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07-24-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 41
Post ID: 11178
Reply to: 4929
A perfect Friday program!
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How smart James Levine was to put the BERLIOZ-MUSSORGSKY program for tonight. They are begged to come along together!

Tonight at Tanglewood:

Berlioz’s  Roman Carnival Overture                         

Berlioz’s  Harold in Italy, for viola and orchestra                 

Mussorgsky Prelude to Khovanshchina

Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition     

If course my absolute favorite -the Levine’s seventh part of the Pictures, the Bydlo will be in very epicenter of my attention. Last fall Levine did it unbelievably wonder with painfully slow and super soft tuba opening – the way how it shell be done but no one does it!!!. Today it will be at open Tanglewood air - they have an opportunity to open my Bydlo even slower, softer and …larger.

The Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
07-25-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Axel
South Africa
Posts 80
Joined on 07-18-2009

Post #: 42
Post ID: 11181
Reply to: 11178
I like your program pick also, now a question...
fiogf49gjkf0d
of the above mentioned pieces the "Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition" is pretty much the more well know item.
I have listened to various interpretations by HvK and the Berlin SO, C. DuToit with the OS de Montreal, George Szell with Cleveland Orchestra,... and then Fritz Rainer with the CSO.

Maybe as yet another case of 'ear equalization' but only Rainer's version seems to get it across with the right timing and POWER, delicacy and sheer scream and explosiveness where the pictures seemed to suggest such. Like just listen to the 'Hut on chicken legs', the Baba Yaga...

I guess the version you refer to is some FM live occasion and not accessible in the 'Wilds of Africa'.
Axel
08-02-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 43
Post ID: 11264
Reply to: 4929
Wow, what a Serenade for Strings!
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Today, as usably, before the Live from Tanglewood Broadcast WGBH played recording from BSO past. I heard that Koussevitzky recoded it but I do not have this record and I think I never heard it. It was Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings. Well, it is famous work but my mind it did not have the posture of being a great work. The Tchaikovsky settings do not have in the Serenade the drama that I would love to see…

Well, look what Koussevitzky did with it. It was a recording from August 16th, 1949. What BSO does with the serenade is just astonishing. Then play it with the same style as BSO played Tchaikovsky IV at the same year. It is truly would be hard to find an orchestra equal to BSO with last Koussevitzky years….

The  Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-21-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 44
Post ID: 11518
Reply to: 4929
David Fray: a wonderful Piano Concerto No. 25!
fiogf49gjkf0d
I French guy that I never heard before David Fray, visited today Boston and along with Kurt Masur and BSO played very very very good  Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25. Although Mr. Fray was better then BSO as the orchestra was not able to support the Fray’s surprisingly-elegant delicacy and BSO sounded bit too “classic” for this concerto, still it was VERY good. David Fray, I need to look up this name…

The Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-23-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 45
Post ID: 11533
Reply to: 4929
The traditionally poorly performing Beethoven IX
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It is a tradition in Boston to close the Tanglewood season with Beethoven IX symphony and it is almost a tradition to pay it very badly.  Today was not an exception. Michael Tilson Thomas led BSO with Tanglewood Festival Chorus with the celebrated work.

It was very bad, particularly the BSO, but the most important it was very much typical to way how people play the Beethoven IX today.  The Ninth is paled mostly like a roadway musical, in easily-alliterative fashion. The dramas of unique phraseology are swallowed and straighten up for sake of continuity of expressionism - sort of taken out of common sense musical version of political correctness. The choral part was a bit better but still it had a great spay of “stupid happiness” - the Tanglewood Festival Chorus sounded as the sing the “In the Tavern” song from Carmina Burana not the Beethoven IX. But I am known to discard the choral part of the Ninth – The Bruno Kittel Chorus did it year back and I hardly care how the choral part is being played today….

The Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-23-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,666
Joined on 10-12-2006

Post #: 46
Post ID: 11540
Reply to: 11533
Large Scale Works
fiogf49gjkf0d

There are a few great works that are popular enough that everyone tries them, but they remain out of reach for most orchestras.  Plenty of Wagner is like this, and certainly Beethoven's 9th is.  While there have been times that I have heard works that were too complex for a small or weak orchestra overcome by enthusiasm, I have to say that I have never - ever - heard Beethoven's 9th done justice by a less-than-stellar group with enthusiasm alone.

I am not really sure how anyone could hear, say, the Furtwangler 9th and then still want to try it with, say, contemporary BSO. Rather, it seems like they would prefer to stay with what they can reasonably be expected to play.

I literally would not go to hear our local SO do the B9  --   no matter who the guest conductor was.

Best regards,
Paul S

08-23-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 47
Post ID: 11541
Reply to: 11540
The same music?
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I do not think it has anything do with “Large Scale Works” but rather with a normal apathy play of BSO. I put a clip, it is a regular 44/16 – anybody can play it on PS - with a fragment of today BSO play and a fragment of how it might be.  This   fragment is my absolutely the most favorite part of Beethoven IX. It is not about the difference in tempos, both of tempos are fine. The BSO, the first fragment, they render notes but each next phase is the same as the previous one, pitch and amplitude are a different but the intend of expressionism is always the same – the homogeneous blending. The second fragment is like a different music. The sound divided upon zillion layers and each layer fights but at the same time complements each other.  Each instrumental section has own very distinctive voice and they deliver the punches then at very right time and in very diverse fashion, enriching the whole musical palette with each strike. There is no single boring note in the second fragment and each note pumps up drama in own way, the orchestra is almost like a boiling soup, where bubbles of musical metaphors are popping up and exploding…. It is even hard to think about the first and second fragments as the same music. Ah, I forget to mention that the first fragment was played by the Orchestra that has the most highly played musicians in Unites States.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?igq3zwqdkmj

The Cat

PS: I more expressed my feeling about in at:   http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=11535#11535



"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
09-06-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 48
Post ID: 11681
Reply to: 4929
The Boston Symphony’s underskirt
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If you have interest about BSO and about the retune live of musicians who live and work in BSO-liven orchestras then you might find the book that I read now worth attention “In Concert: Onstage and Offstage with the Boston Symphony Orchestra”  by Carl Vigeland

“To Seiji Ozawa, the Boston Symphony Orchestra season is filled with challenges. The audience at the opening night concert is greeted by leaflets declaring the musicians' grievances: A strike may cut off the season. Ozawa has chosen to make it a full orchestra, huge chorus, and outstanding vocal soloists: The local critics are eager to judge the results. And the season includes a performance at the reopening of Carnegie Hall, a major recording, and even a concert version of an opera.

There is, as always, the tension between players and conductor. But for one of the musicians, the principal trumpet player, the season is both a challenge and a question of his professional survival, because of his conflict with his conductor. He feels forced to prove himself each time he plays. Yet his performances influence the way the whole orchestra sounds. The interplay between these two men becomes the dramatic center of an intensely moving story.

The concertmaster, the choral director, the official coterie around Ozawa, the major players in the orchestra, are all part of a fascinating view of the BSO no outsider can witness. From rehearsal to performance, from back-corridor talk to at-home life, from Boston to New York to Tanglewood, here is an intimate, behind-the-scenes picture of one of the foremost orchestras in the world?”

The Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
09-24-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 49
Post ID: 11810
Reply to: 4929
The 2009-10 season opens Today.
fiogf49gjkf0d

Today BSO opens up the 2009-10 seaso with Boston’s standard Roman Carnival Overture and La Mer.  It might be interesting word primer of Concerto for Harp by Williams. The key I the program in my view will be the Chopin the Second Concerto by play Evgeny Kissin. Kissin is far from the pianists that I would care but he sometimes he can have the spark of hope – so who knows…  I decided do not go - the Chopin the Second Concerto – who cares. However, on Saturday Levine will lead BSO with Symphony of Psalms and the Mozart’s Requiem with Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

