Max Reger(1873-1916)

Started by Dundonnell, October 27, 2008, 03:55:53 PM

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mn dave

Quote from: karlhenning on November 03, 2008, 12:21:19 PM
I think of a riff more as an ostinato, rather than as a motif or snippet.

Oy vey! At any rate, I hope you know what I meant.

karlhenning

Quote from: mn dave on November 03, 2008, 12:22:49 PM
Oy vey! At any rate, I hope you know what I meant.

I hope I do.  I agree.

karlhenning

Oh.  Dave, this could mean we're a gang.

Sort of a music-discussion-group terror cell.

mn dave

Quote from: karlhenning on November 03, 2008, 12:26:45 PM
Oh.  Dave, this could mean we're a gang.

Sort of a music-discussion-group terror cell.

The West Side Ludwigs?

Josquin des Prez

Quote from: Herman on November 03, 2008, 12:13:42 PM
Sorry, friend, but (as Karl apparently would agree) Beethoven's genius is about manipulating motivs to the nth degree. Not melodies.

You said tunes, not melodies.

Dundonnell

This is Threadjacking ;D :)

Max would have known what you do with your posts ;D

I don't need to remind you of the famous story-".........they will shortly be behind me!"


Hector

Elgar and he were great friends.

I do detect an element of Elgar in Reger's orchestral music or is it the other way round? I've never checked composition dates.

Dundonnell

Elgar and Reger?

What an unlikely couple ;D The upright, proper Edwardian Englishman and the sarcastic, boorish, foul-mouthed...(sorry, I have forgotten Reger's nationality!) ;D

The new erato

I've been making my way through the 23 disc set of  comlete Chamber Music on da Camera Magna, and finding more and more to enjoy. I'm just now playing a really superb clarinet sonata op 107 on disc 5, really good music and very fine performance, and have made other discoveries like the beautiful Pino Trio op 79 b. At around 75 euros this is unmissable. Though there are still 17 discs left to play I feel pretty confident.

Hector

Quote from: Dundonnell on November 04, 2008, 09:12:06 AM
Elgar and Reger?

What an unlikely couple ;D The upright, proper Edwardian Englishman and the sarcastic, boorish, foul-mouthed...(sorry, I have forgotten Reger's nationality!) ;D

You were going to put German were you not, go on, admit it.

This was the man who said of a critic: "I am sitting in the smallest room and your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me."

Dundonnell

Quote from: Hector on November 07, 2008, 05:41:15 AM
You were going to put German were you not, go on, admit it.

This was the man who said of a critic: "I am sitting in the smallest room and your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me."

Ok...yes, I admit it but I suddenly thought of * ******* and thought that might be misinterpreted ;D

snyprrr

Quote from: Herman on November 03, 2008, 07:34:54 AM
I have always liked Reger's late chamber music. The string quartets from nr 3 onwards, the clarinte quintet, there's a great string sextet too, if I recall, and a beautiful violin sonata.

My experience however is mentioning Reger isn't the best way to make friends and influence people. His fugal finales can be punishing.

Who do you have for the SQs? I just ordered the Bern on CPO.

I also have the Volger on Nimbus in Op.108, which I listened to again recently, and, Reger does appear to be the kind of "more shall be revealed" composer (meaning it's going to take more listens!). Always dense, but always fluid,... more like taffy than molasses! ;D

I also see that Naxos has a Complete String Trios & Piano Quartets!

snyprrr


Sergeant Rock

Quote from: snyprrr on February 16, 2010, 10:03:40 PM
Who wins?

What game or sport are they playing? If it's Skat, I'll bet on Reger. If it's Russian roulette, though...

Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

snyprrr

Reger SQs Complete (Bern Qrt./CPO)



Wow,... revelation time!

I've had Op.108 (Volger) for 10years, and, until last year, I had an eh attitude towards it. That all changed today.

