What Classical Music Are You Listening To?

[A Lark Ascending]

Lovely contemporary record of chamber and piano music. 

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The following day:

Edited June 26, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[Balladeer]

Lara Downes - Exiles´ Cafe (Steinway and Sons)

[Peter Friedman]

Mozart - String Quintet K.174

Schubert - Five Piano Pieces D.459 & 459A

[A Lark Ascending]

[Peter Friedman]

Brahms - String Quartet No.1, Op.51/1

Beethoven - Symphony No.1

[JSngry]

Whoa, really good band, gotta find their Beethoven Late Quartets set at a decent price.

intersting to think of these guys playing film scores and pop records and then all going to Schoenberg's house to play his piece for him in hopes of getting him to write liner notes and then basically telling him to quit bitching, don't interrupt, shut up and let them play and then decide. Which he apparently agrees to do and then says, perfect, all good, you'll get you liner notes on Monday. And then, Eleanor Slatkin talking about how enjoyable it was to make Close To You with Sinatra because he knew what he wanted and was so musical about it, the impression is that this was a group that had an enthusiasm for making music in general and a passion for making great music wherever it was. And with daily schedules that were probably more than occasionally filled with commoness, instead of getting beat down by it, it apparently gave them the juice to go to Schoenberg'shouse and kick his ass  with his own music. To use a much overused word in its more original sense, that is pretty damn awesome.

And the Schubert just rocks. While simultaneously being quite nuanced. Delightful.

Hollywood! String Quartet! Hellagood!

[Mark Stryker]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Whoa, really good band, gotta find their Beethoven Late Quartets set at a decent price.

intersting to think of these guys playing film scores and pop records and then all going to Schoenberg's house to play his piece for him in hopes of getting him to write liner notes and then basically telling him to quit bitching, don't interrupt, shut up and let them play and then decide. Which he apparently agrees to do and then says, perfect, all good, you'll get you liner notes on Monday. And then, Eleanor Slatkin talking about how enjoyable it was to make Close To You with Sinatra because he knew what he wanted and was so musical about it, the impression is that this was a group that had an enthusiasm for making music in general and a passion for making great music wherever it was. And with daily schedules that were probably more than occasionally filled with commoness, instead of getting beat down by it, it apparently gave them the juice to go to Schoenberg'shouse and kick his ass  with his own music. To use a much overused word in its more original sense, that is pretty damn awesome.

And the Schubert just rocks. While simultaneously being quite nuanced. Delightful.

Hollywood! String Quartet! Hellagood!

Such a great, great quartet. Every single LP it made is worth having. I wish they made more ... The quartet was underrated in its day because of their studio day gigs and the "Hollywood" taint, and the fact that they didn't tour much . But there are times when I think it was equal to the Juilliard quartet -- certainly these were the two best American quartets of the era. In later years, their Capitol LPs were WAY out of print and were pretty much forgotten until some EMI reissues in the 80s and the Testament CDs in 90s, the latter of which sparked a revival/reassessment.  I've spoken to Leonard Slatkin a bit about the group -- Felix and Eleanor were his parents of course -- and he has great stories about various composers being at the house and "Uncle Frank" singing he and his brother to sleep ...

 

 

[alankin]

Ludwig van Beethoven 
– Sonata for Violin and Piano No.1 in D major Op.12/1
– Sonata for Violin and Piano No.2 in A major Op.12/2
– Sonata for Violin and Piano No.3 in E flat major Op.12/3
Gidon Kremer (violin), Martha Argerich (piano) (Deutsche Grammophon)

 
 

[Larry Kart]

4 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

Such a great, great quartet. Every single LP it made is worth having. I wish they made more ... The quartet was underrated in its day because of their studio day gigs and the "Hollywood" taint, and the fact that they didn't tour much . But there are times when I think it was equal to the Juilliard quartet -- certainly these were the two best American quartets of the era. In later years, their Capitol LPs were WAY out of print and were pretty much forgotten until some EMI reissues in the 80s and the Testament CDs in 90s, the latter of which sparked a revival/reassessment.  I've spoken to Leonard Slatkin a bit about the group -- Felix and Eleanor were his parents of course -- and he has great stories about various composers being at the house and "Uncle Frank" singing he and his brother to sleep ...

