Beethoven 9th "Mix Tape"

[A Lark Ascending]

No.

Do so if it does something you personally feel needs doing for your satisfaction.

********************************

I was thinking about this today. I bought Mahler 9 in the Kubelik version in the early 70s. When CD came about I bought the Karajan CD version - purely to have a CD version without vinyl clicks and pops. Very happy with it except in one of the inner movements where Karajan seemed to speed up the tempo of one section (he may well have been honouring the score to the letter). It grated on me, based on my previous experience.

At a later stage I bought a DG Kubelik box. That's what I play now (because it relates to my experience of Mahler, not because I think it is a superior version) and I'm happy.

But maybe I should have taken the 3 movements I'm happy with in the Karajan and done an insert of the Kubelik movement I'm troubled by.

Wouldn't work, I'm pretty sure, because the whole ambiance of the two recordings would be so different.

I agree that the quest for the perfect interpretation can become an obsession, but.... Here's a personal story. Some years ago I was shopping in Tower Records in Atlanta. I already had two or three different recordings of Barber's Adagio for Strings - not that I had sought them out; it just worked out that way. I walked into the classical room just as the Adagio started playing over the sound system. It was the Thomas Schippers/NY Phil. version, recorded for Columbia in 1965. I had an immediate, visceral reaction to the music, stronger than on past hearings of the piece. I didn't know who it was, and I wasn't analyzing the performance in any intellectual way. I was just standing there dumbstruck, with a lump in my throat, and (I'll admit) brushing away tears. Needless to say, they sold a CD that day. The Schippers Adagio remains a different, and more powerful, experience for me that any other version I've heard.

Apologies for a double quote.

I understand this totally. You are expressing the very particular experience you had with a particular recording at a particular point in your musical exploration. We all experience music differently - different recordings, different contexts etc.

The issue I have with the 'versions' bun fights is that the 'for me' is so often left out.

When someone makes a post, I assume that it's their opinion - unless it's a discographical fact or something similar. It would be redundant for each post to include something like "for me" in each post. Can't recall seeing "for me" in many of the opinions in your posts.

I actually try very hard to express my preferences as subjective. I strongly believe that our musical preferences are very personal and derived from a very individual line of development.

Many posts here don't even try. Schnabel is the dog's bollocks rather than I rather like Schnabel's way of doing things.

Edited September 6, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[paul secor]

No.

Do so if it does something you personally feel needs doing for your satisfaction.

********************************

I was thinking about this today. I bought Mahler 9 in the Kubelik version in the early 70s. When CD came about I bought the Karajan CD version - purely to have a CD version without vinyl clicks and pops. Very happy with it except in one of the inner movements where Karajan seemed to speed up the tempo of one section (he may well have been honouring the score to the letter). It grated on me, based on my previous experience.

At a later stage I bought a DG Kubelik box. That's what I play now (because it relates to my experience of Mahler, not because I think it is a superior version) and I'm happy.

But maybe I should have taken the 3 movements I'm happy with in the Karajan and done an insert of the Kubelik movement I'm troubled by.

Wouldn't work, I'm pretty sure, because the whole ambiance of the two recordings would be so different.

I agree that the quest for the perfect interpretation can become an obsession, but.... Here's a personal story. Some years ago I was shopping in Tower Records in Atlanta. I already had two or three different recordings of Barber's Adagio for Strings - not that I had sought them out; it just worked out that way. I walked into the classical room just as the Adagio started playing over the sound system. It was the Thomas Schippers/NY Phil. version, recorded for Columbia in 1965. I had an immediate, visceral reaction to the music, stronger than on past hearings of the piece. I didn't know who it was, and I wasn't analyzing the performance in any intellectual way. I was just standing there dumbstruck, with a lump in my throat, and (I'll admit) brushing away tears. Needless to say, they sold a CD that day. The Schippers Adagio remains a different, and more powerful, experience for me that any other version I've heard.

Apologies for a double quote.

I understand this totally. You are expressing the very particular experience you had with a particular recording at a particular point in your musical exploration. We all experience music differently - different recordings, different contexts etc.

The issue I have with the 'versions' bun fights is that the 'for me' is so often left out.

When someone makes a post, I assume that it's their opinion - unless it's a discographical fact or something similar. It would be redundant for each post to include something like "for me" in each post. Can't recall seeing "for me" in many of the opinions in your posts.

