search function

[miss understood]

Anyone else having trouble using this since the board upgrade? Any keyword I search for seems to return the same "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms." result. Trying to find some of those old classical threads..

[bitterfruit]

Yeah, I've had the same problem. Something's out of whack.

[miss understood]

Thanks, kinda what I figured.

[Electromud]

I deleted my old avatar and I can't seem to be able to get a new one. :confused:

[Patrick]

Anyone else having trouble using this since the board upgrade? Any keyword I search for seems to return the same "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms." result. Trying to find some of those old classical threads..

I noticed that too. Have now researched with vB and apparently I have to rebuild the search indices after upgrading to 3.0. This is being done as I type... pretty soon all posts should again be searchable, both old and new.

Patrick

[miss understood]

Thanks Patrick. Sometimes you just get a hankering to read someone's old thoughts on Sviatoslav Richter, dig? :)

[Patrick]

Indeed. Especially because I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that I don't like Richter. I know, there must be something wrong with me, but after years of trying I just can't get into his playing.

Especially the Schubert, but even the Rachmaninov and the Mussorgsky. There's something hard and brilliant about it.

Patrick

[miss understood]

Interesting. Have you ever listened to Richter playing Bach, Beethoven, or (esp.) Handel? The solo stuff that is. If not I have some collections I should get you copies of. It's because of those recordings that he's become one of my favorites.

The conclusion I've come to in general is that recordings of piano concerti (with the possible exception of Mozart's) just aren't that much fun to listen to at home; I greatly prefer them in the concert hall. Even all those classic recordings (Horowitz or Argerich playing Rach 3 for instance, Gilels playing the Brahms concerti, Fleisher/Beethoven, etc) just don't do much for me. For listening at home, I'd take any of them performing solo repertoire in an instant.

Schubert's a tough one all around for me. With the exception of D. 960, which I love, and maybe one or two of the late symphonies, I find that a lot of his stuff, piano and otherwise, just leaves me cold. Maybe I'm just too young for it. The pieces that I do enjoy, I prefer Kempff and Uchida.

Is it fair to assume your preference for Rachmaninoff and Mussorgsky is Horowitz? He's someone whom I didn't care for at first but have since come to like tremendously, his recital recordings (Carnegie Hall 1965, at the Met, and in Moscow) in particular.

Some other people I've been enjoying a great deal since our last go-around:

Rosalyn Tureck (anything)
Schnabel (Beethoven of course)
Pollini (almost anything, Beethoven in particular)
Uchida (Mozart)
Gilels (anything)
Jorge Bolet
Claudio Arrau
Stephen Kovacevich (loving his Beethoven sonatas to death)
Andras Schiff (pretty much anything)
Rudolf Firkusny (Janacek--highly recommended if you haven't heard)

Out of curiosity, if not Richter, which other pianists are you returning to these days?

[Patrick]

I like a lot of those pianists a lot -- Uchida I've seen live in Mozart and Schubert and she was wonderful. But I'm not a fan of digital piano recordings (DDD especially) so I've been unable to enjoy her CDs. I do have a copy of the new Mozart Sonatas performed with Mark Steinberg, which I saw her do at Carnegie Hall, but it's currently at my mother's. (Btw Mark is also the lead violinist in my brother's string quartet, the Brentano (http://silvertone.princeton.edu/~brentano/).)

I also enjoy Bishop Kovacevich in Mozart concerti and Gilels in most things.

On vinyl I have recently been enjoying the following pianists -

Clara Haskil - almost anything

Annie Fischer - anything

Lili Kraus - anything she recorded for Discophiles Francais or Odeon - the stuff she did for Epic and Vox after she moved to the US is not inspiring

A Swiss husband-and-wife team doing two-piano works, especially Mozart, for the Swiss Jecklin label, Isabel and Juerg von Vintschger

Dinu Lipatti - ANYTHING - even the CDs sound good - go for the EMI References. Since most of the originals are 78s anyway CD is probably the way to go for most people.