I know: how much Mozart’s Requiem can one hear? Still, the work is so damn good and the Tanglewood Chorus is so capable that it was a definitive “go”.  Also, James Levine does not have, at least I do not know of, any definitive Mozart’s Requiems committed to posterity. Who know, his 2009 Mozart’s Requiem might be such an offence…. If he would show off with Mozart’s Requiem the same level of performance as he had last year with Brahms Requiem then it might be VERY interesting…

The caT


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
10-20-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 50
Post ID: 12012
Reply to: 4929
The windows have been restored. Now it is time to open them...
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Opening nights, opening minds

Innovative new conductors in LA, NY challenge the BSO to do more

Opening night concerts at the most esteemed orchestras are usually a bit of a snooze, but this year they were a shot of adrenaline. In two halls, at least. Change has come to orchestras on both coasts - the New York Philharmonic and at the Los Angeles Philharmonic - with the arrival of two new leaders, Alan Gilbert and Gustavo Dudamel, respectively.

Gilbert is a young (42) American, not previously a brand-name maestro in this country, though one possessed of cool musical insights and a compelling vision of what a modern orchestral ecosystem might look like.

Dudamel, in case you’ve been living in an organ loft, is an astonishingly young (28) Venezuelan firebrand with an electrifying podium presence and a passionate commitment to musical community. Both conductors are bent on taking their ensembles in vital new directions, as was clear from the opening night performances I attended in both cities.

These big shifts in the landscape of American orchestras provide not just an occasion to consider fresh faces but also a chance to look at different models for leading an orchestra into the 21st century. On that urgent issue, New York and Los Angeles are clearly raising the bar. The Boston Symphony Orchestra should be taking note.

Back surgery has recently sidelined BSO music director James Levine, who is now scheduled to return to the podium on Oct. 30, midway through the orchestra’s Beethoven cycle. Health issues notwithstanding, the BSO under Levine, 66, has been playing at a higher level than it has in years.

Yet it is also clear that, after a baseline world-class standard of music-making is met, the pressing issues become not just how an orchestra is sounding but what exactly it is doing with its hard-earned virtuosity.

Weekly performances must of course deliver, but orchestras must also resist the temptation to cocoon themselves in the narcotic sublimity of their own sound. The fear is always that concert halls in America are becoming citadels isolated from the modern-day intellectual and artistic life of the society at large. In that spirit, critics routinely lament that culturally curious people who follow contemporary trends in literature or modern art seem blithely oblivious to classical music. Big orchestras, including the BSO, need to be giving them more reasons to feel otherwise.

Dudamel and Gilbert are only at the start of their tenures and face many tests ahead. Yet they are already coming up with compelling models for coaxing the traditional symphony orchestra - essentially a creation of the 19th century - into the future.

New York sea change So, beyond its playing, what makes a modern orchestra great? Ideally, its season is a sustained journey of exploration lasting some eight months. The route of course wanders but there must be an animating sense of purpose behind the itinerary, and there must be plenty of stops to nourish the mind, body, and spirit. If the orchestra is to realize its potential, there must - truly must - be larger ideas that help bring alive the music of the past more vibrantly, and that spark connections to the world of today. And on those weeks that the music director is away, which can add up to long stretches, there must still be a curated sensibility that comes through in the programming, creating sustained artistic momentum rather than merely filling the open slots.

Judging by the first season he has proposed, Alan Gilbert gets it. As a conductor who was until recently little known by concert-goers even in New York, he may have seemed a risky choice to those who hold the view that celebrity maestros and soloists are the safest way to build an orchestra. In fact, Gilbert is just what the New York Philharmonic needed after the last seven years under the icy and imperious baton of Lorin Maazel. Gilbert is less grand but more thoughtful. He has designed a season both adventurous and enticing, with some radical departures yet enough continuity to bring his audiences with him as he transforms the orchestra.