I actually try very hard to express my preferences as subjective. I strongly believe that our musical preferences are very personal and derived from a very individual line of development.

Many posts here don't even try. Schnabel is the dog's bollocks rather than I rather like Schnabel's way of doing things.

Think you're beating a dead horse - or a dead pianist. If someone says Schnabel is their favorite playing a certain composer, that's all it means. At least that's how I take it. If I trust that poster's taste, I probably would take the post into consideration. Nothing more, nothing less. I've been led to some good music that way and sometimes to some music that didn't suit my tastes. For me, and I hope for some others here, that's how recommendations work.

I think you have a problem with a certain poster and you carry those problems to an extreme. Perhaps I'm wrong about that.

Edited September 6, 2013 by paul secor

[JSngry]

I was thinking about this today. I bought Mahler 9 in the Kubelik version in the early 70s. When CD came about I bought the Karajan CD version - purely to have a CD version without vinyl clicks and pops. Very happy with it except in one of the inner movements where Karajan seemed to speed up the tempo of one section (he may well have been honouring the score to the letter). It grated on me, based on my previous experience.

At a later stage I bought a DG Kubelik box. That's what I play now (because it relates to my experience of Mahler, not because I think it is a superior version) and I'm happy.

But maybe I should have taken the 3 movements I'm happy with in the Karajan and done an insert of the Kubelik movement I'm troubled by.

Wouldn't work, I'm pretty sure, because the whole ambiance of the two recordings would be so different.

But wellnow wait but - if the emphasis is to be, as has been posited earlier, on the composition itself, would not letting the recording ambiances take precedence over performance preferences be shifting the emphasis elsewhere? If you really want to hear the composition played to your preference, then I'd think that the adjustment to a different recording ambiance would be but a monetary concern, and then you're back into it.

I mean, 21st Century Hearing = Never Having To Say You're Always In One Place At The Same Time, as does some of Beethoven's harmonic choices. so, it's tight like that.

[A Lark Ascending]

No.

Do so if it does something you personally feel needs doing for your satisfaction.

********************************

I was thinking about this today. I bought Mahler 9 in the Kubelik version in the early 70s. When CD came about I bought the Karajan CD version - purely to have a CD version without vinyl clicks and pops. Very happy with it except in one of the inner movements where Karajan seemed to speed up the tempo of one section (he may well have been honouring the score to the letter). It grated on me, based on my previous experience.

At a later stage I bought a DG Kubelik box. That's what I play now (because it relates to my experience of Mahler, not because I think it is a superior version) and I'm happy.

But maybe I should have taken the 3 movements I'm happy with in the Karajan and done an insert of the Kubelik movement I'm troubled by.

Wouldn't work, I'm pretty sure, because the whole ambiance of the two recordings would be so different.

I agree that the quest for the perfect interpretation can become an obsession, but.... Here's a personal story. Some years ago I was shopping in Tower Records in Atlanta. I already had two or three different recordings of Barber's Adagio for Strings - not that I had sought them out; it just worked out that way. I walked into the classical room just as the Adagio started playing over the sound system. It was the Thomas Schippers/NY Phil. version, recorded for Columbia in 1965. I had an immediate, visceral reaction to the music, stronger than on past hearings of the piece. I didn't know who it was, and I wasn't analyzing the performance in any intellectual way. I was just standing there dumbstruck, with a lump in my throat, and (I'll admit) brushing away tears. Needless to say, they sold a CD that day. The Schippers Adagio remains a different, and more powerful, experience for me that any other version I've heard.

Apologies for a double quote.

I understand this totally. You are expressing the very particular experience you had with a particular recording at a particular point in your musical exploration. We all experience music differently - different recordings, different contexts etc.

The issue I have with the 'versions' bun fights is that the 'for me' is so often left out.

When someone makes a post, I assume that it's their opinion - unless it's a discographical fact or something similar. It would be redundant for each post to include something like "for me" in each post. Can't recall seeing "for me" in many of the opinions in your posts.

I actually try very hard to express my preferences as subjective. I strongly believe that our musical preferences are very personal and derived from a very individual line of development.

Many posts here don't even try. Schnabel is the dog's bollocks rather than I rather like Schnabel's way of doing things.

