[bosiemoncrieff]

This Valentine's Day, experience Max Lorenz, my nominee for greatest Wagner tenor ever, sing the climax of Tannhäuser, the ode to Venus and Love. I was so fortunate to be able to acquire an extremely rare pair of LPs including some amazing highlights of Acts 2-3 from Tannhauser from 1942 or 43. I was perhaps even luckier to hear the LP on Sol at the Schiitr. @Baldr and I agreed it was some of the finest Wagnerian singing on record. In fact, the LP has him singing something like half a step higher than on the youtube video.


Sorry for the double post.

 

[the finisher]

 

[wink]

..

 

[tromba]

As a closing, I have returned to the Zinman box. As I recall, I spent 80 bucks for thia long box which included, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Schubert and Mahler Symphony Cycles, Beethoven Piano, Violin, Triple Concerti, Overtures, Misa Solemnis, Strauss Tone Poems, and a few diverse selections from Haydn and Wagner. I am now well into the Mahler Cycle which I find curiously odd, as the tempi are on the quick side, yet it is obvious he is not just a beat counter like Toscanini; subtleties in orchestral phrasing are raised in pleasant context. It was a great way to get rid of eighty bucks. On Friday night I will revisit the Da Ponte Cycle. And yes, multibit still rules for Zinman!

Friday always means the Presto Classical email arrives!! I just looked and saw most of these recordings but nothing with all of them in a box set. I'll keep checking. I did hear a recital last summer by the principal trumpet of Tonhalle. He is a great player. Now I just need a piece of Schiit multibit!!

 

[tromba]

That currentzis trilogy is magic. Pure magic. One of the best.

Definitely on my wish list. Everything I've read about him says that.

 

[earnmyturns]

About to cause some heartburn... I love the music making of András Schiff, so I was really looking forward to his SF concert on Friday. Schiff playing conducting from the piano BWV 1054 and BWV 1055 was wonderful -- light, spacious, subtle. BWV 1068 is more muscular, but his conducting kept it from overflowing and made it beautifully balanced between lively and stately. After the intermission, however, the Mendelssohn was too long, too repetitive, too over the top. I'm sure the conducting and playing were good, but the piece just bored and annoyed me, the worst kind of thickness and overstatement that makes me dislike much mid 19th-century orchestral and choral music. To be a bit cynical, the post-revolutionary, post-Wiener Kongress, back-to-royalty culture in Western Europe sold out to official pieties and conventionality except in lower-cost, personal chamber and solo work. It would take post-Commune, post-Prussian invasion Paris with its failure of official ideology to revive the spark of cultural subversion and originality.

For some reason, the Mendelssohn reminded me of Robert Musil's characters Walter and Clarisse in The Man Without Qualities, avatars of the later convergence of German music and fascist artistic sensibilities (yes, I'm aware that as a converted Jew, Mendelssohn would not be in the fascist canon, I'm talking about a cloying closeness to absolute power that one senses in his Lobgesang but never in JSB).

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

I said a while back that I divide Wagner tenors into the sunshine (Melchior, Windgassen, Kollo) and gravel (Lorenz, Suthaus, Vinay, Domingo) - with just a few walking the line (Vickers, though he leans sunshine).

For Wagner sopranos, though I could make the same division, I prefer to think in terms of wet and dry. Flagstad is the driest of the dry, and Jessye Norman perahps the wettest of the wet — a lover once remarked to me that she has a "bathtub in her mouth." It is tremendously sad that she never recorded a full Brunnhilde — we only have Sieglinde, Kundry, Elsa, Elizabeth, and the second act of Tristan with Vickers in 1981 as reviewed in a slightly condescending fashion here. Mödl leans dry, Astrid Varnay leans wet, Nilsson is right down the middle with Vickers. Frida Leider is also to the wet side.

 

[wink]

..

 

[jmarcusg]

Ouch... "Apple’s latest Macs have a serious audio glitching bug" - http://bit.ly/2EjqQ1i

 

[liamo]

Ouch... "Apple’s latest Macs have a serious audio glitching bug" - http://bit.ly/2EjqQ1i

Verrrrry interesting. I swear my iPhone 7s xl or whatever will start streaming fine, then over time develops these glitches that sound like digital dust under my none existent digital needle which is corrected by stopping the stream and starting over. Ever a dongle company.

 

[artur9]

Sunday my daughter and I saw Britten's Midsummer's Night Dream. How strange to enjoy an opera where the lyrics are in English!

The production was fun, Puck was a blast. The lovers were a good listen but I really enjoyed the play at the end most. The snide comments from the attendees were great fun.

It was my first exposure to a counter-tenor (Oberon) and I found the experience not to my liking. Some sort of cognitive dissonance effect maybe.

 

[wink]

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[bosiemoncrieff]

Really enjoying HE-6 for the first time in awhile. I've just turned on the Varviso Meistersinger from the Bayreuth in the 70s. It's a solid record.

I'm also enjoying the Portal Panache - which I can only use with HE-6 and K1000. Too loud for anything else - though I am looking at the Rag 2 with great interest.

Now, for a shocking fact: the fastest Parsifal prelude I've ever seen, coming in under ten minutes, is conducted in the studio recording by Reginald Goodall!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RZZ6UI/ref=dm_rogue_digital

The live recording he did with Vickers in 1971 is a more expected 14 something.

 

[wink]

Bayreuth cat....

 

[GearMe]

Finally a Ring Cycle I can live with...