"Toccata" seems like a highfalutin musical word, but I had never seen an actual definition of it. So I looked it up in my Oxford Musical Dictionary, and it turns out it isn't highfalutin at all. It is basically a very early term for what became a "Prelude." Which could be pretty much anything, but usually a short piece that isn't specifically a dance. Bach wrote a bunch of toccatas, most famously toccatas and fugues for the organ. But he also wrote a series of keyboard toccatas that are not as well known as they should be.



On CD.

Like all the Bach that Glenn Gould plays his recordings of the toccatas are both interesting and wonderful.

New page and we are at Beethoven's 6th, aka The Pastoral. Inspired by Beethoven's walks in the woods outside Vienna, I went with Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt and Vienna Philharmonic from the late 60s.



On CD.

This is an outstanding collection of prime Vienna Phil: after they recovered from the war but before they lost the "Vienna Sound" and became just another virtuoso orchestra.

One of my desert island discs:



On CD.

There are a lot of (interesting) ways to interpret what a lot of people think is the cornerstone of Western Art Music. I'd venture The Well Tempered Clavier is perhaps more open to interpretation than any other piece I know. Fredrich Gulda does two things, first is that while he plays on a modern concert grand piano, he plays the different preludes and fugues in the style of one of the 3 keyboard instruments Bach knew: the harpsichord, clavier and pipe organ.

And he doubles down on the mathematical elegance of the composition. I'd call this interpretation "Bach, all Bach and nothing but Bach." The only "emotion" in this performance in the emotion Bach wrote into the perfection of the notes, and it is magnificent.

Orlande de Lassus aka Roland de Lassus was one of the absolute high water marks of Renaissance polyphonic choral writing. And this recording of his Cantiones Sacrae by Philippe Herreweghe and the Collegium Vocale Gent is one of the absolute high water marks Renaissance polyphonic singing. The sound and the singing is just magical.



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Richard Strauss' ethereal Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings.



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Herbert Blomstedt conducts Strauss' old orchestra, the Dresden Staatskapelle in a luxurious reading.

I am finishing up my brief revisit to the Baroque period with J.S. Bach's "Brandenburg Concertos" performed by The English Concert/Trevor Pinnock:



While I have listened to baroque music before, this may be the most concentrated focus I've given to different composers from this era, where (at least for me) the "family resemblance" of baroque music by different composers seems clearer to me.  It has also been interesting to listen to this music (where the structure and tonal "center" of the music seem well-defined), after listening to some of Shoenberg's atonal music using the 12-tone composition techniques.  

I think I may give another listen to Schoenberg now, having "reset" my ears to strongly tonal music, to see if it helps me to begin to understand what the 12-tone system is about (along with looking at some YouTube videos that discuss 12-tone music and its history).  

When I comes to the Second Viennese School I prefer the students to the teacher. I prefer the music of Alban Berg and Anton Webern to Schoenberg. And the LaSalle Quartet box is a great way to get all of their quartets, plus those of Alexander Zemlinsky.



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The LaSalle Quartet takes a bit of the edge off the music compared to the Juilliard.

I am a huge fan of both Leonard Bernstein and Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony. So I was first in line to get Bernstein's digital Tchaik 5 when it came out 30something years ago. I listened to it a couple of times and then put it away because, as I remember, it just sounded bad. So imagine my surprise when I spun the disc up decades later on my current system and found it actually sounds pretty good. It isn't going to be a demo disc but now I can hear a bunch of the details of the performance that I couldn't (or didn't) back in the 90's. And it is quite a performance: my dad liked to say Tchaikovsky's 5th was a 45 minute finale, and no one whips up a finale like Lenny.



On CD.

Sting and my friend from the University of Chicago Norman look so much alike. . . .

HA.

The German Austrian Musical Criticism Complex, GAMCC^tm, would have you believe composers like Chabrier and Roussel are too much fun to be taken seriously. And they are half right: they are a lot of fun. But they absolutely should be taken seriously as well, on their own terms. As a contrast, not a competitor to Brahms.



On CD.

Paul Paray and the Detroit Symphony are hard to beat in this music, as is the Mercury Living Presence sound.

Listened to some more Schoenberg 12-tone compositions: "Accompaniment to a Film Scene" (through it was not used for a film), and "Variations for Orchestra" , performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peirre Boulez.