Think you're beating a dead horse - or a dead pianist. If someone says Schnabels is their favorite playing a certain composer, that's all it means. At least that's how I take it. If I trust that poster's taste, I probably would take the post into consideration. Nothing more, nothing less. I've been led to some good music that way and sometimes to some music that didn't suit my tastes. For me, and I hope for some others here, that's how recommendations work.

I think you have a problem with a certain poster and you carry those problems to an extreme. Perhaps I'm wrong about that.

If you are referring to Mr Nessa, I have a problem with his imperiousness on this site; but at the same time enormous admiration for the way he has stuck his neck out over the years for music that would otherwise have found no outlet. And the latter, in my mind, outweighs any boorishness here.

I'm more suspicious about the Schnabel idolatry. Mr Nessa has been living with that music for decades and I have no problem understanding his love of it. You strike me as someone with a lot of listening experience and I don't doubt the honesty of your response. Elsewhere...

I was thinking about this today. I bought Mahler 9 in the Kubelik version in the early 70s. When CD came about I bought the Karajan CD version - purely to have a CD version without vinyl clicks and pops. Very happy with it except in one of the inner movements where Karajan seemed to speed up the tempo of one section (he may well have been honouring the score to the letter). It grated on me, based on my previous experience.

At a later stage I bought a DG Kubelik box. That's what I play now (because it relates to my experience of Mahler, not because I think it is a superior version) and I'm happy.

But maybe I should have taken the 3 movements I'm happy with in the Karajan and done an insert of the Kubelik movement I'm troubled by.

Wouldn't work, I'm pretty sure, because the whole ambiance of the two recordings would be so different.

But wellnow wait but - if the emphasis is to be, as has been posited earlier, on the composition itself, would not letting the recording ambiances take precedence over performance preferences be shifting the emphasis elsewhere? If you really want to hear the composition played to your preference, then I'd think that the adjustment to a different recording ambiance would be but a monetary concern, and then you're back into it.

I mean, 21st Century Hearing = Never Having To Say You're Always In One Place At The Same Time, as does some of Beethoven's harmonic choices. so, it's tight like that.

You're talking Texan. Please translate.

[king ubu]

Okay, I'll take the bait one last time (even if it seems like I'm on a lark's ignore list) ... my deep fascination for Schnabel is honest and personal and has nothing to do with whatever I read. I've really not read anything much about classical music, just snippets here and there ... I don't have the time to read any magazines, let alone books. I rely on a few friends whose generosity in sharing their recommendations and their love for classical music has opened up an entire new world for me.

Maybe I'm entirely wrong or missing the boat or whatever ... but I feel pointed at by some of these posts (the Beethoven endeavour mentioned above, as it was just what I undertook a while ago ... but then I never preached about this or that being the best ... I'd also never say "Furtwängler Bayreuth 1951 is the best Beethoven ninth there is", I've not explored many recordings of that symphony yet, but Furtwängler's shook my innards, so to speak, touched me in a rare way ... and that - I know for myself, regardless of what others may think - was a genuine and to me personally, important experience.

But I'm outta here now, it feels weird to even try ...

[JSngry]

I was thinking about this today. I bought Mahler 9 in the Kubelik version in the early 70s. When CD came about I bought the Karajan CD version - purely to have a CD version without vinyl clicks and pops. Very happy with it except in one of the inner movements where Karajan seemed to speed up the tempo of one section (he may well have been honouring the score to the letter). It grated on me, based on my previous experience.

At a later stage I bought a DG Kubelik box. That's what I play now (because it relates to my experience of Mahler, not because I think it is a superior version) and I'm happy.

But maybe I should have taken the 3 movements I'm happy with in the Karajan and done an insert of the Kubelik movement I'm troubled by.

Wouldn't work, I'm pretty sure, because the whole ambiance of the two recordings would be so different.

But wellnow wait but - if the emphasis is to be, as has been posited earlier, on the composition itself, would not letting the recording ambiances take precedence over performance preferences be shifting the emphasis elsewhere? If you really want to hear the composition played to your preference, then I'd think that the adjustment to a different recording ambiance would be but a monetary concern, and then you're back into it.

I mean, 21st Century Hearing = Never Having To Say You're Always In One Place At The Same Time, as does some of Beethoven's harmonic choices. so, it's tight like that.

You're talking Texan. Please translate.

Nah, you've seen the score often enough. You're ready to interpret it now.

