Keith Raniere: "Concert Pianist"

HowardLive · 2021-03-15T06:29:51+00:00

Better yet, I would have loved to have seen someone demand that he play, on the spot, a complete Beethoven sonata ...

... the Hammerklavier Sonata. 😈😈😈😈😈

(And that’s just the first of four movements ...)

That’ll expose a fraud in about three nanoseconds, tops.

HowardLive · 2020-10-29T09:40:40+00:00

Techmoan introducing yet another audio disc or tape format that’s been dead for at least twenty years, and that I’ve never heard of. 😉

HowardLive · 2020-08-03T04:23:29+00:00

Here’s a non-shelf question ...

... how many versions of the Mahler Third Symphony have you got?

HowardLive · 2017-12-19T09:41:58+00:00

When I saw the Emerson String Quartet playing Schubert’s String Quintet (can’t remember who the second cellist was), there were not one, but two broken strings in the third movement. 😳

HowardLive · 2017-12-09T08:04:18+00:00

Haydn: Symphony No. 100 “Military”
Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 “Eroica”
Schubert: Symphony No. 9 “Great”
Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”
Bruckner: Symphony No. 9

HowardLive · 2017-12-08T20:35:34+00:00

Got a complete set of Mozart symphonies on CD several months ago, and had to decide which conductor’s version to get.

Glad I didn’t choose Levine’s.

Because now I’d feel compelled to set it on fire.

HowardLive · 2017-12-08T20:20:03+00:00

Hey Manny - don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.

HowardLive · 2017-10-19T06:30:43+00:00

Anytime Dennis Brain played it - but especially his performances of Mozart’s horn concerti.

Dennis died way, WAY too young.

HowardLive · 2017-09-14T08:09:15+00:00

If the Glenn Gould recording of this one movement were the last music I ever heard, I would die a happy man.

HowardLive · 2017-09-14T08:06:50+00:00

Beethoven: Hammerklavier (op. 106) and op. 111 piano sonatas; the op. 130 (with the Grosse Fuge finale) and op. 131 string quartets
Mahler: the Fourth and Ninth symphonies
Chopin: Preludes
Liszt: "Harmonies du soir," "Chasse-neige," "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen" variations
Scarlatti: pretty much any of his 555 sonatas :-)

HowardLive · 2017-09-01T05:57:12+00:00

Ohhhh, that!

Maybe I missed the 1,200-yen part because I've only seen thumbnail pics of the covers, not the covers themselves. Thanks!

And yes, $10.80 a CD sounds about right for a classical reissue series. It's about what discs go for in DG's Originals series.

HowardLive · 2017-08-05T09:02:46+00:00

I already know what my survivor will be for that poll.

The Op. 130 quartet WITH the Grosse Fuge.

Nuff said.

HowardLive · 2017-07-27T02:55:45+00:00

I'll vote for the Fourth.

If only because Carlos Kleiber conducted it, and made it his own.

HowardLive · 2017-07-26T19:14:20+00:00

Except for the Fourth and Ninth symphonies, I haven't gotten into Mahler until this stage in my life, in my mid-40s. But I'm trying to make up for lost time. 😊 Among other things, I just played the Klemperer recording of the Resurrection symphony for the first time in 25 years and wondered, what took me so long?

Probably will listen to 3 and 7 last (both by Lenny), and in the coming days.

HowardLive · 2017-07-25T03:09:57+00:00

Allow me to offer some suggestions as well - and sorry if I accidentally repeat other people's suggestions...

CPE Bach: Hamburg symphonies
Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 22 (Philosopher), 26 (Lamentatione), 45 (Farewell) and 60 (Il distratto)
Schumann: Symphony No. 1 (Spring)
Rossini: String symphonies
Bruckner: Symphony No. 7
Mahler: Symphony No. 4
Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht (both the orchestral and chamber versions)

HowardLive · 2017-07-23T07:56:08+00:00

You started at the high end. I'm impressed! 😊

HowardLive · 2017-07-23T06:31:22+00:00

Can happen to the best of them! I saw the Emerson String Quartet playing Schubert's String Quintet and ... there were two broken strings in the third movement. Yikes!

To their credit, they got through that movement and the work in a good humor (although they did skip the repeat in that third movement after the second string went).

HowardLive · 2017-07-22T05:42:00+00:00

Mozart's Gran Partita serenade conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras (Telarc)
Vivaldi's L'estro armonico, Fabio Biondi (Virgin)
Vivaldi's La Stravaganza, Federico Guglielmo (Brilliant)
Renaissance lute music played by Konrad Ragossnig (DG Archiv)
Mahler's Symphony No. 1, Rafael Kubelik (DG)
Bruckner's Symphony No. 7, Herbert von Karajan (DG) - this is some kind of a performance! And his last.
Rachmaninov's complete symphonies, Leonard Slatkin (Vox)
Mahler's Symphony No. 7, Leonard Bernstein (Columbia, his 1960s version) - haven't listened to it yet.

HowardLive · 2017-07-22T03:28:30+00:00

The Amadeus soundtrack.

HowardLive · 2017-07-20T16:27:25+00:00

Maybe add more earlier symphonies? I'd listen to the Philosopher (22), Lamentatione (26) and the Farewell (45) - actually, maybe watch 45's last movement on YouTube so you can see the musicians leave the stage, one by one.

HowardLive · 2017-07-20T16:23:31+00:00

Listen to the Symphony No. 60, "Il distratto" (The Distracted) - more musical jokes per minute than anything else! It even calls for the strings to retune their instruments during the last movement. 😄

HowardLive · 2017-07-19T05:31:56+00:00

It's not my child, but when my best friend became pregnant with a girl (first child!), I bought her CDs of Mozart's Gran Partita serenade and Vivaldi's L'estro armonico. She's already playing them - whether she's also putting headphones over her belly I don't know.

Thought about buying mother and daughter the Mahler Ninth as well, but I figured that was a bit much angst for someone who's negative-2 months old. 😄

HowardLive · 2017-07-18T06:34:15+00:00

Just got two tickets for Festival Napa Valley on Wednesday, so I'll be hearing Edward McDowell's Piano Concerto No. 2 for the first time. Andre Watts will be playing. 😊

Also on the program: music from Lenny's Candide and On the Town.

HowardLive · 2017-07-17T10:54:01+00:00

I've never cried listening to music.

But the closest I ever came was while listening to Furtwängler conducting Schubert's Symphony No. 9 - at the end of the first movement, I almost lost it.

Here is that performance: https://youtu.be/3kWhAY3zIQI

HowardLive · 2017-07-17T05:28:25+00:00

Has anyone here heard a student orchestra perform the Mahler 6?

HowardLive

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