I have just discovered the existence of this thread, which I see has been going for several months now! I am not on this site as much as I used to be. I hope that this thread survives as long as the jazz one has - certainly the discourse here is in general more informed and polite....rvpiano is to be commended for starting it!
Perhaps because I am a professional horn player, what I noticed as I just read through this entire thread is the lack of wind music mentioned in relation to strings and piano. Maybe Frogman will chime in and help me out here! Here are some recommendations for those of you who may be interested in some music for winds:
I'll start with Mozart, one of the greatest composers for winds. Of course the horn concerti - one cannot do better here than the classic performances by Dennis Brain, though of course there are several other good recordings. The clarinet concerto is also considered one of the greatest concertos ever written for any instrument. The Gran Partita became more widely known after the movie Amadeus came out, and there is plenty of fantastic music for winds in Mozarts output. There are many good recordings out there - back in the day the London Wind Soloists put out a good set, as did the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and there are other good sets as well. I have always said if I could form any chamber ensemble I wanted, it would be a wind octet. So much fantastic music for this ensemble, much of it by Mozart, including arrangements of most of his operas.
Of course, one cannot mention wind music without including Richard Strauss. His horn concerti are amazing - try Hermann Baumann in this repertoire. Also included on the LP was the Weber Concertino -Weber was another great writer of wind music, especially for the clarinet. But Strauss also wrote much great wind music patterned after Mozart, big serenades. The Happy Workshop is a good one. The old Netherlands Wind Ensemble was a great group that recording much of the chamber music I have mentioned.
As far as music for brass goes, there is plenty. The old Philip Jones Brass Ensemble recorded a very great deal. And for schubert, I'll mention some Hindemith - his Concert Music for Strings Brass and Percussion is excellent, as well has his Symphony for Band - the greatest work every composed for that ensemble. I also cannot resist mentioning his Sonata for Four Horns, one of the greatest horn quartets ever composed. But of course everyone's favorite piece of horn chamber music would be the Brahms Trio.
I'll start there, hopefully this will spark some more discussion here!
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Hello all - the Schumann Konzertstuck is indeed a great piece. I do have that Gardiner recording, though it would be not quite correct to call all of the instruments natural horns - at least a couple of them do have valves on that recording. They are period instruments, but valves had been invented by then and were already in wide use. I would have to dig the liner notes out to figure out exactly what sort of instruments those are that are used on that recording.
Schubert, do you remember who the other three soloists were when you heard Baumann play it? Were they people from the Gewandhaus section?
By the way, I would not say the Nielsen is grossly underplayed - it is a staple in any good woodwind quintet's repertoire. However, there are probably less than a handful of professional woodwind quintets, at least that tour at all. I have played the piece a few times. For another great woodwind quintet piece, try the Samuel Barber Summer Music, if you do not know it.
A couple of other great chamber works involving the horn would be the Beethoven Septet, and the Schubert Octet.
Newbee, the Gliere is a great concerto. Baumann has an excellent recording, and another interesting one is the Valery Polek one, with the composer conducting! Polek premiered the work.
Another really great horn concerto is by one of Schubert's favorites, Hindemith. It was written for Brain, who made an excellent recording of it. Another great piece would be the Britten Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings. |
Craig, what you have heard about Brahms is true, as far as being the last of the major composers to use natural horns in his works. What Brahms did in his symphonies, for instance, was (generally) to use one pair of natural horns (Horns I and II), and one pair of valved horns (III and IV). So he did take advantage of the newer instruments; however he and many others at the time felt that the valved horns were inferior to the natural horns in tone quality. This could perhaps have been true, at first, but it was not a universal opinion at the time. Brahms had very conservative musical tastes. He was a horn player himself, you know. He even wrote an etude book for the instrument! It's quite good, though not much in use today. I would guess most horn players don't even know it exists, let alone have a copy.