And Squire, Ubu, Rey/Roi/Roy, HEY - don't leave. Your enthusiasm is contagious, and your lack of pre-programmed expectations is welcome.

[king ubu]

I'm not going anywhere, just leaving this thread ... don't like crying up trees

[A Lark Ascending]

Just to clarify.

Beethoven String Quartets. Generally regarded by those in the know as one of the peaks of 'classical' music. I never approached those until ten or so years back. I've listened through maybe four times, sometimes becoming absorbed, at other times not getting it. But slowly the fog lifts, I'll keep going back and I'll not be at all surprised to find ten years from now that they are at the centre of my listening. I'm intrigued, want to know what is going on etc.

However, I'd be reluctant to start a thread on them. Because I know that very quickly it would become about versions - how many posts before someone would tell me I really ought to be listening to the Busch version. I just feel there's so much more to this music than comparing versions; online classical discussions (not just here, you should read the Gramophone site!) rarely venture much further.

But that's my way of seeing things. I'll shut up now.

Edit: There's an app doing the sort of thing I alluded to above with Liszt's Piano Sonata in B Minor - http://www.touchpress.com/titles/lisztsonata/ .

Edited September 7, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[JSngry]

Comparing "versions" is a pretty empty exercise if you don't know what's there in the first place. And an honest expression of enthusiasm is not a comparison, any more than a reading is an interpretation, any more than a hearing is an understanding, any more than an understanding is an Ultimate Final Answer. Music is not a building. A building can be "thought of" and "seen" in all sort of ways, but no matter how much you do so, at the end of the day, there sits the building, "interpreted" nowhere but in the mind (unless actual reconstruction/deconstruction/destruction is done on it, and the, hey, that's a lot of money, a lot of time, and really?).

Music can be freely taken apart and put back together in all//many/any kind of ways, and at the end of the day, how it is now done is how it is. But so is as it was done, and how it will be done. As well as how it is also being done.

Versions?

Like v.2.7 rev 13? In some worlds, perhaps, but not in mine, I should hope not! In the world of drafts, alternate takes, etc. yeah, ok. As a manufacturing consideration, yes, because that is how things get made. But most things get made to be used. The manufacturing is just the beginning of the life, not the end of it.

Comparing interpretations especially with music such as Beethoven's later work, is quite instructive, simply because there is much there that was "new", so much so that the whole matter of "what does this mean?", not simply in terms of "emotion", but in terms of basic music (so many places where "functional harmony" is all but temporarily obliterated) is still (STILL!) open to, yes, interpretation. These are not just great culminations of certain by-now fixed traditions, these are musical statements that answer questions that have not yet been asked, so to speak.

So, yes. the music ultimately does "speak for itself". But what it is saying is sometimes (always, if one chooses to be of a "remix" mindset, but let's stay in the 20th Century for the time being) open to interpretation (figuratively and literally), and a listener, player, orchestra, conductor, whatever, should be able to deal with that on its own terms.

And if not, oh well. It'll happen anyway.

[A Lark Ascending]

I said I'd shut up but I'm incapable of that.

I know I use hyperbole in my case against version-obsession. Of course there are differences, of course people have preferences and I'm sure, if your mind works that way, there's plenty to be learnt by comparing versions. My issue is the way that discussions - not just on this site but in general - so quickly become just about versions when there's so much else to talk about.

It's actually not the preference for one version over another that bothers me; it is the way that some listeners seem to focus on interpretations they've decided to dislike (all that Pollini/Uchida is rubbish nonsense [Yes, I know, freedom of speech, strong opinions etc...it's not what you have a right to say but what it's wise to say]). Especially when I see newer listeners voicing those same prejudices as if they've come up with them themselves (and believe me, I've seen that for decades). I noticed you posted that you were listening to the Emerson Quartet's Bartok cycle - apparently, according to orthodoxies here, the Emerson Quartet are beyond the pale because they are 'cold'. When love of music degenerates into bun fights like that I think it's sad. (I've never heard the Emerson Quartet version but those quartets are well worth pursuing - I've been at them 25 years plus and still only partly get them, but they keep pulling me back, Good lord, I've even got two versions of them!).

