Everything Old is New Again

The title is perhaps a bit misleading; I don’t mean that everything is new again, but that’s the song lyric.

It being Thanksgiving break and all, and having caught up with my various activites (including finishing an article on Bruckner 6th for the SFS — a program note that is, if I may be so immodest — one of the best things I have ever done), I’m now free with only some business-as-usual professorial stuff to worry about—nothing of which can’t wait until Monday.

Thus I’ve been able to spend time reading, taking some walks, but most importantly, enjoying a lot of listening. I’m a rabid record enthusiast, always have been, always will be. Part of that stems from my musical childhood, mostly limited to records given the paucity of opportunities to hear live performances. I spent a lot of my childhood squirreled away in my room, absorbing music via records. I still love doing that, but nowadays I have the economic power to indulge myself shamelessly.

So I do. My vast recording collection — mostly CD-based but recently incorporating downloads — is both wide and deep. By ‘wide’ I refer to the repertory it covers, everything from soup to nuts, medieval to modern, thousands and thousands of albums. By ‘deep’ I am particularly thinking of those composers who interest me the most and whose works make up a significant bulk of my collection. I’m not an über-collector by any means, but still I do OK. For example, I own fifteen separate recordings of Haydn’s “Military” symphony, and more than one recording of every single symphony he ever wrote. Beethoven symphonies from the historical (Nikisch and the Berlin Philharmonic in 1913) to the iconic (Furtwängler in Vienna and Berlin, Toscanini in Philadelphia, Kleiber in Vienna, Szell in Cleveland, Karajan in Berlin) to the fascinating and modern (Zinman in Zurich, Vanska in Minneapolis, Fischer in Budapest.) I just love drawing all that stuff in.

It is in repeated listenings of a work from various performers that you achieve a wonderful sense of tradition and continuation. I love hearing the great figures like Mengelberg, Furtwängler, and Toscanini, but like all listener/collectors I tend to develop my own personal favorites.

One of those is Ivan Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra. They are a relatively new phenomenon in the classical music world, but all the more welcome for that. Recently I picked up their recording of the Brahms First Symphony coupled with Brahms Haydn Variations. Heavens, what a revelation: a bit lighter than many classic recordings, but crystal-clear and substantial nonetheless. Slight string portamento, quite welcome to my ears. (I’d love for portamento to return to orchestral playing full-time.) The Haydn Variations were so warm and gracious that the performance actually drew tears towards the end as the St. Anthony chorale returns with all that ding-dingy from the triangle. And their Beethoven Seventh, also fairly recent, ranks right up there with Szell and Vanska, in my opinion.

Another big favorite of mine is Herbert Blomstedt. He has recorded mostly with three orchestras: Dresden, Leipzig, and San Francisco. He tends to bring out the best in each orchestra. Is there any more consistent or better-balanced Beethoven set than his Dresden? In San Francisco he produced some of our most distinguished performances — all happily back in the catalogue thanks to those great folks at ArkivMusic and the ArkivCD reprints.

Over the break I’ve also been re-acquainting myself with Furtwängler — Beethoven Fifth and Seventh (the later Vienna recordings, and not the wartime Berlin ones), Beethoven Ninth from the Bayreuth re-opening in 1951 (messy to be sure, but thrilling — and what a lovely acoustic EMI captured!), that spunky Schumann Fourth from the early 1950s, and the glory of glories, his Bruckner Ninth from Berlin in 1944. There they were in an empty concert hall, with nobody but a Nazi engineer as witness, to put down one of the most impassioned performances ever. It wouldn’t be long before Furtwängler would have to flee Germany, just barely one step ahead of arrest, imprisonment, and almost certainly execution. I’m not any kind of Furtwängler apologist, nor do I flipflop to the opposite pole as do some. It’s a matter of recognizing fine musicianship and commitment when you hear it, and I hear it.

Also up is the Gardiner recording of the Monteverdi Vespers, the latest release in Gardiner’s year-2000 Bach Pilgrimage cantata recordings, the great Fricsay Verdi Requiem from the 1950s, and the Bartók piano concertos with Boulez at the podium (Zimerman for #1, Andsnes for #2, and Grimaud for #3.) Then, oh I don’t know, maybe some of Bernstein’s later recordings of Americans on DGG — Copland, Barber, Bloch, Harris, and so forth. We’ll see; I’m not sure how American guys are going to fare after all this great Beethoven, Bruckner, and the like. Maybe the Kubelik/English Chamber rendition of the Dvorak Stabat Mater instead. And soon I want to hear the Kleiber Beethoven 5 & 7 again. And the Karajan Cosi fan tutte from the early 1950s with Leopold Simoneau as the finest Ferrando ever, and the MTT/SFS Mahler Das lied von der erde, and the Levine/Vienna Brahms First, and the Britten War Requiem in the original recording…and…and…and…

Incidentally, I have very little solo piano music in my collection, and what’s there is mostly out of necessity or the result of picking up a big box set of something that also included pianists. Pianists, on the whole, just don’t interest me. I probably have more chamber music than piano music, although explicitly chamber recordings aren’t all that common beyond the repertory staples. My big passion is the orchestral repertory, together with adjunct genres such as chorus/orchestra or concerto. Some opera. A bit of lieder, mostly from the few singers I really like – Thomas Quasthoff, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Fritz Wunderlich, Barbara Bonney.

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