EJ Moeran

[Irons]

Sweetheart as Tasmin Little truly is, I loathe her recording of Moeran's Concerto, frankly (as I wrote about earlier in this thread).  I won't elaborate details again (parts of the recording can be heard on YouTube), but both Mordkovich and the Lyrita performance are superior on all counts in my judgment (which isn't just an opinion, - even if not definitive).  Sometimes Kyle simply loses his head (and critical faculties at the same time).

You are most kind to my wallet.

[kyjo]

Sweetheart and goodfellow as Tasmin Little and Andrew Davis truly are I loathe their recording of Moeran's Concerto frankly (as I wrote about earlier in this thread).  I won't elaborate details again except to say they just miss all the poignance and every nuance of the work entirely (parts of the recording can be heard on YouTube).   Both Mordkovich and the Lyrita performance are superior on all counts in my judgment (which isn't just an opinion, - even if not definitive).  Sometimes Kyle simply loses his head (and critical faculties at the same time).

Well, to be fair, I haven't heard any alternative recordings of the work, but the Little recording sounded fine to my ears. I'll be sure to check out the Mordkovich recording.

[Roasted Swan]

Well, to be fair, I haven't heard any alternative recordings of the work, but the Little recording sounded fine to my ears. I'll be sure to check out the Mordkovich recording.

Don't forget the 2 other/earlier live recordings of the Moeran -

[asin]B000F5GJLY[/asin]

Campoli is absolutely one of my favourite players - his lighter lyrical style suits this work really well - which is where I'm just a little wary of Mordkovitch.  The Coates on this historic disc is well worth a listen too.  Then there is the Lyrita/BBC archive recording also of Campoli but a different performance;

[asin]B00U1GGF6G[/asin]

The rest of this Lyrita set is of real value too - the Benjamin Concerto is good but its the Bax played by Gertler that is worth the journey........

[vandermolen]

Don't forget the 2 other/earlier live recordings of the Moeran -

[asin]B000F5GJLY[/asin]

Campoli is absolutely one of my favourite players - his lighter lyrical style suits this work really well - which is where I'm just a little wary of Mordkovitch.  The Coates on this historic disc is well worth a listen too.  Then there is the Lyrita/BBC archive recording also of Campoli but a different performance;

[asin]B00U1GGF6G[/asin]

The rest of this Lyrita set is of real value too - the Benjamin Concerto is good but its the Bax played by Gertler that is worth the journey........

The Coates is well worth exploring. Much as I like Bax I never enjoyed either his violin or cello concerto and much prefer the Moeran in both works. I also much prefer Moeran's Cello Concerto to his, admittedly lyrical, Violin Concerto.

[Irons]

Thanks RS and Jeffrey for your reply to my Bax query.

Here's another one! Has anyone heard this?



I was greatly tempted yesterday but already gone well past my quota I passed. Could always go back though.

[Roasted Swan]

Nothing to do with Moeran except that its in this month's BBC Music Magazine which I bought because it had the Moeran Symphony on the cover;

Interestingly captioned picture of Sir Henry Wood on page 33 with the heading Novelty Value the caption reads; "Fine focus; Wood rehearses at the Queen Elizabeth Hall for the 1938 Proms".

Novel indeed given that Wood died in 1944 and the QEH was opened in 1967....... I assume they mean the Queen's Hall.

[Roasted Swan]

Thanks RS and Jeffrey for your reply to my Bax query.

Here's another one! Has anyone heard this?



I was greatly tempted yesterday but already gone well past my quota I passed. Could always go back though.

Irons - this has been very well received and indeed it is a skillful CONJECTURAL reconstruction well played and recorded.  Personally I have big doubts about its value.  And that's from someone who loves what Anthony Payne did for Elgar's notionally 3rd Symphony.  The issue - for me - is that the Elgar symphony did exist in its composer's mind in a near fully-formed/final version.  Of course we will never know what that was but the sketches/fragments give a coherent idea that a musician as skilled as Payne can work from even if ultimately it must be considered a work by Payne after Elgar.

