And speaking of batting around, we're back to Beethoven's 5th again.



On CD.

There are almost an unlimited number of performances, but I went with a relatively obscure one: Erich Leinsdorf's Boston Symphony performance from the mid-60s complete Beethoven symphony cycle on RCA. Fun fact: RCA recorded one of the first complete Beethoven symphony cycles with Arturo Toscanini, and even though they had both Fritz Reiner's Chicago Symphony and Charles Munch's Boston Symphony under contract, two of the great orchestras of the "golden age of stereo," it was Erich Leinsdorf who recorded the next complete Beethoven symphony cycle for the label. His fifth is one of the highlights, both dramatic and lyrical by turns and the corporate virtuosity of the BSO is on full display.

A great way to spend a rainy day.



On CD

Weird story but beautiful music. The music Strauss wrote for his operas is (just) a little more adventurous than what is in his purely orchestral music, and it is magnificent.

Another great sounding Antal Dorati recording. Actually, one of the great recordings of all time: legendary performance of fantastic music in world class sound.



DSD rip from SACD

The Starker/Mercury/Dvorak Concerto is on everyone's (mine included) short list of the best recordings of anything ever, but to do it justice your system really needs to swing the entire dynamic range of a symphony orchestra. From whisper quiet to blow the roof climaxes, you've been warned.

More Bernstein/Mahler, his digital 1980s DG 7th with the New York Phil.



On CD.

This might be even better than his earlier CBS recording. Every weird, spooky detail is played to the hilt and the music sounds more "modern" (in a good way) than it actually is.

Generally I don't have a lot of good things so called "Historically Informed Performances" but I don't hate all of them. The movement has grown up a lot in the last 40 years: when it first became a thing it seemed like mostly it was a race to see how could play a piece the fastest and with the weirdest sounding instruments. Now there are plenty of excellent sounding, well played and perfectly worthwhile HIP recordings out there that provide an interesting contrast to the "old school" performances that I generally prefer. Case in point Phillipe Herreweghe's Bach B Minor Mass on the Phi label. It is quicker and more transparent than my favorite B Minor, by Jochum, but well played, very well sung and certainly worth a listen.



On CD

I had a bit set up for the Coltrane Ballads disc Lon posted, but he deleted it . Here goes anyway.

Coltrane Ballads is one of the most beautiful recordings I know. As is Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli playing Chopin's Ballade No. 1.



24/96 FLAC Download.

CA, many thanks for continually raving about Dvorak. I have delved deeper into his music, and love what I’m discovering!

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Right on! I saw your post yesterday but it wouldn't actually load in my browser until just now. Dvorak is just awesome, I'm glad you're digging it.

Unusual for a composer, Dvorak was a viola player and not much of pianist. The piano music he wrote is great (like everything) but he was really at home writing for strings. His string chamber music and the cello concerto are justifiably famous, but his violin concerto is (almost) equally as great and doesn't get nearly the respect it deserves.



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Josef Suk more or less owned the Dvorak Violin Concerto and he came by it more or less honestly. His grandfather was the composer Josef Suk who was also Dvorak's son-in-law.

Playing this when you posted.

I'm finishing up (for now) on the Bartok Quartets.  I liked all of them - while they are more challenging than a lot of what I listen to, they are rewarding!



As you suggested, James, the first two quartets seem like the easiest entry point, and starting with the third quartet it took more time for this music to make sense to me.  What I found particularly helpful was to watch live performances of these quartets on YouTube.  Seeing the performances, and who is playing what, makes the music clearer to me (that is not the case for me for orchestral music, where the visual cues don't seem so helpful).  

I particularly liked the strong rhythmic content of the music, and all the "textures" (hope that's the right word) created by the four instruments.  Glad I spent some time with this music.

At one point in my life I felt like it was important to listen to all 200+ cantatas that Bach wrote. But I quickly realized life is much too short for that. But there are some bits that are among my favorite music Bach, or anyone, ever wrote. And that would be the opening choruses of his "Reformation Cantatas" BWV 79 and 80.

Bach was a devout Lutheran and for whatever reason Reformation Day (the anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg) coaxed the most exciting music he ever composed from him. And exciting is not an adjective one usually associates with Bach.



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There is a tendency in the "historically informed" movement to underplay the brass parts, which is a mistake but no doubt makes them cheaper to record and perform. But these performances do a fairly good job of blowing the roof off the joint.

