The Classical Music Guide Forums

sfbugala

I heard him quest conduct the Pittsburgh SO once. He gave the absolute worst performance, by a fair margin, of Beethoven's 5th that I have ever heard - live or on record. For me, I would never appoint a conductor would could not convincingly conduct the backbone of the literature. I have to tease a...

sfbugala

It's really too bad the Corner Pub has poisoned nearly every corner of the CMG for me with all this Nazi rally talk. While I've been no big fan of the GOP over the past eight years, I've cringed when some knucklehead has compared W to a Nazi for his alleged sins. I'm sure if we all talked to a vet f...

sfbugala

Thanks, Don!

Indeed, it was a great concert.

sfbugala

gfweis wrote:sfbugala: I got my Steinberg cd at Haydn House.

I'll check them out. Thanks!

Steve

sfbugala

I love the Sixth. For many, the last three are his best, but I think the Sixth belongs up there with them. The last movement is a little wonky, but it works. I love that slow movement. I briefly had the Steinberg performance, but since it was on a poor Dynaflex pressing, I chucked it. I'd love to fi...

sfbugala

I can't help but wonder if Obama's children were older what the response would be from the other side if an unplanned pregnancy occurred... I'd bet the GOP would have nothing but very sweet things to say about it. Oh absolutely! I'm sure the word "whore" or "slut" would be used in the most positive...

sfbugala

shouldn't the President and the Vice-President be held to a higher standard? Sorry, but that silly line of argument doesn't get you points when your guy is a 40 something with no history of leadership or expertise on anything. Talk about unvetted! Obama cannot be held responsible for this embarrass...

sfbugala

Amateur euphonium player. I also dabble on trumpet. But I haven't picked up either in months. I used to play in a fine community band for about 15 years. I'd like to get back to playing, if only for church. I wish someone would transcribe some Bach for Euphonium. I'll play some WTC or Cello Suites s...

sfbugala

I'm stunned McCain didn't pick Hillary herself, for all the talk of reaching out to PUMA Democrats. Now, THAT would've been a shocker...

sfbugala

Mine probably centers around Mahler, because I find him to be the last of the great 19th century composers, and the first of the many, great 20th century ones. I love those who influenced him (Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner), and those who he influenced (especially Shostakovich.) But like others have...

sfbugala

There's a lot of great ones. I like the Wand one from Japan: http://classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=4195

sfbugala

You know, none of you would have anything but ridicule for Buchanan on 99 issues out of 100 because he stands for things you detest. Yet, because on this one issue he plays to your delusions and obsessions, why, he's an articulate and persuasive analyst! Did it ever cross your minds that the same f...

sfbugala

Awesome article! We have no business getting into yet another ethnic quagmire. I'm reminded of what my 8th grade social studies teacher told up about growing up in the 1930's. He said, if you were an Italian kid, and you were in an Irish neighborhood, you got beat up for no reason other than you wer...

sfbugala

Agreed. It's a beautiful work. By any chance, is the Baltimore performance streamlined? I'd love to hear another rendition.

sfbugala

I can empathize with trying to avoid canceled shows. Part of me wishes certain shows had been canceled after one season. Twin Peaks, for instance, had a superb first season, then quickly went downhill from there. I bought Firefly but haven't watched many yet. What I have watched though, I really lik...

sfbugala

Regarding that recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto praised in Fanfare, I suspect that it is Jost Michaels with the Westphalian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hubert Reichert. This was indeed on Vox Allegretto ACD 8013; it is now available on Vox's "burn-to-order" program, but is expensive ($...

sfbugala

I usually don't venture into the Pub, but I thought this story was interesting to report given the conductor involved.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 579829.ece

sfbugala

Brendan,
If you are curious about Boomtown, amazon has it very cheap: http://www.amazon.com/Boomtown-Season-O ... 907&sr=8-1

It's worth a gamble, and you can see that despite it's early cancellation, it built up quite a following.

sfbugala

I picked this up at a church basement sale today, along with another one Bell Telephone Laboratories LP of Stokowski doing Wagner: so far, the Wagner's really good: Not bad for $0.50! Great find. Your passport into the revolution created by electrical recording and its possibilities. Almost like re...

sfbugala

If you're a fan of Christiane Jaccottet , you will probably want to have her complete violin sonatas by Bach with ARTHUR GRUMIAUX , once available on Philips [454.011]. I have been trying to secure complete birth-death dates for Jaccottet, currently showing as being born on February 13, 1937 and pa...

sfbugala

There's nothing new about fictitious orchestras, or for that matter fictitious conductors. Copyright laws and conductors' contracts impelled some producers to indulge. In the early days of LP, the RCA Camden label offered quite a few such recordings; somewhere there's a list of the correct names of...

sfbugala

WARNING!! Although there have been no questions about the provenance of the Pilz discs that list Christiane Jaccottet and Dubravka Tomsic as the performers, there is abundant documentation that many, perhaps most, of the recordings on that label are either misattributed or attributed to pseudonymou...

sfbugala

Welcome!

sfbugala

I'll keep an eye open for any Tomsic recordings, for sure, as well as the others mentioned. What's funny is a used cd place acquired some, and even at "bargain" prices, $4, they're more than when they came out new! But I'll just use trade to get any I find. Hopefully, they have some of the listed. I...

sfbugala

sfbugala

According to Jack Gottlieb's Editor Note for Bernstein's discography: http://www.leonardbernstein.com/discog/editors_note.html, Bernstein also recorded a Piano Concerto in G with the St. Louis Symphony. However, if it saw the light of day, it was as an LP with the orchestra labelled, the Savoy Symph...

