Ungh.
Sublimely poetic live readings of Beethoven's last 3 piano sonatas by Leonskaja.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feOUBUMrNXg
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Ungh.
Sublimely poetic live readings of Beethoven's last 3 piano sonatas by Leonskaja.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feOUBUMrNXg
Janine Jansen plays Bach
A superb set of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas.
The last 4 - opp 106 & 109-111 - are especially tumultuous, wonderful.
Interesting that the relatively unknown Maria Grinberg was chosen by Russia's state label, Melodiya, as their one and only (as far as I can make out) complete set - when you think of the roster of astonishing Russian pianists they could have called on.
But listen, and you'll hear why!
Staggering performances in clear if slightly steely sound. But the steeliness may well lie in the strength of her fingers!
https://open.spotify.com/album/77wLkfKUvkeHnjTyVcgI6e
https://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JP...er=allrovi.com
Funnily enough Damian Thompson wrote about this set in The Spectator recently I was planning to look them up. Thanks for saving the effort! :)
Ah, interesting - what did he have to say about the set?Quote:
Originally Posted by montesquieu
Not sure if you can get access without a subscription but it was an interesting piece:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/...aria-grinberg/
Why did the Soviets not want us to know about the pianist Maria Grinberg?
She was one of only four women to record the complete Beethoven piano sonatas but the state kept her in obscurity
Only four women pianists have recorded complete cycles of the Beethoven piano sonatas: Maria Grinberg, Annie Fischer, H. J. Lim and Mari Kodama. I’ve written before about the chain-smoking ‘Ashtray Annie’ Fischer: she was a true poet of the piano and her Beethoven sonatas are remarkably penetrating — as, alas, is the sound of her beaten-up Bösendorfer. Lim produced her cycle in a hurry when she was just 24; it’s engaging but breathless. Kodama’s set, just completed, is a bit polite.
Which leaves Maria Grinberg (1908–78), whose recordings remain just where the Soviet authorities wanted them. In obscurity. That is shameful — and not because she was the first woman and the first Russian to record all the sonatas. (In those days Jews from Odessa in Ukraine counted as Russians.) This is an unforgettable cycle. Unforgettable, that is, in the unlikely event that you’ve heard it.
Grinberg’s insights linger in the mind even if you don’t particularly like what she’s doing. In the finale of the Moonlight, for example, the chords at the top of the arpeggios would drown out a tractor factory. But elsewhere in the movement the treble melts away to reveal the ingenuity below the stave.
That’s a Grinberg hallmark. She balances voices to shift the listener’s perspective. I kept hearing dotted rhythms and crossed hands that I’d failed to pick up in other performances. The lower octaves ring out with unusual clarity. Perhaps that’s something to do with the fact that, as a young woman, Grinberg lost her state-funded job as a pianist and worked as an orchestral timpanist.
No one communicated better the polyphonic sweetness of late Beethoven. Listen to the mini-motet that precedes the final storm in the fugue of the Hammerklavier. Grinberg plays it with glowing serenity; for a moment we could be in the Sistine Chapel.
Why is she forgotten? Her problem wasn’t just that she was Jewish but, from the point of view of the authorities, that she was the wrong sort of Jew. Her father and husband had been executed by Stalin as enemies of the state. The shadow never lifted.
Admittedly, there was really no such thing as the right sort of Jew in the Soviet Union. If Jews had to be anything, then the authorities were reasonably happy for them to be musicians. Like the Nazis, the Soviets used top-flight orchestras as tools of propaganda. Unlike them, they couldn’t maintain standards of performance without Jews.
Nearly half the professional musicians in Russia were Jewish, as were an even higher proportion of virtuoso soloists, including the violinists David Oistrakh and Leonid Kogan, the pianists Emil Gilels and Lazar Berman and the cellist Daniil Shafran. When they travelled abroad they were watched by the KGB. (Well, maybe not Kogan: as Norman Lebrecht revealed in The Spectator, but his Wiki entry fails to mention, he was a Soviet spook who kept tabs on his brother-in-law Gilels.)
