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What Classical Music Are You Listening To?


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Listening on Youtube to The Rhine Gold from the Goodall (English language) Ring cycle. Really interesting...the English does not sound weird (as I feared), and Goodall's notoriously slow tempi seem to work. I'm not in the market for another Ring recording, but may buy one of the Goodall operas to listen in detail.

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27 minutes ago, T.D. said:

Listening on Youtube to The Rhine Gold from the Goodall (English language) Ring cycle. Really interesting...the English does not sound weird (as I feared), and Goodall's notoriously slow tempi seem to work. I'm not in the market for another Ring recording, but may buy one of the Goodall operas to listen in detail.

This "bleeding chunk" might do the trick for you. I like it a bunch. Reasonably priced, used on Amazon.

61ShZcNK16L.jpg

 

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Pfitzner's "Palestrina."  I have two recordings now, Kubelik's much vaunted DG one with Gedda as the title figure  and Fischer-Dieskau  as the Cardinal who harries him, and an often top-notch supporting cast (Fassbender and Donath as Palestrina's apprentice and his son); and Othmar Suitner's more recent one (now on Brillliant Classics at a bargain price) with Peter Schreier, Siegfried Lorenz, et al. The Kubelik is better conducted, with a superior orchestra, but Suitner is no slouch, nor is his orchestra less than very good. The consensus on-line is go for the Kubelik, but I prefer Suitner. Gedda in this role, though generally extolled, doesn't do much for me, doesn't quite "inhabit" Palestrina, and it's a role that needs to be inhabited, while Schreier, is spot on dramatically and vocally,  though I can imagine that Julius Patzak, a renowned Palestrina, was even better. Fischer-Dieskau really tips  the balance against the Kubelik for me;  his Cardinal Borromeo is very snarly, a truly nasty man, while Lenz's Borromeo, understandably out of patience with Palestrina's insistence that his composing days are over, is essentially sympathetic toward Palestrina, hoping to get him to compose again for the good of the Church, of Art, and for the good of Palestrina the man. A fascinating opera. Pfitzner wrote the libretto and no doubt identified with Palestrina. The libretto weaves historical figures from the Counter-reformation meetings of the Council of Trent of the mid 16th Century  with the legend, already current in the late sixteenth century, that in writing the Missa Papae Marcelli  Palestrina had single-handedly rescued polyphonic composition from banishment by the Catholic Church, in which key figures were advocating a return to the music of Gregorian chant because crucially important liturgical texts were less apprehendable, if they were apprehendable at all, in polyphonic settings. To be clear, the legend referred to above is false. Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli was written before the Council of Trent took place.

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3 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

This "bleeding chunk" might do the trick for you. I like it a bunch. Reasonably priced, used on Amazon.

61ShZcNK16L.jpg

 

Thanks!

Spun this yesterday:

61N9iXdBkfL.jpg

And now this:

emi64180.jpg

An extremely funny Rossini opera. Though much of the music is taken from Il viaggio a Reims, Ory has independent value. I saw a memorable live performance many years ago.

Edited by T.D.
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6 hours ago, Referentzhunter said:

Anyone on Bruckner 6, Klemperer / New Philharmonia Orchestra ?

Pretty controversial version i guess....

:shrug[1]:

I'm neither a Bruckner expert nor a particular fan of Klemperer, but I think that's an outstanding recording.

FWIW. ;) 

 

13 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Pfitzner's "Palestrina."  I have two recordings now, Kubelik's much vaunted DG one with Gedda as the title figure  and Fischer-Dieskau  as the Cardinal who harries him, and an often top-notch supporting cast (Fassbender and Donath as Palestrina's apprentice and his son); and Othmar Suitner's more recent one (now on Brillliant Classics at a bargain price) with Peter Schreier, Siegfried Lorenz, et al. The Kubelik is better conducted, with a superior orchestra, but Suitner is no slouch, nor is his orchestra less than very good. The consensus on-line is go for the Kubelik, but I prefer Suitner. Gedda in this role, though generally extolled, doesn't do much for me, doesn't quite "inhabit" Palestrina, and it's a role that needs to be inhabited, while Schreier, is spot on dramatically and vocally,  though I can imagine that Julius Patzak, a renowned Palestrina, was even better. Fischer-Dieskau really tips  the balance against the Kubelik for me;  his Cardinal Borromeo is very snarly, a truly nasty man, while Lenz's Borromeo, understandably out of patience with Palestrina's insistence that his composing days are over, is essentially sympathetic toward Palestrina, hoping to get him to compose again for the good of the Church, of Art, and for the good of Palestrina the man. A fascinating opera. Pfitzner wrote the libretto and no doubt identified with Palestrina. The libretto weaves historical figures from the Counter-reformation meetings of the Council of Trent of the mid 16th Century  with the legend, already current in the late sixteenth century, that in writing the Missa Papae Marcelli  Palestrina had single-handedly rescued polyphonic composition from banishment by the Catholic Church, in which key figures were advocating a return to the music of Gregorian chant because crucially important liturgical texts were less apprehendable, if they were apprehendable at all, in polyphonic settings. To be clear, the legend referred to above is false. Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli was written before the Council of Trent took place.

Thanks for this, Larry.  I've never heard Pfitzner's "Palestrina" -- I'm not much of an opera person -- but your write up makes me want to hear it. :) 

 

Edited by HutchFan
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9 hours ago, HutchFan said:

I'm neither a Bruckner expert nor a particular fan of Klemperer, but I think that's an outstanding recording.

FWIW. ;) 

 

Thanks for this, Larry.  I've never heard Pfitzner's "Palestrina" -- I'm not much of an opera person -- but your write up makes me want to hear it. :) 

 

Both the Suitner and the Kubelik recordings are on YouTube.

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The Schuller "Rite" is something else -- an electrifying and vividly recorded 1971 "live" performance by the New England Conservatory Student Orchestra. Sadly and against all expectations -- the pianist is Russell Sherman, a talented onetime student of Edward Steuermann, who played the work's premiere, the violinist is Rudolf Kolisch, who also played the premiere -- the coupled Berg Chamber Concerto under Schuller, another "live" performance from 1972, never comes to life. I'll try the Schuller-Berg again, hoping that maybe it's just me, but at this point I'm mystified. Could it be that the supposedly meticulous Schuller didn't know the work that well or just didn't "get" it. If so, he wouldn't be the first. IMO Boulez didn't. Heinz Holliger, for one, did, as did Robert Craft on an old Columbia 2-LP Berg set with pianist Pearl Kaufman and violinist. BTW Kaufman, a Hollywood studio mainstay as well as the first-call Los Angeles area modern music pianist,  dubbed the piano music for Jack Nicholson's character in "Five Easy Pieces." 

91UjtobtwPL._AC_UY218_ML3_.jpg

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