[calaf]

about the Brandenburg, I'd like to add a recommendation for the Concerto Italiano recording

and for an oldie which IMO is still up with the best (Savall and Concerto Italiano in no particular order):

 
 
While I hate to link to a thread I started, there is a lot of musical insight in this thread
http://www.head-fi.org/t/134890/concerto-italiano-brandenburg-concerts
 
 For example here is a quote from bunnyears (much missed on headfi)
The Savall would be the concertos as performed in the palace of the Margrave, more stately with a lot of space around them. The CI (Concerto Italiano) would be Bach with the Collegium Musica in the Cafe Zimmerman after a round of beer and the cravats loosened.

 

[ctemkin]

For a fascinating historical instrument presentation of the Brandenburg Concertos, very well recorded, I recommend the Richard Egarr version on Harmonia Mundi. 

 

[LugBug1]

  So my two-year old managed to make it through this whole DVD (pointing out the horns a lot, which is good ^_^)
 
 
 

Mahlers target audience  
 
(but seriously, thats really cool!)
 
 
 

  about the Brandenburg, I'd like to add a recommendation for the Concerto Italiano recording
 
and for an oldie which IMO is still up with the best (Savall and Concerto Italiano in no particular order):
 
 
 
While I hate to link to a thread I started, there is a lot of musical insight in this thread
http://www.head-fi.org/t/134890/concerto-italiano-brandenburg-concerts
 
 For example here is a quote from bunnyears (much missed on headfi)
The Savall would be the concertos as performed in the palace of the Margrave, more stately with a lot of space around them. The CI (Concerto Italiano) would be Bach with the Collegium Musica in the Cafe Zimmerman after a round of beer and the cravats loosened.

Thanks for that link, enjoyed reading. 

 

[MrPanda]

I'm really enjoying Jeremy Denk's Goldberg's right now...
 
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/07/bach-goldberg-variations-endless-misery

 

[extrabigmehdi]

Well, after reading all the recommendations, I  find there's way too much version of Branderburg... I  find it's even hard to limit the choice to three versions.
 
So far, I  noticed the Karl Richter version. This one stand out , because of unique feeling of happiness/ euphoria that it evocates. I'm not completely a fan of the interpretation,  or just of how some instrument sound in particular, but there's first-rate emotions it's perhaps all that matters.
 
The  Savall version, has a different presentation. It's as if each instruments were played much louder than with other version. They also resonate a lot, maybe because of the particular accoustic of the room, or the mastering. This kind the feeling of a kind of "sonic bath". Interpretation seems ok, but the presentation seems  a bit overpowered.  I'd say why not, but perhaps not my first choice.
 
I  listened a bit also the Alessandrini version. This reminds me a bit the Harnoncourt version. In particular I  love with the Harnoncourt version, the begin of the concerto N°4, there's a lot of harmony with the flutes, and I  find it again  somehow with the Alessandrini version. I  don't know if I'd prefer Alessandrini to Harnoncourt, but at least the record of Alessandrini is more recent.
 
Begin of Concerto N°4 by Harnoncourt:
 

 
Begin of Concerto N°4 by Alessandrini:
 
 

 

[Mink]

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Alpha/ALPHA811

 
 

  The box-set of Bach concerti by Café Zimmermann is outstanding, both performance and sound quality.
It is amazing how many great Baroque ensembles there are. The last decade or so every new recording of Bach's Brandenburg concertos and orchestral suites has been superb and the audio quality gets better every time.
I no longer have a favorite, Alessandrini, Akademie fur alte Musik Berlin, Concerto Köln, Freiburger Barockorchester and the golden oldies by Savall all have their strengths.
Well since they are all great, I superficially will go for the best sounding then
 
 
http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Alpha/ALPHA811
 
 
 

 

[Claritas]

Alessandrini's Brandenburgs strike me as elegant but too cold, and I prefer Savall's more kinetic or boisterous rendition. Note: I generally don't enjoy the sound of period string instruments.

But I'm much enamored with Alessandrini's other records, especially his imaginative Art of Fugue and also his harpsichord concerti. He is one of the few creative interpreters nowadays.

I don't think he's on the level of van Immerseel, but approximately where I'd place Suzuki, though they all have very different approaches. None of these guys is a Glenn Gould--we'll call that the Gould Standard -- but we're most blessed to share the world with them.

 

[extrabigmehdi]

 None of these guys is a Glenn Gould--we'll call that the Gould Standard

-- but we're most blessed to share the world with them.

So what, there's nothing higher than this Glenn Gould for Bach interpretation ? I dismissed him from the stuff I collect, because he sings in almost all his recordings, and none seem digital.
I noticed also a  similar cult following for Rubinstein & Chopin .
 

 

[RRod]

  So what, there's nothing higher than this Glenn Gould for Bach interpretation ? I dismissed him from the stuff I collect, because he sings in almost all his recordings, and none seem digital.
I noticed also a  similar cult following for Rubinstein & Chopin .
 

 
Much as I'm not a Gould fan, his solo Bach, at least, has such clean counterpoint it's unbelievable. Definitely part of what can go into setting a benchmark for Bach, but he's not what I would call the epitome of a complete pianist.

 

[Claritas]

 
So what, there's nothing higher than this Glenn Gould for Bach interpretation ? I dismissed him from the stuff I collect, because he sings in almost all his recordings, and none seem digital. I noticed also a  similar cult following for Rubinstein & Chopin.

 
I'd say it's deserved in both cases, more so in Gould's case because more great pianists recorded Chopin than Bach. So many post-Gould Bach piano records sound like bad copies to me. Or are just unmemorable or willful or both in some measure. Andras Schiff is a notable exception, and Angela Hewitt has some straightforward, pleasant performances.
 
