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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
rok2id's avatar
rok2id
7,859 posts
 
Richard Strauss

VIOLIN CONCERTO

Pavel Sporcl (violin)
Prague Symphony Orchestra
Jiri Kout
Supraphon  2009

In 1933 Strauss (1864-1949) was appointed to two important positions in the musical life of Nazi Germany: head of the Reichsmusikkammer and principal conductor of the Bayreuth Festival. The latter role he accepted after conductor Arturo Toscanini had resigned from the position in protest of the Nazi Party. These positions have led some to criticize Strauss for his seeming collaboration with the Nazis. However, Strauss's daughter-in-law, Alice Grab Strauss [née von Hermannswörth], was Jewish and much of his apparent acquiescence to the Nazi Party was done in order to save her life and the lives of her children (his Jewish grandchildren)... Further, Strauss insisted on using a Jewish librettist, Stefan Zweig, for his opera Die schweigsame Frau which ultimately led to his firing from the Reichsmusikkammer and Bayreuth.  In 1948, a year before his death, he was cleared of any wrongdoing by a denazification tribunal in Munich.---wiki

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor, Op. 8 

Allegro
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1leKe9Uy2g

Lento ma non troppo
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6Qwsq7wxyo

Rondo. Presto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lOuFMp-9Do

Cheers


schubert
7,386 posts
 
I loved it when Strauss said’ I’m the best of the second-hand composers’,
he was correct and showed what that could be .

Thanks Jim , as piano is not my first, {unless it’s Schubert or Brahms}
I have 5 Albums of her I haven’t played in years , doing it today .

Then back to symphonic with best winds .



jcazador
417 posts
 
Before a concert Liszt mingled with the audience, charming them with his witty remarks. He had a semicircle of chairs placed around the piano on stage so that illustrious guests could sit near him and converse with him between pieces. He added extra bits of his own invention to the pieces he was playing, improvising cadenzas, tremolos, double octaves, and trills even to iconic pieces like Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata. He brought his silk gloves on stage and threw them down to be fought over by audience members. Women were said to carry his discarded cigar butts in their cleavages. When he broke piano strings, as he often did in his performances, people collected the broken strings and had them made into bracelets.
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/nothing-sheer-racket

rok2id's avatar
rok2id
7,859 posts
 
Richard Strauss

TOD UND VERKLARUNG ( Death and Transfiguration)

Concertgebouw Orchestra
Bernard Haitink
Philips (now Decca)  1981

Notes: "Death and Transfiguration" is something different again, much closer to Liszt's concept of the tone-poem.  It represents the victory of the human spirit over the sharpness of death.   A man lies dying in his room.  The atmosphere of death lies heavy over the sick-bed.  He dreams of far-off happy days.  A spell of agony racks his body, but victory over the world is his.  He dreams again of childhood and youth.  The music grows more and more impassioned and then we are back in the sick-room again.  He grows weaker and his pulse beats ever more slowly until at last he sinks back into death.  Now out of the darkness comes victory, release from the world, transfiguration.

Death and Transfiguration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tab5DrnhQdI

Cheers
schubert
7,386 posts
 
I have not heard Olafsson on Mozart .

What I have heard is his DG with Debussy . Rameau and thought
it was very good .

Rameau is one of my favorites , I listen to him a lot , have too , you won’t hear him live in US . You will ,IMO. in the most interesting city in North America , Montreal .


https://youtu.be/wChgk4qq3Kc

He’s my man , Olafsson says Rameau is second only to Bach !


https://youtu.be/qTwqBVt2Clw


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