The Kremlin could never forget that it had lost Vladimir Horowitz and Jascha Heifetz, both Russian Jews who dazzled from the United States. When Berman’s international career was at its height, he was suddenly banished to the provinces (but he defected anyway). Even the mighty Gilels was kept at home if the Soviet Union was sulking about what it always called ‘Israeli aggression’.
The model Jewish virtuoso left Russia to win a big international competition, coming straight back after attracting headlines that mentioned his citizenship but not his background. Few things annoyed the Soviets more than references to Russian-Jewish identity; every other ethnic group was expected to parade its musical heritage, but Jews did so at their peril. No klezmer encores, please, and no Hebrew melodies in compositions. The non-Jewish Shostakovich was playing with fire when he ignored Russian folk traditions and returned obsessively to melancholy Jewish ones.
This ridiculous cat-and-mouse game was played at every level, though with varying degrees of cruelty. Sometimes the logic was hard to follow, and especially so in the case of Maria Grinberg.
Her historic Beethoven LPs were produced by the state label Melodiya, yet when they appeared in 1970 the Soviet press wrote not a word abut them. Towards the end of her life she was allowed to give a handful of concerts in the Netherlands, but that was it. When she died, aged 69, the authorities couldn’t decide whether she should be honoured or ignored. They settled for a mixture of both.
Perhaps her mistake was failing to criticise Israel, which several more celebrated Jewish musicians were arm-twisted into doing. On the contrary: in 1967, when ‘aggressive’ Israel humiliated its Soviet-allied neighbours, Maria Israelyevna Grinberg took to introducing herself as ‘Maria Aggressorovna’.
Not until 2012 did Melodiya get round to issuing Grinberg’s Beethoven sonatas as a CD boxed set. It has already disappeared from Amazon. Some things don’t change. Fortunately they found their way on to Spotify, and many other recordings — including an exultant Brahms First Piano Concerto — have surfaced on YouTube. Is it too much to hope that the internet will finally lift her out of the shadows?
Thanks for that, Tom.
Interesting organ concerto by Howard Hanson, in fact the whole album is enjoyable.
https://open.spotify.com/album/157TU8AeZ9ZFP0reGnhOOM
http://www.musicweb-international.co...an_8559251.gif
A relaxing start this morning, great recordings
Symphony No.30 In D Major, K.202
Academy of Ancient Music directed by Jaap Schroder, concertmaster, and Christopher Hogwood, harpsichord continuo, original recording from L'Oiseau-Lyre Records
and Symphony No.31 In D Major, K.297 (Paris)
Klassosche Philharmonie, Stuttgart, Karl Münchinger conductor.
Both are very good IMSO
Mozart*, Various – The Late Symphonies
Label: Time Life Records – STL-M02
Series: Mozart – STL-M02
Format: 5 × Vinyl, LP, Compilation, Box Set
Country: Canada
Released: 1979
Genre: Classical
https://img.discogs.com/15b163tiDFAi...-1723.jpeg.jpg
^ Who's the conductor / orchestra on that set, Adrian?
Quite possibly the most realistically recorded piano I have ever heard.
A very fine, if slow, performance of one of my favourite piano pieces as well - Bach Partita #2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8040BRTUqQ&feature=push-fr&attr_tag=1gIG_5c5hbE4Eatq%3A6
Just for you Jerry I dug out the set notes and edited the entry above. I purchased 4 boxes from the set that were at a local Hospiscare, they were published by TIME LIFE and so far I have found all the recordings to be very good. The records are very quiet and it seems care was taken when putting the collection together.Quote:
Originally Posted by jandl100
Ah, Munchinger.
Full bloodied and romantic, I'd imagine.
Very nice. :) Thanks for that.
Yes the Munchinger is very listenable.Quote:
Originally Posted by jandl100
Absolutely fascinating.
