My Pursuit Of The Berlioz "Requiem"

[knight66]

I have not heard the Berlioz.....but, Shaw generally does not get a good press. He was at one point chorus trainer for Toscanini and he clearly had a talent for it. But as a conductor he was a high class pedestrian. I have tried several of his recordings. The sound is always superb, the choir excellent, but he had so little to say for the music that one by one, I got rid of them, with the exception of a Verdi Four Sacred Pieces.

Mike

[kishnevi]

I have not heard the Berlioz.....but, Shaw generally does not get a good press. He was at one point chorus trainer for Toscanini and he clearly had a talent for it. But as a conductor he was a high class pedestrian. I have tried several of his recordings. The sound is always superb, the choir excellent, but he had so little to say for the music that one by one, I got rid of them, with the exception of a Verdi Four Sacred Pieces.

Mike

I don't have any clear recollection of the other concerts I heard while I was in Atlanta, but Shaw's reputation always was as a choral specialist, and what I can remember doesn't dispute that general verdict. 

[karlhenning]

Au contraire.

Not a bit of it.  Observing that a performance is well recorded, says nothing about the character or quality of the performance.

To paraphrase Stravinsky, even a duck can be well recorded.

[kishnevi]

Not a bit of it.  Observing that a performance is well recorded, says nothing about the character or quality of the performance.

To paraphrase Stravinsky, even a duck can be well recorded.

The live performance  I heard from these performers, which may or may not have been connected to the recording we're talking about here,  was a very good one.

Your initial comment ("no merit of the performers") seemed to imply that you felt the performances were not very good.  Did I misunderstand you there?

[knight66]

I have sung the Requiem in several unexpected places, but the oddest one was when the choir I was in was sent to Milan to sing it with Gary Bertini. I was a bit mystified as to where the performance would take place as I knew that at that time there were no concert halls in Milan. La Scala would not have accommodated this piece. I also knew the cathedral was 'out' because there was a lot of restoration work going on in it and scaffolding all over the place.

It turned out that we were to sing it in an enormous temporarily sited, inflated tent called the 'Teatro Tenda'. It had unexpectedly good acoustics, even with the very large audience. I especially remember the air crackling when the 10 sets of kettle drums got going. They were right in front of me strung across the back of the orchestra. The sound became a sort of wah-waw, my ears in momentary overload.

It was also the first time I had heard the tenor Keith Lewis, who was very young. Bertini was obviously delighted with him and during rehearsal he experimented taking the tempo of his movement slower and slower. Lewis coped easily no matter how slow it got, taking the increasingly long phrases in single breaths. Bertini too advantage of that breath capacity and the movement held a wonderful dreamlike peace. Lewis had a remarkably sweet and powerful voice.

The performances were a success, though I never could understand the economics of this kind of arrangement.

Mike

[karlhenning]

The live performance  I heard from these performers, which may or may not have been connected to the recording we're talking about here,  was a very good one.

Your initial comment ("no merit of the performers") seemed to imply that you felt the performances were not very good.  Did I misunderstand you there?

Yes; in fact I was making no comment on the performances (I could not, for I know them not).