I know that this goes against my soft-spoken, diffident nature, but for some reason I’m in the mood to opine about my ten favorite releases of 2009. So here they are, in no particular order:
Category Archives: Classical Music, Recorded
Vox from the Vaults
Some of my recent remastering projects have at last hit the retail market… some here, one in Japan.
Vintage Hindemith Shellac at… the Crooks & Liars Blog?
It’s true! It’s true! The planet’s most popular political TV blog sports a “Newstalgia” subsite featuring vintage media moments, including this recently posted, gourmet music rarity: the 1948 Pathé recording of Paul Hindemith’s Violin Concerto, performed by Henri Merckel with the Lamoureux Orchestra led by Roger Désormière. Okay, it’s a 64k mp3, which means your brain has to fill in a few holes left by the lo-fi sound, but it’s well worth a listen.
Blast from the Past: A review from 2001
Here is my review of “Willem Mengelberg / Concertgebouw Orchestra: The Radio Recordings” (Q-Disc), originally published by andante.com in 2001 and recovered from the memory hole.
Now that’s what I call Tchaikovsky…
(Hat tip: Sybille Werner.)
It’s All in the Timing…
Another of those wonderful, massive New York City thunderstorms is under way. It started ratcheting itself as the quietest point in Liszt’s Les Preludes (the 1937 Polydor recording by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Paul van Kempen, released in a very good transfer on Tahra) was playing on the stereo. The storm added gratuitous but welcome special effects, showing that once in a while these sonic juxtapositions are serendipitous.
On the CD Player: Furtwängler From the Urbanden
First, some full disclosure: I’ve been a Wilhelm Furtwängler fanboy since my high school years.
Continue reading On the CD Player: Furtwängler From the Urbanden
When Bach’s “esoteric” music becomes the vogue
Jan Swafford, whose Brahms biography proves that a rigorous scholarly study can indeed be a compelling page-turner, has an interesting piece over at Slate about the surprising recent popularity of Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge thanks to the formidable Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s recent recording for Deutsche Grammophon. I would only add that there are parallels between Aimard’s achievement and the remarkable recording debut of Glenn Gould over half a century ago – through which he turned Bach’s Goldberg Variations, then regarded as a similarly “esoteric” work of more interest to the musicology set than a broader listening public, into a chart-topping hit.
On the CD Player: Vintage Barbirolli
It’s been a while since I’ve heard the Barbirolli/Hallé Dvo?ák Symphony No.7 — recorded in 1957, originally issued on Pye and most recently available in an ultra-budget 3-fer from Disky. In some respects it was much as I remembered: the sound was both overmiked and very congested, and the playing was sometimes a bit too out of tune. The performance, however, was more satisfying than I had recalled: enormously energetic, strongly dramatic, and filled with more than the requisite number of “goosebump” moments. I’m very glad I gave this one another listen.
Sound: 5
Performance: 8
Plenty of Corn, Plenty of Gold
Over at Standpoint, Jessica Duchen interviews formidable violinist Philippe Quint about his new recording of the Korngold Violin Concerto for Naxos.