/classical/

Elgar edition
youtu.be/s3uzs6h8DY8

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:
pastebin.com/NBEp2VFh

First for Elgar's two symphonies are as good as mature Mahler

Shit composer.

One of the greatest composers of the early 20th century and perhaps the greatest choral writer since Mendelssohn

most Anon Babble composer?

you say that about everyone, do you even enjoy music at all?

Nikolai Borisovich Obukhov. Imagine an even more unhinged Scriabin

Of couse not. I post in /classical/ after all.

The Dream of Gerontius is actually good? I love Elgar but haven't listened to it. What else does he have? Sea Pictures is more lieder, ye?

What makies him Anon Babble?

Google him, it's literally all there on his wikipedia page and others.

The Dream of Gerontius is actually good?

...well I fucking loved, don't know what to tell you.

What else does he have?

Choral stuff you mean? Caractacus, The Apostles, and The Kingdom are the major ones, but then there's Sea Pictures (which I wouldn't describe as "more lieder" but rather just a smaller, slimmer cantata), The Black Knight (a kind of symphony-cantata that's kinda silly but still very pleasant) Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf (something of a magnification of the former in terms of style and structure), and The Light Of Life, which is closer to an oratorio. The Music Makers, while far less densely written in the voice department, is also worth checking out.

Nice, thanks.

He was consumed by all the western occult ideas going around at the start of the century, and tried to apply them all to his music. You know how Scriabin wanted to bring about the end of the world with a Tibetan symphony? Well:

His largest composition, and the one to which he devoted attention for much of his early creative life, was his Kniga Zhizni (The Book of Life). According to Nicolas Slonimsky, writing in his autobiography Perfect Pitch, Obukhov's wife was so exasperated with her husband's obsessive activity on the massive and peculiar piece that once she attempted to destroy the score by cutting it up. The composer caught her in time, carefully and reverently suturing its wounds, and adding drops of his own blood where he repaired the torn pages. He kept it in a "sacred corner" of their Paris apartment, in a shrine upon which he placed candles to burn day and night, along with religious icons. Obukhov considered himself the intermediary rather than the composer of the piece – the person through whom the Divine allowed it to be revealed to the world – and he called that revelation a "sacred action" rather than a concert performance. He signed this piece, as well as many others, as "Nicolas the visionary". It was intended to be performed – or rather, revealed – once a year, during the day and the night, on the first and second resurrections of Christ, in a cathedral specially constructed for that purpose alone. Of the huge piece, only the Prologue, and possibly some other sections, were performed during the composer's lifetime. The score itself is part of the presentation: it was huge, amounting to 800 pages in the lost fair copy, and 2,000 pages in the copy in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale; some of the pages were cut and mounted in the shape of the cross, on cloth and colored paper. The score contains numerous fold-outs and collages. Some of the performance markings, in addition to the repairs, were in the composer's own blood.

now playing, in honor of the thread

start of Elgar: Symphony No. 1 in A-Flat Major, Op. 55
youtube.com/watch?v=EOu36v1Jwzg&list=OLAK5uy_kHAUkvL6fZETVClFQBYh0RbXMn7c9rwlI&index=1

youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kHAUkvL6fZETVClFQBYh0RbXMn7c9rwlI

warning: slowest tempo recording in the catalogue

Why Thomson's slow tempo recording? I like this review on the Amazon page a lot
<-----

Best =/= reference

Glad we agree

Five MUST OWN sets of Elgar's symphonies:

Slatkin/London Philharmonic Orchestra

Previn/Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Solti/London Philharmonic Orchestra

Barbirolli/Philharmonia Orchestra + Halle Orchestra

Barenboim/Staatskapelle Dresden

For SUPER-fans

Bryden Thomson/London Philharmonic Orchestra

Boult/London Philharmonic Orchestra

Mackerras/Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Oramo/Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra

Andrew Davis/BBC Symphony Orchestra

Mark Elder/Halle Orchestra

Avoid

Sinopoli/Philharmonia Orchestra

Haitink/Philharmonia Orchestra

Jeffrey Tate/London Symphony Orchestra

Sir Colin Davis/London Symphony Orchestra

sorry Sinopoli :(

Ahhh!
vocaroo.com/19tJ7AAJHwMH
The slight pause before the big chord is unacceptable, isn't it?
Does statically stretching your hand also help with dynamic stretches? i.e. will I be able to stretch farther faster and without having to anchor my thumb against the key?
Right now I'm trying to subdivide this in my head and I think of the action of pushing my left thumb against the D key as a 32nd silent-note that needs to occur between the last low-D and big chord -- but I end up slowing down because I have to take care not to make a sound as I anchor my thumb.

