I have looked over some of my previous reports on my listening activities. I dont think many people read them all the way through, because they are sort of daunting. I found that even I had a hard time getting through them when I saw the total length. So now, I am going to try reporting every two discs or issues, whichever is greater, instead of every four. This will keep my reports shorter. I am going to try to make each post short enough that most people will be able to view the whole post without scrolling. With that, heres the two discs I have listened to in the last few days-- Disc 3 of the 4 CD Supraphon set of the larger chamber works of Antonin Dvorak. Two works on the disc: Piano Quintet 1 in A Major, Op. 5 (1872, revised 1887) (28:40), rec. 30-31 OCT 1993 | Piano Quintet 2 in A Major, Op. 81 (1887) (41:22), rec. 6-13 JUNE 1982--Jan Panenka, piano with Panocha Quartet. Both of these works are favorites of mine. The 1st is a new favorite, because this is the first time I have ever heard it. It is characterized by a lush and fairly simple, folk based tunefulness and relatively simple, one might almost say naive developments in each of its three movements. The 2nd is a familar favorite, various recordings of which I have listened to for years, always with pleasure. Curiously enough, one of the principal themes sounds very similar to the American hymn, Shall We Gather at the River, which was written in 1864 by a Brooklyn Baptist preacher named Robert Lowry (1826–1899). I know of no evidence that Dvorak was aware of the hymn; the similarity is almost certainly either a coincidence or, perhaps, Lowry and Dvorak having had some familiarity with a Bohemian tune which inspired both of them. In any event, here is the hymn: youtube/watch?v=El7QNtXqavo And here is the quartet, in a different performance than the one reported on here, so you can compare for yourselves if you are so inclined. youtube/watch?v=Q35ayW9J5t4 Shastakovich: Sym. 1 in F Minor, Op. 10 (1925) (27:48), rec. live 3/2004 | Sym. 15 in A Major, Op. 141 (1972) (46:17), rec. live 6/2005--Oleg Caetani, cond. Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. Arts Music label. This is Disc 1 in Caetanis 10 disc cycle of the Shostakovich Symphonies. Caetani was born in 1956 , per Wikipedia, in Lausanne, Switzerland, the son of the Ukrainian conductor and composer Igor Markevitch and his second wife Donna Topazia Caetani (1921—90), who is descended from a Roman family that included the early 14th-century Pope Boniface VIII. Caetani has chosen to use his mothers family name to continue its lineage. Caetanis is, to the best of my knowledge, the first Shostakovich Symphonies cycle to be recorded in SACD surround sound with no compression. This is by far the best recorded cycle, better even than the Barshai, which, before this, held top honors in the sound department, at least. Judging by these performances, this is also an aesthetic success. These are arguably the best performances of these works, esp. in the first. The ending of the last movement of the 15th does not have quite the misterioso quality, the sense of life slowly but peacefully ebbing away, that I prefer and that only a very few other performances have. I shall be listening to the whole set in the coming weeks. As for now, I can say this has the potential for becoming the new consensus standard, once it becomes better known, by which all others should be judged.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 10:39:39 +0000
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