The Moeran is far less 'complete' in any sense.  There are articles/doctoral theses available online detailing very carefully the extent of Moeran's sketches.  There seems to be fairly tragic evidence that towards the end of his life Moeran was struggling with his mental health and finding the effort of creating a coherent large-scale symphonic work literally beyond him.  There are stories of a 2nd Symphony being complete but then destroyed.  The work which Yates has reconstructed seems to be based on a further/different effort.  But looking at the sketches he worked from the are far more fragmentary than the Elgar ones.  So for me this work lies much closer to the end of a line running from Moeran to Yates at the Yates end.  This is a symphony by Yates in the style of Moeran.  Likewise his orchestration of Sarnia is very clever but quite unlike anything Ireland would have produced I think.  So I'm glad to have it in my collection but hardly ever listen to it.

[calyptorhynchus]

I think the Yates version of the Moeran symphonic sketches is wonderful, and even if it's nothing like what Moeran would have produced it's a symphony in its own right!
You can probably find me raving about it on this thread when I discovered it around 2013.

[Roasted Swan]

I think the Yates version of the Moeran symphonic sketches is wonderful, and even if it's nothing like what Moeran would have produced it's a symphony in its own right!
You can probably find me raving about it on this thread when I discovered it around 2013.

Don't get me wrong - I'd MUCH rather be able to hear anything from this Symphony than not!

[Irons]

Hmm, so much music and so little time. Thanks for your balanced view RS. As in life nothing is black or white although we would like it to be. All things considered I do not regret my decision to pass.

[J]

Thanks RS and Jeffrey for your reply to my Bax query.

Here's another one! Has anyone heard this?



I was greatly tempted yesterday but already gone well past my quota I passed. Could always go back though.

There's a different (and I think better) performance by the same performers in the British archive here.

[Roasted Swan]

There's a different (and I think better) performance by the same performers in the British archive here.

can you repost the link that I assume is missing..... thanks!

[vandermolen]

Thanks RS and Jeffrey for your reply to my Bax query.

Here's another one! Has anyone heard this?



I was greatly tempted yesterday but already gone well past my quota I passed. Could always go back though.

I have the CD but can hardly remember anything about it! I'll try to have another listen soon.

[J]

What's marvelous about Sinaisky's read (posted on YouTube) is how vivid and clear the inner parts and voices of the work are.  You can hear everything going on among the various instrument groups in a way none of the other (more homogenized) recordings approach.

I'd been listening to the YouTube posting of Sinaisky's performance for at least several months (perhaps a dozen times or more) and marveling at all the details one can hear like in no other recording, so finally purchased the BBC Magazine with the CD attached, - but to my utter dismay (even horror) find all those said details now homogenized out,  - they can barely be heard in the CD issue, they've vanished, been gauzed over.  It's just terrible.  How does that happen?  I want my money back, as Sainaisky's interpretation now sounds pretty ordinary and not very distinctive at all.

[Irons]

I'd been listening to the YouTube posting of Sinaisky's performance for at least several months (perhaps a dozen times or more) and marveling at all the details one can hear like in no other recording, so finally purchased the BBC Magazine with the CD attached, - but to my utter dismay (even horror) find all those said details now homogenized out,  - they can barely be heard in the CD issue, they've vanished, been gauzed over.  It's just terrible.  How does that happen?  I want my money back, as Sainaisky's interpretation now sounds pretty ordinary and not very distinctive at all.

I am stunned by your post. I obtained BBC MM Moeran freebie with great excitement which proved, much to my surprise, a disappointment. I have asked my wife to pick up today the current issue with RVW/Elgar CD which I hope does not suffer the same fate.

[Roasted Swan]

I am stunned by your post. I obtained BBC MM Moeran freebie with great excitement which proved, much to my surprise, a disappointment. I have asked my wife to pick up today the current issue with RVW/Elgar CD which I hope does not suffer the same fate.

