Larry Kart

Like this one a good deal. Everyone, especially Kamuca, is in fine form. My LP copy has a different cover, a color photo of Manne IIRC.

How can those Anderson etc. records be purchased?

Based on prior experience (I finally dumped it) Christophe Rousset's Forqueray is crap: If I didn't know better from recordings of his gamba works, I'd have thought that Forqueray is crap, too. By contrast, Rannou's way with Forqueray seems ideal. OTOH, Rannou's glacially paced reading of the aria of the Goldberg Variations (on Spotify) seems absurd to me. Case by case.

Augustin Hadelich's Naxos recording of the Telemann Violin Fantasias is a winner IMO. Not HIP (at least in choice of instrument) but mighty fine fiddling.

Bassist probably was Jeff Castleman. http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2008/03/jeff-castleman-bass-player-and-lone-survivor

Are you sure he didn't have valves? His heart, yes.

That's "Bartok with valves," of course. Bartok himself had values but not valves.

Interesting. Clint Eastwood was a big Kenton fan in his youth and probably still is. At a certain age, he could have starred in and directed a potentially great Kenton biopic. The subject would have been perfect for him IMO.

Some Midori Bach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYdmG8ipvzE&feature=related In particular, check out the Allegro on the second clip; it begins at the 6:36 mark. And she was even better in person.

That last sentence seems to me to call for two qualifications: 1) Provided the players are really good, and too many HIP specialists IMO have been so-so players hiding behind their HIP allrightnik-ness; 2) It also can work like gangbusters on instruments different from the ones Bach had -- no, not the calliope, but ... well, you know the drill. Yes, but it's got to be on a case-by-case basis. Sampling Cafe Zimmermann, I was thrilled, but I think that Mullova, once a top-class player, has become a one-woman train wreck, at least in Bach. Yes, those chordal passages/strokes are important, but she emphasizes them to an absurd degree IMO with the air of a convert and virtually destroys the relationship between those strokes and the melodic line. By contrast I recently heard Midori in concert play half of the Partitas and Suites. I wouldn't say that in the days before Mullova became a sometime HIP convert that either she or Midori was the better player -- both were in the top class -- but these days Midori's combination of virtuosity and deep musical understanding in Bach leaves Mullova far behind, again IMO. You can find Midori's Bach on Spotify and probably on YouTube. BTW I'm with you on mono Walcha. Finally, sound-world/performance practice argument(s) need to be looked at far more closely than often seems to be the case -- not only because what musician X of the past accepted as the norm may or may not have been more or less what he had to accept but also because the historically informed sound world of instruments and the often speculative sound world of performance practice may not always jibe that well, in part because there are good many "informed" views of these matters and other related muscal-historical issues, in part because the final musical dish still has to be prepared by a talented, clear-headed musical cook who knows with his or her own ears the difference between chocolate pudding and a pile of steaming poo. The Mullova who recorded her HIP Bach is, so it seems to me, serving up chocolate-colored poo. Yes, the HIP fiddler next one over may not be, but ... case by case.

That last sentence seems to me to call for two qualifications: 1) Provided the players are really good, and too many HIP specialists IMO have been so-so players hiding behind their HIP allrightnik-ness; 2) It also can work like gangbusters on instruments different from the ones Bach had -- no, not the calliope, but ... well, you know the drill.

They're not losing it, just an approach in search for a different one. The music always is more than the notes, it also encompasses the sound, and that is linked to instruments. Cellos or violins in Bach's time sounded different, that's a fact. The introduction of steel strings and higher tension and modern tunings changes the sound a lot. Like Skip Sempé stated: "In most fine music written before the 1950s, the sound and the composition were linked by the composer. Some performers do not care about this, and some listeners don't care either, but that was clearly the method behind the tradition in question. Without any doubt, this is the manner in which harpsichord music was conceived." I appreciate the approach of a lot of these players, but I just can't get around to like their sound. Yes, but you're assuming, as is Sempe, that the specific sonic means/resources (number of performers, nature of instruments, etc.) available to the composers of Bach's era, or earlier or later on, were always a good match (i.e. were satisfying linked in their own minds) to their musical thinking. In the case of Bach, for one, there is abundant evidence that this was not always the case. Also, what the heck does Sempe mean by "In most fine music written before the 1950s" etc." Is "1950s" a typo? If not, what happened then to change things? In any case, my point is that there is no one size fits all HIP answer to this stuff.

Elsewhere, yes, but in the Bach Suites, as Moms says, he hasn't a clue. But if Schiff screws up (IMO) the first two movements of Suite 1, why should I persist? I used to like Fournier, but after Gaillard he sounded quite stiff and stodgy.

Robert Simpson speaks in some detail of Dvorak's passing influence on early Nielsen in his book on the latter.

Can't stand Schiff in these works. The way he hustles through the Prelude in Suite 1 strikes me as absurd, after which he moons about/pulls limb from limb in the Allemande. Tortelier's first EMI recording is a gem, don't know the second. Gaillard says she admires Tortelier, and it shows.

Yes, I got Gaillard II. Am now digging her disc of the Britten Cello Sonata and his Cello Suites 2 &3.

Yes

Got the Gaillard the other day after doing a lot of listening on Spotify. Here's what I wrote to a friend: 'That Ophelie Gaillard recording of the Bach cello suites arrived; one of the best pieces of music-making I've heard in a good while. Every phrase seems to almost literally speak. Her approach is probably more lower-register oriented than most any other; notes seem to vibrate from down there. Also, a tremendous sense of "grain" and angle as phrases ascend or descend, as though each note were being carved into a stick.'

Why not just say "On the one hand"...or, OTOH, say "On the other hand"?. Say it, yes, write it out, no -- not in an informal setting. YMMV.

Actually, it's both "on the one hand" and "on the other hand."

The somewhat paradoxical difference (at least in part) comes down to OTOH coloring between the lines versus just playing and OTOH simply/even understanding certain key aspects of the language one is trying to imitate/emulate/re-create.

I was thinking of Bill Vukovich's death in the 1955 Indianapolis 500, but I'm not sure I saw that on live TV. In any case, it affected me strongly because it was quite gruesome (I recall images of Vucovich's arm writhing beneath his flaming car) and because he not only was THE star of Indy racing (having already won the 500 twice, he was kind of the Mickey Mantle of the sport) and was leading the race by a huge margin, 17 seconds.

Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. Joseph Welch's "Have you no shame, sir?" to Joe McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings. (That dates me.)

IIRC, the original Jubilee LP issue sounded like crap, too. Fresh Sound, however, says that the original issue was on Bel Canto stereo tape, without of course saying if that was the source for their crappy sounding CD. What are the odds that the Toshiba or EMI Japan were working with original tapes? If not, I would guess that there's only so much you can do with filtering/etc. what came out on Jubilee.

Just began to listen to the Benedetti-Bird material after many years of hesitation. Don't hesitate! Fabulous playing, different from much other Bird in (the LA material at least) its relaxed aura, and the ear (or my ear) immediately adjusts to variations in sound quality and the Bird-only excerpts. Kind of scares me to think that I sat on the sidelines here for all these years.