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Mendelssohn and Chopin slay me.
Tops for me; probably any of Walter Gieseking's renditions of Mozart, Rachmaninoff or Ravel, for piano solo.

brownreasontolive wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 9:18 am Mendelssohn and Chopin slay me.

Lately I've been thinking about the relationship between Mendelssohn's Op.13 String Quartet he wrote when he was 18, and Beethoven's Op.132 String Quartet, written just two years earlier, and one of a handful of the last works Beethoven worked on in his life.

Both are in A-minor, which would seem superficial, if not for the other thematic similarities.

Both opening movements start with a slow adagio introduction - each a questioning theme, though the younger composer's question seems more quizzical than the elder's - whose seems more resigned. Each's primary theme when introduced are very similar as well, through Mendelssohn's treatment seems to some degree to be an inversion of Beethoven's dotted-note melody , but again an extended quizzical line, rather than a plain statement from Beethoven (perhaps frustration at unrealized goals or desires?). high-low-high in pitch rather than low-high-low. The tertiary themes seem to be again related but another inversion. In the closing movement of each the first movement themes are once again brought into play, with some further contrapuntal development of each.

What's missing from the Mendelssohn, of course, is the profoundly moving Heiliger Dankgesang. No real surprise there. No 18 year old in love could conceive of such a moving meditation on mortality as that.

Regardless, the similarities are fascinating to me, and hard to imagine coincidental.

brownreasontolive wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 9:18 am Tops for me; probably any of Walter Gieseking's renditions of Mozart, Rachmaninoff or Ravel, for piano solo.

I'll have to check those out. I've really only listened to Gieseking's Debussy recordings. Alexandre Tharaud's recordings of Ravel's solo piano works are really good too. I especially like his recordings of Mirrors:

I can definitely hear some of the similarities you've noted.
Sadly I'm not musically educated and things like that would go right over my head, looking at the sheet.

Geiginni wrote: Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:47 am Alexandre Tharaud's recordings of Ravel's solo piano works are really good too.

I will definitely have to dig into more of Tharaud's recordings. Glenn Gould is probably the most contemporary player I'm familiar with - definitely a fan of him playing Debussy or Ravel.

Cheers!

Geiginni wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 8:01 pm Have you listened to any of the stuff Fanny Mendelssohn wrote? She was definitely up there with her brother in terms of talent. Though not a fan of lieder, which is mostly what she wrote, her posthumous Piano Trio is a powerful and touching piece, almost every bit as good as the Quartet Felix wrote in her memory.

I have to say that's not my favourite period, but I will try it. Apparently I like my music chromatic, occasionally discordant, French, and 20th Century.

Oh, and it's a pleasure to have you and this thread back.

pldms wrote: Oh, and it's a pleasure to have you and this thread back.

Thanks!

I've been trying for the past year to better wrap my head around Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, which was written as the closing movement to the Op.130 String Quartet, but audience reaction and publisher input pushed Beethoven to write a new (much less viscerally interesting) movement and publish the Fuge as Op.133.

There have been a few resources that have helped in understanding this work, not the least of which has been this comprehensive analysis on YouTube by Richard Atkinson.



Granted it's almost an hour long. But, if you've ever listened to this work 3-4 times trying to crack it open a bit further, this is an easy sacrifice of time.

The other bit I really enjoyed is actually 8-bit. One of the challenges of listening to a four voice fugue can be picking apart the contrapuntal voices when each is a scored for timbrally similar instruments. I've found the simplicity of the tones used for the 8-bit version allow the voices to better stand on their own and achieve clarity that you don't get with all the overtones of four strings playing together.



It's incredible to think this was written in 1825. As Stravinsky reportedly said "It is also the most absolutely contemporary piece of music I know, and contemporary forever ... I love it beyond everything."

On a similar note: Bach's Kunst der Fuge in 8-Bit. One of the magical things about Bach is that his works are great on almost any instrumentation: 8-bit chip generator? Sure. Marimba? Yep. Concert accordion? Of course!

Lovely to see this thread revived!!! Looking forward to digging through all the good stuff in here.

brephophagist wrote: I don't remember for sure if this was on the Before Time forum, but I think there might have been some discussion of Alina Ibragimova as a performer worth seeking out for Baroque violin

Alina Ibragimova is great, I had tickets to see her play last year but that got cancelled for obvious reasons. I like her solo Bach recordings, and I've got one of her records of Mozart sonatas too which is lovely.

