parterre box

119 comments

• Scaramuccio says:

  Fascinating, Mrs Claggart, thank you. It seems La Kosh went off the boil and on the booze; her musicality was unparalleled in the 1920s. Prokofiev writes about anticipating total trash when she sings a Lhitvinne arrangement of a Chopin Etude at a party, but melting. Anthony Phillips, who’s translated the revelatory Prokofiev diaries – everyone should read Vol. 2 – sent me the recording to show me why. It’s consummate. But the later RCA recordings are embarrassing.

  Rach was the greatest ever, in just about the entire repertoire. But we now have an entire new generation of thoughtful players – Lugansky, Hayroudinoff, Melnikov, Sudbin, Trpceski – who seem to be his equal and eclipse just about everyone who recorded before them.

  There, that’s hyperbole, and quite irrelevant to this thread, but you started it.

  on June 27, 2008 at 4:37 AM
• mrsjohnclaggart says:

  Scaramuccio what is your blog that others have mentioned? I can’t agree that Trpceski et al have ‘eclipsed’ my gods Rak, Joseph Lhévinne, the young and sometimes the older Hofmann, Lupatti, the insane Leopold Godowsky, Carl Friedberg, Ernst Levy, Arthur Loesser, Emil von Sauer, not to mention Bolet, Cherkassy (big gel you know), Arrau (gel but shy), Richter (very big gel but bi-polar) the very greatest, Yudina almost greater, Nikolaevna close to Richter, Neuhaus and Samuel Feinberg, dare we forget Cortot (early and sometimes late), Nat (Nazi you know but then wasn’t Cortot…?), my adored Maria Tipo and shall we not remember the greatest Wanda (Landowska) or that major gel Raoul Pugno? They had faces then. I am not sure of your generalization…

  on June 27, 2008 at 4:48 PM
• lottecrabtree says:

  Mrs. JC, thank you for mentioning Yudina, who I just discovered the other night on utube and wikipedya. She must have led a strange life in Stalinland, as she hated the regime and was Religious, but Josef loved her playing, and even tho she was banned from performing for long stretches she was not shot or gulaged.

  on June 27, 2008 at 6:49 PM
• Scaramuccio says:

  Sorry, Mrs C, I can’t believe I wrote that – I must have been thinking specifically about certain Rach works where I’d had to compare – and the latest did best in those instances. I did NOT mean, though it jolly well looks like it as I blush to read it, that the new boys done better than Richter, Yudina et al (though certain sacred old names, including the man you call that wild queen Horowitz, come off badly in direct comparison).

  My humble apologies – and indeed to La Cieca’s crew for temporarily swapping opera for pianists.

  on June 27, 2008 at 6:56 PM
• gryphone says:

  Kashania, for Bernstein’s 1960′s Mahler cycle, the 8th was recorded in London. NYPO still has not recorded a complete Mahler cycle commercially.

  on June 27, 2008 at 8:11 PM
• kashania says:

  Gryphone, thanks. Tubsinger made a reference to Bernstein re-recording a couple of them in London but I was a bit confused as to whether he recorded them with the NYP first. Did he use the London Symphony or London Phil?

  on June 27, 2008 at 11:51 PM
• Scaramuccio says:

  LSO for 2 and 8. 2 in Ely Cathedral was also very well filmed by Humphrey Burton, and is part of the Unitel cycle with the VPO predominating. So best seen as well as heard (the sound, of course, is not good on either), especially for the unsurpassable Dame Janet. But wait, I hear the wicked voice of the Vicar of Wakefield whispering ‘second rate’…

  Oh, and Mrs. C, I should spell it out that Richter is the real god not just for me but also for all of those young ‘uns.

  on June 28, 2008 at 3:54 AM
• tubsinger says:

  Not to belabor the point, but I think Bernstein recorded #2 in NY early on. I might even have it. I know I have the London recording. I just don’t recall the 8th being recorded in NY–just later in London. That’s why I thought my original recollection that the NYPO didn’t record the entire cycle with Lenny might have been correct.

  I even bought the laserdisc performance of the 2nd, and was disappointed to learn that it was the same performance on CD. But it’s almost worth it for Dame Janet’s bouffant and florid dress. I love her singing from that period; her portions of Mackerras’s Messiah are simply perfect to my ears. I love the Sea Pictures. She was fantastic in Scheherezade as well. By the time the late 70s rolled around, there was a beat in her voice that upset the line. I love Carolyn Watkinson, too–so I imagine the Vicar may write something wicked any time soon.

  I look forward to it, in fact.

  on June 28, 2008 at 1:53 PM
• Krunoslav says:

  Actually. “Logical” what you say does not follow logically. Mrs. Claggart was arguing that Disney;s anti-Semitism should be ACKNOWLEDGED. No one is in doubt or ( more to the point) denial about Pfitzner’s anti-Semitism.

  A call for recognizing a fault in a creative artist– when that fault is vociferously denied by many– does not constitute a call to “sandblast” that person as an artist.

  Only the true tribal primitive (say, a Cynthia Ozick, who nonetheless feels free to spew her hatred of Arabs and working class Catholics, or anEdward Rothstein) could believe that anti-Semitism made/makes one incapable of creating art, any more than did/does misogyny, homophobia ( a fault in many Rothstein idols), or other kinds of racial prejudice. Unless the art is intended as inflammatory against the object of the prejudice, a sophisticated person can make the distinction. It is sad to learn that Ives was a raging homophobe and Degas and anti-Dreyfusard ( and general creep) and that Liszt shared his Princess’s anti-Semitism . But it doesn’t affect their art. In the case of Disney, there are a few questionable cartoons on various racial grounds, but as far as I could tell Mme. Claggart was condemning his anti-Semitism ( and pro-Nazi bent– not so rare a thing, c.f. American heroes Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh)– and not his art ( or rather, the art he produced).

  on July 6, 2008 at 3:41 PM