sfbugala

I found a superb selection of Bach discs on the mega cheapo label, Pilz featuring Chrstiane Jaccottet on harpsichord. I remember seeing these at Best Buy many years back for a buck a disc...or less! So far, I have Books I and II of the WTC, Goldberg Variations, and Inventions, Sinfonias, and Prelude...

sfbugala

I have the Karajan, Haitink, both Mehtas, Kempe (Dresden), and the Ashkenazy. It may sound surprising, but I like the Ashkenazy/Czech Phil best of all. But there are a lot of great renditions out there. For me, the work is a guilty indulgence. It's so cheesy and over-the-top, but sooooooo cool. I lo...

sfbugala

He was composer-in-residence for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra for awhile, and they recorded a disc of works of his. My friend was in the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra when they performed a pretty cool work of his, Treasures of the Snow. I always hoped a professional orchestra would reco...

sfbugala

I never knew that!

sfbugala

It is pretty frustrating. Doctor Who used to air here many months later than in Great Britain. However, this year, the wait was only about 3 weeks later, I think.

sfbugala

Brendan wrote:

I've seen Homicide, or at least a season or two - which is why I want it all. Best procedural drama I've seen for some time.
.

Agreed.

sfbugala

Is it the American, David Soul, from Starsky and Hutch?!

Interesting.

sfbugala

I started watching Lost on air, then had to miss a few episodes . . . then was utterly lost myself when I watched it again. Has enough good folk recommend it that I should pick it up on sale sometime. I'll have to order Homicide: Life on the Street from the US or UK. It was shown here on cable, but...

sfbugala

I heard that Battlestar Galactica is very hard to jump into in the middle of the season. Too much backstory? It probably is. Although since it's on hiatus, you could catch up, either by watching them online, renting them, or seeing if Sci-fi Channel or your local equivalent runs a marathon. I don't...

sfbugala

As a fan of shows like The Sopranos , Deadwood , Carnivale , The Shield , Buffy , Rescue Me , Life on Mars , The West Wing and such, I was wondering if there were any new shows as good (besides Battlestar Galactica , but no one will believe me that its better than all of the above put together and ...

sfbugala

18 Bruckner 8ths
13 Mahler Symphony No. 7
13 Bruckner Symphony No. 9
12 Mahler Symphony No. 9

The crazy thing is, I've sold/traded in versions of all four works.

sfbugala

Since others have used poetry as great vehicle to express our thoughts on beauty, I should, too. Music by Anna Akhmatova (dedicated to Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich) It shines with a miraculous light Revealing to the eye the cutting of facets. It alone speaks to me When others are too scared to c...

sfbugala

I picked this up at a church basement sale today, along with another one Bell Telephone Laboratories LP of Stokowski doing Wagner: so far, the Wagner's really good: http://www.stokowski.org/images/Bell-Labs-1931-HiFi.jpg Not bad for $0.50! Great find. Your passport into the revolution created by el...

sfbugala

I picked this up at a church basement sale today, along with another one Bell Telephone Laboratories LP of Stokowski doing Wagner: so far, the Wagner's really good:

Not bad for $0.50!

sfbugala

[korngold's] Hollywood followers...included...Mikos Rozsa (Spellbound). I love the irony (and wonder if Lebrecht himself gets it) of a literary hack taking musical hacks to task. Are there any other idiots who would judge movie soundtrack music by the same standards as classical music? It's like ju...

sfbugala

The measuring bar for copying/stealing is certainly subjective, and I'm probably a softy in regards to Williams. Whatever he lifts, you can usually trace it. (Like the Tatooine music in Star Wars: A New Hope that is sooooo close to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.) But, for me in the end, I still think...

sfbugala

But I remember a line attributed Stravinsky or T.S. Elliot. "Bad composers/poets copy; good composers/poets steal." That's what they said; but the fact remains, that wherever Stravinsky borrowed musical sources, he transformed it, and the result bears his own fingerprint. The great bulk of John Wil...

sfbugala

It's funny. I scrolled down to skim the article, and I missed the byline. When I got to the line, "The word in Hollywood is that Williams is on the wane," I thought, "This is Lebrecht's article." The "word" gives it away. I'm skeptical he even knows where Hollywood is, much less anyone who knows "th...

sfbugala

I personally think it is obnoxious for an English speaker to not anglicize some of the pronounciations. I had a musicology prof that sounded like she was going to cough up a wad of phlem every time she said Bach. While I certainly would pronounce Wagner " Vagner" at some level this linguistic corre...

sfbugala

They may struggle with the same issues (not so, IMHO - the philosophy underlying aesthetics etc has changed considerably) but they express themselves through different forms. War was still somewhat heroic in Haydn's time - Britten's was somewhat different in so many ways. So it goes with others. I ...

sfbugala

The doors close, and with the seating I'd have to climb over five grandmothers to get to my seat 'twixt Sculthorpe and Beethoven. . I usually only have to hurdle three or four at most. But I've requested an aisle seat from time to time when I haven't been in the mood for that. None of which address...

sfbugala

The main ingredient any composer of any era should possess is his or her own "style"; whether neo-classical, neo romantic, serial or whatever, the creative composer should strive to be true to him/herself and the artistic convictions he/she holds. Otherwise, the resulting works can sound artificial...

sfbugala

Berlioz's Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale might fit the bill.

sfbugala

Modern music is nothing special just music written recently. People band it with dates arbitrarily. I would call anything from Debussy onwards as "modern music". You may disagree. Contemporary music is music composed in our time. Its only difference is that boundaries once established by academics ...

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