Two of the great classical musicians of the 20thC - Glenn Gould and Yehudi Menuhin - discuss Schoenberg's Fantasy for Violin and Piano for 7 or 8 minutes before going on to play it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AABQYAPK_Ek
Elgar Enigma Variations a la Polska
Fabulous performance and recording.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLNLvcBmoqo
Absolutely my favourite piece of music and my favourite way of hearing it, played by orchestra rather than organ. Heresy, I know. :D
Has my eyes tearing up at the end climax. :)
Just amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9Sbk3E8-ws&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1TxGBSN2Gzh28dGIWWk ebJRILeOJwbt_p59OuHO dZ438WoqipflEUw7mk
Absolutely my favourite piece of music and my favourite way of hearing it, played by orchestra rather than organ. Heresy, I know. :D
Has my eyes tearing up at the end climax. :)
Just amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9Sbk3E8-ws&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1TxGBSN2Gzh28dGIWWk ebJRILeOJwbt_p59OuHO dZ438WoqipflEUw7mk
It is a long time since I last listened to this work, probably 3 or 4 years, but each time I find it invigorating. I was introduced to it as a boy of 10 or 11 by my father, along with the 5th, both of which I found very impressive although I didn't really appreciate just how great they are, it was his attempt at trying to get me to stop listening to Jimi Hendrix.
To this day I still think it is hard to beat a Beethoven Symphony, although I do like other composers.
I was lucky enough to find this set in a charity shop and they are all mint.
Symphonie Nr. 3 Es-dur Op. 55 »Eroica«
C1 Allegro Con Brio 13:26
C2 Marcia Funebre. Adagio Assai 16:32
D1 Scherzo. Allegro Vivace 6:08
D2 Finale. Allegro Molto. Pocco Andante – Presto 12:30
Beethoven* / Karajan*, Berliner Philharmoniker – 9 Symphonien
Label: Deutsche Grammophon – 2740 172
Format: Box Set 8 × Vinyl, LP
Country: Germany
Released: 1977
Genre: Classical
https://img.discogs.com/AL6a6AZ6gXjQ...-8716.jpeg.jpg
Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, Cologne Chamber Orchestra*, Helmut Müller-Brühl – 7 Symphonies
Label: Nonesuch – HB-73027
Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP
Country: US
Released: 1974
Genre: Classical
https://img.discogs.com/Zv8f_-2zFlbc...-1999.jpeg.jpg
Johann Bernhard Bach - 4 Orchestral Suites
A 2nd cousin of JSB apparently
1676 – 1749
It's really good !! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbQ4ZupOu6M
a light and dancing Beethoven 5th symphony
and why not!
Very enjoyable. - it's OK, you can listen to Klemperer and Karajan, too. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf27GMYNV_k&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0K aXr4c-J6hp8Zvhc9NbmkvQ7azw1ydpw68LVJai3K_ar92NXhT50hzU8
You heard her Weinberg recording on DG yet? Not too sure about the music, maybe not that interesting tbh - but she sings the wordless soprano part in one of the symphonies and conducts!
No, not heard that - I'll look it up.
John Williams (4) – E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Label: MCA Records – MCA-16014
Series: MCA Records Audiophile – MCA-16014
Format: Vinyl, LP, Remastered
Country: US
Released: 1982
Genre: Electronic, Stage & Screen
Style: Modern Classical, Soundtrack
https://img.discogs.com/2shDWBrQrO0t...-6620.jpeg.jpg
Been working my way through a recent boot sale haul:
Mozart Divertimenti – in B flat, K.186; in F, K.253; in E flat, K.289, and Adagio in F, K.411
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....1nsXdeCBtL.jpg
The Netherlands Wind Ensemble, cond. Edo de Wart. Philips 6500 003 (1969).
