Past Purchases (CLOSED)

[Dundonnell]

Ha! What a feast of Rubbra Glorious

I have just ordered Leo Black's biography of Rubbra as a Christmas present to myself

[Sergeant Rock]

Ha! What a feast of Rubbra Glorious

I had very little Rubbra on CD...reading the Rubbra thread last week inspired the purchases. Alwyn and Frankel symphonies are up next. With Alwyn I'm still debating whether to go with Hickox, Lloyd-Jones or the composer's own recordings.

Sarge

[Dundonnell]

I had very little Rubbra on CD...reading the Rubbra thread last week inspired the purchases. Alwyn and Frankel symphonies are up next. With Alwyn I'm still debating whether to go with Hickox, Lloyd-Jones or the composer's own recordings.

Sarge

I have all three of the Alwyn sets You really can't go wrong with any of them; they are all equally good in my opinion. The Chandos is probably the best recorded but the Lyrita is not far behind and Alwyn was a very fine conductor of his own music. Obviously, the Naxos is the cheapest but Lloyd-Jones excels himself in this repertoire!

Sorry...no help!

[Sergeant Rock]

I have all three of the Alwyn sets You really can't go wrong with any of them; they are all equally good in my opinion. The Chandos is probably the best recorded but the Lyrita is not far behind and Alwyn was a very fine conductor of his own music. Obviously, the Naxos is the cheapest but Lloyd-Jones excels himself in this repertoire!

Sorry...no help!

No, you weren't    But then all the reviews I've read have come to the same conclusion. Since I'm unfamiliar with most of this music, perhaps Naxos is the way to go. If I like the symphonies well enough, I'll invest more money in the other sets.

Sarge

[Bu]

[Dancing Divertimentian]

In my view Julius Katchen is one of the great underrated pianists of the recorded era (his premature death probably didn't help). He's known mainly for his complete solo Brahms set on Decca but the fact is his sympathies stretched to all corners of the repertoire. His Decca recordings of both Ravel's piano concerto and Prokofiev's third PC are among the greatest of the gramophone (and still available).

This one I got for Bartok's third PC, which I haven't heard yet but have high hopes.

[Daverz]

In my view Julius Katchen is one of the great underrated pianists of the recorded era [...]
This one I got for Bartok's third PC, which I haven't heard yet but have high hopes.

Best Bartok 3rd evah!  Hope that doesn't raise your expectations too much.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Best Bartok 3rd evah!  Hope that doesn't raise your expectations too much.

Ah, great news Dave! Now I'm stoked!

[The new erato]

I had very little Rubbra on CD...reading the Rubbra thread last week inspired the purchases. Alwyn and Frankel symphonies are up next. With Alwyn I'm still debating whether to go with Hickox, Lloyd-Jones or the composer's own recordings.

Sarge

I find Rubbra very worthwhile. The 2 midprice CDs on Dutton epoch of the string quartets are very fine and just as essential as the symphonies.

[Sergeant Rock]

I find Rubbra very worthwhile. The 2 midprice CDs on Dutton epoch of the string quartets are very fine and just as essential as the symphonies.

Added to my wishlist. Thanks.

Sarge

[Sergeant Rock]

The Rubbra Lyrita disc (symphonies 3 and 4) showed up today. Also from Amazon: Shostakovich 1 and 7, and a 2CD box of piano works by various composers played by that eccentric legend Ervin Nyiregyházi. Johnathan Bellman (Dial "M" for Musicology) says:

"Some regarded him as a pianist of colossal importance, and some thought him a self-centered crank or even incompetent.  We talk about the demise of "personal" styles, but for the most part we can't really abide them; we complain about note-perfect playing but in reality we demand it. Let's try again: To listen to a Nyiregyházi performance is to hear not only inaccuracy (he didn't practice regularly, and by the time he resurfaced in the 1970s his technique was basically a ruin) but tempi that might be considered capricious, or even incoherent.  This recording



offers several apt examples.  So: a joke, a lunatic?  Rather, a real window into nineteenth-century pianistic style. There is an individual personality of titanic power in his performances, however bizarre his personality may have been, his playing had the Ring of Truth, the sense of sheer conviction and individuality for which the best nineteenth-century pianists were celebrated.   We find idiomatic Hungarian-Gypsy playing, dark Hungarian grandeur and brooding, and a full orchestral palette of dynamics and timbres."


