@mahler123 I am 78 years old. Music has been a big part of my life, well my whole life. I played professionally as a young man. All kinds of music, even classical. My last paying gig was in a Scottish Pipe and Drum Band. But always jazz was my first love. If I have a large music collection it is because it has accumulated over a lot of years. It is not by design so much as out of curiosity. Dvorak reminds me of the folk music that was popular in the 1960s. There is nothing there for me, it simply does not move me. I am not saying it is bad. Clearly his music speaks to others, I just don't get it. Bob Dylan, same thing. I listen and the music either speaks to me or it doesn't. You are right that I lack appreciation, but the only way to acquire it is to listen. So I listen. I keep going back and listening again. And again.
Favorite Classical String Quartets
When I started listening to Classical Music as a teenager over 50 years ago I quickly became seduced by the sounds of a string quartet. My school library had a Seraphim 3LP set of Beethoven Middle Period Quartets with the Hungarian SQ (this was in stereo; they had recorded them in mono as well). Op. 59/1, the first of the Razumovsky Quartets, was my seductress: those long soulful cello lines, with the viola weaving in and out, the violins then sweetly taking over the main themes, and then all the instruments trading places-I was hooked.
59/3 has a second movement dominated by the cellist who sounds like a jazz walking bass, and that furious fugal finale. The Harp Quartet in that with its flying pizzicatos was another revelation.
Beethoven’s late quartets are another thing entirely, and took a few generations for nineteenth century listeners to absorb. Mozart and Haydn invented the genre and a lot of their best music is in their quartets.
The aforementioned Classical Period composers are generally thought to have represented the apex of the genre, but I have always been fascinated by Dvorak, Borodin, and Shostakovich, all of whom seemed to luxuriate in the special sonic world of the string quartet.
Other favorites?
T
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Off topic, i suppose, but i would love to know what @billstevenson thinks of this duo guitar version of Goldberg Variations. https://tidal.com/album/445281988 I am besotted. |
I can find string trios for the Goldberg Variations with his arrangement but not anything for quartet. did you mean trios? Or can you provide a link for SQ recordings? |
This Tacet recording, for example, i think is very nice: https://tidal.com/album/282879318 |
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