Wagner's first use of the new instruments was fascinating, in Lohengrin. At first, he did not quite understand the concept, and assumed that the purpose was to essentially have several natural horns on the same instrument - in other words, that it would still be played as a hand horn, just with the ability to change the key of it at will. The result of this misunderstanding was that he changed the key of the instrument sometimes after only a bar and a half! So one has to be alert when playing, for instance, the oft-played Prelude to the Third Act, as the transposition changes come thick and fast - it gives students a great deal of trouble at first.
As far as recordings go, I know that John Eliot Gardiner has a good recording of the Brahms Requiem. I do not know if there are any period instrument recordings of the symphonies - I don't think Gardiner has recorded those. Being still very active, I don't really have time to keep up with everything going on in the recording world anymore. I am very familiar with what was recorded up to say the mid-90s, but not nearly so much since then, when I won my position in a full-time symphony. Many others on this board would be much more familiar than I with who has recorded what in the last twenty years or so. I'm pretty sure there were no period instrument recordings of the Brahms symphonies before the mid-90s, but someone may have done it since.
schubert - I do not remember where you live, if you have ever said. Assuming you are in or close to a major metropolitan area, you would be much more likely to catch a performance of a woodwind quintet at your local universities/conservatories. Also, see if there are any chamber music series in your area that have winds on them. Often, symphonic musicians in major orchestras will have a series set up to give them an outlet for chamber music, which they control, unrelated to their orchestra. Perhaps the performances are located in a local church. It is in this way that I have played most of the major wind quintet works professionally, as well as the Beethoven Septet and the Schubert Octet, and many other major chamber works. You might see if you can find such a series in your area.
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Hi schubert - yes, there is an abundance of great choral music in the Twin Cities. And you also have the Mask of the Flower Prince blogger - one of the best in support of symphonic musicians everywhere (I do know his real name).
Not sure what you mean by your "I'm with Brahms" postscript?? Meaning you are anti-Wagner? I know we have had that conversation in the past. |
Hi gdnrbob - schubert is correct. Brahms literally grew up playing piano in some pretty nasty brothels. Women were either madonnas or whores for him forever after. One wonders if his experiences in them also contributed to his lack of confidence in his artistic craft that he struggled with off and on through his whole career. He literally tore up half of what he wrote.
schubert and I have argued about Wagner on this board before. I won't rehash all of it, but I will say here for readers of this thread that almost all artists would agree that one must separate the art from the man. As far as Wagner the artist goes, he was one of the greatest iconoclasts in the history of all of the arts, truly an artistic genius. He had a bigger effect on music debatably than any other artist has ever had on his/her art. Music was never the same after him - though it did not go the direction he expected it to, it splintered off into so many different directions. Pretty much for the next 100 years, everything written was influenced by him in some way, whether pro or anti, in a musical sense. Wagner the man was truly despicable, but almost all artists would agree that one must not throw out the art for that. This question has come up again in a different fashion in the musical world over the last year, with some listeners wanting to get rid of their Levine and Dutoit recordings because of the sexual harassment/abuse scandals.
The Wagner/Brahms controversy was about taking music in new directions vs. musical conservatism. The two composers themselves rarely entered the fray (in fact they were mostly complimentary of each other's musical abilities publicly), which was fostered mostly by the famous Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, who was most firmly on the side of Brahms and conservatism. George Bernard Shaw, who besides being an incredible playwright and essayist also happened to be one of the greatest music critics, was the most famous critic who took the part of Wagnerism (musically only, of course). As a side note, anyone who wants an education in music criticism or the state of music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries could do no better than to read Shaw's collected music criticism. Truly wonderful writing, very entertaining, and far ahead of his time on many issues. Late in life he retracted many of the negative things he wrote about Brahms when young, too. |
Yes, good comments, rvpiano. Both were heavily influenced by the baroque. Brahms was actually even more influenced by Handel than by Bach. The influence of Bach on Wagner is well documented, too.
schubert, are you actually trying to say that you feel Wagner is responsible for the Holocaust? Even granting that some of his writings (not his musical compositions) influenced Hitler and the Nazis, which as you say many historians do recognize, I think it is a huge stretch to call Wagner responsible for their actions over 50 years after his death. Don't you think they would have believed and done the same regardless of whether Wagner had ever existed? I have certainly never seen any historian suggest otherwise, and I have read and researched Wagner extensively, writing many papers on his music while in school.
