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Thanks for the information. How do you feel about Claudio Abbado as a conductor? I have him conducting (with the Berlin Philharmonic) Mozart's 28th, 29th, and 35th which I like tremendously. I don't own a ton of classical music, but this is definitely one of my favorites.
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I remember listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony and crying at the choral part of it. So beautiful....
There are works that continue to be special to each of us, and many of us have quite a few versions by different conductors and different symphonies. I wonder, though, how much of our preference for one or the other is influenced by the first recording we heard and listened to repeatedly as we learned the piece? I also wonder whether some conductors/orchestras have particularly close relationships with a composer or a work that set their recordings apart?
Ding_an_Sich;132815 wrote:I remember listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony and crying at the choral part of it. So beautiful....
In the movie Equilibrium, Christian Bale's character is also moved to tears by Beethoven's 9th Symphony, First Movement.
An excellent movie, by the way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_(film) (contains spoilers)
There are works that continue to be special to each of us, and many of us have quite a few versions by different conductors and different symphonies. I wonder, though, how much of our preference for one or the other is influenced by the first recording we heard and listened to repeatedly as we learned the piece? I also wonder whether some conductors/orchestras have particularly close relationships with a composer or a work that set their recordings apart?
Have you ever heard one of your favorites performed so poorly that you had to "make it stop" or leave the room? Or, perhaps you've heard a performance so exquisite that you just can't listen to "lesser" versions.
I don't have a broad knowledge of classical music; I know mostly only popular pieces. However, where these are concerned, I find I'm very picky and overly sensitive to "bad" performances ("bad" perhaps only IMO -- others may find them exquisite).
One performance that unexpectedly sent me running for the "mute" button: Karajan (conductor) and Richter (piano) performing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in B-flat minor, 1st movement.
OMG -- Victor Borge's old comedy routine of the movement was not as laughable as this performance. If anyone here has access to this recording, I'd be interested in your opinion. Item #1 on my list of "what's wrong with this performance": it sounded to me like Richter and Karajan were fighting over tempo?
And one performance so unexpectedly exquisite I can't find another to match: Jeno Jando playing the Adagio Cantable from Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata. Somehow Jando manages to pick it up to a "moving, flowing" tempo (I can't stand to hear this one draaaaaaaag) while still maintaining its lyrical beauty (other pianists I've heard at this same tempo sound too rushed). Opinions?
I'd be interested in hearing about others' "hit the mute button NOW" list -- as well as "definitively exquisite" un-matchable performances.
rebecca
I wish I had the recordings you mention in order to comment more effectively, but I notice that a couple of people who wrote reviews on Amazon do not agree with you about Karajan & Richter performing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in B-flat minor (from reviews of a set of CDs that include Karajan & Richter performing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in B-flat minor):
"All that said, this set does include Richter's aristocratic First Concerto with the Vienna SO..."
"Richter and Rostropovich give great performances..."
The first goes on to say that there is a better performance of that concerto conducted by Karajan with a different soloist, but calling it "aristocratic" is far from describing it as unlistenable.
All of this makes me rather curious about the performance, but not enough to actually buy it.
Pyrrho,
First, an apology to all. I am not qualified to be a classical music critic -- I don't have the broad base of knowledge necessary for fair comparison. I should not have made my post "in the heat of the moment" -- I'd listened to my recording again, to be certain of my impressions, before I made the post. I apologize for my arrogant tone. Perhaps I was acting on the general principle jgweed had proposed -- perhaps I was basing my judgements on a "standard" I had in my mind from earlier hearing(s) of a piece. That being said, I still don't personally care for this version of the Tchaikovsky concerto.
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I don't quite understand why you are apologizing. You are entitled to your opinion about such things. (And if you reread my post, I did not state that you were wrong; only that some people evidently disagreed with you, and I was curious to hear it.) As for the reviews by people at Amazon, other than the occasional pro reviews that they quote, the reviews are from anyone who cares to write a review, so I would not attribute any special knowledge to them.
Just so you know, the quotes I got were from:
For some reason, when I searched for the CD at Amazon before, I did not notice the one to which you have now provided a link.
Anyway, thanks for the links to both the CD and to the youtube recordings. I can understand your dislike of it, but from listening to a bit of it, I don't think it is unlistenable. But I think that the recording I have is better:
Amazon.com: Tchaikovsky: Concerto No. 1/Rachmaninoff: Concerto No. 2: Sergey Rachmaninov, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Fritz Reiner, Kiril Kondrashin, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, RCA Victor Orchestra, RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, Van Cliburn: Mus
But if I were going to buy it now, I would go with the hybrid SACD:
Amazon.com: Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1; Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 [Hybrid SACD]: Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Sergey Rachmaninov, Kiril Kondrashin, Fritz Reiner, Van Cliburn: Music