The Classical Music Guide Forums

Belle

Listening today to Cantata BWV78 "Jesu, der du Meine Seele" from the All of Bach project in the Netherlands. Not only first class musicianship but notes accompany the work, similar to the old liner notes on CDs!!

https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/bwv/bwv-78/

Belle

Yes, an interesting review. I haven't heard Kirill Petrenko's conducting, so perhaps I shouldn't comment, but as described I would prefer his approach to Nelsons, whose Boston Symphony Shostakovich leaves me dissatisfied in the main.Nelsons also chose his wife to sing Wagner's Liebestod in a recent...

Belle

Sounds like a normal day/night in the life of Sydney University's residential colleges!! Some of our most famous people have been through that institution and have engaged in less than savoury antics including, but not limited to, bastardization, drugs, orgies, ridicule and forced conformity. These ...

Belle

Frans Bruggen; very, very much missed. I have some of his recordings. Bruggen and Harnoncourt represented my earliest excursions into HIP and I was lucky enough to see the latter in performance on half a dozen occasions in Vienna. Thank you; I know about that Treatise on Harmony and its fame and inf...

Belle

Next year I'm presenting another installment in a program for our music group on the topic of Baroque Music for the Theatre. Last year it was England and Purcell and next year I want to focus on Lully and Rameau, mostly on the latter. Can anybody here recommend a book which covers the cultural milie...

Belle

Thanks for the list, diegobueno. I'm thinking we need to program some newer music into our music group's programs for 2020. I'll take a listen to some from your list on the internet and it will be easily facilitated for a presentation because we have the internet, power-point and U-Tube available at...

Belle

I related to your comment about your brain having no more room for certain composers!! Can you post any of the modern works you like, if these are available?

Belle

Music should be complex, original, architectural, inspirational, challenging, ingenius and musical. "Beautiful" is a bonus, but not absolutely essential. I wouldn't necessarily call a lot of Bach's music "beautiful" at all. This piece is a balm, a salve for life's depredations: contemplative and tra...

Belle

Len, are you suggesting that Falstaff ate food like that in your pictures??

Belle

Absolutely agree.

Belle

Also, maestrob, for what it's worth - Carlos Kleiber was largely 'self taught' too!! Thanks, Belle! For the record, I graduated from Villanova University with a degree in Modern Languages and a double major (Education/French, with Russian as my minor) before moving to Manhattan in 1973. This means ...

Belle

There's a fine analysis of Brahms Symphony no. 2 in the BBC Radio series "Discovering Music," which told me things about the music that I hadn't suspected. If you're interested, it's here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p01yx0hn Thanks for this; up at 5am today and listening now. Nice and loud a...

Belle

Sergei Babayan, pianist ( and Trifonov's mentor ),Verbier Festival Orchestra,Gabor Takacs-Nagy play Mozart’s PC # 9, K.271, “Jeunehomme” , at 2019 Verbier Festival ; extraordinary: https://www.medici.tv/en/concerts/gabor-takacs-nagy-conducts-brahms-symphony-no-2-in-d-major/ Free VOD. I really like ...

Belle

Also, maestrob, for what it's worth - Carlos Kleiber was largely 'self taught' too!!

Belle

I liked Luisi's conducting while he was at the MET, and the Dallas Symphony is indeed a fine orchestra. I particularly resonate with Luisi's dictum: "Never go beyond beautiful." That makes sense to me. 8) Mozart said the same thing. Heresy alert: for me Mozart's music went beyond that. Not all the ...

Belle

maestrob wrote: ↑
Fri Sep 06, 2019 11:24 am
I liked Luisi's conducting while he was at the MET, and the Dallas Symphony is indeed a fine orchestra. I particularly resonate with Luisi's dictum: "Never go beyond beautiful." That makes sense to me.

What do you think he meant by that quote?

