Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

[Jo498]

In what way?

I found the booklet for Schubert's D 894, the only solo disc of V.A. I own.
He ruminates about Spinoza and Dante, summarizes a poem he (V. A.) wrote "In a coma", quotes in full another poem of his "The impossibility of suicide". Then he reflects about the terror of whiteness, starting with a quote from E.A. Poe's "Arthur Gordon Pym" and Malevichs "White on White" [which is on the cover of that disc], then yet another 20 verse poem "Humanism". Finally something like this "The Unfinished Symphony is finished of course - even the second movement is unnecessary. The third and the fourth movement of the Sonata op.78 [D894] quicken the tempo of horror. And yet everythiin remains immobile - finished as it were."
There is another short Paragraph with Borges and Kafka... I cannot tell without investing more time that I'd like to, if it is overall an essay with an interesting thesis on Schubert and his music or just pretentious musings with name dropping and his poems.

IIRC the late Brahms commentary was not quite as odd, I don't think there were several poems included but I don't remember. I might mix it up with the Schubert.

[Florestan]

I found the booklet for Schubert's D 894, the only solo disc of V.A. I own.
He ruminates about Spinoza and Dante, summarizes a poem he (V. A.) wrote "In a coma", quotes in full another poem of his "The impossibility of suicide". Then he reflects about the terror of whiteness, starting with a quote from E.A. Poe's "Arthur Gordon Pym" and Malevichs "White on White" [which is on the cover of that disc], then yet another 20 verse poem "Humanism". Finally something like this "The Unfinished Symphony is finished of course - even the second movement is unnecessary. The third and the fourth movement of the Sonata op.78 [D894] quicken the tempo of horror. And yet everythiin remains immobile - finished as it were."
There is another short Paragraph with Borges and Kafka... I cannot tell without investing more time that I'd like to, if it is overall an essay with an interesting thesis on Schubert and his music or just pretentious musings with name dropping and his poems.

Brian might have been right after all... 

[Madiel]

Of course, people with questionable mental states can still make fine music.

[MusicTurner]

I found the booklet for Schubert's D 894, the only solo disc of V.A. I own.
He ruminates about Spinoza and Dante, summarizes a poem he (V. A.) wrote "In a coma", quotes in full another poem of his "The impossibility of suicide". Then he reflects about the terror of whiteness, starting with a quote from E.A. Poe's "Arthur Gordon Pym" and Malevichs "White on White" [which is on the cover of that disc], then yet another 20 verse poem "Humanism". Finally something like this "The Unfinished Symphony is finished of course - even the second movement is unnecessary. The third and the fourth movement of the Sonata op.78 [D894] quicken the tempo of horror. And yet everythiin remains immobile - finished as it were."
There is another short Paragraph with Borges and Kafka... I cannot tell without investing more time that I'd like to, if it is overall an essay with an interesting thesis on Schubert and his music or just pretentious musings with name dropping and his poems.

IIRC the late Brahms commentary was not quite as odd, I don't think there were several poems included but I don't remember. I might mix it up with the Schubert.

Thank you for the summary, which is probably enough for now, unless one has a lot of spare time to spend.

[Mandryka]

I found the booklet for Schubert's D 894, the only solo disc of V.A. I own.
He ruminates about Spinoza and Dante, summarizes a poem he (V. A.) wrote "In a coma", quotes in full another poem of his "The impossibility of suicide". Then he reflects about the terror of whiteness, starting with a quote from E.A. Poe's "Arthur Gordon Pym" and Malevichs "White on White" [which is on the cover of that disc], then yet another 20 verse poem "Humanism". Finally something like this "The Unfinished Symphony is finished of course - even the second movement is unnecessary. The third and the fourth movement of the Sonata op.78 [D894] quicken the tempo of horror. And yet everythiin remains immobile - finished as it were."
There is another short Paragraph with Borges and Kafka... I cannot tell without investing more time that I'd like to, if it is overall an essay with an interesting thesis on Schubert and his music or just pretentious musings with name dropping and his poems.

IIRC the late Brahms commentary was not quite as odd, I don't think there were several poems included but I don't remember. I might mix it up with the Schubert.

This isn't crazy, it's philosophical and possibly pretentious too as you say. Certainly the poem! But crazy is just the wrong word.

An example of crazy would be Rosalyn Tureck's claim that she was in contact with the ghost of Bach, who was directing her how to play his scores.

[Madiel]

This isn't crazy, it's philosophical and possibly pretentious too as you say. Certainly the poem! But crazy is just the wrong word.

An example of crazy would be Rosalyn Tureck's claim that she was in contact with the ghost of Bach, who was directing her how to play his scores.

Oh right, whereas saying you wrote a poem in a coma is "philosophical". Give me a break.

[Mandryka]

Anton Bruckner recalled to the conductor Hans Richter, one of his major advocates, that the Symphony's luminous opening theme had occurred to him in a dream about his mentor from long ago, Ignaz Dorn.

A violinist, conductor, and composer, it was Dorn who encouraged Bruckner to compose symphonies and delve into the music of Richard Wagner, which he felt was the music of the future, and who quickly became a musical idol for Bruckner. In the dream, Dorn was playing a theme for him on the viola and advised the composer: "This melody will bring you success." And so, according to Bruckner's account: "I immediately woke up, lit a candle, and wrote it down."


https://www.slsostories.org/post/bruckners-seventh

[Mandryka]

This fragment with a good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in a sort of Reverie brought on by two grains of Opium, taken to check a dysentery, at a Farm House between Porlock and Linton, a quarter of a mile from Culbone Church, in the fall of the year, 1797. S.T. Coleridge.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
   Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

[Florestan]

The state of dreaming or being intoxicated with alcohol or drugs is different from the state of coma. Just saying.

