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OK, I've been holding off on commenting about Vanessa Benelli Mosell's new Decca recording featuring the piano music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. As I never tire of quoting, Stockhausen himself claimed that "she [Vanessa] has the ability to make people like my music." But having lived with this recording for over a month now, I'm not so sure the composer's optimism was warranted. Listening to the Stockhausen works on this album is the most concentrated immersion in Stockhausen's music I've experienced so far, and yet I'm still more convinced than ever by the apocryphal story attributed to Sir Thomas Beecham, who, when asked if he had heard any Stockhausen, is said to have replied, "No, but I believe I have trodden in some." (The source for this is Lebrecht - which means it is almost certainly NOT true. Nevertheless, it's something that Beecham SHOULD have said!)
On a more realistic note, there's Robert Craft's 1968 interview with Stravinsky, who stated:I have been listening all week to the piano music of a composer now greatly esteemed for his ability to stay an hour or so ahead of his time, but I find the alternation of note-clumps and silences of which it consists more monotonous than the foursquares of the dullest eighteenth-century music.Later, it was claimed that Stravinsky was referring to the academician followers of Stockhausen, but IMHO Stravinsky's words could just as easily apply to the music of Stockhausen himself.
And what is one to say of all the rock and jazz performers who claim Stockhausen as an influence? (People like Frank Zappa, The Grateful Dead, and even the Beatles, who pictured Stockhausen as one of the personages on the cover of their Sgt. Pepper album!) Well, bless their hearts! I can't help but think these folks were so eager to establish their "rebel" and "maverick" credentials that they tried to grasp at the most avant-garde names in culture without knowing very much about what it was that they they were grasping. Sure, I know about "A Day in the Life" and "Revolution No. 9", but these examples seem so trite and beside the point in those songs as a whole that it's impossible for me to consider these "influences" as anything other than trivial.
The one saving grace is that when I listen to this album, I'm using HQ Player as the playback software for the 24/96 file I downloaded, and it allows me to blow up the album cover to almost the full size of my 65" Panasonic plasma - Yowza!
As for the rest of the album, the Beffa suite is not bad, although I can imagine it sounding too "conventional late 20th century" for some. And as for the Stravinsky "Petrouchka" scenes, I was looking forward to having a "battle of the babes" between Vanessa and Yuja - but then I found to my dismay that I don't actually have Yuja's recording. (I must have heard Yuja on Spotify - which I no longer subscribe to anymore.) There's no one who enjoys a good "battle of the babes" competition than I do, but the Vanessa/Yuja competition in "Petrouchka" will have to wait until I can get a good quality incarnation of the latter's recording!
Follow Ups:
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
N. Thelman, SSI
Stockhausen did untold damage to the last phase of his career when he called 9/11 "the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos."
He later apologized and said he was misquoted but the recorded interview proved otherwise.
A spectacular example of being utterly clueless. I'm tempted to say that there's a lot of cluelessness in his his music too - a kind of out-of-touch mentality as it relates to the rest of humanity. Maybe Vanessa will convince me otherwise over time.
they tried to grasp at the most avant-garde names in culture without knowing very much about what it was that they were grasping." (I edited out a redundant they.)
ROTFLMAO WTOLRDMCheeks.
There is an awful lot of that kind of 'thinking' going on. Choose a field.
Warmest
Tim Bailey
Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger
Sometimes, I'm going full-bore stream of consciousness as I post, and, despite the fact that my undergraduate major was English, I forget the finer points of usage (like recognizing redundancies)! ;-)
Yes, I'm sure that that kind of grasping happens all across the board!
and at that time proceeded to record the fiercest (and in my opinion) his greatest works, in particular the trilogy of Agharta, Pangea, and Dark Magus. You couldn't pry those away from me. Nothing has touched these recordings for their mixture of hellish deep dark funk, hyper distorted rock, amplified Indian drum beats, screaming jazz, sheets of sound, and modernism laid bare.
Miles was under the influence of many things.
Miles was hugely influenced by many things..... including most of his sidemen, his taylor, his car salesman......
Chris -- Which recording of Mantra is your favorite? I see a new one out this year with Mark Knoop and Roderick Chadwick. Have you heard it yet?
I guess I've never been in the right mental state to approach it until now (thanks, Vanessa!) - I'm listening to it right now as I type. But so far, I agree with one of the YouTube comments:"How much can I get away with?" must be the mantra!Madeline has just respectfully asked me to close the door to the listening room, but I continue to persevere.
