The Classical Music Guide Forums

John F

The Kennedy Center awards have always been mainly about popular entertainment, though with window dressing.

John F

Do you know of any major statue anywhere made of aluminum? Statues meant to last are made of stronger stuff, such as bronze.

John F

Ricordanza wrote: ↑
Thu Nov 28, 2019 7:13 am

it shines like gold when it is in perfect harmony
My impression is just the opposite: a confused jumble with gold leaf added in an unsuccessful attempt to prettify the mess. Not my taste either.

Tacky. It's made of gilded aluminum.

John F

I've no candidate of my own for the job, now that James Levine is out of the picture. By all accounts he wasn't much of an admnistrator but he did have an ear for talent and the level of casting at the Met is no longer what it was during his prime years.

John F

The Vienna Phil was famously vastly more Nazified than the BPO, including having a Nazi as director into the 1970s. Who was that? Trumpeter Helmut Wobisch, an unrepentant Nazi, was the orchestra's Vorstand (administrative director) unfil 1967k but I don't know who his successor was. The orchesta ha...

John F

Clive Jamess death was in no way unexpected - he had been writing about his fatal illness formany years - but I'm sorry to hear of it anyway. I've been a James fan ever since he was a guest of Dick Cavett on PBS, and bought every one of his books beginning with the three collectinos of television cr...

John F

I'd say the Met's board has taken the line of least resistance, as boards do. Only once has it failed to retain a general manager who wanted to remain: Hugh Southern, who everyone soon realized wasn't up to the job. The Met would have had to be in terrible shape, like actual bankruptcy, for the boar...

John F

Considering that Furtwängler did nothing wrong but continued to live and work in his homeland, all this is surely unwarranted. Many others did so and I don't see any complaints here, for example Carl Orff. We aren't up in arms about him though "Carmina Burana" was one of the most popular pieces in N...

John F

Every year at Christmas, Sviatoslav Richter invited friends to his apartment to listen to Bach's Christmas Oratorio in the DG/Archiv recording by Karl Richter, which he praises highly in his notes. Me too - an unequaled group of soloists, a big chorus, and well judged tempos. It contains some of Bac...

John F

In effect, Beethoven recomposed "Leonore" and named it "Fidelio" to distinguish his new version. Even when the changes in a particular number aren't radical they are still very audible. That said, I think "Fidelio" is superior in every way; Beethoven was wise to rework the score.

John F

A fine survey of a large discography. Thanks for posting it.

John F

Another piece by Franck that appeals to me is/are his Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra, an uncharacteristically virtuosic piece that has received several outstanding recordings such as this one with Alfred Cortot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmROunc1f8k

John F

The name of this competition struck me as odd; Marguerite Long and Jacues Thibaud were contemporaries, though I don't know how often they played together if at all, but Régine Crespin was born a half-century later. It turns out that the competition was originally run by the Long-Thibaud Foundation (...

John F

The Nazi symbol was there in plain sight and it gave me the horrors!! It seemed a miserable counterpoint to the splendid music. Of course Germany's national symbol the swastika was part of the turbine factory's logo, and of course the logo was on the banners that decorated the hall. What would you ...

John F

Why? This wasn't an official Nazi Party function but a free concert for workers in the AEG turbine factory. No doubt the cameras picked out members of the audience who were listening most intently - and how many American factory workers would have attended this kind of concert at all, let alone give...

John F

Franck's symphony in D minor used to be a staple of American concert programs and was recorded quite often, notably by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. But it seems to have dropped out of the repertoire; the New York Philharmonic last played it during the regular season in 2001, Kurt Masur ...

John F

These recordings have never been circulated and were in storage for several decades, uncatalogued and inaccessible to the public. How and why did the library acquire hundreds of thousands of recordings it evidently did not intend to use? There must be a story here. From the library's web site, it w...

John F

one of these attitudes is the trope of "empty virtuosity," invoked by Furtwängler and almost always used in relation to performers of the "wrong" ethnicity for the particular repertoire, particularly the core Austro-German repertoire (excepting, of course, Mendelssohn, Mahler, and by extension, the...

John F

It is quite a voice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX5aOFhrvN0

John F

songs are a “product of underlying psychological faculties that make certain kinds of sound feel appropriate to certain social and emotional circumstances”. I expect many would agree with this; I do. However, it's a long way from there to the supposition that "music is a kind of universal language"...

John F

As accompanist I heard him in a Schubert recital with Bryn Terfel (the Schwanengesang and a half dozen others) which was the best Lieder singing I've ever heard from Terfel. Obviously he hadn't just accompanied but coached Terfel. Another example of his coaching was when he stood in for one of Maril...

John F

The worst accident during a performance was in 1990, when the Gibichung Hall collapsed too soon and part of it landed on Hildegard Behrens, the Brünnhilde. She completed the performance but did not sing in the following Ring cycle, which had Gudrun Volkert as Brünnhilde.

John F

No actual financial news here - the Met's sources of revenue and its deficits are common knowledge. But tacked on at the end is a possibly significant change. Most of the Met's casting is done by its artistic department whose boss for decades has been Jonathan Friend. For much of that time the Met's...

John F

There's something uncanny about Glass's extraordinary productivity. Partly it may be due to the harmonic simplicity and extreme repetitiveness of his minimalist style; obviously it takes less tme to write a phrase and repeat it literally 100 times than to compose 100 bars of complex developing music...

John F

In the old days, singers like Galli-Curci and Caruso did indeed sing arias and popular songs in the same program, in whatever order they chose. The concert would often also include selections by "assisting artists" (solo violinists etc.) in between the star's numbers. It was the star performers rath...

John F

The Chicago Symphony’s Brass Is World-Famous. Hear It Blast. By Michael Cooper Nov. 18, 2019 EXp3wIDyOas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXp3wIDyOas What distinguishes one top-rank orchestra from another? For the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, it’s long been the brass. For decades, the “Chicago brass” ...

John F

Any number of classical singers have sung Broadway songs as encores, and sometimes as part of the man program. José van Dam sang "Some enchanted evening";Thomas Quasthoff, "I did it my way." And this is nothing new. Great singers of the past sang ballads etc. in their concerts, and Caruso sang Georg...

John F

The Boston Symphony audience was always notoriously conservative. Around 1900, when Symphony Hall was being built, one local critic suggested that the signs over the emergency exits should read" "Exit in case of Brahms." The BSO's audience may have been that conservative a century ago, but under th...

John F

Bryn Terfel has always been ready and willing to do that kind of thing if the money etc. were good enough. In the past he's done so much of it that he failed to learn major operatic roles he had contracted to sing. He was to have made a role debut as Wozzeck at the Salzburg Festival back in the 1980...

John F

Whether or not a pianist has recorded both pieces does not show whether he plays them, or can play them. Johnn Ogdon, for example, could doubtless have played the symphony if he wanted to, and maybe he did. On the other hand, three of the five named pianists are unknown to me as they haven't perform...

John F

Doing "Godot" with a female cast does as much damage to the play as doing "Happy Days" with only men. Beckett knew the difference between men and women if the Oberlin theatre department didn't. It's doubtless unfortunate that especially in older plays, the number and importance of womens' roles is s...

John F

In effect, Allen is bored by Nelsons's conducting and the BSO's playing. Since I haven't heard either recently I have no opinion, but I don't believe this is the consensus in Boston. My friends up there don't agree.

John F

You and I are talking about two different things. Leontyne Price, James King, Cheryl Studer, Claire Watson, Teresa Stich Randall, Evelyn Lear, and many others of that calibre did not "sing small parts for the MET." They sang principal roles in the opera houses of Germany, Austria, and elsewhere in E...