[Madiel]

The state of dreaming or being intoxicated with alcohol or drugs is different from the state of coma. Just saying.

This.

It's one thing to admire a recording, but the sheer amount of effort that is going into trying to persuade the rest of us that it's anything more than a recording is quite ridiculous.

[Jo498]

I am sorry if I used "crazy" in a non-clinical, very colloquial sense. I don't think V.A. is mentally ill, or in any case the text is overall too coherent and not deranged enough for a diagnosis. Also note the quotation marks. He didn't write the poem while being in coma, but it's the title. He doesn't quote it but only summarizes it. It's about a man realizing he must be dead.
Maybe "highly excentric" would be a more apt description both of some of Afanassiev's playing and these liner notes.

In any case, we should refer from now to the "unfinished Symphony" instead as "sinfonia plusquamfinita" because the 2nd movement already makes it overcomplete...

[Florestan]

I am sorry if I used "crazy" in a non-clinical, very colloquial sense. I don't think V.A. is mentally ill, or in any case the text is overall too coherent and not deranged enough for a diagnosis. Also note the quotation marks. He didn't write the poem while being in coma, but it's the title. He doesn't quote it but only summarizes it. It's about a man realizing he must be dead.
Maybe "highly excentric" would be a more apt description both of some of Afanassiev's playing and these liner notes.

Well, Brian's madman qualifies for both of the above highlighted notions. 

[Mandryka]

Well, Brian's madman qualifies for both of the above highlighted notions. 

.

In English "madman" is pejorative, eccentric isn't as much. Look, Leonhardt's music making was eccentric as was Toscanini's and the young Rubinstein. Flaubert was eccentric as was Kafka. Picasso and Braque were eccentic. Jesus H Christ was eccentric. It is no less crass to call Afanassiev a madman than it is to use that particular epithet of them.

[Florestan]

.

In English "madman" is pejorative, eccentric isn't as much. Look, Leonhardt's music making was eccentric as was Toscanini's and the young Rubinstein. Flaubert was eccentric as was Kafka. Picasso and Braque were eccentic. Jesus H Christ was eccentric. It is no less crass to call Afanassiev a madman than it is to use that particular epithet of them.

Okay, got it. Well, in Romanian madman can mean either a clinical madman or someone whose behavior is, well, highly eccentric. I guess it's a common feature of Romance languages, because Salvador Dali famously claimed that the only difference between him and a madman was that he was not a madman. 

[Mandryka]

Okay, got it. Well, in Romanian madman can mean either a clinical madman or someone whose behavior is, well, highly eccentric. I guess it's a common feature of Romance languages, because Salvador Dali famously claimed that the only difference between him and a madman was that he was not a madman. 

It's an irregular verb thing,


I have an independent mind
You are eccentric
He is round the twist

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation

[Florestan]

It's an irregular verb thing,


I have an independent mind
You are eccentric
He is round the twist

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation

Not quite. It's rather a matter of noun rather than verb. In English you have madman, crazy, lunatic, insane. In Romanian there is only one commonly-used word: nebun, which can mean either of the above, both literally and figuratively. It's the context that makes the difference.

[prémont]

Leonhardt's music making was eccentric as was Toscanini's and the young Rubinstein.

Was it really? Maybe in the ears of the past, and even not always that, because eg. I didn't find them excentric by then. And today they are rather seen as representing early mainstream, which we have past since long..

[Mandryka]

Was it really? Maybe in the ears of the past, and even not always that, because eg. I didn't find them excentric by then. And today they are rather seen as representing early mainstream, which we have past since long..

Yes, Leonhardt and Rubinstein and Flaubert etc were eccentric. They changed the rules of the game, and now, in today's system of norms, their values are more central.

In the case of Leonhardt, just the practice of using an authentic instrument, and playing flexibly and expressively. In the case of Rubinstein, almost the opposite (I'm thinking of the Chopin mazurkas in the 1930s, where he cut out the expressive embellishments of the likes of Brailowsky and Friedman). 

[prémont]

Yes, Leonhardt and Rubinstein and Flaubert etc were eccentric. They changed the rules of the game, and now, in today's system of norms, their values are more central.

Then you use the word eccentric in its original sense meaning outside the center = outside the norm. In my ears the word also implies something strange or rightout weird. In the cases of Toscanini and Leonhardt I agree with the former meaning but not with the latter.

[Jo498]

FWIW, I found the d minor sonata with Kremer/Afanassiev even less convincing than the A major although except for the first movement the tempi are almost normal here. Still, it seems every subdued until they suddenly wake up for the last movement. But it could also be that I probably like this sonata less than the first two regardless of interpretation.
In any case of the Brahms violin sonata recordings I have heard although not re-listened last week (Busch, Suk, Szeryng, Oistrakh, Ricci, Grumiaux, Frank and a few more, not all of all 3) none is as odd or even close in the very slow tempi (wrt all of opp.78 and 100 and 108,i) as Kremer/Afanassiev. One might like that (and I kind of liked the G major despite being the slowest) but I'd say they are more outliers on the periphery than merely somewhat off centre...