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Great idea for a thread

Posted by Chris from Lafayette (A) on January 20, 2016 at 23:50:13

In Reply to: Great works that you just don't know like you should posted by TGR on January 20, 2016 at 16:40:21:

Works I don't know as well as I should:

I've already posted about Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - I don't think I have either of my videos that I used to have (Boulez and Welser-Most) right now. I might check out that Essen production on blu-ray as I mentioned in a previous post.

For the rest, I'll use your list as a guide - I hope you don't mind!

Re Die Rosenkavalier, I join you in admitting that I don't know it as well as I should - but right now, I have no desire to get to know it better. Maybe it's because I've never had an interest in "wise" women like the Marschallin. ;-) I love what I've heard of the rest of Strauss's operatic output, including Salome, Elektra, Ariadne, Frau ohne Schatten, Daphne and Friedenstag. (I'm sure I'm forgetting one or two more.)

The big choral work of Bach that I don't know as well as I should is the St. Matthew Passion. I know the St. John Passion SO much better - I had recordings of the St. John almost from my earliest days of collecting: the Fritz Werner-led performance on Musical Heritage Society with that mainstay of the Erato catalog, Helmut Krebs. (I loved soprano Frederike Sailer in this performance too.) I added the Hungarian performance led by Gyorgy Lehel some years later, a recording that moved me so much that I re-acquired when it was re-issued on CD on Hungaroton's "Classic" label. Getting back to the St. Matthew for a minute, I have a recording of the Elgar version of the work, but, like you with some of your repertoire, I just haven't carved out enough time to live with it.

Regarding "The Bartered Bride", my situation is almost exactly like yours: I know a couple of other Smetana operas (Dalibor, The Two Widows) better.

As for Beethoven, I feel I'm pretty well acquainted with the whole oeuvre - well, except for Christ on the Mount of Olives and a couple of string trios!

I love the Janacek operas, and yet there are a couple I really don't know at all (aside from the orchestral preludes), in particular his later masterpiece, "From the House of the Dead". There was a funny story posted many years ago about a Czech guest conductor who led this opera in one of the foreign opera houses. There's a part for chains (in the percussion section) in this work (since it deals with prisoners after all), and this particular conductor insisted on bringing his own chains for use in the performance. At the first rehearsal, once everyone was assembled, he had his scantily-clad girlfriend present the chains to the percussion section - evidently a case of making maximum use of the resources at hand! ;-)

I've kind of lost interest in the original Schubert song cycles, although there are individual songs I continue to cherish, and I still have recordings of them. The Liszt transcriptions of many of these songs are far more interesting to me these days.

My wife is a HUGE fan of Haydn's Creation, and, over the years, she fired up my own enthusiasm for the work too. Her standby performance is the Karajan/BPO recording on DG. I also like the old mono Markevitch recording (also on DG) as well as the de Burgos EMI recording. Madeline doesn't like Helen Donath on this latter recording, but for me, Donath's voice is truly one of the attractions of that set. We both know The Seasons far less well - I wouldn't have a clue as to which recording to recommend.

I played choral rehearsals for the Gurrelieder, so I like to think I know the choral parts pretty well - but I know the long stretches for the solo singers much less well. I've got to get out my vocal score and bomb through the whole work one of these days, in addition to listening to my Salonen/Philharmonia SACD more!

As for Boris, I like both Moussorgsky's and Rimsky's versions. There are so many permutations of the various versions that it's hard to keep track of who's doing what in which performance! I have little patience for listeners who make a big show of their exclusive allegiance to one of the un-Rimskyfied incarnations of the work. The Rimsky-Korsakov version is a very fine one in its own right, and, as long as we're not in danger of losing Moussorgsky's original(s), it's a version that deserves to be heard. I've had the Karajan (the R-K version) since LP days, as well as a couple of original versions. (One of the first CD's I purchased with Fedoseyev's Philips recording - I also have Abbado's Sony recording, as well as a couple of videos of the work: Gergiev and Noseda). Of course it's a great work, with a freightening view of the whole world descending into chaos - especially when the Kromy Forest Scene is placed last.

There are probably MANY works I could have named as examples of music which I don't know as well as I should. I'm sure other posters here will have many lacunae in their musical knowledge which I also share! As Rachmaninoff used to say, music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime isn't enough for music! ;-)

Edits: 01/21/16 01/21/16

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Kimber Kable

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