Appreciating the art of Wagner's music is no crime, listening to it is no crime, and performing it is no crime; and being someone who lost many relatives in the Holocaust, I frankly find your suggestion that I am somehow morally deficient VERY offensive. Parenthetically, I am also surprised the moderators of this forum allowed the post to stand, as they seem to quickly take down posts with much less heinous personal attacks.
Of course, Wagner's anti-Semetic writings are to be condemned, and no artist would argue otherwise. But how is the MUSIC itself made any less great, because we disagree with/condemn much of the composer's thought or actions on an unrelated subject, or because someone else tried to appropriate the music for a despicable purpose? While I fully understand why a survivor of the camps, for instance, might never want to hear the music of Wagner ever again, the music was NOT written for that purpose, and it is a shame to me that some essentially allow the Nazis to appropriate it, as no matter how much we condemn the man who wrote it, it remains some of the greatest music ever composed, and it is not the fault of that music that the Nazis tried to appropriate it. I argue that we should not let them, and that this is a moral choice as well as an artistic one. Condemn the man, not the art.
If we do start condemning art, where exactly does that end? Where does one draw that line? Do you not listen to Gesualdo, for instance? He murdered his wife and her lover. Tchaikovsky was a known pedophile. Do you not listen to him? Bruckner was probably a necrophiliac. Does this make his symphonies less great? You yourself brought up the misogyny and sexism of Brahms. Are we to throw out the music of all these great artists? |
rvpiano, your comments do indeed agree with that of many scholars. Many musicians, however, hear quite a few echoes of Handel in the orchestral music of Brahms in particular. I am not denying that Bach is a heavy influence at all, of course, just that Handel's influence is more than many academics give it credit for. |
I would not presume to judge such a contest - those are all very good choices, and different people will have different favorites. I will mention one of my favorites, though, that I doubt would be mentioned by anyone but a horn player. It is near the end of the second of Strauss's Four Last Songs. Find the Schwarzkopf recording with the Philharmonia, Ackermann conducting, but most importantly in this case, Dennis Brain playing first horn. The most exquisite short little solo I have ever heard on recordings, and a favorite of a great many horn players. The original Angel blue label (at least I think it is without getting up out of my chair to make sure) LP sounds very good, at least the two copies I own both do. It is of course also available on CD, if one must, but that is NOT the same.
Almarg, that is most definitely a solo in the Ravel - the second horn does enter a couple of times, at first on the same pitch as the first horn, but then descending down a fifth from there, just the two notes. Most of the time it is the first horn alone, though. For me, Myron Bloom's performance of it on the Szell/Cleveland recording was perhaps the most beautiful of his recorded orchestral solos.
Cleeds, Adam is a great player. He mostly teaches now - full time major professor at the University of Michigan - but he was a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra horn section for ten or twelve years, I think, perhaps a little longer - he was the second horn player. |
rvpiano - no, I don't know Doug. I have heard of him, but haven't ever hear him play. |
I started typing a post, went back to refer to an earlier one, and then my text disappeared! So retyping, and apologize if this gets posted twice somehow.
Just catching up on the thread. rvpiano, the Brahms horn excerpt you mentioned (from the 4th symphony) is in this case actually a duet, not a solo, unlike the Ravel one Al mentioned. But it is a very nice choice for favorite horn excerpt, nevertheless. All of us horn players wish that Brahms could have gotten over his musical conservatism enough to actually write the horn concerto he wanted to. But at least we have the Trio!
fynnegan, another great recording of the Peter Grimes is the one with Jon Vickers in the title role, with Colin Davis conducting. That one and the one you mentioned are the two representatives in my collection.
brayeagle, I celebrated yesterday by re-watching the film On The Waterfront, which is one of my very favorite Bernstein scores. |
I would agree with rvpiano on Trifonov. He is a huge talent, I have worked with him before. It was a few years ago at least that he played with my orchestra. I am not as familiar with his recordings, but the one or two I have heard confirm that impression. I think he will grow up, though. Let us hope so. Too many competition winners don't. |
I have been away from this site for a long time now, and have just caught up with this thread. I'll mention that I too would agree that Grimaud is one of the best working today. I've had the good fortune to work with her I think on three different occasions in my career.