The Shostakovich Seventh has never appealed to me. I've given it a fair chance over the last thirty years (owning versions by Haitink, Jansons, Rozhdestvensky, Rostropovich and Barshai). I'm hoping Bernstein can change my mind:



Sarge

[PerfectWagnerite]

The Shostakovich Seventh has never appealed to me. I've given it a fair chance over the last thirty years (owning versions by Haitink, Jansons, Rozhdestvensky, Rostropovich and Barshai). I'm hoping Bernstein can change my mind:

Berstein's CSO version will likely change your mind. Janson's version I think is well-played but nothing really special. If you like his more classical, less histrionic approach I think either Temirkanov (with the same orchestra) or Neumann (with an unbelievable Czech PO) will do better. Two others I really like are Masur with the NYPO and Kitayenko on Capriccio. For some and impact alone I would recommend the Kitayenko. I don't even have an SACD player but the cd sound is about as realistic as it gets.

[jwinter]

Found this for a good price, so decided to take the plunge after hearing much praise in these parts over the years.


I was reading the Sibelius thread, and after digging through my largish pile of Sibelius CDs (Maazel, Bernstein, Blomstedt, Segerstam, Davis, Ashkenazy, et al), I was shocked to find that I didn't have a single version of The Oceanides.  Fixed that, and glad I did.  Very fine piece indeed.   

[karlhenning]

I was reading the Sibelius thread, and after digging through my largish pile of Sibelius CDs (Maazel, Bernstein, Blomstedt, Segerstam, Davis, Ashkenazy, et al), I was shocked to find that I didn't have a single version of The Oceanides.  Fixed that, and glad I did.  Very fine piece indeed.   

And he wrote it for Norwalk, Connecticut, of all places!

[Bulldog]

A bunch of Scarlatti cd's came yesterday; gifts from a friend.

Hantai/Vol. 3/Mirare
Hantai/Astree
Schiff/Hungaroton
Schiff/Decca
Beausejour/2 volumes/Analekta
Staier/2 volumes/DHM
Comparone/Lems
Kipnis/Seraphim
Pinnock/Archiv
Weissenberg/DG
Ross/Erato (Best sonatas)

[SonicMan46]

A bunch of Scarlatti cd's came yesterday; gifts from a friend.

Hantai/Vol. 3/Mirare...........

Don - lookin' forward to your comments - I'm still in the market for some Scarlatti on harpsichord and Hantai (on Mirare) is at the top of my list (but the discs are going for $20 each on Amazon!) - thanks. 

[rockerreds]

Thrift shop find:Beethoven:"Emperor" Concerto(Horowitz/Reiner,RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra) mono vinyl,50 cents.

[SonicMan46]

Don - lookin' forward to your comments - I'm still in the market for some Scarlatti on harpsichord and Hantai (on Mirare) is at the top of my list (but the discs are going for $20 each on Amazon!) - thanks. 

Well, 'pulled the trigger' today from a link provided in the Scarlatti thread (by Opus67), purchased the 3 CDs below from Presto Classical in the UK; on sale for $12 each + $6 total shipping to the USA - pleased w/ the price & lookin' forward to hearing the recordings - 

   

[PerfectWagnerite]

This from French Amazon:



When it is all said and done a tad under $50. I don't really have than many Callas recordings so this would be good way to fatten up on Callas. I look forward to hearing her Lucia.

[bhodges]

Beethoven: Symphonies 1 and 6 (Vänskä/Minnesota) - Actually a gift, around the time of the Big Beet's Birthday.  I have Vänskä's 9th, and like it quite a bit.

--Bruce