Just finished end to end… holy crap!!! Dat der’s some real rock and roll! Wow.
Peace
Bruce in Philly
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Bruce which label, orchestra and director…reason I ask I have a copy of the 9th Roberrt Shaw
conducting the Atlanta Symphony on the ProArte label…this recording is good
but would much have preferred a Telarc label recording of Seiji Oazawa conducting the Boston Symphony…
I have the 5th and also the 3rd Choral Fantasy Rudolph Serkin piano…both on Telarc…
the dynamics are way better than the ProArte label…
What impresses you most of your copy of the 9th ?
I might want to get a copy
Thanks Bruce
Here is a link to Seiji Ozawa conducting the Choral Fantasy…at about 9:30 in the pianist
followed by orchestra really cuts loose !!
click link to yout tube
Enjoy!
Here’s another, Beethoven’s 5th video starts as an old photo but allow video top play
Seiji really get’s to rockin’
I am in no way knowledgeable on classical music and its conductors. I do understand there can be great differences in interpretation and performance so I purchase two versions: 1) Chesky: Rene Leibowitz Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (analog recording) and 2) Telarc Christoph Von Dohnanyi The Clevelan Orchestra & Chorus.
Today, I listened to the Leibowitz recording that while very very analog with a ton of air… I thought was a bit dull… however it cranks in the end. The Dohnanyi recording is more enjoyable to me… maybe the Telarc influence? but it is more punchy (the performance not the recording).
Overall, I have no idea which is better.
Peace
Bruce in Philly
Bruce thanks for sharing your views with these They are valuable …
My favorite for many years has been Solti and the Chicago, recorded in the Great Hall at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois in Urbana. Sound and performance are wonderful, and the recording provides, to my ear, just the right balance between vocal soloists and the orchestra. I have the old original LP on London (if I recall correctly), but I think Analogue Productions has done a reissue, too.
The Great Hall is a magnificent venue, and very intimate for its size, due to the fact that it has no proscenium, and no stage per se, just a raised platform near the performer’s end of the hall, with some balcony seating at its side and back, and the rest on the sloping auditorium floor. As a spectator, you don’t feel at all “separated” from the performers. When I lived in Champaign in the late ‘80s, we used to go to hear Ian Hobson and the Sinfonia de Camera perform there regularly, as well as many other notable musicians. from full symphonies to solo artists like Christopher Parkening. We had tickets to hear Solti and the CSO there (they used to come down from Chicago every so often), but it was the year of the big musicians’ strike and the concert was canceled.
Thanks Craig_Burgess… I should check it out!
I was wrong - the reissue isn’t Analogue Productions, but Decca. The cover photo shows the “business end” of the Great Hall.
And if you’re the sort to search for old records, this is what the original London looked like (Mobile Fidelity did a remaster of it with the same cover as this, but I’ve never heard it).
Now you guys have me a’ tinking what to go for on my next
music shopping spree…hmmmmm
Hi Bruce-in-philly,
You are so right regarding different conductor and interpretations and performance each brings
to the same symphony. Each symphony hall has it’s own acoustic qualities and I imagine that
often times recording labels and conductors have to take these into account, create and perform
accordingly. I think
So today I replayed my Pro Arte Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus performing ar
the Atlanta Symphony Hall.
Now with my new P12 installed …what a difference in my system’s performance (last played using P5)
Now the this same recording shines from delicate nuances to the double possible triple fortes.
In comparison to a Christoph Dohnanyi Telarc’s recording of the same 9th…The Robert Shaw
Pro Arte appears to be better staged, miked and recorded from the instrumental nuances,
crecendos along with the soloists and chorus no detail lost or smeared…while in the Dohnanyi Telarc
the vocal chorus in the crescendos aren’t as distinct or the chorus as large as the ProArte Shaw recording.
Remember this is just my own sense of things
I did go looking for the Solti Decca Jubilee and seems to be unobtaniums for now
And to think that when Ludwig conducted this in public for the first time, someone had to turn him around to see the standing ovation afterwards.
He was deaf.
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Am thinking he was deaf when he composed the 9th and other symphonies as well.
Amazing
Avery interesting read on how Beethoven could compose being deaf.
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