Tchoupitoulas
100+ Head-Fier
@HiFiHawaii808 - I'm glad to hear you're better.
There are a good number of recordings of Isle of the Dead. The one with the the London Symphonic Orchestra, conducted by André Previn is excellent, as is Vladimir Ashkenazy's version with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. My favorites, though, are two performances conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov: my very favorite is his live recording with the USSR State Academic Orchestra (the CD of it also includes Shostakovich's 5th Symphony). You can buy it here (for a pretty penny, unfortunately), and hear it here (the quality of the recording is better on the CD but it's not ideal):
This is, arguably, the most emotionally involving and dramatic version. Svetlanov also recorded the piece on another occasion, this time with a radically different interpretation, one that's far slower - fully five minutes longer! - and, as a result, it's more foreboding and ponderous. It's great fun to compare the two!
Some of the more well-known tone poems are Richard Strauss's famous Also Sprach Zarathustra as well as his Don Quixote, and Don Juan, among others. Franz Liszt is credited with inventing, or at least popularizing and advancing the symphonic poem. He composed many of them; Les Préludes is a good place to start.
Jean Sibelius composed some tone poems as well, and I'd recommend Finlandia, arguably his most famous work. If you like Isle of the Dead, you should also enjoy Sibelius's wonderfully romantic and beautiful Lemminkäinen Suite. It's not a tone poem, technically, because it has four movements, but it shares some common features with symphonic poems, and you can listen to individual movements, such as The Swan of Tuonela, as though they're tone poems. My favorite version is Julla-Pekka Saraste's interpretation with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, which is linked here to several streaming services, including here:
I'm a fan of tone poems (or symphonic poems), which are typically quite accessible compositions; they're single-movement orchestral pieces based on a particular theme or idea, often inspired by art and poetry. My favorite is a wonderful, moving one by Rachmaninov: the Isle of the Dead, Opus 29. Rachmaninov was inspired to compose this piece after seeing Arnold Böcklin's painting of the same name, which is understood to be an interpretation of the Greek myth in which Charon ferried the souls of the dead across the River Styx to their afterlives in the underworld.
There are a good number of recordings of Isle of the Dead. The one with the the London Symphonic Orchestra, conducted by André Previn is excellent, as is Vladimir Ashkenazy's version with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. My favorites, though, are two performances conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov: my very favorite is his live recording with the USSR State Academic Orchestra (the CD of it also includes Shostakovich's 5th Symphony). You can buy it here (for a pretty penny, unfortunately), and hear it here (the quality of the recording is better on the CD but it's not ideal):
This is, arguably, the most emotionally involving and dramatic version. Svetlanov also recorded the piece on another occasion, this time with a radically different interpretation, one that's far slower - fully five minutes longer! - and, as a result, it's more foreboding and ponderous. It's great fun to compare the two!
Some of the more well-known tone poems are Richard Strauss's famous Also Sprach Zarathustra as well as his Don Quixote, and Don Juan, among others. Franz Liszt is credited with inventing, or at least popularizing and advancing the symphonic poem. He composed many of them; Les Préludes is a good place to start.
Jean Sibelius composed some tone poems as well, and I'd recommend Finlandia, arguably his most famous work. If you like Isle of the Dead, you should also enjoy Sibelius's wonderfully romantic and beautiful Lemminkäinen Suite. It's not a tone poem, technically, because it has four movements, but it shares some common features with symphonic poems, and you can listen to individual movements, such as The Swan of Tuonela, as though they're tone poems. My favorite version is Julla-Pekka Saraste's interpretation with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, which is linked here to several streaming services, including here:
