Mahler's 1st is actually really dull until the last movement. Basically nothing happens in the first 3 movements except for the silly klezmer break in the 3rd.
What are you talking about? There's tons of awesome in the first three movements. Also, on a different note, I actually dislike the finale of the symphony.
But it is so magical. To me it invokes such a great feeling of morning. Almost even better than Grieg's Morning Mood. I can imagine the sun rising at the morning and the protagonist of the symphony stretching and yawning and bumbling about in the confusion of the drowsiness of just getting up. Mahler's symphonies aren't officially program music, but it was always on his mind. He removed his original programmatic elements (title, other movements, movement order) because of the controversy surrounding it. But it feels like it tells a story to me. I can just imagine a big bumbly guy waking up in the first movement. Dancing awkwardly in the second, and goofing around at a funeral in the third. I don't know how the finale fits in to my imagination but I consider it one of his best for imagination, even if it just a bit of noodling.
My friend Ken on the Beethoven tempi; makes some good points: Of course, I'm not going to run out and get a score for every piece I listen to nor am I going to sit around clocking recordings to make sure they're following the composer's tempo, but I am not going to dismiss the practice and I will prefer that the conductors are doing their utmost to follow the composer's wishes, since they knew what they wanted and wrote it that way for a reason. Note that just because a disc states that it's "authentic period" everything and they may be following tempos it does not mean the performance is good.
What I mean to say is that the first movement is extremely not varied harmonically, and what is going on isn't interesting enough to make up for the lack of harmonic variation.
I think that a lack of harmonic variation is not a common occurrence in any Mahler symphony. The opening bars unfold over suspended unisons in strings. Consulting the Constantin Floros chapter on the first she points out what she labels as "obvious heterogeneity of musical figures". That slow suspended opening lasts 61 measures (out of 450), but within that 61 bars there are four different themes, a chromatic bass motif and ten tempo changes from fast to slow, all before the first main part of the piece starts. And for keys during the first movement he hits: DM, AM, DbM, AbM, CM, FM, Fm. We'll have to disagree on how interesting the material is, though. To me those opening suspended tones create a really cool eerie effect (I always thought of it as "suspension of time") and the descending fourths of the first motif add to the mystery. The faster trumpet, clarinet, and horn motifs are very different in texture and shape and are like bright moments breaking through a haze or mist. It's all attention-getting for me.
Well yeah, he changes keys, but within each key it's basically I, I, I, I, noodling on V, I I I, some suspensions that go nowhere, I I I.
Based on what I know you like, I would really recommend 2, 6 and 9. Those 3 symphonies never fail to give me goosebumps and reduce me to tears, and are very personal to Mahler, dealing with themes of death and heartbreak.
I'll keep an eye out for these at my local place. I listened to Die Meistersinger overture today walking home in a gale and about halfway through, the tornado sirens started going off. I thought: this being Nazi Germany's favorite piece of music, this can't be the first time that someone listening to it has been interrupted by sirens, though in the past it was probably an air raid siren.
I was walking to work today and I tried to listen to my iPod and the damn thing wouldn't work, presumably because it got wet in my pocket last night. The wheel wouldn't spin at all, no buttons would work. I got pretty bummed because I've had the thing for five and a half years, which must be some sort of record. I tried resetting it, I did some looking around online, and the consensus was that it's toast. Anyway, when I was leaving work, I tried again and it was fine. Never before had I heard a finer version of the first movement of Beethoven's 7th. Klieber. Good stuff. And I didn't have to buy a new mp3 player.
After a long while of listening to what I had, this morning I decided to get around to ripping a couple of things I've had sitting around on CD for a while. Vaughn Williams 2, some Naxos recording Ives 1 & Three Places in New England, Ormandy Debussy, Images & Printemps, Boulez I've got a few other things I'll do later, too, some of Verdi's Overtures and Ma, Meyer, & O'Connor's Appalachia Waltz. Listening to Debussy right now and it's not really my speed, but it's not bad. I'm really looking forward to the Ives. I listened to the first movement of #1 as it was ripping and I really liked it.