Boult/London Philharmonic Orchestra

My absolute favourite recording of 1, but I prefer

Andrew Davis/BBC Symphony Orchestra

For 2

Also I'd add Silvestri to the avoid pile

Actually, come to think of it, I take that back. Boult might just have the best 1+2 on record.

Silvestri is still to be avoided though

Boult seems to be the most popular choice among superfans. I prefer a slow tempo but I respect it.

Evil recommendations. Boult should absolutely be in must own over especially Barenboim, especially since none of your must own choices really take the 2nd's slow movement close to the tempo of Elgar himself. Solti is the closest to a representative choice for more energetic performances, but Boult and Mackerras are both less graceless. Colin Davis should also be bumped up to Tier 2 and might've been one of the best cycles were it not for the Barbican's bad acoustics. He also did one of the best 1sts with Dresden. I personally can't stand Barbirolli in anything besides accompaniment but I've resigned myself to his persistence in the preferences of others.
Correct although Silvestri does have a nice In the South.

t. unromantic spirit

Just teasing. I used to like Colin Davis' but all I know is one day I stopped being able to even finish listening to his LSO performances all of the way through.

mfw Gielen's Mahler

Yeah his n2 really intense

Imagine if Gielen had a top-tier orchestra

Along with Clementi, Dussek may have been a source of stylistic inspiration and influence for Beethoven, whose expansion upon the idiomatic innovations of the London school led to their rapid penumbration with the appearance of Beethoven's own keyboard works. Stylistic, melodic, dynamic and structural similarities exist between Beethoven's Sonata Opus 10, No.3 and Dussek's Sonatas Opus 31, No.2 and Opus 35, No.2. Similarly, the opening of Beethoven's Sonata Opus 10, No.1 quotes directly Dussek's Sonata Opus 39, No.3. It is also possible that Dussek's influence can be seen in Beethoven's famous Sonata Opus 81a, les Adieux: "both the program and the realization owed a great deal to Dussek's Opus 44."

Dussek introduced one noteworthy stylistic innovation to the piano concerto form. In variance with the prevailing classical concerto style, exemplified by Mozart's piano concertos, Dussek eliminated the soloist cadenza in the opening movement in all of his concertos written after 1792. His Concerto in C major, Op. 29, published in 1795, starts with an introductory Larghetto in 3/8 time, a solemn thematic declamation that is unique to the classical concerto. His last surviving work in the genre, Op. 70 in E-flat major, was one of the first to lengthen substantially the opening movement: at 570 measures long, roughly a third longer than previous contributions, it foreshadows the practice of a dominant opening movement in concertos, as in the concertos of Chopin and the Opp. 85 and 89 by Hummel as well as Beethoven's fifth.

Dussek is important in the history of music because of his friendship with John Broadwood, developer of the "English Action" piano. Because his music demanded strength and range not available in then current pianos, he pushed Broadwood into several extensions of the range and sonority of the instrument. It was a Broadwood instrument with Dussek's improvements that was sent to Beethoven.

Wagner.

Lohengrin is his best

Has anyone else noticed how pleasant the past two or three generals have been, and that Wagner was hardly mentioned at all during that time? What a wacky coincidence, right? Haha

Listen. This is /classical/, not "plebbit". We only discuss patrician refined music here. You are on the wrong bus stop, but instead of being a civil individual and leaving, you are instead creating a "ruckus" for the other waiting passengers. youtube.com/watch?v=VMw0EjLFPXw Wagner showed us the dangers of being a "faustian" man, not with long essays and tedious literature, but with elegant sound and smooth instrumentation. You are the devil, "Mephistopheles" trying to seduce us poor souls into degeneracy.

W.

Thread ruined

Thread fixed

so true, sister

thanks

retarded jinxer
yes, we noticed. we just didn't bring him up.

Why don't you jinx my retarded boner, meanie man

Anon, why did you create a ruckus? You owe us a formal apology