira is one of my favorite violinists.  Hahn usually does nothing for me.

[Mirror Image]

I absolutely hate it when people here deride great artists who are/were world class masters of their art. It was never easy to get on record with the major companies. I certainly don't accept just any performance on face value, but I think that 99% of the recordings we have (from today or the past) are top notch and any "evaluation" of them as above is purely based on subjective & personal opinion, not on any measurable or quantifiable facts. Collecting and comparing cd's does not make you an "expert" on anything. The musicians who play on these various performances really are/were the experts, imo...

*rant over*

My, my, my are you done ranting, Sid? I never claimed to be an "expert" on anything. Calm down, kick back and have a cold one.    We know you like Stern or else why would you have posted this rant, but not everybody is thrilled with Stern's playing. He clearly is a very capable violinist, but he's not one of the best I've heard and I've heard MANY of them. I'm just not impressed with his technique nor am I enamored with his overall feel for the music he performs.

So testy you are today, it must be something in the water there in Australia.

[Mirror Image]

Oh, dear, Oliveira is one of my favorite violinists.  Hahn usually does nothing for me.

To each their own.

[kishnevi]

Pahud is a tremendous flutist.  I have the following CD's by him ...

C'mon everyone, let's admire my...instrument!

Turning to seriousness--I have the Telemann and Bach recordings,  and also these two

[Coopmv]

C'mon everyone, let's admire my...instrument!

Turning to seriousness--I have the Telemann and Bach recordings,  and also these two

I also bought this CD a few months ago ...

[Sid]

Well, yes MI that was a bit of a "rant" on my part

But seriously, all I was saying that it's very difficult to get on top of the game in classical music (always was, always will be). Performers who don't make the grade in some way simply do not get recorded, there is way too much competition out there.

I also think that people like Stern and Oliviera excelled in some more out of the way repertoire. They didn't only record the warhorses. I even still have a tape of Oliviera doing one of Joseph Joachim's (Brahms' violinist friend) violin concertos. I also have his Barber and I think it's pretty good.

I don't really love or hate any particular person's playing. I don't have an exhaustive collection, but I can back what I'm saying up by having a small selection of (say) Stern, Oliviera, Hahn and others. I love Stern's Berg disc in particular, and as for Hahn, it is probably fair to say that her performance of the Schoenberg is one of the finest put to disc. There's always something good that the astute listener can glean from these greats, I think. Either the cup is half empty, or it's half full, as they say...

[Mirror Image]

Now:



Listening to Ma mere l'oye right now. Such a stunning work.

[Mirror Image]

I don't really love or hate any particular person's playing. I don't have an exhaustive collection, but I can back what I'm saying up by having a small selection of (say) Stern, Oliviera, Hahn and others.

And how does having a small selection help you evaluate which violinist you like the most when there's more performances by other violinists that were put to disc besides the ones you already own?

One way or the other, I truly dislike Stern's playing. He could break windows with his screechy shenanigans.

[Antoine Marchand]

Johann Sebastian Bach - 35 Kantaten
John Eliot Gardiner
The Monteverdi Choir
The English Baroque Soloists
DG/Eloquence
12 CDs

CD1: Cantatas for the first Sunday of Advent (BWV 61, 36 & 62)

This disc was recorded in 1992 and, therefore, it was not part of the Pilgrimage to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Bach's death in 2000. Anyway, it was released by Archiv along with the recordings of that year, originally under this cover:



Although Gardiner also performed all these cantatas during his Pilgrimage and they have been released as volume 13 of his cycle on SDG:

Our two successive concerts were given to capacity audiences in the atmospheric Michaeliskirche where Bach, aged fifteen, sang as a member of the small specialist 'Mattins Choir'. We all used the old choirroom to change in, treading the same boards that Bach trod when attending choir practice. The church, which was begun in 1376, is unusual and slightly uneven, its wonky slender pillars set at an angle. It
is built over salt mines: Lüneburg was an important Hansestadt in the sixteenth century and controlled the extraction of salt and its supply to northern Germany. With the collapse of the Hanseatic League the city's
fortunes declined, with the result that the remarkable Rathaus was not modernised and exists in a pristine state of preservation – as does the whole old town, which was spared the bombing of the Second World
War and later occupied by the British army.

--John Eliot Gardiner 2009
From a journal written in the course of the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage

For the record: the disc on Archiv is one of the most beautiful recordings of these cantatas that I have ever listened to. The singers are all superb: Nancy Argenta (soprano), Petra Lang (mezzo), Anthony Rolfe Johnson (tenor, unfortunately died this year) and Olaf Bär (bariton); perfect, too, are the music (clean, with beautiful textures), the direction (you can follow perfectly the text without detriment of the music) and the recorded sound (I don't know if because of a new remastering).

A happy, joyful finding.   

[Sid]

Actually, I have got Perlman's Barber, believe it or not, and I have no problems with it. I have heard some of Bell's work on the radio, and ditto that. When I listen to something, I want to be positive and not negative. Is that a problem? Anyhow, I'm too busy enjoying the work itself to get bogged down in mindless details of what aspects of the individual performance I do or don't like. If I analyse anything, it's the work, not the performance. You can argue that it's all connected, of course. But I would like to think that I am more interested in listening to the work first and the interpretation second.

Mind you, we are all different, and if you or others do things differently, that's ok. I'm just saying that it's not necessary to slam a great artist's life achievement just because he or she doesn't measure up to how you expect them to play a particular work...

[Scarpia]

Well, yes MI that was a bit of a "rant" on my part ;)But seriously, all I was saying that it's very difficult to get on top of the game in classical music (always was, always will be). Performers who don't make the grade in some way simply do not get recorded, there is way too much competition out there.

There may be an exception, in that performers who become very popular sometimes record things that probably should be better left to others.  For instance, DG released numerous recordings of Karajan performing warhorses that he didn't have any particular magic with.  Does anyone really believe that the world was waiting for Karajan's recording of Eine Kliene Nachtmusic, for instance?