All these qualities could be felt in his opening night program, even if there was also a slightly cautious air that never quite disappeared. The first notes he conducted as music director were written last year by the excellent Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg, who has been named the orchestra’s composer-in-residence (a position Gilbert created). The piece, titled “EXPO’’ in honor of Gilbert’s debut, was a complex and glittering orchestral essay, densely scored and full of drama.

Gilbert also recruited the star soprano Renee Fleming. But rather than singing the usual Strauss or Mozart, she agreed to take on “Poemes pour Mi,’’ the pulse-quickening song cycle by the 20th-century master Olivier Messiaen. After intermission Gilbert led a cogent if slightly restrained account of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique.’’ Though his cool temperament did not exactly ignite the house, you could feel a genuine excitement among the crowd for the start of a new era.

And consider Gilbert’s programming ideas. His choice to create a composer-in-residence chair projects a powerful symbolic message that the orchestra is not only a conservator of tradition but also can be a home to creation in the here and now. And Lindberg is an ideal choice. Not only will audiences get to know his sophisticated yet viscerally charged orchestral music, but also he will lecture, teach, perform, and curate a newly created series of contemporary concerts that will take place in more intimate venues than cavernous Avery Fisher Hall.

Gilbert has also inaugurated an annual three-week thematic festival to be led by a prominent guest conductor, inviting audiences to engage more intensively with a particular composer, a musical theme, or a period in history. This year, the festival will look at the Russian roots of a self-styled cosmopolitan, Igor Stravinsky. The Slavic sound-wizard Valerie Gergiev will conduct nothing less than eight different all-Stravinsky programs (several featuring the Mariinsky Theatre Chorus), making this an exceptionally meaty detour in the season’s journey.

In addition to the new works, the new initiatives, and the new energy, Gilbert’s season also makes room for another absolutely essential component: the continued reckoning with the core musical inheritance of the last century. In this case, New York will finally get its first performance of Ligeti’s monumental opera “Le Grand Macabre,’’ in a semi-staged production. This instantly becomes a major event on the national orchestral map.

Institutional reinventions do not happen overnight, but an orchestra that used to be among the stodgiest in America is already becoming a far more interesting place.

Los Angeles heats up Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s new maestro, is an intensely charismatic presence. Last year when he brought his Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra to Boston, the performance unleashed paroxysms of joy the likes of which I have never seen in Symphony Hall.

Of course Dudamel is still learning on the job, as any 28-year-old would be. Yet it is clear that he has the potential, at least in his new hometown, to reorient the woefully Eurocentric axis around which this art form revolves, and to bring classical music to entirely new audiences.

Under Esa-Pekka Salonen, its former director, the LA Philharmonic became the most progressive big orchestra around, especially in its celebration of new music and its attempt to install living composers not as peripheral figures who show up for the occasional bow but as central pillars in a community’s musical life. (The orchestra’s president, Deborah Borda, calls them “composer-heroes.’’) Now, the LA Philharmonic is leading the way in a new populist push to democratize the art and, one hopes, finally put to rest some common assumptions about who this music is for.

In that spirit, Dudamel’s first concert in Los Angeles as music director was not a fancy downtown affair but an expansive genre-hopping event at the Hollywood Bowl before a diverse audience of 18,000 people. The concert included an ensemble of 8- and 9-year-olds from the Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, a new initiative that is bringing music education to underserved urban neighborhoods, inspired by El Sistema, the revolutionary Venezuelan public music system from which Dudamel emerged.

A few days later, I caught Dudamel’s official opening night in Disney Hall. It began with an impressive new work by John Adams titled “City Noir,’’ a jazzy, gritty, sultry, and wonderfully inventive 35-minute symphony. (Adams, like Lindberg in New York, has been appointed to the LA Philharmonic’s new position of “creative chair.’’) Dudamel concluded with a gripping, confident performance of Mahler’s First Symphony, full of heat and visceral intensity if at times heavy-handed. Still, the players already seemed fired by his energy.