I’m really trying hard to understand Bartok. So far, the only things I (kind of) like, are the selections on this. However, there has been a lot of music over the years, that I have not cared for at first, but came to like or even love. So I have learned to give music a good chance.


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For a composer considered one of the giants of 20th century music Bartok didn't actually write a lot of stuff. In his defense he had a lot going on: he was a touring concert pianist, professor at the Liszt Academy in Budapest and spent a bunch of time wandering around Eastern Europe and North Africa (at least) listening to and recording folk music while more or less inventing ethnomusicology. Most of the music he did write was for piano, either for his own concerts or for pedagogical purposes. But that is for another post.

I don't think there is much debate that his masterpieces are the string quartets, the Concerto for Orchestra and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. The later two pieces are among the last to enter the standard repertoire. When I'm in the right mood I enjoy his expressionistic opera, Bluebeards Castle, but I'd be tempted to say the most "user friendly" of his remaining (orchestral) music is the 3rd Piano Concerto (the first two are pretty thorny, but rewarding like most of his music).



On CD

It seems a little provincial to say Hungarians own Bartok's music, and it isn't exactly true, but if you want to hear the Bartok Concertos you can't do better than Anda and Fricsay who happen to both be Hungarian.

Bruckner's 9th is the other great unfinished symphony. And it is very great indeed. There are two ways to play it, one is dramatic, leaning toward demonic. The other is majestic leaning toward prayerful. Either can be very effective, and Carlo Maria Guilini's recording with the Vienna Philharmonic is certainly in the latter camp.



On CD.

This is a mesmerizing performance, but you have to turn up the volume because the beauty is very much in the quiet details, as well as the shattering climaxes and the dynamic range of this recording is huge.

Stuck on Dvorak…

Like the Beethoven String Quartets I have a bunch of recordings of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, and my "favorite" is usually the last one to which I've listened. But Craig Sheppard's version is always near the top of the list. It is a much more old fashioned, romantic interpretation than is the norm these days. And the sound, for a live recording, is excellent.



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Most of J.S. Bach's music is very serious, sometimes oppressively serious. And while it can certainly be beautiful and very moving it is rarely what I'd call fun. But the Flute Sonatas played by Andrea Oliva and Angela Hewitt are both beautiful and fun, I guess because it is hard to call anything played on the flute "oppressive."



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This is a recent acquisition and the recording (and playing) are fabulous.

The Alban Berg Quartet fancies itself as the Viennese String Quartet. And there is no more Viennese composer than Franz Schubert, who spent virtually every day of his (tragically short) life in or around Vienna. So it should be no surprise that the ABQ's early digital recording of Schubert's transcendent C major String Quintet is fantastic.



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So what are you waiting for?

That is a very late Mercury recording that I don't think I've ever seen (or heard about) in any form. Curious what you think of it.

The Boston Symphony is, or at least was, well known as the Great American French Orchestra. So Paul Paray's Detroit Symphony would have been The Other Great American French Orchestra. And they are every bit of that in this collection of music a la francaise in great Living Presence sound.



On CD.

Violin is not my favorite instrument. So, while there is a lot of violin music I appreciate and listen to, there is not a lot of it I really like. But near the top of that short list is the Sibelius Violin Concerto.



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The Sibelius Concerto has been well served on recordings, and some of my favorites include David Oistrakh, Gil Shahan and Hillary Hahn. But none of them are better than Perlman and Previn from the "wide tie" years aka the late 70s.

John
The amount of attention, time and care you put into your room and set up is remarkable. Thanks for sharing the pictures.
Tony

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Schoenberg is an interesting case. After he wrote some nice late romantic music like Verklarte Nacht he felt like traditional tonal music was played out and tried to save it by writing ever more elaborately complex atonal music that culminated in his 12-tone approach. Which, long story short, never really caught on. What actually "saved" music were the ideas of composures like Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Bartok, but that is for another post. I've come to appreciate Schoenberg and the rest of the so called Second Viennese School and while it isn't my favorite thing on the menu I will order it from time to time. Probably my favorite disc, and one that is on most everyone's short list for Great Recordings of all Time^tm is Antal Dorati's on Mercury



On CD

Besides demonstration quality sound the thing that makes the disc so enjoyable is the individual pieces are only a few minutes long and easily digestible in spite of the difficult harmonic language.