Classical Music for Aficionados

Allow me to add my appreciation for the contributions by the frogman.  Both here and on a jazz site, he offers great insights to the music and the artists.  He has a way of doing this for musical dummies like myself, while not dumbing down his comments, so they are also meaningful to those with more musical background.

Others of course add valuable insights, but few with the depth and consistency of the frogman, a treasure for those looking to learn.

With that, here's wishing a warm and wonderful Holiday Season to all, and a safe and sane New Year. 

Putting aside the question of whether musicians such as Milstein, or Perlman can be compared to unquestionable geniuses such as Haydn. The very things that drive any particular artist’s personal approach to “practice” in its various forms are also what shape an artist’s musical personality.  It is about more than simply what is sometimes perceived as a reflection of that person’s work ethic.  These are hugely accomplished individuals with often equally huge personalities, musically and otherwise. Artistic expression is an expression of the musician’s personality even when taking a back seat to that of the composer. I have always had trouble with the notion of a “greatest”, or “best”.  Personal favorites?  Of course.  Our own personal preferences (biases) are always a part of the mix of reasons that influence our reactions as listener; enough to always throw into question an attempt at designating a “greatest”.  

Amazing Pavarotti.

First there is no greatest in a general way of speaking... Pavarotti is not Greater than Jussi Bjorling in an absolute sense...

Second there is greatness...For me it is Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fisher Dieskau the two greatest singer i ever listen to...

Yes i know i contradict myself here...

I cannot claim in an ABSOLUTE way that Bach is the greatest composer in history, even if i think so somewhat and to be frank i think so... Because esthetic and ethic converge in Bach works at a level never seen before or after save like in Beethoven case for example but never with the perfect balance that exist in Bach between esthetical choices and means and ethical one.......

But i love Scriabin And Gesualso because the esthetic choices here are so constrasted that esthetic choices here border near an ethical abyss and over it...Gesualdo with his contrasted excessive colors use is almost contemporary composer...And Scriabin is near atonality not by an equation like Schoenberg but by a genius particular  chords choices obsessive expressive habit...

Then i am not afraid to speak about "greatest" or "best"...But i know that this is only a relative way for us to express something objective sometimes, the ouput of Telemann is the larger in European music and sometimes subjective, like Bach is the greatest Composer in European history...

But feel free to contradict me, if someone say that Scriabin is the greatest i will never mock him, knowing his genius ....Or Telemann who was the greatest composer and the prefered choice of one of my friend ... How do we know a man who has written 3,000 works and more, 1000 cantatas, 40 passions... It is safe to say that almost no one can judge Telemann...

The greatest and the best are always like say wisely frogman personal choices but these personal choices COULD be motivated and must be motivated by precise reason to say so...

it is sometimes clearer and more informative to speak about vertical greatness than to put all on a relative horizontal line...

The point is not to say which one is the best in an absolute sense , but why we think so in a relative way.... It is a way to think in different perspectives and anyway to clearly emerge, each one of these perspectives must be hierarchicallly described and related....

If we forbid ourself to express our own feeling and any hierarchy, how do we are supposed to understand all musical history? Musical history is not ONLY objective facts, it is also critical debatable esthetical choices and ethical one... All mountains are not equal at all and many Himalaya exist....

I apologize for being too exclusively passionnate in this thread... I recognize it like my greatest defect but also my greatest quality....

frogman, Ignacy Pdererwski stole that from my Marine Drill Sgt. on Paris Island .

He just took the Push Outs, out.

All jokes aside, it is exactly what happens to a Marine re PT .

Alice Sara Ott: Liszt: 12 Études d'exécution transcendante

Nudge up the volume just a smidgin, and you have a Steinway grand in your living room.