Shostakovich edition
This thread is for the discussion of music in the Western (European) classical tradition, as well as classical instrument-playing.
How do I get into classical?
This link has resources including audio courses, textbooks and selections of recordings to help you start to understand and appreciate classical music:
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Previously, on /classical/:
going through this Shosty set. Just listened to the 7th off of it and it was excellent, off to a promising start. I got a good feeling about it.
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the 6th is so comfy
Lol the cover. Listening!
Suggestions are really getting stronger in this general. Keep up the good pace. Rostropovich was a very powerful, orderly and clean conductor. His works "exude" clarity especially the instrumentation. It is rather a shame that he never tried any color other than Russian, but seriously his Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky is untouchable.
i am conducting
Tchaikovsky is untouchable.
Funny, I was just looking up that set. Guess I'll hope it's on RT and give it a listen.
past 5 threads have all been 20th century music OPs (with excetion to Bruckner, who was late 19th anyway)
20th century won. It's over. It's so over.
Bachfags, Wagnersisters and the rest of you plebs, bend the knee.
Posting Bach on Shosta thread
Because it's the same OP.
A young writer and critic named Max Graf once sat in on one of Bruckner’s classes, and recalled that, “during the lecture, the Angelus bells rang, and Bruckner immediately knelt down to pray. I have never seen anyone pray as Bruckner did. He seemed to be transfigured, illuminated from within. His old peasant face, with the countless wrinkles covering it like furrows in a field, became the face of a priest. Like many peasants in the Alpine provinces of Austria… Bruckner had a Roman profile, and when he prayed, or when he played fragments of a new symphony at the piano (that was a prayer, too), his face took on a magnificence that was reminiscent of the busts of old Roman emperors. But his expression may best be compared with that of the Apostles in the paintings of Giotto. “[v] Likewise, as many of his students have relayed, he would suddenly seem to disappear during a private lesson to pray, especially if nearby church bells were ringing for the Angelus.[vi]
He once said of himself, “They want me to compose in a different way; I could, but I must not. Out of thousands, God gave talent to me. One day, I shall have to give an account of myself. How would the Father in Heaven judge me if I followed others and not Him?”
It's always the greatest clowns who write the best music
While there is no scientific, verifiable, vaguely solid basis on keys having a specific character, "mood", or meaning, there's been enough experiments that show that, when exposed to the sound of the keys, people will not coincide enough in their descriptions of them for there to be any statistically significan co-incidence.
Much like fashion and morals, it's entirely tied to a specific culture in a specific point in time, and only perdures through appeals to authority and antiquity.
Considering all the different temperaments and tonal systems that have existed and exist throughout the world, it's nothing short of patronizing and preposterous to adscribe such specific, artificial characters to the western, relatively new 24-key system.
Much like fashion and morals, it's entirely tied to a specific culture in a specific point in time, and only perdures through appeals to authority and antiquity.
Did you know that most philosophers are, in fact, moral realists? As in they believe whether a moral fact is true or not is not "tied to a specific culture in a specific point in time," and many of the same arguments which support that can also be used to support a similar objective position for aesthetics? Anyway, seems like you're just trying to bait kraut-anon into an argument and I don't see why you'd want to do that, but you do you.
It literally could be settled and then changed when we change to A = 455
Franz Schrecker
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Did you know that most philosophers are wrong and unscientific?
Yes? I genuinely don't understand how any of that has anything to do with the unfounded myth of keys demonstrably having specific characters/temperaments, but you do you
There's a scientific experiment which demonstrates moral and aesthetic facts to be relative? Huh, news to me.
Rostro's got his passion face on. I like the 6th, 8th, 10th, and 11th for relaxing, and the 4th, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 15th for excitement, seems to work well. Been forever since I've heard the rest.
It is one of the best performances of Bruckner's 9th, though. Even if it sounds terrible in quality. I can't really think of too many other 9ths that approach it in terms of quality, though it's not my favorite.
Everything's getting better all the time
Opera has been getting worse every decade since the 1930s. It is genuinely unlistenable garbage these days. Modern pianists are largely boring. And most modern conductors are not good. The only major exception to the general decline in performance quality is chamber music, which, for whatever reason, is better than its ever been.
The 14th is good. The rest, not so much.
Opera has been getting worse every decade since the 1930s
True, I'll give you that. Sometimes I forget because opera is the genre I am the least interested in
Modern pianists are largely boring
What do we consider "modern" here? Because the pianists I like the most recorded throughout the '70s, '80s, and '90s. That's pretty "modern" to me, and I consider those interpretations literally the best there are, so why would I need anything else?