Digital isn't important to me for anything. Gould died just as it was starting, and his very last records including the '81 Goldbergs are digital. Sony issued an analog version much later (which Quinto prefers and I don't). He intended to re-record some of his repertoire in digital including some Bach works and the Beethoven piano concerti. Alas!
 
Quote:

 
Much as I'm not a Gould fan, his solo Bach, at least, has such clean counterpoint it's unbelievable. Definitely part of what can go into setting a benchmark for Bach, but he's not what I would call the epitome of a complete pianist.

 
I don't know if there is a complete pianist; nobody's good at everything. It's like what one of the Golden Age pianists said about the Chopin Etudes: nobody can play all of them equally well.

 

[RRod]

 
I don't know if there is a complete pianist; nobody's good at everything. It's like what one of the Golden Age pianists said about the Chopin Etudes: nobody can play all of them equally well.

 
Quite true, but Gould's idiosyncratic mockery of anything that didn't smack "enough" of Bach (though he was a Strauss fan, go figure) makes him someone that I have to "qualify" for people. "Oh Gould… yeah don't hear Mozart from him first." Some pianists might not play all of Chopin's etudes well; Gould would probably play them in the guise of some fake Polish persona that he put on and take the Winter Wind at 1/4 speed just to troll people.

 

[Claritas]

Quite true, but Gould's idiosyncratic mockery of anything that didn't smack "enough" of Bach (though he was a Strauss fan, go figure) makes him someone that I have to "qualify" for people. "Oh Gould… yeah don't hear Mozart from him first." Some pianists might not play all of Chopin's etudes well; Gould would probably play them in the guise of some fake Polish persona that he put on and take the Winter Wind at 1/4 speed just to troll people.

He definitely comes with qualifications. What little Chopin he recorded is cool and on the fast side; only for completists really. Even he admitted he shouldn't have recorded the later Mozart sonatas but he was under contract to finish the set.

 

[icebear]

   
Much as I'm not a Gould fan, his solo Bach, at least, has such clean counterpoint it's unbelievable. Definitely part of what can go into setting a benchmark for Bach, but he's not what I would call the epitome of a complete pianist.

Today anything is trimmed by market research or "consumer insights" studies and the result is some boring middle of the road stuff that doesn't polarize.
The candidate (product) with the least amount of negative comments wins. That's not necessarily something interesting.
Fewer and fewer artist do have an expressive character nowadays. Gould was the opposite.

 

   
I'd say it's deserved in both cases, more so in Gould's case because more great pianists recorded Chopin than Bach. So many post-Gould Bach piano records sound like bad copies to me. Or are just unmemorable or willful or both in some measure. Andras Schiff is a notable exception, and Angela Hewitt has some straightforward, pleasant performances.
 
Digital isn't important to me for anything. Gould died just as it was starting, and his very last records including the '81 Goldbergs are digital. Sony issued an analog version much later (which Quinto prefers and I don't). He intended to re-record some of his repertoire in digital including some Bach works and the Beethoven piano concerti. Alas!
 
Quote:
 
I don't know if there is a complete pianist; nobody's good at everything. It's like what one of the Golden Age pianists said about the Chopin Etudes: nobody can play all of them equally well.

 
+1. There are lots of great recording taped analog and latest technology remasters of these sometimes 50 or 60 year old master tapes sound spectacular.
Most of the time easily better than early digital recordings from the beginning of that era.

 

[RRod]

  Today anything is trimmed by market research or "consumer insights" studies and the result is some boring middle of the road stuff that doesn't polarize.
The candidate (product) with the least amount of negative comments wins. That's not necessarily something interesting.
Fewer and fewer artist do have an expressive character nowadays. Gould was the opposite.

 
Well I didn't say I'd take Lang Lang over Gould ^_^ But performers today have a larger corpus of recordings to contend against, along with improved scholarship. That doesn't bode well for sticking out of the crowd without sounding ludicrous. And even if you want to sound ludicrous, can you out-troll Gould's Mozart? Still, certain performers manage to do it in certain niches, just as Gould did with Bach. I was more saying that there are quite a few Gould discs I would tell people to avoid like the plague for a first listen to a piece.

 

[LugBug1]

Gould made Bach interesting for people new to him in the beginning. But as a whole, a lot of his Bach recordings became quite stale as time went on. For me he seemed to have got into a mould of thought and stuck with it . Dry and mechanical and only very occasionally highlighting the soul and sweet melancholia (which is what Bach was best at) - often in places no-one else saw. Also, his first Goldberg's is a bit silly listening to it now.... But his 81 recording could stand objectively as the best interpretation on record.
 
For all his faults, Gould still wipes the floor with someone like Hewitt (who is just plain boring imo. She talks a good talk but I just don't feel anything from her performances). Gould is also more 'Bach' than Schiff imo. Schiff squeezed every nuance of emotion out of Bach's technical music and in turn can be as annoying as it is beautiful. Richter was in another league to anyone else at the time and even more idiosyncratic than Gould, but as always with Richter you either agree with him or you don't..  
 
Gould laid the groundwork of Bach interpretation and should always be used as study point.  But there are also some great Bach performers playing at the moment. Till Fellner, Roger Woodward, Jeremy Denk, David Fray stand out for me. 
 
And this guy... 
 

 
He has suffered from Turrets Syndrome all his life and it suddenly stops when he plays piano! This is the best recording of the concerto's probably since Gould's. Every note has a life of its own. Such playful joy! An extraordinary recording.