The Classical Music Guide Forums

Beckmesser

I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.

The only work by Carl Loewe that I know is the Grand Duo in F Major for Piano Four Hands, Op. 18. I’m very fond of it, in fact.

Beckmesser

Off to a good start artistically. But financially? I'm not so sure. My wife and I attended the performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk on Thursday night. We had the third row of our section of the balcony all to ourselves. There were so few patrons one might have thought there was a terrible blizzard...

Beckmesser

I attended the rehearsal of the Beethoven Ninth at Tanglewood on Saturday. MTT showed flashes of humor in his remarks to the musicians but no signs of physical weakness. Hope he has many more performances to come.

Beckmesser

I discovered Umm Kulthum when I was working on assignment in the Middle East in 1980. Egyptian friends shared their audio cassettes with me. I found the music absolutely intoxicating. I recommend it.

Beckmesser

YouTube can be a useful resource for someone discovering classical music. You can find a wide range of material from what some would call "basic repertory" to the highly obscure. You can "try before you buy." Also on YouTube, I have recently discovered CD reviews by David Hurwitz, executive editor o...

Beckmesser

In all fairness, I must confess that I didn't listen to the samples in their entirety. I might still do that.

My initial impression: where are the tunes? Contemporary music seems more about sound effects. I like a good tune. Maybe composers feel that all the good tunes have already been discovered.

Beckmesser

I'm missing Tanglewood terribly these days. I go every week during July and August to attend the Saturday morning open rehearsals. On at least three of those Saturdays there will be an afternoon orchestra concert by the super-talented high school musicians attending the Boston University-Tanglewood ...

Beckmesser

Tommasini reports that this summer's Boston Pops season has been cancelled. I wonder if the Tanglewood season has also been cancelled. I haven't received any email announcements.

Beckmesser

I can appreciate the argument that what we call "classical music" or "art music" needs to renew itself as an art form by the addition of new works to the repertoire. Sweeping generalizations that all "new" music is unlistenable, unintelligible noise are unfair, although I must confess that I have he...

Beckmesser

That is very sad news, indeed. John Francis was the only member of this forum whom I actually knew in person. Whenever we attended an opera at the Met on Monday nights I always stopped into the library next door (where John served as a volunteer) to say hello and have a brief chat. I will miss his f...

Beckmesser

The article states that the number of seats will be reduced by approximately 20 percent. I wonder how the Philharmonic plans to compensate for the loss of ticket revenue. Raise ticket prices? Ask donors to dig deeper into their pockets? I assume they have already made these calculations. That aside,...

Beckmesser

Pedals falling off during a concert happens more than you think. One problem is, pianists sometimes really stomp on them and if there is a loose connection or not tight to begin with, off they go. Seems to me I've seen one of these on YouTube happening. I'll try to find it and put on the link here....

Beckmesser

I wonder what other CMGers may have seen in the way of "accidents" at events they attended? I recall a mishap at a performance of Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera in 2008 that could have been very serious for the performer involved. Fortunately he was not seriously injured. Tenor Gary L...

Beckmesser

I wonder if Ms. MacDonald would come to Levine's defense. Probably can't do that on a conservative website.

Beckmesser

They appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra this summer at Saratoga. I'm sorry I missed them.

I have enjoyed many of their videos on YouTube.

Lance, you could add them to your list of family musicians.

Beckmesser

I must really be out of touch.

I have "heard of" only nine composers on the list, and aside from John Adams, have probably heard only one work by each.

Beckmesser

I guess we are not surprised to find multiple members of a family who share musical talent: married couples who met "through work" and their talented offspring (there must be a genetic factor, I suppose). I think it would be really interesting to compile a list of musicians who "came out of nowhere"...

Beckmesser

Didn't see pianist Claude Frank who performed with his wife, pianist Lillian Kallir, and their daughter, violinist Pamela Frank. Wikipedia reports that violinist Miriam Fried performs with her son, pianist Jonathan Biss.

Beckmesser

I had no idea that I have Giulio Ricordi to thank for the creation of my two favorite Verdi operas.

Beckmesser

What I found interesting is that Maestro Petrenko seems disinclined to make recordings unless they are perfect. He wouldn't be the first artist who is reluctant to make recordings but I wonder how the orchestra feels about it. I don't suppose orchestras earn much revenue from recording but it is a w...

Beckmesser

It's not the sales taxes that bother me.

I recently received a shipment from Amazon and three out of four jewel boxes were damaged in some way. The hinge on one box had broken off and so the two pieces no longer fit together.

I wish Amazon would take greater care in packing CDs for shipment.

Beckmesser

The reaction has already started.

Beckmesser

Could this mean that we will never see him at the Met again . . . if Peter Gelb handles this the same way he dealt with L'affaire Levine?

Beckmesser

I was at Tanglewood last weekend and I thought the performances were terrific. Goerke was in better voice than she was during the Met's Ring Cycle in May, although some high notes come out sounding pinched. Maybe she was well rested before this engagement. Amber Wagner was a standout as Sieglinde. I...

Beckmesser

I'm sure if Alexa had been asked to play Paul McCartney singing "Michelle" she would have had no difficulty finding it. Classical music "nomenclature" is more complicated. I discovered this when I got my first iPod and started "ripping" my CD collection to iTunes. During the process, iTunes typicall...