John F

Sic transit gloria mundi: Paisiello's "Barber of Seville" was so popular that Rossinin was sharply criticized for daring to compose his own. And while Cimarosa's "Matrimnio Segreto" is seldom perormed today except occasionally in Italy, its popularity when new was such that the first revival of Moza...

John F

Where do these singers go to grow and mature? Now, they must migrate to Europe, where opera culture flourishes. Which of course a great many American singers did during the 1950s and 1960s. Leontyne Price was singing Aida (1958) and Pamina (1959) in Vienna years before her Met debut in 1961. Some n...

John F

Some may find a performer's body language annoying but really it's of no consequence. What counts is the sound that comes out of the instrument or the orchestra. Seems to me that your comments on Lang Lang's playing are on the mark. So what if Horowitz sat still when playing? Artur Rubinstein didn't...

John F

Haydn was second to Mozart in his time. (Surely you can't believe I was placing him ahead of Wagner!) I've listened to quite a few operas by 18th century Italian composers such as Cimarosa and Paisiello, and Haydn certainly places ahead of them, don't you think?

John F

Bratby surely didn't write the headline for his review, because he nowhere calls any of Haydn's operas "lousy," and indeed has high praise for parts of "La Fedelta Premiata." Unlike Mozart, Haydn wrote no operas for the commercial theatre and its popular audience - his job was to please Prince Ester...

John F

where is the audience for opera? Companies like New York City Opera, New York Grand Opera, Eve Queler's Carnegie performances, DiCapo Opera, all have ceased to exist. The MET is the last standing Of course this is true only of New York City, which we New Yorkers sometimes provincially take to be th...

John F

Some critics do not place Stokowski in the same league as a Toscanini or Furtwangler For most of his life Stokowski wasn't taken seriously by critics and record reviewers, partly because of his idiosyncratic interpretations of the standard repertoire, partly ( suspect because of his extraordinary p...

John F

It's the 2nd concerto that William Kapell recorded for RCA Victor. I don't know that he played any of the others.

John F

That may be, but you and Sue filled only two seats, and not the most expensive seats at that.

John F

With an attractive cast, even the most hackneyed revival can fill the Met's many seats. It's the fans who need a reason to come. In 1988 Carlos Kleiber made his Met debut in "La Boheme" with Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni in the leading roles. Not only did the house sell out for all five perfor...

John F

That's the trouble with revivals of older productions of standard repertoire, with no star singers in the cast - tickets are hard to sell.

John F

New York's Drama Book Shop, an essential resource in the theatre district, lost its lease and has been looking for a new location. It appears that they've found it. Drama Book Shop Sets a Fresh Start in a New Locale By Michael Paulson Nov. 12, 2019 The Drama Book Shop has a new home. Lin-Manuel Mira...

John F

I've always suspected that the most interesting thing about this opera is the idea, and sampling some of the music (Glass at his most minimal) hasn't increased my interest. Playing in the orchestra for this must take away the will to live. :mrgreen: Still, I guess I'll watch it on TV. Len says there...

John F

Gerrymandering goes back centuries and has been practiced by both political parties. Whichever party has a majority in a state's legislature at the time of the 10-year census gets to draw the boundaries of the election districts, and there's no law that dictates on what basis it to be done, so natur...

John F

Kind of on topic: I remember a 1950s movie, now on YouTube, called "No Highway ni the Sky," based on a Neville Shute novel, that was about "incidents" happening to a new airplane. You might enjoy it. aRa4yey8Z2k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRa4yey8Z2k (The YouTube link I posted was to an incompl...

John F

Lotte Lehmann sang many songs whose protagonist is clearly male, even Schumann's "Dichterliebe." She was certainly not a "butch" singer, few sopranos were more feminine, and wasn't making some kind of unisex point about the songs, she just thought they were great songs, and of course they were. I'm ...

John F

This is very interesting in its own right, whether or not you care about Philip Glass's music. (I don't.)

Search found 21013 matches