Love your Inner Classical Music Geek

Full time geek. Classical Music lover. founding Head of 1729 Maths School. CUP book author. Opinions are my own. 🏳️‍🌈

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

I’m currently working through the 234 box sets and 3 composer retrospectives in this thread. The craziness started in early 2020 with the Stravinsky box and I’ve been lost to it ever since. The link takes you to the END, so you’ll need to scroll up. I will continue to…..

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

The Jessye Norman Studio Recital Thread.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

#NowSpinning Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra in Karajan’s digital recording. I have always tended to prefer his earlier versions, but I am very happy to be hearing this again. Karajan was a fine Straussian and this recordings holds up the high standards, regardless of comparisons with earlier efforts.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

…had already placed this performance in my top few and that great, soaring flood of sound only enhanced my reaction. So, if it is not already obvious, this is a Sea Symphony to reckon with.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

A thread for each Vaughan Williams work, to celebrate the music and recordings as I listen to them. This one is for A Sea Symphony, a huge canvass for soloists, choir and orchestra, with each movement setting words by Walt Whitman. The work was premiered in 1910 at the….

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

…moments. Will Liverman brings a stirringly heroic quality to the performance, leaving a lasting impression of richness and emotional depth. My favourite moment in the whole performance was the sweeping power of ‘O Thou Transcendent’ in the final moment. By this point I…

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

#KarajanDG1980s CD 38 also includes Brahms’s Tragic Overture. It’s a decent performance in terms of pacing, but the orchestral sound feels bloated and thick here. I think it’s partly the recording, but also Karajan’s balancing.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

Karajan Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, 355 Discs. Part Four! 1980s DG orchestral recordings, avoiding massive threads!

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

#KarajanDG1980s CD 38 Anne-Sophie Mutter and Antônio Meneses join Karajan in Berlin for the Brahms Double Concerto. This is a big, bulky account of the score and the DG recording makes it feel far too congested. The soloists seem to be coming at the work from different angles, too, with Mutter attacking sharply but Meneses going for glowing grandeur. Odd.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

@seckerson I’ve only listened once and that encounter left me cold. But I need to listen again.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

#NowSpinning Mahler Symphony No.2 with Rattle in Bavaria. Against a backdrop of divided opinion I always really enjoyed his 1987 CBSO version, even if it feels a touch slow. I never really warmed to the Berlin remake, though. So where will I end up with this one?

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

@NixonandIke Not so long ago I commented on all of the Järvi Telarc series. I see I thought that disc was enjoyable but not particularly distinctive.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

#JärviTelarc CD 14 Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an exhibition, Night on Bald Mountain and the Prelude to Khovanshchina, all back in the usual Järvi technicolour. There isn’t anything particularly distinctive, but they sound gorgeous and the disc is very entertaining as a whole.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

@TimothyGWeir I am not at all convinced either.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

@FerretKingRT Definitely the recorded sound.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

#NowSpinning Pappano’s Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony. It took a short while to get used to the slightly anaemic choral sound, as recorded, but the orchestra and soloists are caught with impressive clarity and definition. It’s important to keep this work moving and Pappano does just that.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

@gadboit2 @Mahler18601911 I love watching him. He knows a lot. I can forgive the rest.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

@gadboit2 @Mahler18601911 I tend to think Rattle is often overrated. But Abbas doesn’t deserve the stick.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

@TimothyGWeir After today’s listening I would agree.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

Oh and how hauntingly lovely is the Maconchy? A little gem of a coupling right there.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

@polymath1959 *version

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

#NowSpinning truly stupendous Sibelius from Ormandy. This is thrilling Sibelius, played at white heat.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

@polymath1959 The EMI versions has long been one of my handful of choices in this work.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

@musicandroots Of those it’s Barenboim for me, though I do really like them all.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

#OrmandyColumbiaLegacy CD 47 Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Suite in a genuinely electrifying performance. The outer movements are incredibly swift and played with knife-edge precision. The middle two movements are altogether more chillingly atmospheric, with flickering half lights amazingly well caught. Superb!

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

The Eugene Ormandy Legacy on Sony. This set comprises the complete mono recordings Ormandy made with the Philadelphia Orchestra, for Columbia and RCA. I'll add comments as I listen to each disc.

[Love your Inner Classical Music Geek @LoveInner]

#OrmandyColumbiaLegacy CD 46 Chopin’s First Piano Concerto with György Sándor. This is a very muscular performance, with both conductor and soloist converging into one approach nicely. Structures are all very clear and sharp and the impact is lucidity over emotional impact.