I'll give you that
Actually I take that back. It got better in the '60s and '70s, THEN began to get progressively worse. And even then, only when considering the repertoire essentials. The past 25 years have been and continue to be a golden age of overlooked gems and premiere recordings. I couldn't be happier about the efforts (and resulting quality) of labels like CPO to finally bring to life amazing works that have been languishing in obscurity for anything between 100 and 250 years.
I didn't mention which work it was about, n-n-nerd!!
Kidding. My issue wasn't even about quality, plenty of old recordings are good and it's reasonable someone's tastes could align with a performance practice which was more common or outright exclusive to those older eras, so of course recordings from that era would be preferable to them -- rather, my issue is the annoying, unwarranted haughtiness. Can't we just enjoy today's artists and musicians for what they are? It'd be like me going onto a review of a new acclaimed novel and commenting "no one's come close to Kafka or Keats since their time; boy, we're really lacking writers of their caliber these days," only worse because, as the other anon replied, I feel on the whole conductors and musicians have been pretty good since Furtwangler's time.
Besides, as they say, Barenboim is Furtwanglian anyhow!
Rostro's got his passion face on
Rostro means face/visage in spanish
The 14th is good. The rest, not so much.
Meh, I liked the 7th, and I'm listening to the 4th now, seems promising so far, but we'll see.
serendipity!
Barenboim is Furtwanglian
Overrated and insufferable, right?
There were a lot of great pianists during the 60s-70s, yeah. A few into the 80s. Haven't been impressed with anyone since, though. A few strays here and there. If you're fine with the pianists you're familiar with, then that's good.
It got better in the '60s and '70s, THEN began to get progressively worse
It was still at an acceptable and even great standard in the 60s and 70s, but even by then we had seen a decline, especially in French and German signing. Italians managed to hold onto things for much longer.
And even then, only when considering the repertoire essentials
Yeah, sure. I mean, there's not really any competition considering most people weren't performing Rameau or Handel or Enescu back in the 60s and 70s; so we make do with what we have, and the music trumps everything else anyways. But I would still kill to hear Rameau sung in the traditional French style which completely died out after the 1950s and which can only be hear on antique recordings.
Besides, as they say, Barenboim is Furtwanglian anyhow!
They're very different. Barenboim apes Furtwangler's tempo fluctuations without care to much of anything else.
I don't see how Barenboim's conducting can be insufferable. The most apt criticism I could see would be like bland or stodgy, but not to the point of offensiveness; not like his conducting ever veers into obnoxiousness ala Bernstein or soporific mediations with excessively broad tempos ala Maazel or mawkishness like Rattle or juvenile shallowness like Makela; those are conductors I could understand one having hate for for those reasons, but Barenboim? I feel like at worst his conducting is "nothing special," but hey, I like it.
They're very different. Barenboim apes Furtwangler's tempo fluctuations without care to much of anything else.
Fair enough, it's just something I've read more than a handful of times so I've internalized it as accepted wisdom, but I'll take your word for it as I think for Furtwangler, I've only ever heard some of his Beethoven 9s and his Schubert 9, and those were almost a decade-and-a-half ago!
I meant the men themselves. Their conducting is merely adequate but inflated in importance by critics participating in cronyism and defamation of conductors they have personal issues with. Kinda like the war of the romantics, really.
Furtwangler is far more popular with real performers than critics. You'd be hard pressed to find a performing artist that doesn't have them as an influence on their craft.
You'd be hard pressed to find a performing artist that doesn't have them as an influence on their craft.
Which is a problem
Why?
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A good example of the kind of individuality we used to hear in piano recordings in the early 20th century.
That isn't to say that this kind of approach should be used for everything, or that variety for the sake of it should be the end goal, but rather to illustrate a kind of piano playing that doesn't exist today. Pianists of that era had a far more limited repertoire, perfected a few pieces over and over again throughout their lives, and thus had incredibly unique and enigmatic interpretations.
To be fair to modern pianists, they have to play a much wider spectrum of music than those in the golden era did, and so their interpretations - by necessity - have to be more dull and homogenous.
Remember, Rachmaninoff dedicated his 3rd concerto to Josef Hofmann, who was, in his opinion, the greatest pianist that ever lived. Hofmann never performed the piece, not because he didn't like it, but because it would have been a strain on his existing repertoire to add another to the pile. That kind of attitude was very common amongst golden age pianists.