Chiara Banchini's Tartini recordings are mind blowingly good and a definite favourite of mine. I recently picked up a box of Amandine Beyer's Bach recordings, who was apparently a student of hers.

My playing has lapsed this year but my violin teacher was a big fan of Pavlo Beznosiuk. I've got his Corelli Op5 and it's pretty great.


Less baroque focussed but Leonidas Kavakos is always a good listen. I love his Enescu and Ysaye recordings, and the Beethoven Concerto he did recently was conducted from the violin and frighteningly precise. I don't know if there were some editing shenanigans going on but it's totally together. I picked up the Tetzlaff recording when that came out and the Kavakos one just makes it sound amateurish.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja is loads of fun too. She has a great Stravinsky concerto on youtube somewhere and a tendency to be mildly unhinged. Excellent stuff.

matt_stevens wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 8:30 am Lovely to see this thread revived!!! Looking forward to digging through all the good stuff in here.

brephophagist wrote: I don't remember for sure if this was on the Before Time forum, but I think there might have been some discussion of Alina Ibragimova as a performer worth seeking out for Baroque violin

Alina Ibragimova is great, I had tickets to see her play last year but that got cancelled for obvious reasons. I like her solo Bach recordings, and I've got one of her records of Mozart sonatas too which is lovely.

Chiara Banchini's Tartini recordings are mind blowingly good and a definite favourite of mine. I recently picked up a box of Amandine Beyer's Bach recordings, who was apparently a student of hers.

My playing has lapsed this year but my violin teacher was a big fan of Pavlo Beznosiuk. I've got his Corelli Op5 and it's pretty great.


Less baroque focussed but Leonidas Kavakos is always a good listen. I love his Enescu and Ysaye recordings, and the Beethoven Concerto he did recently was conducted from the violin and frighteningly precise. I don't know if there were some editing shenanigans going on but it's totally together. I picked up the Tetzlaff recording when that came out and the Kavakos one just makes it sound amateurish.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja is loads of fun too. She has a great Stravinsky concerto on youtube somewhere and a tendency to be mildly unhinged. Excellent stuff.

Wow! Thanks for these recommendations FM matt_stevens. I've now got a full plate of Italian baroque in my playlist and really looking forward to it. So far the Banchini Tartini recordings are quite good including the recording's technical aspects. It seems Alpha is consistently up there with Harmonia Mundi when it comes to sound quality and choice of venue acoustics.

FM Jason from volo: You ask a great question, and I intend to get back to your question in the very near future. What seems like a simple question requires a little thought and carries a few deeper answers and more than a few suggestions.

In the meantime: Here's a really cool clip of Glenn Gould's first televised appearance when he was only 22. He wrote his own cadenza for Beethoven's Piano Concerto #1.



That fucking cadenza is really incredible! To trot that out on CBC TV in 1954 suggests that tastes were maybe not so conservative as one might've assumed for that time.

Beethoven's first two piano concertos are basically love letters to the great Mozart piano concertos that Mozart wrote between 1782 and 1788, six years that produced sixteen of the finest piano concertante pieces of the late 18th century.

Poor Glenn was born too early. Had he come along 20-30 years later he could have studied harpsichord and gotten access to and played on period fortepianos. His approach to playing the modern piano has always hinted at the desire for less sustain, more attack, fewer overtones, and a lighter touch.

For comparison:


The modern 'historically informed' performance is not afraid to be more uptempo, take advantage of the dynamic capabilities of each section and have a less smoothed over, blended sound. And that piano seems to be almost exactly what Glenn was going for - even at 22 years old.

FM jason from volo: I've decided to finally get back on these great questions, that unfortunately also diving into deeper rabbit holes than you were probably expecting.

jason from volo wrote: Wed Aug 11, 2021 2:55 pm Is there a particular ensemble you know of that consistently does a fantastic job (or perhaps unique job) of performing classical pieces?

As I've aged with my interest in this music, I've realized that everyone comes to specialize: in particular genres, periods, composers, performance techniques, etc... So in answering this question I must revert to a lot of conditionals. Additionally, we live in a world where the levels of musicianship exist at a level consistently well above what could be found in the past. Small city orchestras are staffed with performers that would have been rare at major orchestras a few decades ago. There's no reason not to witness great performances coming from the Sioux Falls Symphony, or high-school students at Interlochen.

