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Classical Music for Aficionados

I would like to start a thread, similar to Orpheus’ jazz site, for lovers of classical music.
I will list some of my favorite recordings, CDs as well as LP’s. While good sound is not a prime requisite, it will be a consideration.
  Classical music lovers please feel free to add to my lists.
Discussion of musical and recording issues will be welcome.

I’ll start with a list of CDs.  Records to follow in a later post.

Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique.  Chesky  — Royal Phil. Orch.  Freccia, conductor.
Mahler:  Des Knaben Wunderhorn.  Vanguard Classics — Vienna Festival Orch. Prohaska, conductor.
Prokofiev:  Scythian Suite et. al.  DG  — Chicago Symphony  Abbado, conductor.
Brahms: Symphony #1.  Chesky — London Symph. Orch.  Horenstein, conductor.
Stravinsky: L’Histoire du Soldat. HDTT — Ars Nova.  Mandell, conductor.
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances. Analogue Productions. — Dallas Symph Orch. Johanos, cond.
Respighi: Roman Festivals et. al. Chesky — Royal Phil. Orch. Freccia, conductor.

All of the above happen to be great sounding recordings, but, as I said, sonics is not a prerequisite.


128x128rvpiano
jim204
881 posts
 
I'm afraid Norrington in anything is not to my taste . I attended one of his Edinburgh Festival appearances some years back and it was awfull with violin playing that had your ears bleeding nearly. I hear also that he will not countenace any violin soloist performing with him unless they eschew Metal strings for gut. I heard a Proms performance some years ago and it was Victoria Mullova playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto on gut with little or no vibrato. It was absoloutely dreadful robbing that girl of her wonderful golden tone and replacing it with a dreadful screech that reminded me of those dreadful busking pipers who plague the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh . No wonder tourists think we reside in caves .
gdnrbob
4,444 posts
 
Whoo, you guys are a tough crowd.
I think bdp hit the nail on the head.-And, the liner notes on the Schumann symphonies relate that Norrington used scores that as close to what Schumann wrote, if I recall correctly.

When I recall listening to the Brandenburg concertos when I was young and then listening to them performed on 'Period Instruments', it seemed like a breathe of fresh air.
I, for one, like the 'cleaner' sound of period instrument recordings.
And, though Schumann was in the Romantic Period, he was at its' beginning.
B
rvpiano's avatar
rvpiano OP
2,656 posts
 
Bob,

Someone once said “Do not attack men’s [or women’s] pleasures.”
It comes down to a matter of taste.  I, too, took delight in listening to some new historically informed approaches to performance.  Norrington is just not to my taste in the Schumann symphonies, but, I’m sure, many think as you do.


jcazador
417 posts
 
rv
love starker
his music, his lifestyle, his attitude
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,788 posts
 

The first Classical I heard was on TV when I was a teenager (I didn’t come from a musical family). Being a modern, "raised-on-rock" kinda guy, I found it SO boring: slow, plodding tempi, orchestras with huge ranks of stringed instruments played with an extreme degree of vibrato, all sweet and cloying (think Montovani ;-) . Bla! Those adjectives I now associate with the overly-Romanticized performances of what can and should be bracing, energetic music. That was done to Beethoven and Mozart by the 20th Century Symphony Orchestra, and it imo emasculated their music.

Then a couple of things happened; I heard the debut albums of Van Dyke Parks and Randy Newman, both of which featured orchestration. And, I got a job at the best record store in San Jose, Discount Records (owned by CBS), which had a complete Classical inventory and clerks who knew the music, a couple of them music majors at nearby San Jose State (now University of California San Jose).

Van Dyke Parks had collaborated with Brian Wilson on the ill-fated Smile album, with which I was obsessed. Van’s Song Cycle album was a revelation; if you haven’t heard it, remedy that situation! On that album Van included a song by some guy named Randy Newman, so when his first album came I had to hear it. And I loved it.

I asked the Discount Records Classical clerks for advice on music less "easy-listening" than that which I had heard, and they steered me to Stravinsky and the other 20th Century composers, even Penderecki ;-) .

Next came recording with a songwriter who was a music major at The University of California Riverside. He helped me navigate my way into Mozart, and finally to the source of all: J.S. Bach. This songwriter (who died at a young age, the victim of his terrible diet) used his knowledge of composition to write his songs, just as does Brian Wilson. See, that’s "the problem" I have with guys like Keith Emerson/ELP and other Progressive bands; they wear their "Classically-trained" badges on their sleeves, but the songs they write exhibit no evidence of compositional wisdom.


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