Have you listened to Debussy's La Mer? It might not be up your alley but I think it's pretty cool (plus the choir of sirens in the last movement totally sounds like something a 70s prog band would do).
La Mer is great, only thing is I have a real problem with brass instruments. I just can't stand them... So I rarely listen to big orchestral things, even though I like the music itself. L'apres midi d'une faune is great as well, though it's been bastardized so much by films etc... Would have been amazing to hear it in 1894.
Today, I listened to: Wagner's Siegfried, Act 2, Krauss/Bayreuth 1953 Brahms' Symphony 2, Toscanini/NBC, 1950ish Mozart's Requiem, Abbado/Berlin, 1990ish Beethoven's Symphony 5, Furtwangler/Vienna, 1950ish All kinds of mono. None of them are bad recordings at all, and the studio ones are quite good. The Requiem is recorded in a gorgeous hall and it sounds absolutely amazing. I had forgotten how good the second movement of B5 is. It's definitely the most overlooked of all the movements there. My love of 8 & 9 is pretty well-documented here, but 5 is right there with them. Brahms' 2nd didn't do much for me, but it's only my third listen. His 4th is one of my favorite symphonies, but then it took a long time for it to sink in.
Any Bartók fans in here? If so, favourite pieces? I'd have to go with the string quartets, especially the 1st, 4th and 5th. I have the Piano Concertos sitting here, but haven't listened to them properly yet, will get to that soon.
My prof played the timpani part in Sonata for Two Piano and Percussion on the night before my music school audition. That was the night that I knew I was doing the right thing in auditioning. Bartok is sweet, the local orchestra put off Three Village Scenes last year, what a fucking ridiculously hard piece.
I have found this with Brahms. His symphonies take a long gestation period. I have only recently truly appreciated his first symphony, and I only really know the first and last movements. They're very layered works. But so far with the first, they're very worth the work.
I like his Concerto for Orchestra and Four Orchestral Pieces a good deal. I don't like Cantata Profana very much, at least in comparison to the two other pieces on the same disc, Barber's Prayers of Kierkegaard and Vaughn Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem. Oh, I've also got Divertimento that I like. I'm pretty curious to check out his quartets, which a lot of people compare pretty favorably with Beethoven's as the best in the repertoire.
Well, today at the used CD place right across the street I happened to find Mahler 2, Klemperer/Philharmonia 1962 for $5, and I'm ripping it right now. Amazon reviews have this as a pretty good version, some saying it's the version and others saying it's old and the sound quality sucks, preferring Bernstein or Solti. Bernstein I've got mixed feelings about but I don't like much that I've heard from Solti, so hopefully that stays true here for me.
I've read that Klemperer does a good 2. I've read that Rattle's was a monumental 2. Or maybe it was his 3... Either way. Good price, and Klemperer is going to give something worth at least one listen regardless. Good pick up.
Klemperer's is solid, but the sound quality could be better. Although if you're used to Furtwangler and Knappertsbusch recordings, then that shouldn't really be an issue. I'm not a big fan of most Bernstein recordings(they're usually passable, but not groundbreaking), but he was a very passionate Mahlerite and his recordings are definitely worth hearing. His 2 is very slow, which does make some sections seem to drag, but the climax is incredible because of the slow build. Zubin Mehta's recording of 2 is also very good. I remember thinking that Rattle's recording was problematic in some places and excellent in others, but it's been a long time since I heard it.
Well, most of my resource on Rattle's recording being good is from Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical music, but of course, they are a British publication and tend to give their native sons a shitton of credit. But any amazon review I've read stated that Klemperer's is one of the best. And with any Rattle recording, there will be some sort of division. He reads things differently and puts his own stamp on things and doesn't just do what Karajan or Bernstein did so people like to call his interpretations wrong or troublesome. I like his fresh approach to works.
