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

Late this night i was dumbfounded by the beauty of this two playings of Liszt , the first by a "playing giant" and the second version by a "singing god"...

Pick the one you prefer, but listen attentively to  the continuity uniting "pulse" behind all successive passing states and the subsisting  constrasts polarities at the same times and read how alternate emotions coming from the unconscious mind of the very conscious Liszt  are translated by the two pianists unequaly, one in a more spectacular but beautiful  playing, the other with an absolute clarity about the poetical and unified  alternative emotionals rumination of Liszt in the same moment sometimes in the piece...

The  "playing giant"  tempo is faster than the  "singing god"...

It is a lesson in piano playing by two masters...

 

 

 

 

Now i will propose to you a listening experiments with three versions of the same piece of Liszt "the evening bells"...

The first version with a good pianist...

 

The second one with a great pianist....The beautiful one...

 

And the third one with a god pianist, one of the supremum few one... The eepest version the more moving one....He is so in love with this piece that he repeat it two times...We dont listen here to a beautiful sound only like in the second case but to a pure emotion emerging with his own time flowing  in eternity...

 

Judge by yourself....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is music an emotion becoming a beautiful sound ?

Or is music a sound becoming pure intense sometimes terrifying emotion ?

 

 

These two interelated notions, which we may distinguish but
cannot separate illustrate TWO different interpretations conception...

Two polarities intricated in one another and dominatating one another at the service or disservice of one another ...

I will illustrate each one of these polarities by two versions of the Mephisto Waltz no 2 from Liszt...


The first one by the giant Richter, beautiful and perfectly played... One of the great version...

The second one by the godly pianist is terrifying in his brutish character coming directly from hell...

No more Beautiful sound here, only a mesmerizing violent emotion that let us in pieces... The 4 last minutes of the second version shatter all other versions for me...Pure daemonic summoning which transform the worst heavy metal ceremony in children play...


It is impossible to chose between these two versions, which one is the best because one is not like ANY other one....
But we know the one which is the more terrifying and possessed by a daemonic force...


Music is more than any man because it is the source of mankind being the mother of speech...

 

«An angel is terrible»-Rilke

«Imperfection only  is the peak and the apex»-René Char

 

 

 

 

I concur with Moravec choice...

He is one of my third favorite pianist with E.N. and Sofronitsky...

I own all his albums... 😊

His mastering of colors hues is almost unmatched...