Belle

With that kind of musical pedigree I'm sure you're justifiably proud, together with your wife. What an honour to have even enrolled at Juilliard, let alone to have graduated - and then some. I'm more than impressed. Some people talk the talk but others, like yourself, walk the walk!! Those are big ...

Belle

With the invention of the moving image we no longer just have to read about and/or imagine history; we can see for ourselves. All those previous generations in a city that looked to all intents and purposes prosperous but which harbored a dark underbelly. That short clip and those smiling faces coul...

Belle

I came across this just now on the internet. Apropos nothing, I thought it was quite interesting: well, kind of sad in a way -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtoRYmKRwIE

Belle

I walk the walk, Sue. Just in my case, it's more of a waddle. :lol: Yes, of course, as many people do here on CMG. I was also referring more generally with my comment - and that applies equally outside music as well. (The wind is absolutely roaring here - at least 100kph - and terribly hot. Early S...

Belle

With that kind of musical pedigree I'm sure you're justifiably proud, together with your wife. What an honour to have even enrolled at Juilliard, let alone to have graduated - and then some. I'm more than impressed. Some people talk the talk but others, like yourself, walk the walk!! Those are big n...

Belle

This is a sweet clip in which Michael Keiran Harvey explains how he composed a bravura piece for a student with small hands, then plays it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMv1JbYjJpw That's a different pianist to Michael Kieran Harvey. Here is the latter on keyboard in his own composition: it take...

Belle

To get back to the original topic: I used to fall in love with whatever music I was working on (when I was performing), whether it was studying the role of Scarpia in Tosca at Juilliard in class with Vincent La Selva, performing the Bach B Minor Mass in Carnegie Hall with David Randolph, or reading...

Belle

I feel that I could explore "The Trojans" after today's program but, to be honest, I prefer the refinement of Italian baroque opera to anything from the 19th century. Belle I love this work-fantastic music! Grimes isn't chopped liver either! Regards, Len :lol: I'm trying to give that up!! :mrgreen:

Belle

Oh dear! I've learned over the years not to invest too much in certainty - at least in theory - because I just may be wrong. (I speak only of music, of course! :D) Oh yes, "at least in theory"! :lol: Speaking of which I see I got things the other way around in my posting; "it was Chopin and NOT Bee...

Belle

I do have enthusiasm for Haydn more and more these days, with a special fondness for the masses, The Seasons, The Creation and the piano sonatas. I've been to this very Schloss, just an hour by train from Vienna! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIpSNMQZH9M To which I add the piano trios and string ...

Belle

As I said, "off the top of my head". Anyway, I've just looked at Rosen and he has interesting things to say about Haydn's intellectuality, though he does say his works were 'patchy' in this and other musical respects and not a consistent whole. I think some of the thinking about intellectuality stem...

Belle

Years ago, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival had an all-day Haydn marathon with H. C. Robbins Landon as host and commentator. At one point he said Haydn was the most intellectual composer of his time, a surprising statement about Papa Haydn the musical jokester, but if anyone was qualified to...

Belle

I do have enthusiasm for Haydn more and more these days, with a special fondness for the masses, The Seasons, The Creation and the piano sonatas. I've been to this very Schloss, just an hour by train from Vienna!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIpSNMQZH9M

Belle

Sue, you must find all of us annoying. We ALL know all there is to know about classical music, even when we're entirely wrong. :lol: That's a terrible story about your friend's boy, though. So sad, and so terrifying for him and his family. No, THIS is annoying - constant malapropisms and wrong deta...

Belle

So I'm presuming that you still listen to Schubert's Symphony #5 after all these years? I've gone on to other composers like Berg, Webern etc. and I've found it's hard to return, after that, to purely tonal music. Except baroque; that's a very special case. I agree Bach was the greatest but that his...

Belle

At our music group there's a man there whom I find annoying. He spent 37 years in English musical theatre and thinks he knows all about classical music. Last week he announced that Schubert had died from mercury poisoning because of syphilis. I'm sure Schubert died from "tertiary syphilis; that is t...

