Recordings That You Are Considering

[Scarpia]

I stand corrected on everything else... but not this.  I will blame the labels because the economy is not the major factor for their decline.  It was their inability to get onboard with inexpensive drm-free digital downloads, and lowering prices of cds to a point that people would buy.  They made stupid decision after stupid decision, and frankly they got what they deserved.  If people can dump hundreds of dollars on iphones and ipods and accessories for them, they can spend money on music.  The majority of them choose not to and choose piracy instead.  Major artists have been moving away from labels to deal straight with either itunes or walmart, and sign with companies that schedule tours putting all of their profit into concerts.  This is a world in which we don't need record labels because it's just like you said it doesn't take expensive equipment anymore to make recordings, and the industry made almost no attempt to adjust to the new era until it was too late.  Do you know that only now (as in this very month) has universal said that they would drop cd prices to $6-10?  That should have happened a decade ago.

There is a point where change is going to happen, and a company will either embrace it or stick with the old model.  Those that do the latter die, those that do the former succeed.  When cd came to be the industry went the right way, when mp3 became popular for online sharing, they went the wrong way.

It is very easy for you to say that other people should throw their money away.  Holding the price point where it did sustained their industry.  The price point you suggest was sufficient to support Naxos, which paid third-rate orchestras by the hour to record music.  Well, there already was Naxos, their niche was charging enough to pay Royalties to the Vienna Philharmonic so we would have an alternative to Naxos.

[George]

You don't get it.  People don't download because they want it cheaper.  They download because they want it on their ipod and don't even have a cd player anymore.  I suspect it will have no effect on the iTunes store.

From there it's just a short step to downloading for free. How about itunes's greed? .99 for one lossy song? Seems like a shitty deal to me.

[DavidW]

It is very easy for you to say that other people should throw their money away.  Holding the price point where it did sustained their industry.  The price point you suggest was sufficient to support Naxos, which paid third-rate orchestras by the hour to record music.  Well, there already was Naxos, their niche was charging enough to pay Royalties to the Vienna Philharmonic so we would have an alternative to Naxos.

Well I don't know about that.  It's about supply-demand.  The majority of people feel that music in both cds and digital downloads are overpriced.  If you lower the price point and many more people buy, then you make more money.  But you have to understand that I'm talking about popular music where the majority of listeners feel that the quality of the product is not good enough to warrant paying alot for it.  And though many really enjoy the quality of older music, they feel that it simply due to being older it should be cheaper.  In classical music I don't think that we begrudge the studios for the price point as much because (a) they have bargain box sets, (b) the quality of recordings both sound and performance wise are excellent, and (c) fewer classical music listeners are willing to be satisfied with pirating or buying lossy music, and prefer cds.  None of those issues are prevalent for pop, but they are for classical.

The industry was not sustained by their business model, they were ruined by it.  They have laid off a great # of employees and merged many times over just to stay a float.

[Todd]

...Henryk Szeryng, Arthur Grumiaux, Nathan Milstein, Viktoria Mullova, Rachel Podger and Julia Fischer....While Hilary Hahn is a good violinist, she is certainly not on the same level as the above names IMO ...

While I think a good case could be made for saying that Hahn doesn't equal up to Grumiaux or Milstein, I completely disagree regarding Mullova and Fischer.  (Haven't heard Podger yet.)  Fischer, in particular, strikes me as one of the most over-rated violinists I've heard.  She actually succeeded in making Mozart boring for me, for instance.  And Mullova, while a technical powerhouse, sounds a bit distant, cold, and too precise.  Everyone's tastes differ, of course, but I can't place the names you mention in the pantheon of greats just yet.

As to the disc, it was apparently a pet project for Hahn.  I bought it to hear Ms Schaefer, and even then was disappointed.  Just a dud all the way around. 

[Bulldog]

While I think a good case could be made for saying that Hahn doesn't equal up to Grumiaux or Milstein, I completely disagree regarding Mullova and Fischer.  (Haven't heard Podger yet.)  Fischer, in particular, strikes me as one of the most over-rated violinists I've heard.  She actually succeeded in making Mozart boring for me, for instance.  And Mullova, while a technical powerhouse, sounds a bit distant, cold, and too precise.  Everyone's tastes differ, of course, but I can't place the names you mention in the pantheon of greats just yet.