I listened around Reger for a while. the usual suspects. Pfitzner was the lastest. I keep saying, over and over in my head, to get it straight:

Brahms-Busoni-Wolf-Reger-Berg-Webern (maybe there's someone else around there, I don't know ::))

But I kept getting confused with the plethora of second tier composers : Marx, Mittler, Toch, Wellesz,... I don't even know how many there are! ???



I'll be perfectly honest. I totally planned to do a direct comparison between Brahms' Op.51, and Reger's Op.54. I put on Op.54 1-2, and,... BOOOOM!!... wow, the opening of the g minor just goes right for it, and the mvmt doesn't let up for 12mins! I may still go back and try to do some comparative study, but I so totally enjoyed the Reger so much more than the Brahms that it will be a trek back there.

Reger's relentlessness in the first mvmt. was just overwhelmingly impressive to me. Big boned yet supple, thick without being choked, the instruments move forward with a force heard not since the Grosse Fuge (perhaps some may not give Reger that much credit?). The rest of the quartet proceeds with the same manly expansiveness to a bravo conclusion,... and,...THEN!,...

Op.54 No.2 in A Major. The first mvmt is marked Allegro assai e bizarro, and, unlike the Boccherini mvmt, Allegro bizarro (which,...isn't!), this mvmt is...truly...the most...jawdropping... From the get go it careens and lurches and runs all over town proclaiming it's overarching bizarreness. It doesn't make sense as much as just... GO!!!... and I don't really know how to compare this to Berg or Schoenberg or Webern. Reger here is simply taking the logical course to the end game, without the needed system of Schoenberg. It may be the most thought provoking mvmt for the Canon that I've heard, but most definitely up until it was written (the notes make a mistake with a date, and it isn't clear from the CPO release when it was actually written. The premiere was in 1904 (No.2 was written much later than No.1 (1900))). I still haven't made it through this SQ.

Wilhelm Altmann writes (1904-05) that, in comparison to Reger's quartet "Beethoven's last works... both in intellectual and technical respects" seemed to be "mere child's play"! Truly, these SQs are the bad boys of the Romantic Era. Wow! I am so impressed right now.



I compared the Eb, Op.108, with the Volger. Basically, the sound for the Volger is so rich and deep and upfront, that a sonic comparison is not really fair. The Berners are afforded a very creepy and bald recording that actually highlights the morbidity of much of the proceedings; however, the recording isn't the last word in clincal detail, though, let me emphatically state that this does not hinder hearing all the complexity. The music appears to be on this side of hysterical, but never is there any listening pain. You just have to crank it up a bit, but when you do, the dynamic is just fine. Differences between the performances are no big deal.

I am saving the gigantic Op.74 for later, but I dipped into Reger's last, Op.121 in f#minor (Schoenberg!). The first mvmt is Reger at his most commandingly awesome. Profuse comes to mind. I made it half way through to the slow mvmt, and, I just haven't heard a more MORE MORE kitchen sink SQ. The intellectual complexity of the Viennese style started over 100years earlier here receives its end game. Already in my mind there is a war between Reger and Schoenbergianism. Reger's way is just as valid. Who's fruit was/would have been richer? Hmmm,... interesting.



Reger's gonna be a fun nut to crack! I look forward!

Oh,... did I mention Reger's student work with a bass in the finale? Yea, Reger's da man!



The particular sound qualities of the Bern/CPO set sort of trigger my CDCDCD into wanting to get the Drolc/DG set just to compare sound (I checked timings, and they're pretty consistent).

There appears to be this Philharmonia group that recorded Op.74 for Thorofon, and has now recorded Op.108 & the Clainet Quintet for Naxos? There is also an old recording of Op.54/2, w/ Busoni and Pfitzner, by different groups. The only other recording I see is with the Joachim on Koch playing the last two SQs (mmm, sounds interesting).

Does anyone have the Drolc? Sound? Performance?

snyprrr

Op.74 is Reger's 'Schoenberg Op.7'. It is massive like Mahler (53' here), but Reger's gothic angst is all his own. This music really sounds like "Wuthering meets Poe", echt Romantic drama, from the minor key opening onward.

