What Classical Music Are You Listening To?

[Peter Friedman]

Dvorak - String Quartet No.9, Op.34

Mozart - Piano Concerto No.12, K.414

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[Peter Friedman]

K.464 and K.465 "Dissonance"

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[Peter Friedman]

Piano Concerto No.2

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[Peter Friedman]

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[Larry Kart]

On 2/17/2018 at 4:57 PM, Larry Kart said:

 

Five Pieces for Orch. arranged by Webern, Chamber Symphonies arranged by AS himself.

P.S. The album in the middle here, by an Italian piano duo, includes the the same works as the album on top, by the Prague Piano Duo, except that the arrangement of Op. 9 is not by AS but the previously unperformed one done at AS's request by Alban Berg. Berg  took a long time over the task, wasn't satisfied by what he had done and/or by how the pianists (one of them Rudolf Serkin) played it in rehearsal for its premiere and cancelled the performance, after which his arrangement remained unplayed. I've ordered that album out of curiosity.

The Schoenberg arrangement of Op. 9 is kind of dry, like an X-ray of the piece; I would guess that his intent was to clarify the work's structure, not to attempt to capture its instrumental colors on the keyboard. The Berg arrangement is said to be demandingly virtuosic and probably tries to do what AS's arrangement did not attempt.

Also, the Webern arrangement of Five Pieces Op. 16 is fantastic -- a major work in its own right. Webern more or less invents new sorts of piano writing to reflect/capture the unprecedented nature of AS's orchestral writing.

I now have listened to Berg's arrangement of AS' Op. 9 from the second disc mentioned above, which arrived the other day. Fascinating its own right, it could hardly be more different than AS' own four-hands arrangement. In AS' arrangement for the most part there is a clear differentiation between treble and bass information/figures (or right hand versus left hand figures if one were talking about a single pianist rather than, as is the case, two players on one keyboard). In Berg's arrangement for the most part the music seems to be flowing from and through. at times thrashing about in, a single central pool, with numerous attempts (if one knows the work in its original 13-instrument form) to evoke instrumental timbres. 

Of course, I'm  not only responding to two different arrangements of the same instrumental piece but to two different interpretations -- one of AS' s arrangement, one of Berg's  -- which at times complicates matters considerably. For instance, toward at the end of the section that Berg (in his analysis of the piece) calls the development, the Italian team is rhythmically very turbulent/agitated, "thick" and "juicy,"  while the Prague Duo's performance of that portion of the work is significantly less turbulent  and not highly colored, more black and white,  like an etching. But is this a matter of interpretation or of Berg's  approach as an arranger versus Schoenberg's? At the moment, I like both recordings of this portion of the work -- swings and roundabouts as they say in Great Britain. 

Likewise different in the two arrangements/two recordings is the utterly magical beginning of the slow movement, with its rising/hovering terraces of woodwind tremolos. I prefer the Prague Duo/AS arrangement here (assuming, as I feel I can here, that  their interpretation and AS' arrangement are pretty much one); the gestures, more isolated/stripped down than those of the Berg arrangement, are as magical as they are in a good performance of the original work; while the somewhat more filled out/romantic approach of the Berg arrangement ... well, its tremolos here are faintly reminiscent of the accompaniment to a silent movie. Again, though, is this Berg's doing primarily, or is it a function of the Italian duo's  more juicy interpretative approach? In any case, I'm happy to have both recordings. 
 

[Peter Friedman]

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[Peter Friedman]

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[Peter Friedman]

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[Peter Friedman]

Stern - Mozart Violin Concerto No.1

Oistrakh/Rostropovich - Brahms Double Concerto

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[Peter Friedman]

Haydn - Op.9/4

Dvorak - No.10, Op.51

[Peter Friedman]

Brahms - Violin Sonata No.2, Op.100

Mozart - Symphony No.39

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44 minutes ago, Peter Friedman said:

Mozart - Symphony No.39

Very good indeed ....

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[Chuck Nessa]

A vinyl of this -

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