Both Mullova and Fischer well satisfy my tastes.  I find their respective Mozart discs exceptional - Fischer for her beauty of tone and Mullova for her searing interpretations.

[Coopmv]

While I think a good case could be made for saying that Hahn doesn't equal up to Grumiaux or Milstein, I completely disagree regarding Mullova and Fischer.  (Haven't heard Podger yet.)  Fischer, in particular, strikes me as one of the most over-rated violinists I've heard.  She actually succeeded in making Mozart boring for me, for instance.  And Mullova, while a technical powerhouse, sounds a bit distant, cold, and too precise.  Everyone's tastes differ, of course, but I can't place the names you mention in the pantheon of greats just yet.

As to the disc, it was apparently a pet project for Hahn.  I bought it to hear Ms Schaefer, and even then was disappointed.  Just a dud all the way around.

I overstated the case for Julia Fischer.  While she may be a bit prettier than Hilary Hahn, she is perhaps only marginally better as a violinist.  I have a small number of recordings by Hilary Hahn but many by Rachel Podger and Viktoria Mullova.   IMO, Hilary needs to work a bit more to catch up with the other two.

[Coopmv]

From there it's just a short step to downloading for free. How about itunes's greed? .99 for one lossy song? Seems like a shitty deal to me.

George,  You made an excellent point.  I think iTunes is a ripoff.  That is why the publishers are now very careful not to give away the store to iPad, which Apple will no doubt push very hard.  At the end of the day, content is king, not hardware.  It will be interesting to see how the profits at iTunes get downsized due to this new music pricing model ...   

[Elgarian]

While I'm struggling to choose between two versions of Purcell's Fairy Queen, I'd like to posit a similar question to my earlier one, this time with regard to John Blow's Venus and Adonis. I have this version (Medlam, on Musique d'Abord):


I find this is very lovely - but is there any alternative out there that others would recommend as significantly better ?

[Elgarian]

Maybe you could consider this excellent live recording by Ottavio Dantone and his people:

Well, AM - listening to the samples from Dantone and Christie leaves me wanting both. The treatments are very different - Christie kicks off at higher speed, and there's a general feeling of fresh-airness about his whole approach. The Dantone is mellower, somehow darker, but very beautiful, and whichever one I choose I think I'll do so knowing that I'm missing out on something. So, when the new month starts and I'm back in funds, I think I may just have to get both.

[kishnevi]

While I think a good case could be made for saying that Hahn doesn't equal up to Grumiaux or Milstein, I completely disagree regarding Mullova and Fischer.  (Haven't heard Podger yet.)  Fischer, in particular, strikes me as one of the most over-rated violinists I've heard.  She actually succeeded in making Mozart boring for me, for instance.  And Mullova, while a technical powerhouse, sounds a bit distant, cold, and too precise.  Everyone's tastes differ, of course, but I can't place the names you mention in the pantheon of greats just yet.

As to the disc, it was apparently a pet project for Hahn.  I bought it to hear Ms Schaefer, and even then was disappointed.  Just a dud all the way around.

Podger specializes in pre-1800 to a degree that it might not be fair to compare here to some of the others in that listing.  It is true, however, that her recording is my favorite version of the Bach solo works.

As for the Mayer oboe CD that spawned this particular sub-thread--while in Borders yesterday, I took another look at it.  My memory of the tracklist was wrong.  Much of the music is chorales from the cantatas, and not necessarily the best known ones.  So  I was wrong to classify it as a variation on "Bach's greatest hits".  Don't know yet if I'll actually get it, but it interests me more than it did before.

[Scarpia]

George,  You made an excellent point.  I think iTunes is a ripoff.  That is why the publishers are now very careful not to give away the store to iPad, which Apple will no doubt push very hard.  At the end of the day, content is king, not hardware.  It will be interesting to see how the profits at iTunes get downsized due to this new music pricing model ...   

The same way that price cuts on buggy-whips wiped out profits for automobile manufacturers.   

