trying to figure out which are the definitive recordings of classical works is very difficult

i've been trying to fill in the gaps i've got w/r/t classical music and i've got a few composers i've liked for some time now (gorecki, arvo part, mahler), and with few exceptions i find it pretty hard to figure out which takes on their works and others' works are the ones to get. i was thinking about picking up 'tabula rasa' today but i was faced with half a dozen options, all of which looked respectable, but thanks to the dearth of info insofar as quality goes, i wasn't sure which one to pick up. how do you people figure this shit out?

I have a huge fondness for BBC Radio3's 'Building a library', in which somebody goes through all the versions of one piece of music on the market, explains what's particularly noteworthy about each one, and then gives you a recommendation or two at the end. Even when I'm not particularly interested in the piece they're talking about, it's really interesting to listen to.

The archived recommendations are here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/cdreview/buildingalibrary/ it's a bit... big-name heavy, but it might be useful for Mahler at least.

sorry to be dumb and not to derail thread but how does this ' thing happen?

this ' thing?

My understanding was that the ECM releases of Part are considered fairly definitive, though maybe that's just good marketing...

I usually pick the cheapest option, like, say, this: http://www.therestisnoise.com/2009/01/bargain-of-the-week.html
Sometimes it works out!

You're allowed to have more than one of each.

yeah, that is true -- i mean, you could probably start a long argument about what is the "definitive" Goldberg Variations or something. Get a bunch! It is fun to hear different interpretations.

naxos record a lot of music in order to sell as the cheapest option: they are never stellar but i guess fairly reliable. I think I'd rather shop around for the most recommended version tho.

fwiw i have the ecm release of pärt's lamentate and it's pretty stunning. i do not know about their tabula rasa though.

http://www.amazon.com/Tabula-Rasa/dp/B0000262K7

the ECM is the original release that made his rep, you can't go wrong with it

at first it's intimidating trying to find the best first impression. but the idea of a definitive recording of music that was composed on paper is a 20th century neurosis. it's impossible to play these pieces the same way twice and the differences are beautiful. most of my favorite compositions I definitely have my own preferred go-to recordings that just nail them down, but I still learn different things about those same pieces through other recordings of them.

does anyone have any favorite classical message boards dedicated to discussion on various recordings of the same piece?

(I mean, I often just use Amazon for that purpose when I want to hear a piece for the first time and can't decide on a recording, the search engine is great, the comments are extensive and increasingly they've got samples for everything)

i have heard plenty of awesome recordings of the same piece and i imagine that barring some sound issues or a really incompetent orchestra/ensemble/etc, a great work will remain great, so i guess my question was more along the lines of "where to start?" rather than assuming there is only one take on a work that matters (i will get the ecm 'tabula rasa' tomorrow!)

this ' thing?

Someone told me that it's a browser issue. It looks like an apostrophe to me, but I guess in Internet Explorer it's rendered as HTML gobbledygook.

btw this thread can easily be turned into a recommendations thread for classical works, esp 20th century works (which specific recordings i should get not required).

"does anyone have any favorite classical message boards dedicated to discussion on various recordings of the same piece?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio3/F6643901

ok yeah it's lol britishes but these are hardcore collectors on the cd review board; if you register i think you can search it, otherwise it's great just to browse. here's one decent example http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio3/F6643901?thread=6231809 a thread deicated to tristan and isolde. also od course i'd agree with the building a library page linked up there.

more on the crusty britishes tip: http://www.gramophone.co.uk/login.asp?url=cdreviews%2Easp%3Ftype%3Dgramofile gramophone's extensive review archive gramofile. i don't think you have to pay for it, just register. their forum seems to have been drastically pruned, it used to be alright for discussion.

i bought the penguin guide to classical cds and the gramophone guide back in 1998, two hefty mothers but they've been invaluable. in terms of finding out what are considered by crits to be 'definitive' recordings they were/are the shiznit. snce then ive developed my own tastes, but they were a good springboard.

multiple xp: thanks jaymc. think my browser needs updating.

The Penguin Guide stuff is usually available cheap in bargain bookstores. Like Henry says tho there's no substitute for listening and liking yourself: the myth of correct versions still pervades Classical music fandom and there's not much objective truth in it.

