[DavidMahler]

Hahah, this should be a funny read.....

Just based on your opinion, please list recordings which you feel are the WORST interpretations of classical works you have ever heard. Feel free to explain why you think it is so terrible.

 

[Absorbine_Sr]

Search for an LP from the 70's by the Portsmouth Sinfonia. If memory serves me, it was an experiment by Brian Eno and Gavin Bryars wherein musicians played classical music on instruments they had never played before. The basic musical knowledge keeps things close, but oh Lord is the final product horrendous.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

The Great Kat: Beethoven on Speed

It is something that needs to be done. Classical themes done speed metal or neo-classical metal style. But her interpretations leave me wondering just what's going on. It's so over the top that it comes across more as parody.

 

[Head_case]

I can remember a group from Oxford who did Palestrina's Masses with an all boy choir whose voices hadn't broke. They were screechy and so miserable to listen to, they'd sounded like they'd been whipped by Oliver Twist's devious conductor.

I tried to live with the CD which was touted as one of the 'best recordings' for a few years. Gave it away to the local library for everyone else to enjoy instead

 

[Lex2]

Anne-Sophie Mutter's Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (later version, with the Korngold). Vibrato taken to the extreme as to sound ludicrous.

 

[DavidMahler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lex2 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Anne-Sophie Mutter's Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (later version, with the Korngold). Vibrato taken to the extreme as to sound ludicrous.

I have mixed feelings about this one. I hear what you're saying. Many critics have commented about this version and Mutter's playing for the past decade. It certainly makes her version unique. It's obviously not a reference version, but I think it is good in its own way, kind of like how I feel about Gould's Bach.

 

[Uncle Erik]

Hooked on Classics.

Anyone remember those TV commercials?

 

[reorx]

Heh, I was just about to post Hooked on Bach.

There is a special place in my heart for the utter monstrosity that is Nessun Dorma as performed by Manowar

 

[Zaubertuba]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hooked on Classics. Anyone remember those TV commercials?

LOL-I don't remember the commercials, but the *BOOM, CHUCK, BOOM, CHUCK* underlying the whole mess is burned into my brain forever---and all you had to do was mention it. Great, now I'm going to have it going through my head until I can get my rig fired up and play something to cleanse my musical palette.

 

[rhythmdevils]

an orchestral pink floyd CD I found is certainlly the worst. 80's synth drums + orchestra = bad news bears

 

[lwd]

If you can find it, Rohzdestvensky conducting Petrouchka with LSO on Nimbus. You would think that would be good, but OMG! For a laugh, Svetlanov doing Rach Symph No.3 2nd mvt opening horn solo. They don't play it like that anymore. There is a Neemi Jaarvi recording where large parts of the orchestra are clearly lost but I cant remember what piece it is.

 

[Currawong]

Every interpretation of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor other than Peter Hurford's I find to range between pathetic and pretentious. This was a piece of work Bach used to stress test organs by pulling out all the stops and it should bloody well sound world-ending epic.

 

[zotjen]

Does Trans-Siberian Orchestra count?

 

[userlander]

I don't really like that synthesizer bach stuff - "bachbusters" I think it's called? Or how about ELO doing beethoven.

 

[Tyson]

Pretty much all of Bruno Walter's late recordings with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. I know some people love them, but to me they are universally slow and dull; classical music for old men, by old men.