Belle

Very enjoyable comments!!

Belle

....cool aid?! :lol: To what do you attribute, if anything, your changing tastes? I'm interested in your engagement with 'minor' composers and those heard less often. Do you feel that you've become 'exhausted' by the canon over the years and had to go in search of something different? What do those ...

Belle

Writing about Schumann started me thinking about how my musical tastes have changed and evolved over the decades (sigh). The music which inspired me in my earlier decades now lies dormant in my brain and I seldom listen to it. The Mozart Piano Concertos are no longer of interest - those and most of ...

Belle

The piano writing in the last movement is lyrical and very fine, but I feel the concerto is let down because the orchestra just 'strokes' the piano. Same with Chopin, though I think his orchestration is even less interesting than Schumann's. I was thinking about this just now as I was eating my brea...

Belle

I'm not really interested in listening to music composed by somebody just because she is a woman. On their many many music nights at the Schumann house there is no record of either Clara, Robert or Brahms playing any of her music - and I've read books on Brahms and the Schumanns as well as the diari...

Belle

This is incredible; I found it just recently: a 6 year old boy with all the poise of a seasoned concert performer!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9phP2rlGmiw

Belle

Clara Schumann was indeed a remarkable woman, especially in her loyalty to her husband the promotion of his work. Not to mention raising 7 children all alone and having 2 (or more) predecease her. That must have been terrible. And her last years were not especially healthy or happy. Brahms could eas...

Belle

I'm sure that as a conductor he'll be a very good airline pilot.

Belle

I worked briefly behind the scenes on " Playschool " in 1972/3 (before the days of colour TV) when the late Warren Carr was the pianist. We used to hold full rehearsals the day before recording in a church hall right near Sydney Church of England Girls' Grammar School in Darlinghurst. It was a very ...

Belle

Mark Anthony says that as a rhetorical ploy, together with "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him," to set up a long list of good things Caesar has allegedly done. He clearly does not mean it as a general rule of life, and while we can't know Shakespeare's intention, I don't believe he meant it ...

Belle

The word 'rhetoric' has gotten a bad rap in contemporary usage. Of course, like any other tool of argument, it is open to abuse. But used skillfully it can also serve to persuade. This makes me think of Trump, Hitler, Mussolini. The power of skillful rhetoric to persuade scares me a little-maybe mo...

Belle

This has just been written today in our national daily newspaper by a female doctor of Jurisprudence: As The Australian reported this week, there are real concerns that NSW crown prosecutors are running sexual assault trials with insufficient regard for the strength of the evidence. One of Sydney’s ...

Belle

Belle: I mean no disrespect, but not all people are built the same as you. Young men and women may "have agency" as you say, but not all are able to talk or think their way out of a difficult situation, especially when trapped by a predator in a practice room. 'Nuff said. :mrgreen: We cannot have a...

Belle

jserraglio wrote: ↑
Thu Aug 15, 2019 6:05 am
If so, it supports what I see as an uncomfortable truth.

Looking up the meaning of 'rhetoric'. It doesn't 'support' anything.

Belle

Rhetoric.

Belle

I have the DVD of Lukic and Netrebko in the original production she starred in: They were both magnificent! I had no interest in seeing Domingo in that or any other baritone role even before this kerfluffle started, and have even less interest now. Belle: I've been reading your comments above, and ...

Belle

Beckmesser wrote: ↑
Tue Aug 13, 2019 5:07 pm
The reaction has already started.

What a surprise!! Fortunately for him, Domingo is yesterday's hero.

And my final word on this topic: if you make a pact with the devil don't complain about the devil.

Belle

A witch hunt is a hunt, not a trope. And it's obvious why folks would disavow it as a witch hunt!! Why would they not feel uncomfortable about hounding people the way McCarthy did? Process exactly the same. No person of wit needs to knee a sexual aggressor anywhere when a few well chosen words can w...

Search found 2039 matches