Sorry, reading the thread I realise Henry wasn't the only guy that flagged it up but seriously, fuck a "best" recording.

yeah milton expressed that better than me. as an example of the difference between my taste and the penguin guide's i tend to prefer less romantic/more HIP (historically informed performance) interpretations of pre 20c works, while the PG will often break throught the barrier of objectivity to praise montserrat caballe or leopold stokowski doing their blown-up thing, and that's great.

but this is crucial

most of my favorite compositions I definitely have my own preferred go-to recordings that just nail them down, but I still learn different things about those same pieces through other recordings of them.

the notion of 'best' is silly, but there are certain recordings where the playing/conducting/interpretation/sound is so compelling that it makes the record an artifact in itself, as well as a superb vehicle for the work. Mahler 5 by Barbirolli, the Busch quartet playing Beethoven, Argerich doing Chopin's Preludes, Gilels playing Brahms 2nd piano concerto.
Actually the force of personality and interpretation in some of those discs can detract
from an objective understanding of the piece - necessitating looking at further recordings, concertgoing or even studying the score if you are able in order to correct that - but they're so damn enjoyable nonetheless, or as a result.

This is a rather complex issue.

No, there is never such a thing as a "definitive recording" just as there is no such thing as a "definitive performance." Are some recordings better than others? Obviously. In the "auteur" tradition of 20th century classical music, composers often wrote scores with specific performers in mind, and 90% of the time the end result is superlative. Case in point: the Borodin and Beethoven Quartets' recordings of Shostakovich are unfailingly attuned to the music's strata, from existential pathos to covert dissidence to autobiographical allusions and back, usually in the space of a few notes. By comparison, the Emerson Quartet's recordings are to their Russian counterparts as Soderbergh's "Solaris" is to Tarkovsky's.

Context matters. Gidon Kremer, the Latvian virtuoso violinist featured on ECM's "Tabula rasa" was the dedicatee of various works by Pärt's then-"underground" colleagues (Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, Edison Denisov, Giya Kancheli, and Valentin Silvestrov are among the best-known). In fact, Schnittke even plays prepared piano on the title track, which was taped in Bonn--joining the tourning orchestra was for him the only way of crossing the Iron Curtain. Besides that, Kremer's unflagging devotion to the history and ethos of the Baltic classical music scene also shines through (note the various converges at play in the disc's eponymous piece: Estonian composer, Lithuanian conductor and orchestra, Latvian first violin, Russian second violin, and Schnittke on prepared piano). Did I forget to mention that these are, to my knowledge, premiere recordings? i.e. it is living music played without the snags of hindsight? And that, being one of the greatest violinists in the world, Kremer's tone is laser-like even in the fiendishly difficult double-stops at the outset of "Fratres" (for violin & piano)?

Granted, the disc could still suck. But it doesn't. Given that most other recordings of these works are wishy-washy shams (including, to some extent, Kremer's remake of "Tabula rasa" with his own chamber orchestra two decades later), I'd say that for all intents and purposes, ECM's "Tabula rasa" is definitive.

As for the canonical stuff, you just have to prick up your ears, listen, and figure out which performers grasp what the composer is aiming for. Classical musicians really do develop a "style" or "temperament" that may or may not appeal to you depending on the era or aura of the score at hand. Specialists are usually a good bet for starters, i.e. Otto Klemperer & Bruno Walter conducting Mahler or György Cziffra playing Liszt or Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert, etc.

I can tell you that the hardest-core Mahlerite I know swears by Bernstein for all the symphonies. Bernstein & Fischer-Dieskau doing the lieder is really something else, too.

my mahler recs: 4 - szell, 5 - barbirolli, 6 - boulez! ya reaally, his 6th is so gorgoeus, 7 - rattle, brilliant live version, 8 - solti, 9 - walter in the legendary 1938 recording on naxos, or barbirolli, or karaajan, 10 - rattle i guess, das lied - haitink is good.

I've got the 5th with Charles Mackerras which is good but not stunning and absolutely killer live recording of the 8th conducted by Boulez which is the best verzh I've ever heard.

yeah i've been slow in getting others from the boulez cycle, i'd like to hear the rest. his 6th has an great balnce between fulsome romantic swwoning and modernist precision of colour and effect.

you can tell i don't type for a living.

I'm partial to Horenstein's 7th, 8th, and (especially) 9th. As for "Das Lied von der Erde," I stand by Klemperer with Fritz Wunderlich and Christa Ludwig. It lumbers a little at times, but I like how chiselled his view of it is and the vocalists are pitch-perfect, which really matters in this work. As far as complete sets of the symphonies go, Rafael Kubelik is amazingly consistent; he just gets the many transformations Mahler's music underwent from the romantic 1st to the 10th's disturbing first movement.

(As a sidenote, Bernstein totally misses what was at once so universally revolutionary and echt-Austrian about Mahler. He appropriates him via Hollywood and Lil Lenny's own personal tedium. Sometimes, as in the 7th, he sets his ego aside, admits he doesn't get it and hocus pocus happens).