I have not made friends with Schoenberg's music yet (as CAJames warned me might occur!).  I watched some YouTube videos about 12-tone music and found it interesting (though I know little about music theory).  I can kind of see the relationship between math and music in the concept, where the 12-Tone technique does seem to be designed to help a composer avoid "drifting" into tonal music, and as an intellectual exercise it seems interesting.  However, that knowledge did not help me to connect with this music.

I am reminded of Geno's observation that Bartok does not work for him, though he has given it several chances.  I think I am going to follow my suggestion to him, that if the music does not connect with you then it may not be worth too much of your time (at least for the immediate future).  This is (of course) a personal view, and others may well have an appreciation of the music that I do not have (at least as yet).  

I am also thinking about Geno's comment, that there is plenty of music that I initially did not like, and then over time learned to love - I may come to a different view if I revisit Schoenberg in the future.  

Anyone able to endure Schoenberg and like composers has something I will never have. Is it mental acuity?  Is it musical maturity?  Is it grit?  Whatever it is, I don't get it.  I feel depressed, irritated, dispirited, empty, oppressed (as by evil), angry, upset, and unsettled when I listen to this stuff.  I sense rebellion and hate toward what is good and beautiful in this stuff.  I can't even bring myself to call it music.

Give me Bach, Handel, Corelli, Haydn, Schubert, Beethoven, the Schumanns, the Mendelssohns, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and many others from this 250 year stretch.  I want to experience beauty, joy, goodness, peace, unity, harmony, order, and love when I listen to music.  There is some twentieth century music that meets these standards but the options are far more limited.

That's where I am, but of course, to each his own!  Happy listening!

Couldn't agree with you more, CAJames.  
One of many Rachmaninoff works I marvel at.  
Shaw and Telarc were a great team!

Rudolf Serkin was one of the great pianists of the 20th century, and listening to his recording of Beethoven's towering Hammerklavier Sonata will show why. From the virtuoso fireworks of the opening movement to the transcendent stillness of the Adagio to the clarity of the final finger crushing fugue the thing that impresses most is not his flawless technique, but rather his flawless musical taste and intelligence.



On CD from the Beethoven Sonatas Box.

What did Beethoven do after writing his Appassionata Sonata, the biggest, loudest most elaborate piano piece ever written up to that time? First he took a few years off, and then he wrote an absolute jewel, the Opus 78 Sonata in F#. I'd say it resides somewhere between unknown and underappreciated and AFAIK no one has recorded it outside of a complete survey of the 32 sonatas. But no less an authority than Beethoven himself singled it out as one of this favorites and it is about 9 minutes of pure bliss. Esp. the way Jeno Jando plays it.



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Ravel's Daphins et Chloe was written about the same time as Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Schoenberg's 5 pieces. It strikes me as both very modern and very classical, and I like much more than either of the admitted much more "revolutionary" works. It is also one of the great virtuoso showpieces for orchestra. The Czech Philharmonic play the 2 Daphnis and Chloe Suites with both panache and Bohemian charm.



On CD

From the Libor Pesek Gold Collection.

Brahms had what today we'd call Beethoven Issues. He actually had a lot of issues, but this is the one that matters here. He was called "the next Beethoven" by no less than Robert Schumann when he was just starting out, and was perhaps uniquely qualified to understand just exactly how hard it would be to live up to than billing. The complex manifest itself in many ways, but the biggest was that he was afraid to write his first symphony, and spent many years writing "symphonic" music for anything but a symphony for orchestra. One of his earliest outlets was the piano sonata, of which he wrote three, and each more elaborately symphonic than the one before. By the time he got to his Third Sonata you can almost hear the orchestra playing the music, although it is a perfectly excellent piano piece in its own right.



On CD.

Julius Katchen was one of several mid-century American pianists who had their lives and/or careers cut tragically short. But he remains one of the great Brahms pianists to ever make a recording and his collection of solo piano pieces has been a classic since it was released.

What to make of Bach's Art of the Fugue, the piece on which he was working when he died? Well, I find it, in a word (or two), kinda boring. YMMV. The Well Tempered Clavier is a desert island piece for me, AotF is different. It seems more like an academic exercise then something for serious listening. But it does make nice background music.



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Certainly Angela Hewitt sounds and plays beautifully, like she does with pretty much everything.