Brahms-Schoenberg: Piano Quartet

Johannes Brahms: Piano Quartet in g, op. 25, as orchestrated by Arnold Schoenberg
Allegro
Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo
Andante con moto
Rondo all’Zingarese: Presto

Los Angeles Philharmonic
Simon Rattle, conductor

Schoenberg’s orchestration of Brahms’s chamber work exaggerates the inherent romanticism, filling the piece with denser harmonies and stranger timbres. Rattle manages not only to keep the piece from becoming slapstick but also brings out melodies hidden among the many instruments.

aircheck 27 February 1983, 1300–1400h, KUSC-FM Los Angeles
(Por si la palabra «aircheck» no se traduce bien, sabed que significa una grabación sacada de la radio, a veces de un evento difundido en vivo, más comúnmente de un evento grabado en vivo para emitirse otro día. De costumbre los airchecks se identifican por las siglas de la radiodifusora y la fecha de emisión.)


Rattle conducts the Brahms-Schoenberg
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Richard Wagner: Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey (Götterdämmerung)

Minnesota Orchestra
Neville Marriner, conductor

This performace dates from when Marriner, as the music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, began venturing deeply into Romantic repertoire. The precision and moderation that made his reputation with Baroque and Classical pieces work surprisingly well with Wagner.

aircheck 20 February 1983, 1330–1400h, KUSC-FM Los Angeles
(Por si la palabra «aircheck» no se traduce bien, sabed que significa una grabación sacada de la radio, a veces de un evento difundido en vivo, más comúnmente de un evento grabado en vivo para emitirse otro día. De costumbre los airchecks se identifican por las siglas de la radiodifusora y la fecha de emisión.)


Wagner by Marriner
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The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, live 1982

The Emerson Quartet
Walter Trampler, second viola

Wolfgang Mozart: String Quintet in g, K. 516
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet in C, op. 59/3, “Rasumovsky”
George Crumb: Vox balaenae (Voice of the Whale)

For many decades now, the CMSLC has been a somewhat fluid group of musicians, originally all members of the New York Philharmonic, that the Lincoln Center draws from each season to perform chamber works involving a wide range of instruments. This evening, most likely from the 1982 season, assembled five strings, a flute, and a piano to present one piece each from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, all surprisingly well suited to each other.

aircheck 27 April 1983 2100h KUSC-FM, Los Angeles
(Por si la palabra «aircheck» no se traduce bien, sabed que significa una grabación sacada de la radio, a veces de un evento difundido en vivo, más comúnmente de un evento grabado en vivo para emitirse otro día. De costumbre los airchecks se identifican por las siglas de la radiodifusora y la fecha de emisión.)


Emerson Quartet at Lincoln Center
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Claudio Arrau in recital 15 August 1982

Beethoven: Sonata in E-flat major, op. 81a, "Les Adieux"
Liszt: Sonata in b minor
Beethoven: Sonata in f minor, op. 57, "Appassionata"
Liszt: Après un lecture de Dante (Fantasia quasi Sonata)

Arrau claimed direct musical descent from Liszt and Beethoven, for whose works his rich, powerful sound was ideally suited. This program was selected to show off that relationship. Recorded live at the Salzburger Große Festspielhaus in Austria as the fourth recital of the Salzburg Festival 1982.

Claudio Arrau in recital 15 August 1982
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Claudio Arrau plays Beethoven: Sontas #3 and #8 ("Pathétique")

Sonata #3 for piano in C, op. 2/3
Sonata #8 for piano in c, op. 13, "Pathétique"

Digitally mastered, 1987. Arrau recorded the Beethoven sonatas several times throughout his life. He lived long enough so that his final recordings took advantage of the new digital technology. From his old age, Arrau left us with the insight that one of Beethoven's earliest and overlooked works can be every bit as interesting as the most famous nicknamed sonatas.

Arrau Beethoven 3 and 8
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Ilana Vered plays Chopin

Sonata #3 in b, op. 58
Nocturne in f, op. 55/1
Ballade #4 in f, op. 52
Valse in a, op. 34/2
Polonaise in A, op. 40/1, "Militaire"
Mazurka in a, op. 17/4
Mazurka in B-flat, op. 7/1

One of Vered's earliest commercial recordings, this was released in 1974 on London "Phase 4" and established Chopin as her specialty.

Vered plays Chopin
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Halleluja: The Portsmouth Sinfonia at the Royal Albert Hall (1974)

Self-described as the world's worst orchestra and often mentioned in the same breath as Florence Foster Jenkins, the Portsmouth Sinfonia was an exercise in musical Dada that ran from 1970 to 1980. Its members were students at the Portsmouth College of Art whose idea was to democratize classical music by taking it away from the "tuxedo Nazis" and putting it in the hands of people with little or no experience on the instrument they were playing. For a few examples, Gavin Bryars played cello, Brian Eno played clarinet, and Michael Nyman played euphonium in the Sinfonia.

The Sinfonia was not so much a camp joke as it was a satire on the commercialized stuffiness of the Royal Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra. Its members attended rehearsals regularly, approached their performances seriously - and accepted wrong notes proudly as just a part of life. When the copyright administrator for Also sprach Zarathustra refused to let the Sinfonia release their performance of the work, complaining that they had made changes to it, their manager offered that "it wasn't intentional, but happened more as a result of incompetence". And when the BBC refused to let them perform in their Promenade Concerts, which were supposed to make classical music accessible to the masses, the Sinfonia rented the Royal Albert Hall themselves and performed to a sold-out audience.

So the Portsmouth Sinfonia's second LP comes to us courtesy of the BBC's stuffiness. It was recorded live on 28 May 1974 and contains seven earnestly performed and almost recognizable works by Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Schubert, Rossini, and Handel.

These MP3s were made from the LP using NCH Software's Golden Records analogue-to-digital ripper. Its filters for normalization (to render Mr Bond's comments audible) and click/pop reduction (to remove much of the surface noise) were applied.

Portsmouth Sinfonia at Royal Albert Hall
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Ilana Vered plays Waldstein and The Wanderer

Beethoven: Piano Sonata in C, op. 53, "Waldstein"
Schubert: Fantasy in C, D. 760, "The Wanderer"

Vared is an Israeli pianist (born 1943) who was active primarily in the 1970s, recording for a number of labels including Connoisseur Society and Decca. This particular recording was made in 1978 for the London "Phase 4" series.

Ilana Vered: Beethoven and Schubert
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