Sorry to be so brief for now... I'm also listening to Magda Tagliaferro, Frederick Marvin, Diane Andersen, Pierre Barbizet, Alexandre Sellier, the great, great Pierre Auclert (who doesn't seem to have recorded anything but the Well-Tempered Clavier, twice, for different labels), Jose Iturbi (in Spanish music), Marcelle Meyer (doing rather exotic stuff for grand pianos, like Rameau, in incredible style)...

Patrick

[Patrick]

And I will add an absolutely extraordinary record I just got from Switzerland as well... the Trio Pasquier playing the first two Mozart piano quartets with Robert Veyron-Lacroix on piano.

This is on the legendary BAM label, which I think is mono only... BAM stands for "Editions de la Boite à Musiqe Paris." They always get snapped up on eBay for lots of money. I've heard great things about the Pasquier, let by Etienne Pasquier who I presume was an elder relative of the Régis Pasquier who still plays (with Les Musiciens? among others) and this record lives up to that reputation... gracious, elegant, full-bodied ... luscious would not be overstating the case.

Patrick

[Lukas]

at what age did you fellos become interested in this type of music? I couldn't imagine myself listening non volantarily to mozart or others like him.

[Patrick]

Well, I played piano from a young age. When I became good enough to enjoy what I was doing, I started to appreciate the music. I also got taken to tons of concerts as a kid.

But it really kicked in after I graduated from college... started buying CDs when CDs were beginning to reissue basically the entire corpus of recorded classical music (in the LP age it wasn't all available in print at the same time), and that was really exciting, learning about great music through the multiple great performances that were suddenly available everywhere... around 1990-94 was a real golden age for that kind of thing. I immersed myself in it in graduate school.

More recently, as my stereo system has improved, I've gotten into classical vinyl (especially the rare varieties, especially the French 1950s-1960s stuff) and it's like nectar to me...

Patrick

[miss understood]

How cool, Patrick! I had no idea your brother was in the Brentanos. As I'm sure you know they're playing Ligeti here at the Chamber Music Society in January (and were, if I'm not mistaken, the first CMS2 ensemble in residence here).

I'll have to check out some of those pianists you mentioned. Aside from Haskil, Fischer, Lipatti, Iturbi, and Kraus, I know none of the others. Lili Kraus's recording for EMI References of the complete Mozart violin sonatas with Willi Boskovsky from the mid-1950s is one of my favorite discoveries of the past few months... (Working at Lincoln Center, a two-minute walk from the holdings of the Performing Arts Library, will prevent me from complaining about my NYC taxes in perpetuity.)

Incidentally, I was in Seattle this past weekend and found a pristine used EMI References set of Schnabel doing the complete Beethoven sonatas for $40. Not bad considering that's what I just paid for two student tickets to see Andras Schiff play Beethoven and Haydn at Avery Fisher in November.

Last question, I promise--have you found very much use for any recording guides in particular? I've picked up and/or browsed through the Gramophone, Penguin, Inner Ear, Svejda etc. guides and found them useful in varying degrees but was curious if you had ever gotten much value out of any and if so, which.

[Patrick]

Lili Kraus's recording for EMI References of the complete Mozart violin sonatas with Willi Boskovsky from the mid-1950s is one of my favorite discoveries of the past few months...

I'm pretty sure this was originally released on Discophiles Francais, a label that I (try to) collect. I have a few of them and they are really amazing.

Incidentally, I was in Seattle this past weekend and found a pristine used EMI References set of Schnabel doing the complete Beethoven sonatas for $40. Not bad considering that's what I just paid for two student tickets to see Andras Schiff play Beethoven and Haydn at Avery Fisher in November.

Yes, those EMI References are truly peerless. And Schnabels were originally 78s, so there's no "originals" to get (unless you do the 78 thing, which gets really insane with classical music due to the length of the pieces and the consequent number of heavy discs you need to constantly be changing).

Last question, I promise--have you found very much use for any recording guides in particular? I've picked up and/or browsed through the Gramophone, Penguin, Inner Ear, Svejda etc. guides and found them useful in varying degrees but was curious if you had ever gotten much value out of any and if so, which.

Penguin Guide was my intro... now I disagree with most of what they say, but it's always good to have a navigational tool, even if you need to read between the lines.

Patrick

[Lukas]

hey guys I am playing a show on the 2oth! yay, and it is outside!