Classical music round up 2024 - bits from the past

I was a bit late getting up this morning  even though I was in bed  and asleep according to my set bedtime although that's probably down to the business around moving from Daylight Saving Time  and how that affects your body clock.

We're a bit busy with getting ready for the spooky weekend but in the throws of that I revisited a set of four really quite old records of mine.

Piano music is a favourite of mine either solo or in the form of a concerto with other instruments typically a full orchestra and Beethoven wrote a set of five such concertos for piano and orchestra which remain hugely popular even today.

This is the third in series of I have that were recorded around 1961-3 for the first time in stereo by the acclaimed pianist Wilhelm Kempff with accompaniment from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by  Ferdinand Leitner.

The whole set came on four lps, and this like the others is an original  with the "Tulip" logo on the record label.

Given they are over sixty years old, I gave them a very thorough cleaning to remove anything that in that time had worked its way into the groove which helps as there are a good many very quiet passages that don't like any intrusions of dirt and other debris.

That's the rear and it does also show the more usual thick spine with title wasn't commonplace back then as this doesn't have nor do Decca albums of the same era although I have to say the more modern spines with titles are much easier when hunting for your recordings when in racks.

As for the playing, the orchestra is a full on with modern instruments that won't impress those who favour using replicas of eighteenth century instruments but the playing especially the piano just sweep you along in their romanticism which to me is most apt as you just focus on the playing.

It's a set that although there have been a number of great modern accounts  that may offer modern musical scholarship and digital recording you just find yourself very much coming back to.

A spot more Beethoven with his violin sonatas and a trumpet

Sometimes people may say "But you've got one recording of" as you take ownership of another.

The amazing thing in the world of classical music is that often different combinations of conductors and players have different things to say from the same score of a composition over and above any technical differences in the sound.

For me this group of three Sonata's as performed by the acclaimed violinist Rachel Podger with Christopher Glynn on piano brings a freshness to the score I haven't heard before and there is a magical airiness in the recording that just takes you into the venue.
 

Recorded in a gap between covid restrictions that hit performance live and recorded hard  this is one to keep I feel.

Technically this plays in stereo on a regular cd player and stereo plus surround sound for those with super audio cd players or other equipment that can play them such as some Blu Ray players.

Well classical music takes many differing forms and June 2022 on Bis, the Swedish classical music label tackled twentieth century French trumpet concertos by André Jolivet, Henri Tomasi, Florent Schmitt and Betsy Jolas.

Trumpet concertos have the trumpet as the lead instrument but don't preclude the instrument being played in an orchestra such as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic as part of the regular group of instruments.

Classical Music sacd Round Up 19 - Beethoven violin sonatas

 This disc is  part of a a complete set of Violin Sonatas by Beethoven that although they'd come out in 2014 I had missed out upon.

Over four discs it covers in order of composition each violin concerto being performed by Thomas A. Irnberger and Michael Korstick who are well captured in a warm setting by the recording team carefully monitoring the performance.

This was well worth getting and given the wet stormy weather we've had across the week a great thing to relax to on my sacd player and stereo equipment.

I also played my four discs of Haydn's London symphonies performed by the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jeffrey Tate who performed on that Mozart cd I mentioned a couple of weeks back.

Classical sacd round up part 4 - the Beethoven edition

As readers are aware I bought last year a Super Audio cd player that plays those discs in addition to regular cds and I have been buying a number to add to my classical cd collection that goes back to the early days of cd.
Beethoven is a major composer and so a set on super audio cd of his symphonies was something I had been looking for.

This set is one I am familiar with as it was issued for the first time on cd in 1991 and I bought it in early 1992 during one lunch break putting it out of harms way until I got home
If you look the sticker indicates like most for Europe discs, it has a ordinary layer and the super audio cd layer on the one side so it can be played on practically any player

 There are six super audio cds in the set with two symphonies per disc on four and a bonus disc that has some thirty minutes of rehearsals for the Ninth

As you can see although this is called a box set apart from that bonus disc really all you get is a short booklet outlining the history of Herbert von Karajan's Beethoven symphonies recordings for DG is a slip case as the discs are otherwise identical to the originally released individual ones and just fit in.
There's no attempt to put them in as the 1991 mauve cd box set into space saving multi cd cases or of the use of card or paper sleeves.
The recordings date from 1961 through 1962 and were issued in early 1963 on stereo lp records and was the first stereophonic series issued by DG.
One reason I bought this is I am less taken to the combination of the use of replica original instruments  the sounds some of which I'm not keen on and of the tendency to play it faster and often less consideration than traditionally had been the case which is very much the current flavour in performed and recorded  classical music.
In general I would say these remain amongst the most consistent sets of Beethoven symphonies recorded with the Ninth being one of the finest I've ever heard for the singing of the Ode To Joy with only the Sixth, the Pastoral a little fast in playing although I feel it does hold together well even if it is different to most.
The recording quality for the period is very high and unlike a good number of modern recordings where lots of microphones are used and fed to multi-channel recorders before being mixed, this was done with simple stereo pair with just the odd 'spot mic' to aid the odd section of the orchestra which captures the scale of performance better in my opinion.

To go with this set, I needed some Overtures that traditionally were added to the lp record versions and so I bought this modern set played by the Bremen Chamber Orchestra that also has a multichannel sound layer as well as stereo.

 Around the mid 1990's the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra began a project of recording a collection of central classical repertoire at low cost enabling people to build a useful self contained collection that would aid musical appreciation.
At the time they were issued in conjunction with Tring records on regular cds a good number being well worth owning which I bought at the time but they were recorded at better than regular cd quality using the dsd technology used by super audio cds and briefly issued on sacd in association with Membran Records.
One of the discoveries of that era was the Manchester, England born pianist Ronan O'Hora and he recorded a superb account of Beethoven's Violin Sonatas 5 "Spring" and 9 "Krutzer"  with the violinist Jonathan Carney. It sounds really smooth .
That title was one re-issued on sacd around 2005 which I recently bought  to join my increasing number of classical recordings in this format.
When it comes to recordings of Beethoven' piano works I'm generally in the camp that prefers Wilhelm Kempffs recordings including his 1965 stereo piano concerto cycle but these have not been issued on sacd for North America and Euope. Indeed titles from Deutsche  Grammophon usually only show up as very limited releases in Japan with large price tags.

 One recording I did like of the Fifth piano Concerto growing up was Christoph Eschenbach's 1973 account with the Boston Symphony Orchestra which was recorded in four channel ("Quad") multichannel sound too  for DG and issued in late 2014 by PentaTone on sacd coupled with an account of the Third with the London Symphony Orchestra.
I decided to add this issue to my selection of Super Audio cds by this most important composer.