And what exactly will they be serving up this season in LA? Premieres of nine commissioned works are scheduled. The LA Philharmonic is also perfecting the art of the mid-season festival. Past seasons have seen “Minimalist Jukebox,’’ a sweeping survey of minimalism from seminal Steve Reich to Glenn Branca’s “Hallucination City’’ for 100 electric guitars; “Shadows of Stalin’’ a multifaceted take on state oppression and creative life, with chamber and orchestral concerts, films and symposia; and “Concrete Frequency,’’ a fresh look at the relationship between music and the urban environment, curated by David Robertson and tacking from brainy Boulez works to Japanese psychedelia to Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis.’’

This year Dudamel will lead an “Americas and Americans’’ festival building North-South musical bridges, and Adams will curate “West Coast, Left Coast’’ a kaleidoscopic tour of the California creative spirit, with sound-video and photo installations and a dizzyingly eclectic slate of concerts ranging from jazz with beat poetry, to maverick avant-garde chamber music, to songs of Brian Wilson, to the Timpani Concerto No. 1 by California composer William Kraft.

Simply put, these festivals show what it means to program with energy and flair. And they are cumulatively transforming the definition of the modern orchestra. Borda explained that more tradition-minded subscribers can trade in their tickets for other dates. New audiences are taking their places. And the blasts of fresh air produced by this kind of fun, intelligent programming have a way of flowing through the entire institution.

Unfinished in Boston Levine began his Boston tenure in 2004 with his own sustained shot of adrenaline at Symphony Hall, arriving with two-plus seasons of bold and visionary ideas. Things these days tend to be a lot sleepier. Levine says his focus has shifted to building the orchestra.

Week to week this season, there will surely be some wonderful concerts. Rarely played Martinu works dot the calendar in honor of the 50th anniversary of his death. I personally can’t wait to hear the premiere of Peter Lieberson’s “Farewell Songs,’’ a sequel to the soul-stirring “Neruda Songs’’ he wrote for his wife, the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died in 2006. In February Levine will also conduct a beautifully conceived program - Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, Strauss’s “Four Last Songs’’ with Fleming, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 - with deep musical and historical resonances.

But one can legitimately wonder whether there are enough bona fide artistic events like these with an urgent reason for being; whether the public is truly being led on any kind of sustained journey; whether there is enough richness, breadth, texture, or in a word, oxygen; whether once May arrives, the season will have amounted to more than the sum of its parts.

One of the year’s big artistic projects is a seemingly redundant cycle of Beethoven symphonies, music that is already ubiquitous at the BSO and that had been partially explored in the rich context of the Beethoven/Schoenberg series just three years ago. What’s more, when the BSO’s winter tour was canceled and more dates in Symphony Hall opened up, rather than use it as an opportunity to break fresh ground, the BSO instead scheduled repeats of two Beethoven programs.

We are, in other words, still waiting for Levine-the-bold-visionary and Levine-the-cautious-orchestra-builder to be present on the same season. Must it really be one or the other?

There is also more that can be done on a structural level at the BSO. The orchestra has a historic tradition of commissioning new works, but it should take the next step and bring on board its own composer-in-residence, to write music, of course, but also to help oversee its new-music programming, engage the community, and bolster the organization’s overall creative vision from deep within its ranks. Ideally it would be someone who also conducts, and whose tastes in contemporary music are more catholic than Levine’s own, which tend to favor a particularly thorny stream of musical modernism.

It’s also time to push further beyond the rigid structure of the Symphony Hall subscription season. As I’ve urged before, the BSO needs a proper off-sight new music series where adventurous works can be played for niche audiences; it also needs its very own mid-season festivals that bring a more diverse audience more deeply inside the music.

The BSO could also create opportunities for the public to build sustained relationships with exceptional performers, inviting a brilliant figure like, say, the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard for a residency that would entail multiple performances with a common thread. A figure of Aimard’s creative depth might also design breathtakingly original chamber programs to be performed with players from the orchestra.