The String Quartets are awesome but my favorite Bartok piece is the Romanian Folk Dances, especially the fourth movement. I'm always amazed at how delicate Bartok could be when he wanted. The second movement is definitely the best part of the Fifth. The first and third movements are famous because of the famous motive but the second movement is where the emotional turmoil of the symphony shines through best for me.
Man, the first movement of Mahler's 6th is really awesome. But hella too long. The Bernstein recording I have (which feels brisker than the Chailly I've heard) is like 22 minutes. And for once I actually feel like it doesn't need to be. There are lots of awesome ideas in there, but it could have pared down a bit. The only issue with Mahler I have is the lack of self-restraint. The 5th's scherzo falls in this boat with me too. I lose interest about halfway through. Luckily the finale keeps me on board. Anyways, I'm a huge fan of Thomas Ades, as you may well know because I keep posting about him, but I have the cd with his Violin Concerto and his new orchestral work, Tevot. There is this absolutely gorgeous section at the end of the second movement of the concerto which gives me chills everytime I hear it, and upon listening to Tevot I found that he put, pretty much, the exact same line near the end except longer, more developed and drawn out. What an effect. I don't know how you guys feel about composers re-using material. I enjoy it because it acts as a sort of bridge between works, maybe lets you know that they're connected, but it also shows that the composer has enough balls to say "yes, this is one of my favourite things I wrote and I do believe it should be heard again, because it's different in this context". What do you guys think?
I spent this morning listening to a couple versions of a couple of Wagner preludes. I've come to this conclusion: Georg Solti cannot conduct Wagner.
Shit, I've got three of his Ring recordings. All except Siegfried. Anyway, had a good listening day yesterday--Haydn 39, Schumann 2, Shostakovich 9. The Shostakovich 9 gets more interesting every time I hear it--there's a lot of more subtle layers of emotion buried in the orchestration and tunes that on the surface sound kind of flippant. Actually all three of them improved.
Well that's an impressive set of ears you've got there. If that's really true you're still kind of ignoring the rest of the stuff I mentioned that makes the movement really interesting.
That's a highly regarded recording, though it was also the first studio recording and the first stereo one, so it gets a lot of mileage from that I'm sure. It was also when he was still a nobody, so maybe he changed later on into the intolerable Wagnerian. I'll have to listen to his Ring recordings, but every goddamn thing I've got with him on it is so slow that it loses all the drama. His Tannhauser is just blah, and his preludes just reek of being a minute too long each.
I just pulled out my disc of Wagner Overtures with Tennestedt and Berlin Phil. I bought it for reference when I was doing an arrangement of Rienzi with my youth string group. For some reason he changes the rhythm of the turn in the main theme (E-D-C#-D if I recall), in the slow opening of Rienzi, from 32s to 16ths. I'm rather curious what the reason behind that is, since it seems kind of major. Eh. The rest of it sounds good, from what I know of Wagner Overtures. The others are Tannhauser, Lohengrin Act 1 & 3 Preludes, and Meistersinger.
I think the best two Wagner preludes, insofar as they are standalone pieces, are Lohengrin Act 1 and Die Meistersinger. Parsifal and Tristan are great, but they work so much better in the context of the dramas, especially Parsifal. EDIT - I'm listening to Rienzi right now, and yeah, that does seem to be a huge, unnecessary change. Thanks for bringing it up, by the bye. I haven't listened to it in a real long time. I seem to remember doing this with a youth orchestra at some point, long before I knew Wagner from any other composer. EDIT 2 - Rienzi really sticks out, partially because it's so ... well, non-late-Wagner sounding. But also, I think it's the only prelude of his with snare drum. Lohengrin Act 1 really sticks out too, because it's the only one with cymbals. With the brass themes in Rienzi, you can definitely tell it's Wagner. All the other stuff sounds so atypical and almost crude compared to something like Tristan's prelude.
