classicalcd

[classicalcd]

A disc full of holiday getaways. Absolutely delicious. No notes!

#classical music #classicalcd #classicalcdcollection #seijiozawa #Spotify

[classicalcd]

A very easy #holidayplaylist selection today: Martha Argerich and Alexandre Rabinovitch playing Mozart’s Andante and Variations K. 501. First, hearing Martha Argerich of decades past is always a holiday, and the fewer people there are trying to keep up with her in a performance, the bigger the holiday! (Here, the two pianists blend magically). Second, there’s the piece. Gentle, comforting, with some tasteful dramatic fireworks in the middle, but safely coming home at the end. It may not be in the top 10 (or top 50) of Mozart’s most brilliant pieces, but it’s music we all may need right now.

#Mozart #martha argerich #classicalrecording #classical music #music collection #classicalcdcollection #piano music #twopianos #Spotify

[classicalcd]

i love physical media. i love dvds and cds. i love the cover art on the boxes and the way they look organised on a shelf.

i love owning a piece of media that will have to be pried from my cold dead hands to take it from me, instead of being wiped off the face of the earth with the click of a button the moment it stops being profitable.

i love the little manuals that came with video games. i love the design and effort and care put into the little details. i love it all, and we should appreciate it more as a society.

[classicalcd]

This might be a fraught selection to post… I don’t know if the use of Kazakh, Tatar, and especially Uygur melodies by Chinese composer Du Mingxin constitutes tribute or appropriation. But at a minimum, it serves as a document that those cultures and legacies exist at a time when some may want them forgotten. And the melodies are beautiful and addictive, especially in Du’s symphonic treatment and Nishizaki’s violin solos.

The last track, “Celebrative Singing and Dancing” is a holiday in and of itself… a one-track #holidayplaylist. Enjoy it!

#Spotify #nowlistening #classicalcdcollection #cdclassical #classicalcd #dumingxin #singaporesymphonyorchestra #classicalrecords #classicalrecording

[classicalcd]

With its well-earned jubilant organ-enriched finale, I don’t need to explain why Saint-Saëns 3rd belongs on a #holidayplaylist. But the history of this particular recording is fascinating and potentially disturbing.

Let’s start with the dates and places: The orchestra was recorded in June and November of 1985 at Salle Wagram. The organ was recorded almost exactly a year after the first orchestra sessions at the Chartres Cathedral. This isn’t the first recording of the symphony to record the organ and orchestra at separate venues, but a year apart? There must have been some logistical nightmare here. And this is where it gets interesting.

By 1985, Ozawa was 12 years into his tenure as the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Unlike Salle Wagram, Boston Symphony Hall has a magnificent organ. That organ had already been used in a successful recording of Saint-Saënt’s 3rd led by Charles Munch. The orchestra was deeply steeped in French tradition. A year earlier, EMI, the same label that produced this recording, released another recording with Ozawa and the BSO. So the inescapable question is: why did EMI record Saint-Saëns’s organ symphony with Orchestre National de France, which does not have an organ, instead of with Boston Symphony Orchestra which does?

Alas, the most obvious answer I can come up with is that without a French orchestra, some feared a recording lead by Ozawa wouldn’t be “authentic” enough or “French” enough, raising troubling racial implications. Ozawa’s photo is nowhere to be found on the front or back cover of the original record. I wonder why.

I hope my conjecture is wrong, but I don’t have a better explanation. The organ is mixed in pretty surgically - it’s only heard when it needs to be and only as softly as the music allows. The muddiness of the reverberant cathedral acoustics is thus avoided. And the orchestra gives Ozawa a heartfelt performance… but it’s still not the same as having the orchestra and the organ really play together.

#Spotify #saintsaens #seijiozawa #classicalcdcollection #cdclassical #classicalrecords #classical

[classicalcd]

Box sets without original covers are like weekends without sunshine…