And, it really goes by pretty fast. That's how I can immediately tell it is a masterpiece!

Reger is just absolutely and totally in control of this gigantic canvas of complexity, all couched in an elusively beautiful melodic line: the melody style is quite hummable, but Reger is alway pulling notes away from the melody to disguise it, though it remains intact.

The first thing that popped into my head was that this was the largest scaled work since Schubert's Quintet, which this SQ seems to emulate, to me, though, through Reger's world of course, perhaps a haunting of the "decadence of the fin-de-s...".



I am just truly impressed with all of Reger's SQs. The sheer profusion of invention is exhausting, gigantic, and ever changing, all the while exuding an unconsciously creepy undertone of decadence (gluttony, my dear Reger??) in that Art Nuveaououho(!) turn of the century way. The density of these 3 cds is heavy indeed! Reger has truly solved The Question!

kentel

#36
I am currently in the process of listening to everything I can find by Reger, and my opinion is very divided.

For the most, I must confess that I don't share you enthusiasm. In rough, his style is heavy, his harmonies are so overloaded with chromaticism and his counterpoint is so inextricable that, for the most, you just have a faint idea about what's going on, his pieces are excessively long considering the weakness of his thematic material, and he is a very poor orchestrator.

It can be worse : in all his piano pieces without a single exception (12 cds Thorofon by Markus Beker : a challenge), he has a naive bouncy and perky style which I find highly exasperating.

BUT, the surprise is that among this ocean of platitude, some true masterpieces are hidden.

For example, among the organ works (which is to me the most exciting part of his work), some pieces are pure hallucinations, they introduce the listener into strange, magical and shimmering sound worlds which I find fascinating. The organ's Reger is not the same composer : inventive, audacious, original, imaginative, dense. Among others I recommend :

- The 6 Trios op.47 (1900)
- The Monologue op.63 (1902)
- The Variations sur un thème original op.73 (1903)
- The 12 Pieces op.80 (1904)
- The 9 Pieces op.129 (1913)

these are the best, but there are other very good pieces : the Fantasy op.27 (1898), the Fantasy & Fugue op.29 (id.), the Fantasy & Fugue "Inferno" op.57  (1901) and the 10 Pieces op.69 (1903)...

The best version is by far  the one with Rosalinde Haas :



This is very important, as Reger did not indicate accurately which registration should be used for his organ pieces, the choices of the organist are crucial : Rosalinde Haas proves to be very inventive and clear there.

And for the rest : I love the very first String Quartet in D minor , the 5 others are just schmooze to me. I also like very much the velvet-like Clarinet Sonatas n° 2 & 3 (I agree with Erato here), the Violin Sonatas nr. 3 & 4 and the Viola Sonata nr.1. The 2 concertos are not for me : the Violin concerto is like a soup with too much water and the gigantic piano concerto with its wacky choir part is like a big cake with too much cream. I almost forgot the other violin concerto "im alten stil".  Among the orchestral pieces I liked the Mozart Variations, and that's all but I haven't heard everything yet. The 2 Piano Quartets are OK too, but too long and too brahmsian.

That's all for the moment, I still have about 10 Cd's to listen  :)

--Gilles

Josquin des Prez

Quote from: kentel on February 20, 2010, 03:38:08 AM
And for the rest : I love the very first String Quartet in D minor , the 5 others are just schmooze to me.

Opinion dimismissed. The later string quartets (op.109 and op.121) are clearly superior in every way, not to mention the Clarinet Quintet (op.146).

kentel

Quote from: Josquin des Prez on February 20, 2010, 03:41:45 AM
Opinion dimismissed. The later string quartets (op.109 and op.121) are clearly superior in every way, not to mention the Clarinet Quintet (op.146).

"are clearly superior in every way" :  tell me which ways and tell me how :)




snyprrr

UH OHHH!!...

...run for cover!!...