Most difficult famous piece to get right?

[Larry Kart]

I vote for the Beethoven Sixth. 

I have one great recording (I won't say perfect, even though that's what I think) -- Monteux with the Vienna Philharmonic. Listening to a set of Beethoven LPs I'd just purchased, Bohm with the Vienna Phil., I was dismayed, after enjoying Bohm's First, at how pedestrian his Sixth was. So I hauled out every Sixth I had around at the moment -- Bernstein, Vienna Phil., Furtwangler 1944 (Berlin} and '54 (Vienna), Jochum with  the Berlin Phil., and Harnoncourt with the COE. Harnoncourt is just quirky, lots of lunging accents; Jochum is almost impossibly slow but does capture some of the vital pastoral mood/moods; both Furtwanglers edge close to the ideal but not close enough for me, both too slow for one thing, though not as slow as Jochum, and I find some of F's point-making a bit too "conductorial"; Bernstein is so fussy with dynamics that this pretty much becomes what the performance is about; Bohm, as the Brits say, is just po-faced. 

And Monteux? A perfect flowing tempo for the first movement -- why doesn't anyone else capture what he does? -- and from then to the end I sit there stunned, absorbed, you name it. In particular, what a simple piece of music it seems in Monteux's hands up to a point, and then one feels (I feel) that it is in fact not simple at all. 

Any other candidates for the "most difficult famous piece to get right?" Or candidates for a Sixth that surpasses Monteux's? 
 

[soulpope]

5 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

I vote for the Beethoven Sixth. .....

Or candidates for a Sixth that surpasses Monteux's? 
 

A "right/perfect" Beethoven 6 is based on personal judgement and so ist the evaluation of the Monteux/VPO performance (which is highly regarded with some) ....

No benchmarking here from my side, just some examples of (IMO) interesting views on Beethoven`s 6th ....

[Larry Kart]

9 hours ago, soulpope said:

A "right/perfect" Beethoven 6 is based on personal judgement and so ist the evaluation of the Monteux/VPO performance (which is highly regarded with some) ....

No benchmarking here from my side, just some examples of (IMO) interesting views on Beethoven`s 6th ....

I'll try to check those out. Thanks.

[soulpope]

16 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

I'll try to check those out. Thanks.

You've welcome .... interested in your impressions ....

[JSngry]

Nothing in particular to call out, but I find the shifting interpretations of a lot of 20th Century repertoire to possible be an ever-evolving view of what "right" is/was to begin with? Especially the 2nd Viennese School, "Lulu" in particular/extreme. Where we're at with that now vs. what I've heard of the earlier/earliest cases sounds like it's just now getting "there", if you know what I mean.

Anybody with greater (hell, any) insight into that, please expound at length, as they say.

[Larry Kart]

8 hours ago, soulpope said:

You've welcome .... interested in your impressions ....

I've sampled all three on YouTube and like Kleiber the best. There's a certain nervousiity (is that a word?) in his approach that is quite unusual in my listening experiences pf the Sixth and that I can imagine becoming a bit wearing, even febrile, if it were to persist throughout, though on the other hand the virtues of that nervousity are quite striking; it certainly makes the work take place in the "present." Interesting to read the editorial remarks on Kleiber's Sixth on YouTube -- that he found the work extremely difficult and performed it seldom, though he loved it.

Of versions of the Sixth that I've now sampled thanks to recommendations from others, I was bowled over by Klemperer's. That one I'll' have to buy; it's different than Monteux's but ranks alongside it IMO.

P.S. Interesting that Erich Kleiber's Sixth also has some of that nervousity; it's a gem, somewehat better I think than his son's:
 

 

[Larry Kart]

 

- show quoted text -

Also, I have second thoughts about Bernstein's live Vienna Phil. recording (1980). I was listening on LP, and everything I said about it above still applies. Then today I listened to the same performance on CD and could hardly believe the difference. The fussy dynamic shifts are evened out (if that's the way to put it), and the whole sonic picture is more "forward,." This is the most joyous first movement of the Sixth I've ever heard, and if joyousness isn't the whole story, Bernstein makes it seem like it is. 

[soulpope]

Another performance to be heard ....

[HutchFan]

Two VERY different views of LvB's Sixth, both favorites:

  

[felser]

My understanding is that  there never was a successful take on Monk's "Brilliant Corners" on the Riverside album, and they had to piece it together from multiple takes.

[BillF]

The "Moon Dreams" arrangement from the Birth of the Cool album has reputedly defeated many, including the musicians on the original recording, in the view of some commentators.

[Peter Friedman]

My favorite version of Beerhoven’s 6th would also be Montreux / Vienna. I also like Walter / Columbia, and Jochum / London ( not the BBC).

[Teasing the Korean]

31 minutes ago, Peter Friedman said:

My favorite version of Beerhoven’s 6th would also be Montreux / Vienna. I also like Walter / Columbia, and Jochum / London ( not the BBC).

Does Beerhoven play in Biergartens?  