WIth that:
Orchestral Music:
For performance of late-romantic through 20th century music, especially large scale works, nothing beats my 'hometown' CSO. The CSO with Pierre Boulez conducting was a kind of synergistic magic. There are few recordings of this pairing that fails to impress. I was lucky enough to witness this pairing live between 2004 and 2011 when he stopped travelling extensively.

On top of that, almost anything from Strauss through the early 21st century was handled quite well by Boulez as conductor. His ability to get rhythic exactitude and scintillating detail from each section - especially woodwinds, makes him a great conductor to seek out - particularly for works by Strauss, Debussy, Ravel, Bartok, Stravinsky, Varese, as well as the Second Viennese School guys.

Other modern orchestras for 20th century works: Cleveland SO, Detroit SO, the St.Louis SO under David Robertson is great, and some of the earlier recordings under Leonard Slatkin. All the major American orchestras are very good technically and will depend upon which music director is leading them and therefore which repertoire they will be more fine-tuned to perform.

For classical and early romantic repertoire, I like many of the European period performance groups. In particular the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment has made some spectacular recordings over the past 30 years. Also, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Freiburger Barockorchester, Netherlands Bach Society do great stuff. There are many others, but those four stand out in my mind.

Chamber Music:

This follows a similar vein. Some groups specialize in periods and repertoire to the exclusion of others. Some that I've enjoyed most:
- Emerson String Quartet: particularly their Shostakovich, Bartok and Mendelssohn complete sets
- Pacifica String Quartet: another dynamite Mendelssohn set
- Tokyo String Quartet: their complete Beethoven quartets recordings on Harmonia Mundi France
- Quartet Vegh: Many of their 70s era recordings are quite good
- Takacs Quartet: I just saw these folks this last Monday & Tuesday playing two Haydn pieces, along with Coleridge-Taylor, Schubert's "Death and the Maiden", Janacek's 2nd quartet and Beethoven's Op.132 quartet. All fantastic performances.
- The Trio Elegiaque recorded a cycle of Beethoven's piano trios that I've been listening to a lot over the past 3 years.
- The Wanderer Trio has done a bunch of great recordings of Dvorak, Shostakovich and Mendelssohn over the past decade.
- The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is great, both in performance and for the sets of recordings covering composers/periods.
for more historical performances:
- The Borodin Quartet did great stuff, both 20th century and romantic
- The Tatrai Quartet's cycle of Haydn is unbeatable
- The Melos Quartet has done some magnificent recordings - Schubert's quartets and Cherubini's quartets, both complete are great. I've been listening to the Cherubini quartets quite a bit lately.
- The Alban Berg Quartet did a really great set of the Mozart Quartets.

Solo Performance:

I'm prone to break this up by composer, based entirely on personal preference:
- Bach piano: Gould (of course), Angela Hewitt, Vladimir Feltsman (WTC I & II), Murry Perahia
- Bach harpsichord: Robert Hill (top notch), Richard Egarr
- Bach Organ: Simon Preston (I like his choice of registrations)
- Bach Violin: Henryk Szeryng, Isabelle Faust, Hillary Hahn
- Bach Cello: Janos Starker

- Beethoven: Andras Schiff (Beethoven with Rubato), Ronald Brautigam (fortepiano), Alfred Brendel (classic performances)

- Haydn: Andras Steier, Tom Behgin, Gould (no shit!)

- Schubert: Alfred Brendel's recordings are the best

- Debussy: Bavouzet, Pierre-Laurent Aimard

-Ravel: Alexandre Tharaud; Werner Haas

Ugh, I could keep going, but I'm starting to lose track of my thoughts and putting order to any of this.

Is there a particular series of recordings of classical pieces that are readily available (on vinyl would be great but digital is fine too) that you'd recommend?

I've always had a hard time with recording series that are a bit too broad, as inevitably not every piece on a label will be the best performance, or not every performer hits the mark with every piece - as evidenced by Gould's recordings of Bach, where it becomes obvious he regards certain pieces as trite or mere exercises.

I can recommend the Boulez collections. In particular the Stravinsky, Debussy/Ravel, and Bartok collections with CSO as the main performing group. All fantastic.

Also, the collections on YouTube produced by Brilliant Classics are of surprisingly high quality. You get hours and hours of well performed, well recorded music that is near completist in scope.

The aforementioned 14 disc collection of Bach organ works by Simon Preston on DGG has kept me entertained for the past six months or so.

Geiginni wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 6:49 pm *Pure gold*

We're very lucky to have you here.