Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #30)

Now playing the following CD, a recent arrival for a first listen ...

 

The early studio recording is great too. In fact, I think I like it more.

 

The early studio recording of Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations was probably included in this set. I feel lucky that I bought the set for about $109 a few years ago. The set is now OOP and a new set has an asking price of $1200 on Amazon ...

 

This one is quite nice....had it for a while now.
Got from part of a collection very inexpensive...lil diff cover art.

 

And by appropriate freaky coincidence I started reading "Inherent Vice" a few days ago. Big fun.

 

That disc was how I got to know the Golberg Variations and it's still my favourite performance of it. I bought it after reading Thomas Bernhard's "Der Untergeher" ("The Loser"), that uses a fictionalized Gould as a character and mentions the Golberg Variations a lot.

I listened to the recording from the 50s while reading another book in which this performance plays a vital role, "The Gold Bug Variations" by Richard Powers (yes, Poe's short story plays a role as well). But the earlier recording will always sound a bit too fast for me, since I'm used to the '81 version so much.

 

Saw Midori in recital last night.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a more active violinist. In fact, that may be one of the reasons I didn't care for the first piece - the Mozart K. 380, it aded to her romantic take on the work.

The rest of the concert was outstanding: sonatas by Shostakovich and Schumann and a marvelous Schubert Fantasy, D. 934, composed in 1827, which I had never heard.

 

That makes sense. I think the early on is great for daytime listening, the later one for the evening.

 

Dang, are they all from the 90's Vanguard/Omega releases? I ask because there are some newer releases that just have the Everest name, but supposedly nowhere as good as the Vanguard/Omega. I think they are from the UK.

 

Münchener Kammerorchester / Hans Stadlmair / Mozart - Concerto For Flute and Orchestra No.1 In G Major / Concerto For Oboe And Orchestra In C Major
Archiv Productions - DG - W Germany - 1965



A recent thrift store find for $1.99. LP is in beautiful condition. This is my first Archiv title on vinyl. I have a couple of CDs on Archiv as well.

 

Good news for SACD fans:

 

Glenn Gould's piano

I've posted about this book on these threads before, but let me repeat.

A Romance on Three Legs -- Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano by Katie Hafner.

A great read, with some juicy stuff about other pianists, and some interesting history of Steinway.

Some trivia from that book: the 1981 Gould Goldbergs was recorded on a Yamaha piano, due to his feuding with Steinway.

 

The price per SACD is like the price of most of the big boxes we have been getting ...

 

Now playing the following CD, another recent arrival for a first listen ...

 

This act of aggression will not stand!

And, in a somewhat futile attempt to steer the conversation back to the usual subject at hand, I have been listening to a bit of that aforementioned Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd as of late. My best friend recently picked up recent remasters of early PF and Procol Harum albums. When all this fusion of classical and rock was happening—from about 1967 on, that is to say post Sgt. Pepper—I was the weirdo who'd rather be listening to Glenn Gould whip through Bach or HvK and the Boys from Berlin sledding through a Sibelius tone poem. Ever since my seventh-grade math Teacher, Mrs. Way°, turned me on to the Symphonie Fantastique of Berlioz, psychedelic music simply was not the same.

In the case of early PF, I can now hear the Stockhausen in Syd, if only really on "Interstellar Overdrive." It's there, clear as a bell, as it is also in some of John Lennon's better efforts of the time.

Still, for a true intergalactic experience, Stockhausen is pretty hard to beat:

http://www.stockhausenmusic.com/

I mention this in part because Inherent Vice [the most cosmetically "Stupid" of the Pynch's shorter missives] is part of a Trilogy of novels, mostly in California and mostly knee-deep in drugs. Stockhausen is cited in the first of the Three, "The Crying of Lot 49." The context is 1964, our heroine runs into a bar near a major aeronautics firm where there's an avant garde jam weekly, with plenty of electro-gear on the premises, so anybody and join in and jam. While understanding Inherent Vice in toto requires also having read "49" and Vineland, suffice to say that MKULTRA is the micturated rug that ties the whole thing together.


To my mind, "Hymnen" is more psychedelic than the whole Pink Floyd catalog.

° Obvious, early Taoist influence.

 

Agree. These prices are getting pretty high. Too high to buy without hearing first.

 

Jim, This is a great CD ...

 

The high price also has a lot to do with the Yen/Dollar exchange rate of 80, which is the lowest I have ever seen.

 

Now playing CD9 - more WTC I from the following set for a first listen ...

 

How do you like the sound of this set? It seems a good deal for it's price, but many here are wary of the AMSI logo.

 

The SQ is quite good with excellent piano tone. While I would not consider this a definitive performance of WTC, the performance was quite good. The set was actually remastered in Germany and I bought it from jpc since it is not available in the US ...

 

Thanks. I already own the WTC by Schiff (and like it), but I still might get this set one of these days.

 

I have all of Schiff's Bach keyboard works as singles but did not have the French Suites and WTC. It just did not make economic sense to buy those individual recordings since they would have cost more than this entire set ...

 

Great stuff. I heard him play Bach live years ago in Philadelphia.

 

Yeah, I got his complete recordings on EMI for the price of ONE of those EMI $ACD's. Even if I had a SACD player, I wouldn't be bothering with these new discs.