 

 

At one point a few years ago -- after my first wife died and after this woman's second husband died -- I had a brief, volatile relationship with a brilliant violinist (a onetime Heifetz pupil) whose father was Eleanor Slatkin's brother, Victor Aller, a brilliant pianist who recorded with the HSQ when they were recording works that called for a pianist and who also recorded on his own (he also was a major figure on the Hollywood film studio music scene). BTW, my former flame absolutely despised Leonard Slatkin, both as a musician and as human being. A woman of strong opinions, she was. Among other things, she claimed that her father coached the HSQ in many of  their interpretations. I suspect that there was some truth to that -- her anecdotes about this were fleshed out with much telling detail -- but it should also be said that she pretty much worshipped her late father and felt that the Slatkins, individually and collectively, failed to give him the credit that she thought he deserved.

[JSngry]

Wherever the credit deserves to be, there is credit to be given, I should think.  That Schubert is freaking frollicking!

And of course, an idea/interpretation is only as effective as its execution. Whatever ideas Aller may or may not have given, they did not seem to be foreign to anybody's gut instincts.

OTOH, Hollywood.

[Peter Friedman]

Bruckner - Symphony No.4

[Mark Stryker]

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

At one point a few years ago -- after my first wife died and after this woman's second husband died -- I had a brief, volatile relationship with a brilliant violinist (a onetime Heifetz pupil) whose father was Eleanor Slatkin's brother, Victor Aller, a brilliant pianist who recorded with the HSQ when they were recording works that called for a pianist and who also recorded on his own (he also was a major figure on the Hollywood film studio music scene). BTW, my former flame absolutely despised Leonard Slatkin, both as a musician and as human being. A woman of strong opinions, she was. Among other things, she claimed that her father coached the HSQ in many of  their interpretations. I suspect that there was some truth to that -- her anecdotes about this were fleshed out with much telling detail -- but it should also be said that she pretty much worshipped her late father and felt that the Slatkins, individually and collectively, failed to give him the credit that she thought he deserved.

Families are complicated.

[Larry Kart]

Victor Aller (March 26, 1905, New York City – May 1977, in the area of Los Angeles, California) was an American pianist.

He had a successful career behind the scenes in the film industry, and he taught piano in Hollywood, where his students sometimes included actors preparing to depict musicians on screen, such as Dirk Bogarde and Cornel Wilde. His present fame, however, rests primarily on his performances in acclaimed 1950s-vintage Capitol Records recordings with the Hollywood String Quartet, including accounts of piano quintets by Johannes Brahms, César Franck, and Dmitri Shostakovich, and the Brahms piano quartets.

Aller had family and professional ties to the quartet. His sister, Eleanor Aller, was its cellist, and her husband, Felix Slatkin, was its first violinist. They and the other quartet members were all musicians with the Hollywood studios of the era, and Victor Aller was the orchestra manager at Warner Bros. during the 1940s; by 1949, his hourly earnings amounted to $19.95 according to company records. Aller was married to violinist Ester Heller whom he met while both were attending Juilliard.

A Warner film in which Victor Aller had direct input was The Beast with Five Fingers. Mr. Aller made a piano arrangement for the left hand of the Chaconne from J. S Bach's Violin Partita in D minor, and, according to a press release, he spent 200 hours training actor Victor Francen in proper technique. Victor Aller's hand was used when the hand plays the piano in the film. Victor sat underneath the piano, wearing black velvet on his arm, so that the hand appeared disembodied. For Song Without End Victor provided technical instruction to Dirk Bogarde, who played the leading role of Franz Liszt.

Aller's musical heritage lives on with relatives in succeeding generations. His daughter is concert violinist Judith Aller, a student of Jascha Heifetz; his nephew, son of Felix Slatkin and Eleanor Aller, is noted American orchestra conductor Leonard Slatkin. Leonard's brother, Frederick Zlotkin, an outstanding cellist, is the principal solo cello of the New York City Ballet, and a member of the Lyric Piano Quartet.

