Post by Edvin June 22, 2006 (1 of 24)
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Classical music is a serious business. It is important to know what you are talking about, to be precise and accurate with a nose stuck up in the air.
I´m only joking of course, but if you have made a fool of yourselves please write about it here. Let me start with quite an innocent episode from my teens.
I went into my local record store and asked for the Tchaikovsky 1812. The young and lovely girl searched for it and came back with a CBS LP with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra that said Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture.
I took the record, held it and whatched it for a while..and said: Very nice, but can I please have the whole work and not only the overture.
The young girl started to look in various catalogues and said finally that it was only the overture that was recorded, sorry. She really tried to find the "whole piece" for me.
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Post by ramesh June 22, 2006 (2 of 24)
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If I remember correctly, this Ormandy LP had the 'Serenade for Strings' as a coupling. Wish it had been issued by Sony as an SACD, as the string tone was quite voluptuous. Ormandy has been treated rather shabbily by Sony in the SACD releases. The great Philadelphia string tone in the Ormandy era would've made a better advertisement for the SACD medium than the late 1950s tapes Sony released with eg Walter, purely from a sonic perspective. The EMI Philadelphia early digital recordings weren't very impressive, although Muti's late 1970s analogue 'Rite' is fantastic as sound and performance.
Seth, did the Philly strings go downhill later in the Muti reign, or was it the digital recording's fault?
PS the World Cup : Very impressed with the Paraguayan player England had in the first match; far more effective than Michael Owen.
PPS If Posh Spice married McCartney, I wonder whether the offspring's musical genes would be cancelled out, or synergistic.
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Post by seth June 22, 2006 (3 of 24)
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ramesh said:
The EMI Philadelphia early digital recordings weren't very impressive, although Muti's late 1970s analogue 'Rite' is fantastic as sound and performance.
Seth, did the Philly strings go downhill later in the Muti reign, or was it the digital recording's fault?
EMI's digital sound was good at first, then went downhill in the mid '70s, and became excellent by the early 90s. I'm in the minority of listeners who think that the orchestra was always excellent under Muti -- you just cannot follow a 44 year act. The brass section in particular excelled under Muti. Some examples:
Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet Suites (1982). The digital sound is artificially bright and compressed, but nonetheless still impressively full blooded. If you ever want an example of what "first rate" playing is, listen to the orchestra in Tybalt's Death.
Beethoven: Symphonies (mid 80s). After making Memorial Hall the permanent recording studio, the recorded sound was uneven and unflattering to the Orchestra's sound. The recorded sound was diffuse; the strings have a digital glare. While latter recordings had a more focused sound, the sound still had an artificial texture to it. The Orchestra, though, was always in top form. Listen to the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique from 1985 (which was quite well recorded).
Two of Muti's late recordings, Shostakovich Symphony No.5 (EMI, 1992) and Prokofiev Symphony No.5 (Philips, 1990) were both brilliant recorded -- they remain demo material for me -- and clearly show that Muti left the orchestra in better shape than he inherited it in. As I said before, brass playing doesn't get much better. The Shostakovich was recently reissued on EMI's budget line; not by any means the most idiomatic reading, but among the very best played and Muti totally nails the slow ending. Recommended.
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Post by raffells June 23, 2006 (4 of 24)
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Edvin said:
Classical music is a serious business. It is important to know what you are talking about, to be precise and accurate with a nose stuck up in the air.
I´m only joking of course, but if you have made a fool of yourselves please write about it here. Let me start with quite an innocent episode from my teens.
I went into my local record store and asked for the Tchaikovsky 1812. The young and lovely girl searched for it and came back with a CBS LP with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra that said Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture.
I took the record, held it and whatched it for a while..and said: Very nice, but can I please have the whole work and not only the overture.
The young girl started to look in various catalogues and said finally that it was only the overture that was recorded, sorry. She really tried to find the "whole piece" for me.
I remember the old days as well.
I once asked for a piece that I had heard ,it had two brass bands and it was on a 7 inch.Looking at the titles / catelogue I was offered two brass monkeys /or / Music for A Ball by two brass bands with a tenor/Being Dyslexic He said Ive" 2 brass balls on a tenor!!!" I asked Is that a record?. He replied "Well I am not sure I am only 16..."