More could also be done in the area of extra-musical programming. The BSO sits in one of the intellectual capitals of the world and yet, on most weeks, you would not know it. Beyond the current pre-concert talks and post-concert receptions, there could be more cultural scaffolding built out around the concerts through lectures, panels, films, university collaborations, and connections to literature and the visual arts.

It’s good to have prodding from examples in other cities, but the BSO does not necessarily have to look far away for inspiration. This, after all, was the orchestra of Koussevitzky, who believed passionately in the wellspring of American creative art, and the importance of the music director’s mission to galvanize the community around his vision of music’s past, present, and future.

The BSO needs to return to the task of its own reinvention so boldly begun when Levine was the new maestro in the news six seasons ago. He has vastly improved the BSO’s playing, and for that the city owes him an enormous debt of gratitude. The hall looks good too. The windows in Symphony Hall have been beautifully restored. Now it is time to open them.

Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com.


REF: http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2009/10/18/new_conductors_in_la_ny_pose_a_challenge_to_the_bsos_agenda?mode=PF


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
11-07-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 51
Post ID: 12170
Reply to: 4929
The Lorin Maazel disaster.
fiogf49gjkf0d
The BSO played Beethoven Ninth yesterday. I was not home, listening the live broadcast in my car and was thanking God that I scheduled to record it home. As the resale I because an owner of the most remarkable and the most valuable recording of Beethoven Ninth but a major orchestra. If BSO pays my $5.000 I will probably give up my rights for the recording, otherwise I will remind as an evidence of the most shameful event in BSO history. I was actually laughing out loud right during the broadcast and it was like in the bad parody. Even the always great Tanglewood choruses sounded like it come from the meanest Victor Borge’s joke. To insult the injuries I have tickers for today Saturday performance…


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
11-07-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,666
Joined on 10-12-2006

Post #: 52
Post ID: 12174
Reply to: 12170
Black or White
fiogf49gjkf0d
We talked about all the great performances and recordings of the 3rd.  Well, the 9th does seem to go pretty much the other way.  

Could there be such a thing as a "mediocre" 9th?  Either it's great, or it sucks.

As a point of interest, does anyone know of a great recorded performance of the 9th by BSO from back in its Glory Days?

Paul S
11-08-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 53
Post ID: 12192
Reply to: 12174
No Beethoven from BSO
fiogf49gjkf0d
 Paul S wrote:
As a point of interest, does anyone know of a great recorded performance of the 9th by BSO from back in its Glory Days?
From my point of view there were no known to me worthy Beethoven Ninth from BSO committed to recording media. BSO was not truly the Beethoven orchestra even during the Glory Days....


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
11-09-2009 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
clarkjohnsen
Boston, MA, US
Posts 298
Joined on 06-02-2004

Post #: 54
Post ID: 12211
Reply to: 12174
One answer for the BSO
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 Paul S wrote:
  Could there be such a thing as a "mediocre" 9th?  Either it's great, or it sucks.


I've heard many plain performances.

As a point of interest, does anyone know of a great recorded performance of the 9th by BSO from back in its Glory Days?


Actually, the Munch ain't bad! Soloists are not shoddy: Giorgio Tozzi, David Poleri, Maureen Forrester, Leontyne Price. The 1958 sound (on vinyl) is exemplary, although a couple later issues exceeded the original shady dogs. Haven't heard a CD.

clark
07-24-2010 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 55
Post ID: 14094
Reply to: 4929
The Abduction From the Seraglio by BSO
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Last night BSO performed a concert version of Mozart “Abduction From the Seraglio”. I do not know this opera too much and had no idea what to expect. The BSO was lead by Johannes Debus – a musical director of Canadian Opera Company.

It turn out to be a very very pleasant experience. I am not sure if I like flow of the “Abduction…”  - the text comments are interesting but destroy some opera dramaturgy. Still for a concert version it was OK I guess, it sounded more like oratorio. The BSO was surprisingly at it’s high. It all together it turned out to be a very-very good concert.