[JSngry]

What about Pierrot Lunaire? I've yet to hear a recording that really finds a groove, but I heard it live and it knocked me out.

like, Far-Outsville, baby.

[paul secor]

I'm not a musician, but Elliott Carter's string quartets sound as if they'd be difficult to play.

[JSngry]

5 minutes ago, paul secor said:

I'm not a musician, but Elliott Carter's string quartets sound as if they'd be difficult to play.

They do, and no doubt they are, but they also sound like the type of difficult that becomes easy (enough) once you finally get them right, like, you just keep digging deeper until you strike the gold. I love shit like that, both as listener and as player, because on some things, the gold is just not there. It's easy to get complacent and figure, eh, this is some more obtuse bullshit and not give too much a fuck about any of it. But that's a disservice to humanity, that kind of attitude is, not just in music, but in life.Some shit is just right, no matter how difficult or abstract or otherwise initially baffling it is. And some is not. But hell, better to find out for sure than just assume, right?

[T.D.]

Some contemporary classical pieces come to mind, but the "famous" stip DQ's them. Composers like Ligeti, Xenakis and Scelsi, but they're subject to the "audience can't tell whether the piece is played correctly" objection...

I've gotta believe that Morton "It's too fucking loud, and it's too fucking fast!" Feldman's music is very difficult to play.

I'm not a fan of the "New Complexity" school (Brian Ferneyhough is chief exponent), which is by definition fiercely difficult (back when I read Usenet newsgroups, someone on r.m.c.c. called NC "the reductio ad absurdum of the Second Viennese School"). A musician advocate (Carl Rosman) once told me that when a performer is able to overcome the difficulties, playing NC music becomes joyful. But the only time I ever heard that is on the Nieuw Ensemble's recording of Ferneyhough's La chute d'Icare; everything else just sounded like drudgery (a recording of a James Dillon solo drum piece I heard even came across as unintentionally funny). Granted, I gave up on NC pretty early and didn't listen to a great deal.

Edited August 27, 2018 by T.D.

[Alexander Hawkins]

On 24/08/2018 at 2:35 AM, Larry Kart said:

I've sampled all three on YouTube and like Kleiber the best. There's a certain nervousiity (is that a word?) in his approach that is quite unusual in my listening experiences pf the Sixth and that I can imagine becoming a bit wearing, even febrile, if it were to persist throughout, though on the other hand the virtues of that nervousity are quite striking; it certainly makes the work take place in the "present." Interesting to read the editorial remarks on Kleiber's Sixth on YouTube -- that he found the work extremely difficult and performed it seldom, though he loved it.

Of versions of the Sixth that I've now sampled thanks to recommendations from others, I was bowled over by Klemperer's. That one I'll' have to buy; it's different than Monteux's but ranks alongside it IMO.

P.S. Interesting that Erich Kleiber's Sixth also has some of that nervousity; it's a gem, somewehat better I think than his son's:
 

 

The Kleibers were my first thoughts too...somewhat astonishingly (or maybe not given who we're dealing with), that recording was the only time Carlos ever performed the piece.

Thank you for the recommendation on the Monteux, which I don't know, but am going to check out!

[Rooster_Ties]

What of an arguably epic piece like Berg's Lyric Suite? - which I have two recordings of which couldn't be more different!

Though I like the Alban Berg Quartet's verison best (because it has WAY more teeth) -- this second version casts the piece 'sounding' much more like a late romantic piece, albiet still thorny (harmonically, but no where nearly as thorny 'sonically').

You could put the second, way more "Romantic" one (Schoenberg Quartet) on at a dinner party, and people wouldn't be all freaked out (even the non-musically oriented ones could stand it).  It's a little busy, but if you didn't crank the volume, it wouldn't scare anyone.

But put the first, WAY more 'punchy' and in-your--face one (Alban Berg Quartet) on at a dinner party, and most folks would be be all "WTF is THAT???" and all dinner discussion would grind to a complete halt.

 

A jazz saxophonist friend 20 years ago (Todd Wilkinson, from Kansas City, bandleader of Boko Maru, if that means anything to anyone) -- when he discovered I was getting into 'modern' string quartets, he told me to get Berg's Lyric Suite, and swore it would "fuck me up!!".  He said get that, and all the late Beethoven quartets (which I did).  So...

• This Alban Berg Quartet rendition below is way more of the "fuck you up!" variety (the whole thing is on YouTube as a playlist, if anyone wants to hear all of it).
• The Shoenberg Quartet version, though, will not fuck you up -- or at least not unless you're really paying closer attention to it.

 

So here are the two versions I'm talking about.  This one via YouTube (the one with the B&W photo of Berg) is by the Alban Berg Quartet, recorded in 1991-92 (released in 1994).

 

But then there's this version, which sounds light-years different, and WAY more Romantic -- by the Schoenberg Quartet.

(Dang it, I can't seem to find a YouTube upload of this version so folks can hear how different it is.)  Anyway, here's the cover -- and it was recorded in 1985 (released in 1986) -- so the radical difference isn't having anything to do with being recorded in different eras.

Edited August 31, 2018 by Rooster_Ties