|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
108.34.158.106
In Reply to: RE: Came to a profoundly sad realization this morning.... posted by Amphissa on January 18, 2015 at 12:54:33
Was when as a tyke he was allowed to leave the house and wander around the public square. When (as it appears happened regularly), a military brass band went marching by, little Gustav would fall in behind them and--march.
BTW, Mahler's first musical instrument was--the "piano accordion," which is perhaps why there are no works for solo piano among Mahler's mature works.
BTW2, I believe that John Williams is indebted to one of more of Mahler's march movements, perhaps most likely from the Sixth symphony, for the Star Wars musical cue of the white-suited storm troupers marching in.
Yes, I am pretty burned out on the numbered symphonies except 5, 6, 9, and maybe 10, but the song cycles still grab me, and I am just knocked over by the recently unearthed 1964 live Vienna DLvdE with Fritz Wunderlich and believe it or not Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. It is a white-hot revelation.
ATB,
JM
Follow Ups:
.
I assume that when you say bootleg you mean an unauthorized and surreptitious recording made in the hall on portable amateur or home recording equipment. In 1964 that would mean a small Japanese reel to reel recorder, or, perhaps with very lax security or a blind eye on the part of some hall employee, a NAGRA portable broadcast recorder.
I think that if there was a tape and if someone had gone to the trouble of pressing LPs (rather than just cutting a few acetates for friends) then that performance would have been known to the worldwide Mahler community as a very rare but existing document.
The perhaps more-likely scenario that did not come to pass, in view of the disappearance of the first-generation Austrian radio broadcast tape, is that an employee or someone with access to the vaults "borrowed" the first-generation tape, used it to cut acetates to make LP stampers, and then forgot to return the tape. But that obviously never happened.
I take DG at their word that this is in effect a totally new discovery, that, but for the Krips family's holding on to everything from Maestro Krips' career, would have been lost forever.
Of course, I would have wanted the tapes processed with Plangent Processing, but, you can't have everything.
jm
Wow! what a combination of voices!
John: how do you feel about the conducting?
Jeremy
I surmise or assume that FW wanted (a) to banish or at least add nuance to his image of a pretty boy who sang Mozart and sentimental German semi-pop songs of the Talkies movie era and (b) put all the chips down, in view of whom he was sharing the stage with.
Mission accomplished. Zo, the conducting is almost beside the point.
But I think that it is very good.
More info at the link.
jm
Thank you, John -- I just ordered it. I'll let you know!
Jeremy
Hi-
I mentioned that it was a radio tape. While it is NOT an off-the-air tape, back then, AFAIK there was no stereo radio broadcasting in Europe. So the radio archival tape, long since lost and forgotten, was a recording of the same mono mix that was broadcast.
In the run-up to the Centenary of Mahler's death, somehow the dubbed copy made for the conductor that was in the Krips family archives came to the attention of DG, hence this CD release.
Now, seeing as it was a ref for the conductor (who perhaps never actually listened to it) I am rather confident it was duped at 2X running speed, my guess would be 7.5 ips, duped at 15 ips.
So, it required restoration that DG claims to be quite proud of. I am listening via a streaming service, and it sounds good enough to me--for what it is and how important it is to me.
It appears that the only tape running was for the Austrian radio service, IOW, the Vienna Philharmonic did not archive it--perhaps their crew had the summer off... . So there was no VPO archive tape, which I assume by 1964 would have been stereo.
I think it was Aquinas who paraphrased Aristotle to the effect that the slenderest knowledge of divine things was preferable to certainty about mundane things.
That's my story and I am sticking to it.
jm
Fair enough, JM! Besides, I agree with you and Aquinas. Furthermore, mono doesn't bother me -- in fact, in the early 60s a mono version often sounded better than a stereo release of the same performance.
Thanks for your information. I eagerly await hearing the disc when it arrives.
Jeremy
Whatever the excuse for all that marching, it just became tiresome for me. I've (seriously) thought about playing the symphonies without the march movements, but I've never been much motivated. I've got a very large hoard of CDs, SACDs, LPs and DVDs of Mahler, if I ever get the urge to return. For now, he's not on my play list.
Yes, DLvdE. Some parts are very fine indeed. I haven't listened to it in awhile. I do enjoy voice with orchestra, but I most often turn to other composers -- Chausson's "Poème de l'amour et de la mer", Martucci's "La canzone dei ricordi", Rachmaninoff's "The Bells" and "Spring" cantata, Ravel's "Shéhérazade", Strauss' "Vier letzte Lieder", etc. I suppose I should unearth my recordings of DLvdE.
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
Just as Wagner's writing music was the continuation of political revolution by other means, Mahler's writing of music was the continuation of a spiritual quest (or a continuation of psychotherapy) by other means.
That's why you get "Frère Jacques," Klezmerim, and marching band music--like them or not.
IMHO.
JM
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: