#SIBELIUS GRIEG STRING QUARTETS BY GUARNERI QUARTET FULL#
#SIBELIUS GRIEG STRING QUARTETS BY GUARNERI QUARTET PLUS#

#SIBELIUS GRIEG STRING QUARTETS BY GUARNERI QUARTET FULL#

This was the first orchestral score I bought at the tender age of 12 when I discovered I could follow a full score as easily as I could piano music. My two benchmark recordings for the Brahms Double Concerto have been Von Karajan/Oistrakh/Rostropovich and Bruno Walter's excellent stereo take for Columbia with Francescatti/Fournier. Andrew Manze has made quite a reputation for himself during the past decade or so, and has recorded a fine set of Brahms Symphonies with the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, so I put this recent release on with much positive anticipation, not knowing the soloists at all. My take is that if you have to draw a map for the music, you shouldn't write it.Īcquired this unexpectedly fine CD last year on a recommendation and am just now hearing it for the first time.

It's really an intellectual exercise, and it comes across as quite dull as stand alone music. Schoenberg's Pelleas et Melisande really requires a thorough dive into his compositional technique, very similar to Wagner's idea of leitmotif, and the text of the Maeterlink play. This merchant has a pretty damn skimpy classical selection. I may or (most likely) may not put it on, as I attempted to listen to the piece 30 years ago and concluded I'd want to hear this about as much as I'd let my attention span wander thru the umpteenth Also Sprach Zarathustra. In order to get the best deal on shipping, the merchant required me to add an extra dollar's worth of goods, so after thoroughly searching the dealer's $1 albums the sole item I was even remotely interested in was a DGG Schoenberg Pelleas und Melisande, led by Karajan.

As purely musical fare it's in-one-ear-and-out-the-other stuff, and bass reproduction is below RCA's usual standard but I'm still keeping it.

#SIBELIUS GRIEG STRING QUARTETS BY GUARNERI QUARTET PLUS#

As a result, I ignored Herreweghe for decades, hoping he would come to his senses, and it seems he has at last done so.įor just three bucks plus shipping, I got a 1s/1s Living Stereo RCA pressing of Fiedler' s short-lived original issue of Hershey Kay ballets, Stars & Stripes and Cakewalk. Why is it that the conductor is never blamed for these things?Īt any rate, we sat together in stony silence for the rest of the performance, which was quite ruined for me from that point on. My neighbor began excoriating the horn player for incompetence, at which point I glared at him and corrected him in no uncertain terms that the disaster was the fault of the conductor's unplayable tempo, something he hadn't obviously considered. He took such a fast tempo in the Gloria that the poor natural horn simply couldn't play the notes, which really angered me. I was put off him by a disastrous performance of the Bach B Minor Mass in Avery Fisher Hall decades ago, a work I have performed myself in Carnegie Hall. Herreweghe has an amazingly sensitive ear for tone quality and he conveys his concept really well to his performers. Their discography is becoming rather massive. I've listened to quite a few of their recordings on my Youtube Music subscription. 'Full yet gentle' is a good way to put this. The above outstanding recording in superb sound is surely a feast for the ears, and wins a rating of five enthusiastic gold stars from your reviewer. In passing, let me add that Johan Dalene has also just released a recital album of Scandinavian works for piano & violin that I must hear soon. Both in the accompanying Barber Violin Concerto and in the Tchaikovsky (which, like many modern recordings, opens the cut in development in the overlong bridge before the 'B' section of the first movement that Reiner saw fit to make), Dalene suffuses each work with new depths using subtle dynamic shifts and bowings that appropriately underline the music without ever being obtrusive or offensive in any way, while Maestro Blendulf, in his skillful preparation of the orchestra, echoes the sentiments in each bar. Johan Dalene, in a stunning debut partnership with conductor Daniel Blendulf leading the Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra from Sweden (founded in 1912) is really the first recording I've heard that surpasses Heifetz in subtlety without losing any of the electric excitement so necessary to sustain the listener's interest. I've often criticized conductors for tampering with Tchaikovsky's tempos as many have slowed things down to accommodate difficult passages, or otherwise weakened the dramatic tension so necessary to Tchaikovsky's vision.

Everest of Violin Concertos, even while many recordings by the following generations, many very impressive, have come my way. For many decades your reviewer has held on to Jascha Heifetz in his recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with Fritz Reiner as the master interpreter of Tchaikovsky's brilliant Mt.

Sibelius Grieg String Quartets by Guarneri Quartet