Speaking of keeping the music alive, one thing that has recently done that for me as far as listening goes was my purchase of john Eliot Gardiner's complete set of the Bach Cantatas that they did a few years back for the anniversary. Just one great chorus after one great aria after another. None of it of lower quality. Bach is a great choice if you need a reboot. |
Hi Schubert - Pablo Casals used to do the same thing, apparently. |
I haven't ever read that Gardiner book, though I would like to. That's one to add to my list, for sure. |
Wow- I have been away from this board for a few weeks and there have been some interesting discussions here!
I don't think anyone responded to Pete, who asked about programs for cataloging a collection. I found the ones I looked at wanting for classical, so I just use an Excel file with columns for everything I want to list.
Mahler's symphonies are amazing - I would urge anyone who hasn't to try the performances of Claudio Abbado, both older and newer. For instance, many prefer Abbado's 5th with Chicago to Solti's from the same era, including myself. His more recent work with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra was amazing as well. The best Mahler conductor of our time, IMO.
Speaking of showing off audio systems with Mahler, my choice is always the first 20 minutes or so of the second movement of the Mahler 8th, with Solti and Vienna, recorded by London. This is an excellent test/show off vehicle for your system, for a lot of different things, from one extreme dynamic to another, and one register extreme to the other as well, along with a huge variety of timbres.
Very interesting discussions about different composers, too. There are a few I personally would put above Beethoven for sheer compositional craft - Mozart and Bach from earlier in his era, and from nearer our own era, Bartok and Stravinsky. Of the later romantics, Wagner and R. Strauss are his equal for sheer craft as well. Wagner of course much more limited as far as variety in genres, lol! But Mozart and R. Strauss are the two who wrote a truly great work in pretty much every genre of the art (if we stretch to include tone poems in the case of Strauss).
As far as great symphonists go, obviously most of those don't apply. I agree with the Sibelius choice, Mozart and Haydn must also be mentioned, Brahms, Dvorak, and it must also be said, and I'm surprised Schubert didn't mention this having lived there, but in Europe Bruckner is often considered second only to Beethoven as a symphonist. He is still under-appreciated here in the US. Try the Giulini Bruckner 7th with Vienna if you have never heard that recording. The writing in the coda of the slow movement for the horns and Wagner tubas was in tribute to Wagner, who died while Bruckner was composing that movement. One of the most beautiful and moving moments in the entire symphonic repertoire. |
Just checked in after a few weeks. In the Beethoven Sonata discussion, surprised no one mentioned Alfred Brendel. One of the greatest, and all three of his sets are great. Definitely a musician's musician/pianist. |
For another great version of the Goldberg Variations, try the one recorded by the Canadian Brass. Definitely my favorite recording of theirs. |
I'll repeat some of what I just posted on the jazz thread here, since the Ravel Pavane has been brought up in both. Myron Bloom, the former principal horn of the Cleveland Orchestra in most of Szell's recordings, has died the other day. His Pavane was one of the most beautiful renditions out there- I put it on when I heard of his death. It was on the same LP with the Debussy La Mer. |
twoleftears, I highly recommend the Giuliani/Vienna Bruckner 7. Best performance of it I have ever heard on recordings. |
edcyn, I agree with you on Brendel - not just for Beethoven, but for just about anything. Definitely my favorite pianist, and usually very underrated on audiophile sites, why I am not quite sure, since his recordings on Philips have excellent sound as well. His Mozart concerti I am thinking of in particular.
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