References[edit]

Library of Congress authority record citing birth and death dates [1]

Neil Lerner, Music’s Role in Hollywood’s Social Erasure of the Disabled Body: Two Case Studies ( Kings Row and The Beast with Five Fingers ) Archived November 20, 2004, at the Wayback Machine.

Judith Aller biographical Web site [2]

Chicago Quarterly Review: Vol 15 The Beast with Five Fingers [3]

P.S. If you remain curious, go to Victor Aller's Wikipedia site and click on the link to his daughter's memoir  of him "The Beast With Five Fingers"  in the Chicago Quarterly Review, which then can be read using the "Look inside" feature on Amazon. It's quite a story, and she is quite a writer.

[Chuck Nessa]

2 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

Families are complicated.

As are music critics.

 

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Chuck Nessa said:

As are music critics.

 

As are record producers.

 

A particular Victor Aller gem is this recording of Hindemith's "The Four Temperaments" and Shostakovich's Concerto for Piano and Trumpet:

https://www.amazon.com/Victor-Aller-Shostakovichâ-Hindemith-record/dp/B00Q519D8I/ref=sr_1_5?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1466982488&sr=1-5&keywords=victor+aller

The trumpeter is none other than Mannie Klien. 

[alankin]

Ludwig van Beethoven 
– Concerto for Piano No.1 in C major Op.15
– Concerto for Piano No.2 in B flat major Op.19
Martha Argerich (piano) – Philharmonia Orchestra – Giuseppe Sinopoli (Deutsche Grammophon)

    
 

[alankin]

2 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

A particular Victor Aller gem is this recording of Hindemith's "The Four Temperaments" and Shostakovich's Concerto for Piano and Trumpet:

https://www.amazon.com/Victor-Aller-Shostakovichâ-Hindemith-record/dp/B00Q519D8I/ref=sr_1_5?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1466982488&sr=1-5&keywords=victor+aller

The trumpeter is none other than Mannie Klien. 

I'd love to hear this.  It looks like it's on CD from Naxos but not available in the US.   In addition to Mannie Klein's well-known jazz work, my wife tells me that he was a great Klezmer player.

[Peter Friedman]

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, alankin said:

I'd love to hear this.  It looks like it's on CD from Naxos but not available in the US.   In addition to Mannie Klein's well-known jazz work, my wife tells me that he was a great Klezmer player.

Here's Aller playing the Schumann Piano Quintet with the Hollywood String Quartet:
 

 

[Mark Stryker]

4 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

As are music critics.

 

No argument here, though I would note that some music critics are more complicated than others.

[JSngry]

I want a HSQ Mosaic. Hell, start a subsidiary, call it Mosaique Classique or some shit, whatever. It's all still EMI,  right?

Oh wait, they sold all that shit, didn't they. Damn. 

Ok, that's complicated. Business is complicated. Folks just be folks.

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

I want a HSQ Mosaic. Hell, start a subsidiary, call it Mosaique Classique or some shit, whatever. It's all still EMI,  right?

Oh wait, they sold all that shit, didn't they. Damn. 

Ok, that's complicated. Business is complicated. Folks just be folks.

Everything the HSQ recorded has been reissued on Testament and can be found on Amazon, though some items are pricey.

The Judith Aller Quartet's recording of the Debussy String Quartet can be found on Spotify and You Tube. It's not only the best performance I know but also, so I feel, a revelation of the work's true art nouveau spirit. The music sounds like it's made of actively intertwining vines.

[JSngry]

Yeah, pricey. Not looking for pricey right now. I mean, really, they got them big as legit maxo-boxes for tree-fitty, just sayinggggg.....At those prices, right now, that's a dabble. From what I heard, a little dabble won't du ya',

[A Lark Ascending]

Edited June 27, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[soulpope]

9 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Here's Aller playing the Schumann Piano Quintet with the Hollywood String Quartet:
 

 

Do consider the Hollywood String 4tet with Aller performing Brahms Piano 4tets/5tets - assembled together with this Schumann on a Testament ⚂ CD-Set - being a mandatory purchase ....