[jlaurson]

t Hahn doesn't equal up to Grumiaux or Milstein, I completely disagree regarding Mullova and Fischer. Fischer, in particular, strikes me as one of the most over-rated violinists I've heard.  She actually succeeded in making Mozart boring for me, for instance.  And Mullova, while a technical powerhouse, sounds a bit distant, cold, and too precise.

Would it be fair to assume from this that you have not heard Fischer live yet? Although I can see where you are coming from--direction-wise, I disagree strongly with the flat-out dismissal. The in-concert potential of Fischer is without upper limits, even if you don't like her (lack of) style. The best Beethoven concerto I've ever heard (live), for example, came from Fischer. Although, in fairness to the 'other side': A colleague showed me a review he wrote of one of her earliest recitals, when she was 13... treating her not as a "Wunderkind-violinist" but as he would any mature artist. And his verdict was more or less along the lines of: impeccable, but not yet with character...  a little too neat. I paraphrase and he was more nuanced, but you could still take the review, patch a new picture on it, and publish it as a current one.

Interestingly I find it is Hahn who, with her wry, silvery-spidery ability, is fast becoming a new dry-ice-queen. Very aloof. But also very skilled and very musical in its own way. At least she is the real-deal, unlike fiddlers like marketing geniuses Joshua Bell and Daniel Hopeless. Podger's S&P (Bach, we're talking) is the S&P recording to have as a HIP version. (Although technically Mullova II is also HIP, I still consider her's a hybrid--justly or not.)

[Scarpia]

Interestingly I find it is Hahn who, with her wry, silvery-spidery ability, is fast becoming a new dry-ice-queen. Very aloof. But also very skilled and very musical in its own way. At least she is the real-deal, unlike fiddlers like marketing geniuses Joshua Bell and Daniel Hopeless. Podger's S&P (Bach, we're talking) is the S&P recording to have as a HIP version. (Although technically Mullova II is also HIP, I still consider her's a hybrid--justly or not.)

Hybrid or no, I didn't find Mullova II to be not terribly convincing.  I heard a little of Hahn doing Bach violin concerti, and it sounded like a midi synthesizer to me.  I have her Sibelius disc in hand but haven't listened yet.

[mc ukrneal]

For those interested, and get the Mezzo channel, they will be showing a Fischer concert where she plays a violin concerto in one half and a piano concerto in the other half (don't recall the program).  It is on Wednesday.

[The new erato]

For those interested, and get the Mezzo channel, they will be showing a Fischer concert where she plays a violin concerto in one half and a piano concerto in the other half (don't recall the program).  It is on Wednesday.

I seem to remember it was the Grieg in the 2nd half.

Didn't Mendelssohn compose and piano-and-violin concerto? Seeing her do that would be really something.

[Antoine Marchand]

Well, AM - listening to the samples from Dantone and Christie leaves me wanting both. The treatments are very different - Christie kicks off at higher speed, and there's a general feeling of fresh-airness about his whole approach. The Dantone is mellower, somehow darker, but very beautiful, and whichever one I choose I think I'll do so knowing that I'm missing out on something. So, when the new month starts and I'm back in funds, I think I may just have to get both.

The difficult art to avoid duplications... 

[kishnevi]

I seem to remember it was the Grieg in the 2nd half.

Didn't Mendelssohn compose and piano-and-violin concerto? Seeing her do that would be really something.

He did.  The recording I have features Argerich and Kremer with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as part of DG's box of Argerich concertos.  (The original CD included the Violin Concerto as companion piece.)

[Elgarian]

The difficult art to avoid duplications... 

Alternatively ... I want them ALL and I want them NOW!

[George]

I already have an earlier incarnation of this set, so I am not "considering" it, but wanted to give you guys a heads-up.

On sale now at MDT, Ashkenazy's excellent Chopin Box set for under $46 -



http://www.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/product//4782282.htm

[mc ukrneal]

I already have an earlier incarnation of this set, so I am not "considering" it, but wanted to give you guys a heads-up.

On sale now at MDT, Ashkenazy's excellent Chopin Box set for under $46 -



http://www.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/product//4782282.htm

Can be had at Amazon for that price too (Moviemars).