Classical Music for Aficionados

Behind the music of Ives there is a question, it is not a man who decided to be a composer here, he worked unrecognized as an insurance company executive ,it is a man who happened to be composer, after being a church organist like his father, but obsessed by a deep  question...

He was an "amateur" of all genre of music, instruments,new sound, unusual ideas, unusal statistics, and strange mysteries, like Leonardo Da Vinci happened to be an artist "amateur" of plants, minerals, chemistry, mechanics, etc ...

They were ARTISTS in the deepest sense...Investigative free souls....

What i retain of this analysis, which makes us understand better what feel deply Ives, is that the world is the encounter of an indefinite numbers of free events without any synthesis, a musical self organized chaos, why? The answer is the emerging beauty of the question itself ...Amazing....

This is "the unanswered question" posed by Ives for me ...

A general remark: Music must be investigated, not only tasted, music must be understood at a deepest level than his syntax or grammar, music must be lived through...Music then is not about tastes so much but about the release of the human spirit from his chain, prejudices,limitations, and attachment... It was Scriabin idea to do so with his music and Charles Ives idea too...These two unrecognized or underestimated geniuses, Ives and Sciabin live at the same time in two difdferent country and express the same freedom ....The two explored  tonal/atonality frontier  and the cosmic enigma... 

«Imperfection is the peak and the apex» René char

I use Gil Shaham as a standard much as twoleftears .

I was using Barber here and Bernstein because i discovered the WORK with them... Stern play with Bernstein here... Anyway Shaham is a genius too...But my point was related to the composer which is a great one for me...

And when i like some work i am sometimes unable to choose...

For example these interpretations of the Well tempered Klavier... at first i think i was able to choose... I was wrong...

The Russian master play with a delicate sensibility, like improvising that is sublime...

The Hungarian master play with a controlled WAY that is sublime too...

( i was unable to retrieve his SECOND interpretation recording, here he play in concert but like he played in his second recording though. my favorite one by far, which is way more mature and more controlled playing than his first recording of the work)

One interpretation is more related to my feeling, the Russian one, who play intimate and make our heart participate more a fascinating and pulsating singing interpretation , the other one is more "cosmical", the Hungarian one, almost a fragment of eternity , a block of perfect ice, an HYPNOTIZING interpretation .... Impossible to choose one and forget the other...

Then Shaham is a genius, Stern too in Barber ....

And Barber created a piece Bach would have loved very much too...That was my point... Barber genius...Bernstein and Stern like Shaham are great musicians...my preference here goes to the Bernstein version because the duo violin orchestra is more well contrasted...It is not the violonists which determined my choice but the way Bernstein work the dialogue violin and orchestra over Previn...And anyway if Shaham make his violin sing , Stern make it speak...It is less romantical than Shaham and more "classical" in his intonation...

We can debate interpretation without being able to reach an agreement, but works like the well tempered klavier or Barber quatuor are UNIVERSALLY agreed upon... We can debate about the importance or the level of impact of Scriabin versus Stravinsky for example, but the genius of the two is universally recognized...But some prefer Stravinski and other like me Scriabin...