So Wagner is well known to me, but not so well loved by me. This is too good to miss though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dfbZ6S6DU4&NR=1

Note the exemplary balance of the orchestra which remains entirely a support to the voice, partly because of the instruments then used and also the containment provided by the pit. So different from horribly loud and crude representations that pass in modern studio recordings. Recorded at a performance in 1936 in Covent Garden, London, with Flagstad, Reiner, and the LPO ...

George

One of the most unheard of nowadays, but splendid musicians of yesteryear was Mogens Woldike. Not famous now like the great Busch brothers, or luminaries like Furtwangler, he simply is just such a musician!

Here he is leading the orchestra in Handel's Messiah with Aksel Schiøtz as tenor soloist in "Comfort Ye!" and "Ev'ry Valley..."

Magnificent, and completely timeless in its ways. Danish HMV recording from 1940.

Enjoy, from George

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na5NE-vE9vU

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
One of the most unheard of nowadays, but splendid musicians of yeateryear was Mogens Woldike.

I think Woldike recorded some of the standard repertoire for Vanguard, a label that in the late 50's and 60's sought out many different, non mainstream artists.

Well, I just acquired a couple of Haydn symphonies under his direction and I will say that they are not the typical virtuoso, power chord, whizzbang run throughs that one might expect. I'll be sure and look at the link when I have time. Thanks for posting this.



Mac

Dear Mac,

One audio sample is worth an infinite number of words! It is my intention to use the audio route where ever possible to drum up enthusiasm in the nether-byways of great music making. How dull it would be if we merely followed the sheep and spoke highly of say Futwangler, when he was but one peak of high artistry! Not one that apeals to me in general either!

I hope this will lead to people posting where such artists may be found in modern issues of their great music making, for the betterment of all music lovers! The modern mainstream is desperately dull in all too many cases nowadays!

Technically perfect recording that defy you to stay awake through them.

George

And now for something completley different! I love it! Dionne Warwick! I am thinking that she was responsible for me loving music as a little kid!

Thanks for the memories stirred again by youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTV6QnPMMp8&NR=1

George

For the Romantics among us!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RXnorFwfPA&feature=related

Rachmaninov playing the slow movement from his Second Piano Concerto.

George

Here is something special played by Ignaz Friedman. Ignaz who, I hear you say! He was a pianist in the old style, and I had a funny story concerning a recital he gave when he visited Oslo while my grandmother was being courted by my grandfather.

She being a cultured girl want to impress her husband to be and so got her father to get two tickets. My grandfather was no enthusiast of music!

Invitation To The Dance by CM von Weber.

George

Girl From Ipanema

Stan Getz/Astrid Gilberto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpmGKbXxaOk

So laid back that it must be inder some influence or another, but wonderful!

George

Bach's Second Brandenburg Concerto from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis under August Wenzinger.

This was more or less the pioneering HIP performance recorded by DG Archive in 1953. It is one of my three favourite recordings of the set of concertos, and just as much, this very concerto. Still sadly trapped in Universal's vault. This is such unaffected great music making, simply played wuth huge appreciation of the music's message. Almost as if the performers disappear from the process, so artless seems [but only seems] the result.

First part

Second part

George

Here is something quite special! "Music for A Found Harmonium." The Peguin Café Orchestra, from a BBC broadcast! It was used in the Film, "It's All Gone, Peter Tong," about the [based in truth] story of a deaf DJ in Ibiza called Frankie Wilde. Sad film, but lovely mad bit of music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJg1NNyke2E

George

Penguin Café Orchestra. Sorry. George

Solomon Cutner in a unique film of him playing Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata:

First Mov't

Second Mov't

Finale

In my view this is priceless. George

George

quote:

Penguin Café Orchestra

You are full of surprises with your musical taste...

Cheers

Jim

Dear Jim,

I simply love music. Not one sort, and not all of one sort for sure!

I probably dislike more classical music than any other style! Because I know more of it. It seems to me reasonable to love or dislike music without regard for the received wisdom. I hate the musical snobbery found round all genres that says that this music is the peak.

The only judgement I am prepared to accept is the judgement of time, and that if music still speaks to us after centuries, it must have something very big inside it!

I suppose that is why I continue to find JS Bach so surprising after so many years of enjoying it and getting to know it better!

Thanks from George

Elgar: Prelude to The Kingdom. Here Elgar conducts the BBC SO in one of his last recordings for HMV in 1933 in the the then only two year old Abbey Road Studio.

But this music should be much better known. This is the real Elgar in my view. Passionate and with an appeal that can reach almost anyone, as it did in his lifetime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVU9CXPq-oo

Enjoy this. I have known this since a ten year old in this marvelous old recording, first on 78 sides and then LP transfer, and now on CD!

George

Dvorak - Songs My Mother Taught Me

Flagstad once again. Seems that she turned to gold whatever she chose to sing.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyV_zExfj10&feature=related

George

And now for something I have had in mind to post for several months:

Dennis Matthews and Dennis Brain, playing Beethoven;s Sonata for fortepiano and horn in F.

First part

Second part

George

Hunting around I found this wonderful Youtube of the Toccata and Fugue in F major BWV 540, of old Bach, played by Helmut Walcha, in what sounds the old mono recording which I have on CD. Bach is a musical Universe really!

The joy in this has to be listened to to be believed!

Toccata

Fugue

George

Something from Mary Hopkins to make some of us realise how old we are getting!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5pkkAhETYg

When I was little kid, and the Radio consisted of Light, Home, and Third and there were two TV channels [our old black and white TV would not pick up BBC2], somehow cultural choices were narrower [particularly in an isolated rural setting], the general mass media was more concentrated. Now we have a masive choice ... And that would be the choice between rubbish and rubbish.

George

Something of a rarity! Mozart's other G Minor Symphony, number 25 in the cannon.

Otto Klemperer leads a performance by the Philharmonia of massive energy, while retaining elegance, musical phrasing, clarity and lightness of touch.

First and second movements

Muunuet [and trio], and Finale

This recording, from the 1950s, I believe is available with Klemperer's other [stereo] Mozart Symphonic recordings on four EMI CDs, and represents some of the greatest Mozart playing I know of.

Listen with an open mind. It is rather surprising!

George