Edits: 09/01/15
Well, the 2015 recording with Knoop and Chadwick is vastly superior to the older one I have with Rosalind Bevan and Yvar Mikhashoff. I guess Spotify has its uses. I also see there is a 2009 CD by the Ensemble Recherche of Kontra-punkte, Refrain, Zeitmasze, and Schlagrtrio that the Amazon.com reviewers say is vastly superior to earlier efforts.
But newer is not always better with the avant gardists (Virgil Thomson called them the "far outs"). I listened to half a dozen versions of Crumb's Music for a Summer Evening after hearing it live and the 1970s Contemporary Chamber Ensemble version on Nonesuch still won out. Same holds with Robert Craft's Edgard Varese recordings from the 60s.
They worked with Stockhausen too.
I just listened to two complete performances on YouTube, one live with the Callithumpian Consort (New College, London, I think - BTW, I love that name!) and the Kontarsky one above. Although their timings are within a minute of each other, the two performances sound completely different, with the electronic elements much more to the fore in the Kontarsky recording.
I'm sure the 2010 Naxos performance with Xenia Pestova (piano), Pascal Meyer (piano), and Jan Panis (electronics), is available on classicsonlinehd, so I may check that one out too. I still think Stockhausen's mantra was "how much of this can I get away with?".
I've just never heard their version of Mantra. And I was messin' with ya a bit in this thread, I think Mantra is the very last thing that would interest you, there may well be other (earlier) Stockhausen pieces that wouldn't bother you as much as that one. But the new CD is indeed vastly better than the old one I have long had, imho.
I notice Pollini recorded the Three Movements from Petrouchka, something to check out in the non-babe category, if your babe disappoints.
I've got some Boulez by the Kontarsky's, and early Schoenberg by Pollini, both terriffic.
But, obviously, he wouldn't quite fit in a "battle of the babes" competition. ;-)
Edits: 09/03/15
One of my favourite discs.However I recall that when first released there were rumours that the "performance" had been assembled from numerous perfected takes of small snippets. What truth there is in this I cannot say although the playing does have a somewhat superhuman aspect.
(nt)
Munchausen
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
I heard the Beecham Stockhausen story decades ago, when my younger brother was at the Boston Conservatory, so I am very certain that the story was in circulation before Lebrecht began his career.
A Beecham story I have not seen publicized comes via Arturo Delmoni. Beecham was guest-conducting the Cleveland Orchestra. Beecham for some reason was unclear about the order of the program, so he bent over and asked Gingold "What's the first piece?"
Gingold was so flummoxed that he blurted out "The Dying Flutchman," and Beecham started chortling so hard that he had to steady himself on the podium, and every time he thought he was ready to begin conducting, he started laughing again, which only added to Gingold's misery (and perhaps fear that Beecham would have a heart attack then and there).
JM
I cannot imagine what might have happened if Sir Thomas Beecham were to have collaborated with Victor Borge..........
/
I love otur tidbits
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
"The French Horns are too loud."
The Concert Master leans over and says, "But the French Horns aren't playing there."
So Beecham sys, " Well, if they Had been playing, they Would have been too loud..."
Also, at one Concert he thought the first piece was Beethoven's 5th Sym, so he wound up
and gave a Big Down beat, and the Orch started playing
the Pastoral Sym.
(You have to visualize it...)
OK, back to Stockhausen-Bashing.
"Please be so good as to get in touch every now and then..."
jm
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...that the contents wouldn't be very filling.
Not only Stockhausen, but also Beffa. And if I were giving stars to the performance of the Stravinsky "Petrouchka" (which, as I flatter myself, I like to think I know pretty well), I'd give it a 5/5. (Hence, my eagerness to compare it directly with Yuja's recording!)
I forgot to mention too that the SQ on this recording is great, even if (in the Stockhausen Klavierstucke - sorry, I don't dare use an umlaut!) the tone quality is sometimes. . . uh. . . secondary! ;-) But in all seriousness, the vast dynamic range (and it IS truly gigantic!) and the ability to sustain even the tiniest wisps of tone over long durations are pretty breathtaking on this recording (and also a tribute to the piano she's using). My problems have more to do with the music itself rather than Vanessa's execution of it.
BTW, Madeline agrees with you that most babe musicians have that tell-tale (nobody's home!) "vacant stare". ;-)
As for me, I've got to get back and check the Italian gossip magazines to see who Vanessa's latest boyfriend is and what else she's been up to recently.
"Everybody just wants the same old thing..."
/
It's what's on the Other Side that counts!
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