Yes, versions can affect your enjoyment of music. But I'd say a much more powerful factor is the context from where you are listening. That makes a lot of early 20thC English music a shoe-in for me where it might sound quaint, conservative or bland to others. Being aware of how your context can limit your enjoyment can also be instructive - it can empower you to try and get past those prejudices. Being aware that others hear differently can avoid you feeling ever so pleased with yourself about what you despise, inadvertently annoying those who really do enjoy those things.

Side comment: That Beethoven Nine app has apparently sold 500 000 copies. Whether it's because people want to understand the differences between the versions or the nature of the 9th would be interesting to know. I hope someone does one on the the quartets.

Edited September 8, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[JSngry]

Emerson is cool as shit. And they bring the heat too! "Cold", I dunno 'bout that. I can see that, but I can't hear it in the results. But what they find in that music is definitely there. Maybe they're a bit Glenn Gould-ish, they bring so much clarity that it's like WHOA, Not Sure That's What I Want for some (and I'm still "adjusting" to Gould...it might take forever). Fair enough. I've long known the Julliard versions, and what they found is not what Emerson found (not they they found new notes or anything, just how they "interpret" the "meaning" of those notes. And - at some point, I need to check out the Takács, because it seems they find something else yet in it. The Emerson is the version where I can hear the music most readily, but all that means is that now I can go back to the Julliard with fresh ears, and to the Takács (when I get to them) with even fresher ears.

It's not like there's only one "way" that this music "has" to be played, or that there's only one "meaning" to it. If viewed as a "work in time", yes. and of course, it is that. But as music that transcends all that...of course there is always the risk of re-contextualizing to the point of wholesale redefinition rather than illuminating previously unconsidered possibilities, but time does what it does, and I don't think that anybody has "gotten" this music to the point where that should be anything but an ultra-reactionary concern. But I could be wrong.

Same about later Beethoven - so much there to ponder (and what I said earlier about "changes", I was dead serious about that - yeah, themes, inversions, forms, and all that (and orchestration too), sure, but the harmonic movements, the changes (at times really just micro moments within a longer line), that is where you run into some serious WTF-isms, even today. The word "changes" might be construed as a "jazz" idea, but no, it might be a jazz word, but its a music idea).

All that just to say that I don't see why an attempted discussion of a Beethoven 9th "mix tape" gets construed as an invitation to a "versions" war. No way was that the intent. And the idea might have never taken off anyway, for any number of reasons (as in I don't know enough different interpretations to say or I like several very different interpretations but they wouldn't do with any one movement being extracted out of the unity of the whole, any number of reasons up to an including THAT IS NOT THE WAY TO THINK ABOUT MUSIC). But it never got that far.

I think it further reaffirms my long-standing impulse to not speak about "classical music" hardly at all, and even less often as specifically "classical music", because, you know, fuck "classical music". Not relevant to my lifestyle, and all that. It's a necessary evil to keep some truly great music being "heard", but it also creates an artificiality of importance. Importance is not Relevance (nor is Relevance Importance, but dammit when/where they intersect should be nurtured, not ignored and/or confused). Ain't but a little bit of anything really all that, you know?

But apart from that - I posit the Toscanini's 9th as the most Zawinul-esque - and therefore most "Austrian" - I've heard. I supposed in terms of "classical music" that's a ludicrously naive and/or idiotic backwards notion, but again, fuck "classical music".

[Teasing the Korean]

The Beatles ruined Beethoven's 9th for me. I will never be able to listen to it again.

I will never be able to listen to the Beatles again either, for that matter.

I'm through with both.

[A Lark Ascending]

I think it further reaffirms my long-standing impulse to not speak about "classical music" hardly at all, and even less often as specifically "classical music", because, you know, fuck "classical music". Not relevant to my lifestyle, and all that. It's a necessary evil to keep some truly great music being "heard", but it also creates an artificiality of importance.

Couldn't agree more. It's why I'm troubled by the term 'art'. Creates unnecessary segregation into 'classical music' (or my real pet hate phrase, 'serious music') and everything else; art and not-art. With the 'artificiality' of importance that goes along with that.

'Classical music' is a useful term for finding things in a record shop (or on a website) but like 'world music' or 'jazz' it can mean many things; and the definition overlooks all the interesting interconnections that take place across the genre boundaries.

[JSngry]

Furtwangler's "Wartime 9th" ('42, Berlin, Radio, To honor the fuher)...how much of what I'm hearing is my projections of the drama onto the music and how much of that drama is there if I don't know Furtwangler from Boston Strangler?