I can't believe this whole time I have let this thread pass by. I live in Regina now, the Regina Symphony Orchestra is quite old and is pretty decent. I have seen Ludwig's 5,6,7th with them, very impressed. Quite a few pieces I look forward to seeing. They are playing SB's adagio next year, I will try not to cry. Thus spake zarathustra too, I will try not to cum. Oh and they played crouching tiger hidden dragon pieces last year with the original chinese instrument, I forget what it is called, but it was fantastic.
Nice. The NSO is doing Adagio this year as well, but our string section is the most miserably tuned section ever. It will sound so bad. A lot of it comes from having a terrible concertmaster. We're getting Anton Kuerti in next year doing the entire Beethoven Piano/Orchestra cycle. I say it that way because he is also doing Choral Fantasy. We've also got James Ehnes doing Bartok Viola Concerto and some Violin solo that has the word "Thais" in its name. Along with that Saint-Saens violin solo. Either way. We've also got a dude playing Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. It's weird that we've got such great soloists but such a terrible orchestra. On the topic of Wagner, I very much like his Tristan Prelude, and Der Fliegende Hollander has an awesome prelude too. I'm planning on watching the dvd of Die Walkure I borrowed from the library sometime within the week.
The Flying Dutchman is a decent overture, but to me, the opera as a whole is just really raw. Wagner's motifs there were giant blocks there, like big 16 bar things. Senta's ballad, the storm motif, etc. By the time he got to Parsifal, the motifs were down to little half measure pieces that he was able to combine in a more organic, subtle manner. That's not to say that Dutchman is bad, just that it's early.
Aye, I agree. That's what made it such a digestible opera to watch first. Plus the storm motif is absolutely balls to the wall awesome.
I saw the messiah last holiday season live for the first time, had the best seat in the entire cathedral. some really powerful shit there. Any recording cannot do it justice.
I randomly listened to beethoven's first five symphonies (berlin ph) on saturday, you guys must fucking hate guys like me.
When you say random do you mean shuffling movements? Either way it's not a big deal to me. If you like the way they sound then enjoy it.
No, in order, randomly because I pretty much never listen to classical music. It's either too big of a beast, or I'm too much of a pussy.
6 and 7 are my fav, you should make it up to them. The start of the 4th mov of the 6th is the most "symphonic" thing ever written. EPIC
I haven't heard many, but I enjoy the speed that Bernstein takes in the first movement. It's more brisk than I've heard before and sounds like a militant march, whereas, it seems, that other conductors get weighed down by the size of the orchestra.
That movement is already 23 minutes at Bernstein's tempo. That's the only version I think I've ever heard and I think it would be deadly to drag at a slower speed.
Yesterday I determined that Beethoven's early string quartets are pretty much the perfect music to graaaaaaaaadually roll out of bed to. Specifically I was listening to #2 and #3 from a recording by the Alban Berg Quartet.
So I recently got a new haul of music. Bought Shostakovich Symphonies 5 & 9 from Petrenko/Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, on NAXOS. Lorin Maazel doing Debussy's La Mer, Jeux and Nocturnes with Vienna Phil, and Jean-Philippe Tremblay doing Bruckner 4 with some small canadian orchestra. I also just ordered the EMI Mahler complete works box set. It has various artists doing everything. Rattle/CBSO doing 3, 7 and Das Klagende Lied, Rattle/BPO doing 10, Tennestedt/LPO doing 5 and 8, Barbirolli doing 9 with Berlin, and 6 with New Philharmonia, Furtwangler doing Songs of a Wayfarer with Philharmonia, Giulini/Chicago doing 1, Klemperer/Philharmonia doing 2, and Horenstein doing 4 with LPO. I am so pumped.
Enjoy Bruckner 4. He's weighty and a bit ponderous but he's got a great ear for melody and 4 shows that perfectly. I've got a different recording, though. As far as La Mar, let me know how you like that. Debussy is one that it's taking me some time to get into.