Curiouser and curiouser.....  I've just recorded the YouTube stream and loaded both it and the BBC magazine CD into Audacity - 1st movement only for the moment.  One thing is clear the CD recorded level is quite low - easily fixed.  But here's the odd thing - the CD has the 1st movement as 13:04 (I've deleted even the couple of seconds of silence before the playing starts).... but YouTube has the "same" performance as 13:37.  The timing "drift" seems to be quite equal through the movement so perhaps whoever posted this on YouTube has done some audio tweaking .... but why change/slow the playing time?  Did Sinaisky perform this more than once and the versions have got mixed up?  Cannot believe the Beeb would tweak a performance in this manner......  I might have a look at the other movements later too. 

Even allowing for the difference in level the YouTube version does seem to have more bite in the sound?

EDIT:  a little digging brings an answer I think..... the YouTube version says "2010" and indeed on the BBC website there is a link (now defunct) to a Bridgewater Hall Sinaisky/BBC PO performance from February 2010.  The CD version is the 23rd July 2009 Proms version ..... very similar ....... but NOT the same!

[Irons]

Curiouser and curiouser.....  I've just recorded the YouTube stream and loaded both it and the BBC magazine CD into Audacity - 1st movement only for the moment.  One thing is clear the CD recorded level is quite low - easily fixed.  But here's the odd thing - the CD has the 1st movement as 13:04 (I've deleted even the couple of seconds of silence before the playing starts).... but YouTube has the "same" performance as 13:37.  The timing "drift" seems to be quite equal through the movement so perhaps whoever posted this on YouTube has done some audio tweaking .... but why change/slow the playing time?  Did Sinaisky perform this more than once and the versions have got mixed up?  Cannot believe the Beeb would tweak a performance in this manner......  I might have a look at the other movements later too. 

Even allowing for the difference in level the YouTube version does seem to have more bite in the sound?

EDIT:  a little digging brings an answer I think..... the YouTube version says "2010" and indeed on the BBC website there is a link (now defunct) to a Bridgewater Hall Sinaisky/BBC PO performance from February 2010.  The CD version is the 23rd July 2009 Proms version ..... very similar ....... but NOT the same!

All explained then and (deerstalker) hats off for sorting that out.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

All explained then and (deerstalker) hats off for sorting that out.

No sh*t, Sherlock! Tip of my deerstalker, too.

[J]

Curiouser and curiouser.....  I've just recorded the YouTube stream and loaded both it and the BBC magazine CD into Audacity - 1st movement only for the moment.  One thing is clear the CD recorded level is quite low - easily fixed.  But here's the odd thing - the CD has the 1st movement as 13:04 (I've deleted even the couple of seconds of silence before the playing starts).... but YouTube has the "same" performance as 13:37.  The timing "drift" seems to be quite equal through the movement so perhaps whoever posted this on YouTube has done some audio tweaking .... but why change/slow the playing time?  Did Sinaisky perform this more than once and the versions have got mixed up?  Cannot believe the Beeb would tweak a performance in this manner......  I might have a look at the other movements later too. 

Even allowing for the difference in level the YouTube version does seem to have more bite in the sound?

EDIT:  a little digging brings an answer I think..... the YouTube version says "2010" and indeed on the BBC website there is a link (now defunct) to a Bridgewater Hall Sinaisky/BBC PO performance from February 2010.  The CD version is the 23rd July 2009 Proms version ..... very similar ....... but NOT the same!

Just amazing.  I'd been driven to the brink of madness since acquiring the magazine CD over how different (and inferior) it sounded from the YouTube posting, and so confused over how that could have happened and what might explain it, - but never imagined they were different performances.

[Roasted Swan]

Just amazing.  I'd been driven to the brink of madness since acquiring the magazine CD over how different (and inferior) it sounded from the YouTube posting, and so confused over how that could have happened and what might explain it, - but never imagined they were different performances.

It through me for a bit.... even things like the cymbals are clearly the same pair... but it shows how the BBC engineers struggle with the Royal Albert Hall as a venue and how the Bridgewater is a much more sympathetic recording environment.  It also underlines how in many ways a 'single' recorded performance is a fallible record of an interpretation.... within a few months the same artists were giving a significantly differing view of a work....