Henry you don't rate Sinopoli for the 5th or Ozawa for the 8th? Those are the ones that peeled my mind open back in high school

also love or loathe Bernstein, there's less likelihood that we'd even be talking about Mahler if for not Lenny's tireless championing of him

havent heard those, j0hn. sinopoli i've been put off by a friend of mine who dislikes his mahler.

you're right about bernstein. he's like alfred deller with purcell, or glen gould with the goldbergs, a musician who reintroduced the public to a composer but whose interpretations were arguably bettered by later generations.

Any good recommendations for recordings of Dvorak's American string quartet (i.e. the most beautiful piece in the world)

To be fair, though Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer weren't nearly as PR-savvy as Bernstein, they were Mahler's protégés and advocated his symphonies as tirelessly as Lenny, and certainly had better interpretive chops. And there were others: Willem Mengelberg, Dimitri Mitropoulos, the aforementioned Jascha Horenstein, etc. After the fall of the Third Reich, Mahler's time was imminent regardless of Bernstein's championing.

I'm being hard on him because I think he's almost single-handedly responsible for the notion that Mahler was a neurotic hyper-romantic whose works are pure reflections of a precarious psyche.

youcangoyourownway:

Check out the Pražák Quartet.

xp
yeah, i was just going to correct myself - although many of my recomendations up there are from more recent years, the great mahler conductors you mention, and let's add kubelik to that list, were lenny's contemporaries or even forerunners.
interesting what you say that mahler's comeback was inevitable post 1945. certainly recording and home listening made all the difference. the political and social climate? i've been led to believe that the artistic atmosphere of the 1960s was key in changing appreciation of mahler.
also would it be fair to say bernstein was very important specifcally in making an american audience fall in love with mahler?

I'm being hard on him because I think he's almost single-handedly responsible for the notion that Mahler was a neurotic hyper-romantic whose works are pure reflections of a precarious psyche.

you know, I hear this sometimes with Bernstein but I want to defend him - I think he's right (I want to say "obviously right") to bring up a strong romantic element in Mahler, 'cause that's surely there in my opinion. And just to be Capt. Save-Lenny, when he's up on the delicate-soul-in-distress thing, he's following a popular trend in interpreting composers, he can't be made to shoulder all the blame there - vide how you can't even listen to Bruckner without having to talk about his personality & eccentricities! Bernstein's Mahler may not be the most daring Mahler, but like it or leave it, it along with Walter is a large foundation from which we know Mahler and I think he should be heard early in one's travels with Mahler.

also would it be fair to say bernstein was very important specifcally in making an american audience fall in love with mahler?

yeah but I think that Mahler wasn't terrifically well-liked in Europe, either - he had his champions there, too, but I think Bernstein was either a) right place right time, as you suggest, or b) persuaded that Mahler would get the ears of the music world if he kept pushing

Simon Rattle's 10th is pretty intense stuff btw

Boulez, Stockhausen, Maderna, Nono, Berio, and the rest of the Darmstadt School were crazy about Mahler because to them he was the father of that 'other' tradition in 20th century music: the Second Viennese School. Mahler unconditionally supported Schoenberg, and his late works deploy a kind of haunted tonality, as though its reign were already spent, so it's no surprise that the post-war avant-garde latched on to him as a tragic prophet, in tune with their own political convictions (Stockhausen excepted... up to a point). They were unsettled by the ease with which, say, the "Ode to Joy" could be co-opted as Nazi propaganda and felt that the music of the future was latent in the works of so-called 'degenerate' artists. The initial shock of modernism had already passed by the late 40's, so it's no surprise that Mahler was gradually being revived as a visionary (and one with popular appeal to boot). Even more populist-minded composers like Britten, Shostakovich and Copland praised him upon discovering his oeuvre--the seeds were sown from a variety of quarters.

But yeah, Bernstein was definitely instrumental in spreading the good news in America.

And John, I'm not saying that it's an ill-founded interpretation; I'm equally critical of ostensibly 'objective' renditions. I just don't like how Bernstein brings that (admittedly important) aspect out and almost nothing else, as though he were beating time to a soap opera score.

or glen gould with the goldbergs, a musician who reintroduced the public to a composer but whose interpretations were arguably bettered by later generations

please tell me about these arguably-better-than-glenn-gould goldbergs! i love the goldbergs so v v dearly and would like more interps in my life.

c sharp major:

Try Ramin Bahrami, Angela Hewitt or Evgeni Koroliov.

On harpsichord, Gustav Leonhardt or Christophe Rousset.

thank you!

Detective Sweeney: You handle Handel like nobody handles Handel. And your Delius - delirious!

My preferred versions of the Goldbergs: Angela Hewitt (my favourite Bach pianist), Murray Perahia, Richard Egarr and Masaaki Suzuki. Pierre Hantai and Andrei gavrilov are versions I would like to hear.

"more HIP (historically informed performance) interpretations of pre 20c works"

The one field I want to investigate more of this year...