I often wonder whether he joined a circus as the shop stopped selling soon after..
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Post by akiralx June 23, 2006 (5 of 24)
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Not quite in a record store, but my father's friend once asked for the sheet music for a Schubert piano trio in a large music store.
The manager smoothly assured him they wouldn't stock it as very few of their customers owned three pianos...
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Post by robstl June 23, 2006 (6 of 24)
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Funny thread. I make a fool of myself often enough, I'm sure, but here's a story of others.
I've witnessed this _twice_ now, in two different cities: I've been browsing in the classical section of a record store when a customer has said, "I'm looking for Pachelbel's Canon. I think it's by Bach." On one of these occasions, the person working in the store dutifully went over to the Bach discs to look for Pachelbel's Canon.
One of life's little challenges is to help out in situations like this without causing embarrassment or discouraging interest.
-Rob
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Post by seth June 23, 2006 (7 of 24)
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A long, long, long time ago, I thought Beethoven's 9th was five movements long since all of my CD copies had five tracks...
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Come on folks, I'm 50 years old, a college graduate, and don't know a fugue from a tocatta, if you told most people you had a movement, they'd think bowel. Where was I supposed to learn this, in music appreciation? If you don't study an instrument, or even do, when do you learn about the forms and styles of classical music? Self taught, I suppose. Also, rolling ones eyes and putting your nose in the air does nothing to help us great unwashed ever learn about these things. Frankly, I'm surprised classical survives to the extent that it does, I've tried to like it, I own several dozen disks, but they just don't thrill me. What can I do?
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Post by mandel June 24, 2006 (9 of 24)
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coherent_guy said:
Come on folks, I'm 50 years old, a college graduate, and don't know a fugue from a tocatta, if you told most people you had a movement, they'd think bowel. Where was I supposed to learn this, in music appreciation? If you don't study an instrument, or even do, when do you learn about the forms and styles of classical music? Self taught, I suppose. Also, rolling ones eyes and putting your nose in the air does nothing to help us great unwashed ever learn about these things. Frankly, I'm surprised classical survives to the extent that it does, I've tried to like it, I own several dozen disks, but they just don't thrill me. What can I do?
This thread is meant to be lighthearted. It's perfectly possible to laugh at newbies daft mistakes without being snooty about it. I think you missed the irony in the first line of Edvin's original post, the next line should have been a bit of a giveaway.
As for "What can I do?", tell us what classical discs you already have and what sort of pop/rock music you like and we might be able to suggest something worth trying.
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coherent_guy said:
Come on folks, I'm 50 years old, a college graduate, and don't know a fugue from a tocatta, if you told most people you had a movement, they'd think bowel. Where was I supposed to learn this, in music appreciation? If you don't study an instrument, or even do, when do you learn about the forms and styles of classical music? Self taught, I suppose. Also, rolling ones eyes and putting your nose in the air does nothing to help us great unwashed ever learn about these things.
Know what? I'll be 66 in July and I don't know a fugue from a tocatta either, I started to love classical music when I was 14. Nothing snooty, nothing snotty, I wonder where all that crap comes from! The closest I've seen to identifying the history of that notion is in some old Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck comic books I had as a child!
Movements were learned from seeing them listed on LPs as track headings like songs on pop records. You only have to listen to one work that is in movements to get the idea.
Some people will never like classical music and I think those are the people who never sing or whistle or hum to themselves. In college I remember a fellow student who simply did not like to listen to any music. Lots of people who like rock and its variants will not ever care for classical because they don't have much melodic appreciation.
Learning to enjoy other aspects of classical music such as structure seems to me to come after enjoying the great melodies that are there, getting absolutely caught up in them. If you like folk music sung by the likes of Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Gordon Bok, you are IMO a candidate for enjoying classical music.
That doesn't mean that I think those are the only people who will like it, just that those people are suseptible to melodic invention and lyricism and much of classical music excels in that arena. It is a starting point.
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