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I’m currently working through the 234 box sets and 3 composer retrospectives in this thread. The craziness started in early 2020 with the Stravinsky box and I’ve been lost to it ever since. The link takes you to the END, so you’ll need to scroll up. I will continue to…..
The Jessye Norman Studio Recital Thread.
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#NowSpinning Andris Nelsons’s Mahler 3. Having been somewhat bored by 1 and 2 my hopes have not been high here. But there are certainly enjoyable moments amongst frustrations. I just wish the winds were *far* less polite.
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New acquisition to add to my growing family of boxes. There are great classics in here. Some wonderful Sibelius and Delius to die for. Sir Thomas Beecham. Complete Stereo Recordings on Warner Classics. 35 discs.
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…probably several performances which, moment for moment, outstrip this one in terms of rugged power, but it’s pretty satisfying on its own terms. The tension does build well and the final release feels inevitable.
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#BeechamStereo CD 2 starts with Schubert’s Sixth Symphony in a winning performance full of joy. This is classic Beecham territory and I was thrilled to hear such spontaneity and naturalness in the phrasing.
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#BeechamStereo CD 1 concludes with a justified classic, Beecham’s Sibelius Pelleas. His orchestra digs deep and sounds splendidly earthy, throughout an interpretation of spacious grandeur and great nuance. The Death of Melisande is almost unbearably moving.
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#NowSpinning magical Sibelius with Sir Thomas Beecham. As ever, Beecham’s Sibelius is romantic and warm, which might not be to everyone’s taste. But I find it deeply satisfying in this particular work.
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#NowSpinning this very cold Leningrad. Actually I quite like this work to be somewhat chilly, but maybe not quite as frozen as this. The glacial beauty is clear, but is it delivering enough punch? Still enjoying it, though.
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Astonishing divergence of opinion amongst critics on this. Four stars in the last Penguin Guide. Four out of ten on Classics Today. I think I am with the latter. It’s polite, inexplosive and tensionless. Meh.
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#NowSpinning Bruckner Symphony No.2 from this great man’s Gewandhaus cycle. May he rest in peace.
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#NowSpinning Roger Muraro with Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. This is a work full of endless detail and wonder. It is no surprise, then, that each recording seems to wring the very last drops of imagination from the pianist.
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We have a Battle Royale! A thread to chart my ongoing comparison of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s Complete Ravel with…..Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s Complete Ravel. I have set up a playlist that takes both recordings of each work and places them side by side in a random order. Let’s see…
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For Miroirs - which has five movements - I am going to compare each individually. ‘Noctuelles’ clearly inspired Bavouzet’s design imagination in both performances. The harder-toned MDG evokes a skittishness in the nocturnal flutterings, but the Chandos has more light and shade, ancing. So it’s 2 - 5 in favour of the Chandos.
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The next of the Miroirs is Oiseaux Tristes - Sad Birds - and this one brings more evrn honours between the two performances. The MDG is certainly melancholic, but in a lonely kind of way. The Chandos actually feels like the bird is dying, which seems closer to Ravel’s intentions. s.
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A thread for Mahler’s Second Symphony and all preliminary works related to it. I’ll try to use minimal space for each recording, but that may change here and there. It will take a long time to build this as I listen to all my collection again; do join me on the journey.
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...and deliver character as well as refinement and poise. The finale continues to take a no-nonsense path, with Blomstedt no wasting a single note. My only concern is that the final moments appear to have been unnecessarily manipulated by the engineers, losing some naturalness.
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Andris Nelsons’s Mahler 2 on DG
#NowSpinning Andris Nelson’s with Mahler Symphony No.2. Well the first movement is actually quite sunny and pretty. That’s when it’s not just frosty. I think Mahler intended something much more trenchant and dark than this. I didn’t really feel any particular build up of…
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A thread for Mahler’s First Symphony and all preliminary works related to it. I’ll try to use minimal space for each recording, but that may change here and there. It will take a long time to build this as I listen to all my collection again; do join me on the journey!
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…brilliantly coloured and smartly inflected. I just wish there was a bit more of Mahler’s youthful zest. As it is, the performance feels like it’s trying to present this as a mature work. Oh and the inclusion of Blumine between movements 1 and 2 is meaningless in this context.
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Andris Nelsons’s DG Mahler 1
#NowSpinning Android Nelsons with Mahler Symphony No.1. The quiet opening was fine, but when the cellos play the first statement of the main tune there is a really horrible affectation right at the end of the first line. I hope things improve.
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Back to work from some down time and found some nice packages had been delivered! Box 1 of Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concertos series has long been a dream. I stopped collecting the series in the hope this would appear. And here it is on 50 discs.
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#RomaticConcertosBox1 CD 5 Rimsky-Korsakov’s very brief, but charmingly inventive Concerto is a huge treat. Fabulous orchestration is splashed all over the piece, which sparkles and glows. Malcolm Binns makes light work of the dancing piano part.
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#RomaticConcertosBox1 CD 5 also contains the two Balakirev Concertos. The 1st is a charmingly tuneful single movement work. But the 2nd is an altogether more substantial creation, it’s thrilling in the outer movements and genuinely touching in the middle. Binns plays with fins
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#NowSpinning Balakirev’s Piano Concertos, from this disc in the wonderful Hyperion Romantic Piano Concertos series. A box of treasures indeed.
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Love your Inner Classical Music Geek retweeted
Conductor Eugen Jochum was born on 1 November 1902. Undoubtedly and justly famous for his interpretations of German repertoire, few command such comprehensively impressive discographies. What are your favourite Jochum recordings?
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...Mehta's Los Angeles account on Decca sounds much more involved and exciting. That account is much more colourful than this pale rendering.
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#MehtaWarner CD 9 Mehta’s Sibelius 2 is too low-voltage for my personal taste, though I still enjoyed a lot of it, particularly the stirring finale. Elsewhere the edges are smoothed over and momentum is lacking. But there’s a lot of cold beauty and it’s mostly very well played.
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#NowSpinning a version of Sibelius’s Symphony No.2 I don’t think I recall ever hearing. To be honest the very option gestures seem too relaxed to me, but let’s see how it pans out as a whole…
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Igor Stravinsky complete Columbia Recordings on 57 discs. Several of these feature the composer as conductor, but many were merely supervised for him. But it's clearly an absolute treasure trove.
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#ColumbiaStravinsky CD 4 starts with the 1946 recording Stravinsky made of his own Symphony of Psalms. This is stripped back and avoids any lushness or sentiment, so that it sounds mechanically ritualistic and somewhat obsessive. A real window into the composer’s thinking.
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#ColumbiaStravinsky CD 4 also includes the Symphony in 3 Movements. A fabulous example of how easily this angular and jabbing music yet falls easily on the ear. Stravinsky relishes the jazzy rhythms, which are made all the more compelling by the piano contribution. Superb!
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#NowSpinning Ireland’s Concertino Pastorale from this new disc. The close recording in a big acoustic makes the music sound massive.
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Oh. My. Dear. God. I just watched this film, having stumbled across it. I didn’t know it existed. I can’t think of many horror films with such a grim ending and it takes a LOT for me to react this way. If you like ‘found footage’ films, this one is way better than Blair Witch!
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#NowSpinning Stravinsky’s Symphony in 3 Movements, conducted by the composer. Even when the music is angular and spiky it somehow falls so easily on the ear. What a genius Stravinsky was.
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