Because Furtwangler is merely adequate
huh, didn't know that Bohm had recorded Tchaikovksy's 4th, 5th, and 6th symphonies. Always interested in Germanic takes on Russian music pieces
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People in all disciplines have become better and more adept at perfectioning an ever-increasingly wide spectrum of abilities/techniques/etc. Just look at sportsmen today as compared to a mere 40 years ago. Contemporary gymnasts for example would've seemed right out of a CGI-heavy film a mere 20 years ago. Same with musicians. People are getting better, and getting better at getting better. It's time we snap out of the "older = better" echo chamber.
People in all disciplines have become better and more adept at perfectioning an ever-increasingly wide spectrum of abilities/techniques/etc.
What they gained in their repertoire quantity, they've sacrificed in the quality of the performances.
I understand that you're saying people have become better in both quantity and quality, but I choose to ignore that in order to maintain an artificial ideal of the past
ok boomer
I choose to contradict it because it's incorrect. Modern pianists are no better than a MIDI.
grrr new bad
ok boomer
There are a few pianists I'm keeping my eye on. Yunchan Lim is probably the most popular a pianist has been in quite some time, and he distinctly cites golden age pianists like Friedman as a major influence for himself.
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You can hear them back to back here. The influence is clear.
It's still early yet but I'm eager to see where he goes.
His chief influences were the recordings of Ignaz Friedman, Alfred Cortot and Youri Egorov, as well as Vladimir Horowitz in Op.25 No.7. “I still remember, when I was 13, being shocked and stopping on the street when I first heard Friedman’s recording. I had never experienced such a sense of creativity and freedom before. In Cortot’s performance, I witnessed what many legendary pianists used to say: ‘playing the piano comes from imagination.’ Cortot plays Chopin’s Études with a unique timing and tone, as if singing in the bel canto style, a quality that has largely disappeared among contemporary pianists.
People in all disciplines have become better and more adept at perfectioning an ever-increasingly wide spectrum of abilities/techniques/etc.
This retard seriously needs to read Dutton. Nothing has become "better", not in arts or science. Everything has regressed since the 20th century.
What about his playing is similar to those old era greats if you don't mind?
Does Finghin Collins count as a "newer" artist? Anyway, you should definitely consider Alice Sara Ott
hey guys, we all made it onto the album cover :)
ok boomer
Hey niggers, can you tell me the name of the piece I'm whistling here? Can't remember what it is.
There's already a half decent analysis in the comment section. To add to this, I would add that Lim apes the cantabile, bel canto style of playing, with a clear separation between the left and right hands. There's an effortless rubato there. Though Lim, like most modern pianists, does not voice his left hand as fiercely as golden age pianists do, and he isn't as quicksilver, but part of that has to do with the fact that he's playing on a Steinway.
I only see central/south/latin america and a chunk of angloamerica/africa. Exclusivist much? They should be cancelled.
Hey niggers
Fuck off, nigger
Joan Joseb Fugg :DDD
we all brown here
I'm not from the United States of America
it really makes no sense to say that classical music is done
if that was the case then I would be able to find music for any possible state of mind, emotion, theme, etc.
I think capitalism and the humiliation it brings is what has destroyed us, to be honest
everyone, including potential composers are completely buck broken, they have given up, admitted defeat and accepted that nothing "great" will ever be created again
from now on we just get short-term slop, a little dopamine hit and then move on to the next
in this type of world, with such a frantic pace, nothing consequential can be developed upon because the mind has nothing to hang on to for long enough
just listen to modern music then bro
Your post is littered with non-sequiturs
you don't even know what that is
We're talking about recordings, not compositions, "bro"
Your post is littered with non-sequiturs
it makes big claims and leaps that aren't fully fleshed out but there aren't any non-sequiturs
perhaps you need to take philosophy 101 again?
I know I'm stupid and wrong, but have you considered that I'm also going to cry about it?
Alright
fffffffsshhhhhhhwwwcrackshhhfff*POP*crrrracklehhhisssss
your mind is literally incapable of understanding the concept of a non-sequitur
you just thought you could make me feel bad about my shitpost by using some buzzword you heard about
actually hilarious, I can imagine how dumb you feel currently
crying about it
Ma'am, get a hold of yourself
>crying about it
ok I won't berate you any longer since you clearly show regret
I w-won the argument so s-shut up ;_;
Sure
damn you mad
this retard seriously needs to read [other retard]