Beckmesser

I'm not quite sure what the implications of this development are for me. I have probably never purchased more than a half dozen "songs" (can we call them tracks?) from iTunes. I did the use the iTunes app on my PC to rip hundreds of my own CDs, which files I then copied to my iPod. I assume I will s...

Beckmesser

Well, Mr. Volle's performance sounds like something to look forward to.

Our Ring Cycle starts tonight.

Beckmesser

I'm not sure that is very different from having a regular subscription. When I renew my subscription I can request exchanges for other performances at no extra charge (in the past it could only be done in late summer and there was a fee for exchanges). Last time I renewed our subscription I requeste...

Beckmesser

Apparently Ms. Rowe has reached a settlement with the BSO.

Beckmesser

We have been Met subscribers (Monday nights) for many years. I recently learned that the house was going to be dark on many Monday nights this season because more performances were being scheduled for Sunday afternoons. I was surprised to learn yesterday that we still have a subscription, although w...

Beckmesser

There's a documentary, too, about Trifonov available through MediciTV and in that program Sergei Babayan talks about "the Triff" and how he has a tendency to look at his hands as he's playing. Babayan was his teacher at Curtis and he tells how Trifonov fanatically tried to change his keyboard watch...

Beckmesser

And now for something completely different . . .

Beckmesser

While I am very fond of Debussy's music I have never been able to appreciate his only opera. The fault, I'm sure, is mine because professional musicians and knowledgeable music lovers hold the work in such high esteem. I'm not exactly sure what my blind spot is, but I think it is the dramatic elemen...

Beckmesser

Here's a problem I've been wrestling with. Back in the 1960s my aunt gave our family a set of World Book Encyclopedias that occupies one shelf of a bookcase. A second shelf is filled with the annual supplements. A third shelf is filled with the annual issues summarizing recent scientific development...

Beckmesser

Other items that I have in abundance are VHS video cassettes and reels of audio tape. For years I recorded broadcasts of British shows that appeared on our local public television station--adaptations of literary classics, documentaries, comedies, and lots and lots of mysteries. I recently filled si...

Beckmesser

My wife and I definitely have too much stuff. I have spent the past several months trying to empty out our house before undertaking a total renovation. Looking back on 35 years in the same residence I can see that we held onto our stuff much too long. I think people have varying "relationships" with...

Beckmesser

I was struck by the fact that Andris Nelsons was the busiest conductor of the lot with 121 performances, 30 percent more than the runner-up (Valery Gergiev with 93). It's true that he is music director of two major orchestras, but one has to wonder how he manages it all. He was very active in last s...

Beckmesser

I attended the prima on New Year's Eve and, as Tommasini reports, it was an exciting performance. If the Met could field a cast like this one most evenings, they would have no trouble selling more tickets.

Beckmesser

By an accident of Fate we happen to have tickets for the Met's New Year's Eve gala when the curtain will go up on a new production of Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur starring Anna Netrebko in the title role. They came with our Monday 3 subscription. Looking at my email today, I was surprised to find an o...

Beckmesser

Apropos of this discussion, the following article appeared in today's New York Times:

There’s More Religion Than You Think in Bach’s ‘Brandenburgs’

Beckmesser

I just looked up the Wikipedia article on Hanon and discovered this paragraph: Piano students all over the world know of Hanon’s famous training exercises. Both Sergei Rachmaninoff and Josef Lhévinne claimed Hanon to be the secret of why the Russian piano school delivered an explosion of virtuosi in...

Beckmesser

I've read through the Shostakovich Second Piano Concerto a few times and I didn't find it especially difficult. I suppose it had just the right degree of difficulty for the composer's son who was presumably an advanced piano student at the time. Many pianists will recognize that the concerto contain...

Beckmesser

Regarding the "vanishing" audience, I have a theory, but no data to prove it. With World War II there was a large influx of refugees to New York City fleeing from the Nazis. By and large, it was a well-educated and cultured population. They knew and loved classical music and opera in Europe and they...

Beckmesser

After the move, Mr. Hubay relinquished the house manager job . . . and concentrated on the box office. It was a different time; shows and schedules were not announced far in advance as they are today. “We would announce two weeks in advance for individual ticket sales,” he said of the practice he i...

Beckmesser

I had planned to pose this question myself, so I'm glad to see that Len has done so. I spoke with a friend recently who said he wondered why he was buying CDs when he can enjoy a lot more music with a streaming service. My friend chose Apple music. I might have considered that option until I read th...

Beckmesser

Every now and then I'm blocked from viewing a clip, told that I don't have permission. More often than that, my friends in Sweden can't view a clip that I've seen and sent them the link. Whether these are Content ID in operation or some other system, I don't know. It does suggest that viewers in Eu...

Beckmesser

A few years ago, a poster on another forum that I follow was complaining about YouTube. It seems his son, a high-school student, had posted a video of himself performing a Beethoven piano sonata. YouTube took it down, claiming that it was a copyrighted performance, presumably owned by a record label...

Beckmesser

Crutchfield is still selling car CD players.

Beckmesser

I'm in the process of cleaning out the acquisitions of 35 years living in the same house, among them the audio and VHS cassettes. I assumed that the best of the audio cassettes have already been issued as CDs and had no qualms about consigning them to the rubbish bin. I never felt any special fondne...

Beckmesser

What a fascinating experiment-won't listen to it until we get home from nyc because the sound from a tablet is pretty lousy-great that the NYPerforming Arts Library was involved in this! Len https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/20/arts/music/met-opera-beczala-recording-edison.html?rref=collection%2Fspot...

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