Forums - Classical Music Thread

CAJames Seasoned Member Online "I've run every red light on memory lane." Posts: 3252	Re: Classical Music Thread Reply #1300 - 05/31/26 at 14:50:45 Mendelssohn's great F minor quartet. The Talich Quartet plays it almost perfectly, like most everything they play. 16/44 FLAC download
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CAJames

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Re: Classical Music Thread
Reply #1301 - 06/01/26 at 19:37:10

Beethoven's Sixth, aka The Pastoral. Carlo Maria Giulini doesn't get much love as a Beethoven conductor, but that is a big mistake IMO because he has made some excellent recordings. Like Beethoven's Sixth recorded in 1980 analog sound in Los Angeles. On brand for CMG, the tempo is slowish, but with plenty of movement and danceability. And the LA winds and low strings sound fabulous, which is just what you want in the piece.

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CAJames Seasoned Member Online "I've run every red light on memory lane." Posts: 3252	Re: Classical Music Thread Reply #1302 - 06/03/26 at 15:00:54 Bach wrote about 17 hours of organ music, that has survived, and most of it is not "preludes and fugues." I was listening to some more obscure chorales and fantasias, which is where Johann Sebastian really lets his hair down and gets crazy. 16/44 FLAC download
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CAJames Seasoned Member Online "I've run every red light on memory lane." Posts: 3252	Re: Classical Music Thread Reply #1303 - 06/04/26 at 22:17:00 Isaac Albéniz is well known for his España, and much less well known for his Suite española. Which is too bad because it is full of the same Spanish infused melody, harmony and rhythm. Martin Jones has recorded just about everything, and pretty well.
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CAJames

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Re: Classical Music Thread
Reply #1304 - 06/05/26 at 15:26:47

Hector Villa-Lobos is best known (perhaps only known at all today) for his Bachianas Brasileiras and Chôros that are an intoxicating cocktail of modern classical music and Brazilian folk music. But he wrote a lot of "serious" classical music as well. He wrote a bunch of symphonies and string quartets, as well as piano music. And it is certainly worth a listen.

16/44 FLAC download.

Marc-André Hamelin plays wonderfully, but if I'm honest I'll spend more time listening to the Brazilian stuff.

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CAJames

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Re: Classical Music Thread
Reply #1305 - 06/07/26 at 16:35:16

Nicholas Harnoncourt got his start making some of the most ridiculous sounding recordings ever committed to magnetic tape early in the "historically informed performance" movement. YMMV. But at some point he grew up and it turns out he is actually an interesting and talented musician when he started making "historically informed" recordings of the classical at romantic repertoire with modern symphony orchestras. One of the first was his Schubert Symphony cycle with the Royal Concertgebouw, and it is excellent.

On CD

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CAJames

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Re: Classical Music Thread
Reply #1306 - 06/09/26 at 15:35:58

I love the way Jean-Efflam Bavouzet plays Debussy, but I'm still figuring out his Beethoven. At this point I'd say I respect his ideas more than I actually like it, but it is hard to articulate why. The tempos are all perfectly reasonable and he plays off the profound vs the humorous elements in a way that is... interesting but perhaps not entirely convincing. Yet I keep coming back to listen.

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CAJames

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Re: Classical Music Thread
Reply #1307 - Yesterday at 20:19:02

Classical music has been recorded for about 100 years, so it is pretty hard to call any recording of something as popular as Haydn's Nelson Mass "definitive" just because there are so many of them worth hearing. But Leonard Bernstein's New York recording is so good you can make a case that it is in fact definitive.

On CD

I'd say the same thing about pretty much everything in the Sony/CBS/Columbia box.

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