Mozart – Horn Concertos: No.1 in D Major, K.412; No.2 in E flat Major, K.417; No.3 in E flat Major, K.447, and No.4 in E flat Major, K.495
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....L._SL1172_.jpg
Soloist: Dennis Brain, Philharmonia Orchestra, cond. Herbert von Karajan
EMI ASD 1140 (1954)
Mozart – Piano Concerto No.22 in E flat, K.482, and Concerto Rondo in D Major, K.382
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....1y5svSLhIL.jpg
The English Chamber Orchestra, soloist and conductor Daniel Barenboim
EMI ASD 2838 (1972)
Brahms – The Four Symphonies; Tragic Overture and Academic Festival Overture
https://www.popsike.com/pix/20091204/160384141340.jpg
The Philharmonia Orchestra, cond. Otto Klemperer
4-record set HMV SLS 804 (1972)
Franz Schubert – Octet in F Major, D. 803
https://img.discogs.com/Rkh2U2RsJv5c...-3786.jpeg.jpg
Vienna Chamber Ensemble
DG 2531 278 (1981)
Chopin – 12 Etudes, Op.10, and 12 Etudes, Op.25
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....AC_SL1024_.jpg
Tamás Vásáry, piano
2-record set, DG 2721 208 (1965)
Vivaldi – Four Concertos for a Solo Woodwind Instrument
Concerto in A major, RV 461; Concerto in E minor, RV 484; Concerto in C minor, RV 441 and Concerto in D, RV 427
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....AC_SL1500_.jpg
Leo Driehuys: oboe, Marco Costantini: bassoon and Severino Gazzelloni: flute.
I Musici
Philips 6580 152 (1960)
Felt like some good dramatic piano music, mmmm!
Tschaikowsky* • Liszt* - Martha Argerich, Charles Dutoit, Claudio Abbado – Klavierkonzert • Piano Concerto No.1
Label: Deutsche Grammophon – 2543 503
Series: Deutsche Grammophon Signature –
Format: Vinyl, LP, Reissue, Stereo
Country: Germany
Released: 1983
Genre: Classical
Style: Romantic
https://img.discogs.com/fq-eYD5usokO...-2202.jpeg.jpg
An awesome performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations on a harpsichord.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AtOPiG5jyk
Gosh who knew that Jesus could play the harpsichord?Quote:
Originally Posted by jandl100
He was the son of a carpenter, so probably made one and learnt to play it.Quote:
Originally Posted by montesquieu
It's certainly a miraculous performance. :D
Right now, I'm rather enjoying this, as it's quite 'out there':
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...924/fNAGo7.png
Marco.
A stunning Sibelius violin concerto from a very young (1980) Viktoria Mullova
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdQdRGc0nhY
Wow... She's rather good, isn't she?:eek: :thumbsup:
Marco.
Hmm, powerful and engaging stuff from Lauri Porra, a contemporary Finnish composer with influences from across the musical spectrum
- I confess to avoiding the rapping 1st track and going to the pure orchestral version at the end of the album!
https://open.spotify.com/album/22ovbDuIyywiU174wNS6U1
https://external-content.duckduckgo....jpg&f=1&nofb=1
Lovely
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy / Hungarian State Orchestra* / Iván Fischer* – Symphony No. 3 In A Minor "Scottish" / The Hebrides Overture "Fingal's Cave"
Label: Hungaroton – SLPD 12660
Format: Vinyl, LP
Country: Hungary
Released: 1985
Genre: Classical
Style: Neo-Classical
https://img.discogs.com/CR0FWd9LeHb3...-2931.jpeg.jpg
Tempted to ask Del to get me this for my Xmas: https://www.berliner-philharmoniker-...l%20Newsletter
:)
Marco.
200 smackers :eek:
Go on, you're worth it!
Lol - you should see what I spent on her last year, as she has a 'fondness' for large bottles of Chanel No5 Parfum and toiletries from L'Occitane En Provance!:D
Marco.
What you buying me honey?:DQuote:
Originally Posted by Marco
Quote:
Originally Posted by jandl100
The great-grandson of Sibelius.
With remembrance Sunday coming up I always find this piece very moving.
George Butterworth - Banks of Green Willow.
https://youtu.be/Fs2jP23U2aw