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
10-01-2010 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 56
Post ID: 14614
Reply to: 4929
James Levine’s return stunt.
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The next week you need to be dead to skip Boston’s Symphony Hall.

This week James Levine returns from his long medical sabbatical with all-Wagner program. Levine looks like fine nowadays and this week he conducted Metropolitan. BSO is perfectly able to suck with Levine but with his it is so bad…

The next week James Levine perform the “return stunt” – during the midday he will conduct 'Das Rheingold' at Metropolitan – 3 hours very complex opera with no intermission and by 8PM we will be leading  BSO witch Mahler Resurrection.  This is as bold as ambition as it can get, God bless him with the strength to undertake all of it.

Meanwhile, this Saturday it wills me the day of opening of my horns and the day of BSO opening. I am not willing to commit adultery to my horns – I will be listening BSO over WCRB. If James Levine does not cancel I will raise a glass of nice Georgian wine to his honor….

So, far Levine is on….

http://interceder.net/list/James-Levine

The Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-07-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 57
Post ID: 16800
Reply to: 4929
BSO is back…
fiogf49gjkf0d

I do not post a lot in musical section of my sire as I interact about my mural at different places. Still here is some update about what is going on in Boston. As we all know James Levine is out and BSO is ownerless. Since the opening the Tanglewood season they played surprisingly well I have no idea who prepared them but it was relay good. Ten the last two weeks Christoph Eschenbach came with all Brahms program and it was a nightmare. Then Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos added the injuries with Rachmaninoff and Yuja Wang. The BSO sounded so broken up that it was almost like high-school band. The last nigh however BSO were back.

The BSO assistant conductor Sean Newhouse took his turn at podium and BSO somehow came together. It was Sarah Chang with Mendelssohn violin and the mighty Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony.

The Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony at open air of Tanglewood – that might be interesting I though while BSO was opening up with Jalbert’s “Music of air and fire” and suddenly demonstrated unexpectedly-good play.  So, it was. The BSO flew over the Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony with very nice touch. They of cause are not the BSO from 40s and then played the work with much unnecessary romanism that in my view not good for the work but whatever version they played they played well.

Here is a fragment in 88/24, 140Meg, be your own judge. Discard some multipathing FM noise I have in my reception – I am working on it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?4p67i58wgqyxxqj

The caT


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
08-07-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
clarkjohnsen
Boston, MA, US
Posts 298
Joined on 06-02-2004

Post #: 58
Post ID: 16801
Reply to: 16800
Rach too
fiogf49gjkf0d
Elsewhere I read that Romy has put the Golovanov Rach 2 onto his server. I recommend that everyone download it... now!

The BSO's performance last night was thoroughly enjoyable, but not exactly a keeper.

What he omitted was how fine the Paganini Rhapsody was on Friday, especially considering who the conductor was.

clark
08-07-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 59
Post ID: 16804
Reply to: 16801
You got to be kidding!
fiogf49gjkf0d
 clarkjohnsen wrote:

What he omitted was how fine the Paganini Rhapsody was on Friday, especially considering who the conductor was.

http://classical-scene.com/2011/08/07/lilt-and-wit-tanglewood/comment-page-1/#comment-7224



"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
10-30-2011 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,170
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 60
Post ID: 17259
Reply to: 4929
What a play list nigh from BSO!!!
fiogf49gjkf0d

Last night Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos took BSO on the Ein Heldenleben trip as it was never before:

http://classical-scene.com/2011/10/29/fiddlers-two-at-the-bso

It was unbelievably wonderful play, probably the best Ein Heldenleben I ever heard. In ten minutes after the concert was over the Nor'easter storm cut out power in my neighborhood and reportedly in the home of two million of east cost residences. My stand-by generator kicked. I do not drive my playback from stand-by generator, the PP2000 can’t lock it PLL to it, so and today I am waling walking around my house and am thinking about nothing else than how to play this Ein Heldenleben file again. I am painfully want to hear it again!!!!

Rgs, the Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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