Whiskers on mittens: A few of my "classical" favorite thingsFeb 08 '07 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line For composers, Bach; for performers, Heifetz My "classical music" favorites include Johann Sebastian Bach organ music: I've never heard a Bach composition for organ that I don't like. My favorites are two that I used to play: "Komm susser tod" (Come soothing death) and the Passagalica and Fugue in C Minor. I grew up with a Carl Weinreich recording of the latter. And the recording of the "Saint Matthew's Passion" helmsed by Otto Klemperer. And Jascha Heifetz and Erik Friedman playing the double violin concerto (rather better than I and a friend did in high school). Bela Bartok: I learned to play piano (unfortunately, I had a promising future already behind me in third grade) primarily with compositions by Bach and Bartok. (And for a long time, I was skeptical of music composed in the centuries between them, though earlier and later music appealed to me.) I most love the climactic door opening in "Bluebeard's Castle" (sung by Christa Ludwig). My favorite is the second piano concerto, "The Wooden Castle" or "Music for Strings, Celesta and Percussion," depending on which I've heard most recently. Johannes Brahms: In the period (adolescent priggishness) in which there was hardly anything between Bach and Bartok that I liked, I made exceptions for the standard violin concerti: Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch, Mendelsohn, Tchaikowski, all played by Heifetz, though my first recording of the Brahms violin concerto was played by Zino Franscetti (with Bruno Walters conducting, if I correctly recall). I heard a very sunny performance of the Brahms violin concerto last Friday (Christian Teztlaff, the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson-Thomas). One of the most memorable live performances of anything I've ever hard was the Czech Philharmonic, conducted in Prague by Erik Leinsdorf playing Brahms's Fourth Symphony, but my favorite Brahms has to be the "German Requiem," which I play repeatedly when I'm sick enough to stay in bed. Georg Friedrich Handel: As for Bach, I've never heard a Handel organ concerto that I don't like. My favorite Handel is the first Coronation Anthem (Zardok, the Priest), followed by "Israel in Egypt." I like what was my mother's favorite, the "Surely" chorus from "The Messiah." I was playing "The Messiah" in a semi-doze at her death vigil. There is some frightening music in "The Messiah" (the second, "Easter" half), but the soundtrack of her death was very appropriate for a believer like her, "He Shall Feed His Flock." Wolfgang Mozart: I love the Queen of Knight arias from "The Magic Flute," the first half of the Requiem, the last 20 minutes of "Don Giovanni," the ensemble from "Cosi," the 39th Symphony, many of the concert arias sung by Gundula Janowitz or Margaret Price, etc., but my absolute favorite is the "Laudate Dominum" from the Versperae solennes de confessore, KV 339, sung by Nicolai Gedda (with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, conducted by Eugen Jochum). Sergei Prokofiev: I love both violin concerti (Heifetz only recorded the second; I'll go with Maxim Vengerov for the first). If not them, the Seventh Symphony and "Romeo and Juliet." Something of a guilty pleasure is Jean Sibelius's Second Symphony (my head says that it is bombastic, but the brass short-circuit my head when I hear it live or play the Cleveland/Szell recording of it l-o-u-d. My favorite Sibelius, however, is his violin concerto, with its beautiful slow movement and its fiendishly difficult final movement. Heifetz took it in stride. One of the most exciting live performances I've ever heard was Elmar Olivares playing it somewhat faster than he really could. What was exciting was knowing that he was at his edge and at any moment could go out of control. I also heard Vengerov break a string playing the first movement and play the last half of the movement on three strings. The only Richard Strauss opera I really like is the opera seria embedded within "Ariadne aux Naxos" (preferably with Jessye Norman in the cave), though parts of the undramatic "Capriccio" are gorgeous. But my favorite is the Jessye Norman recording of the "Four Last Songs," particularly the last three, and some other shimmering music for soprano and orchestra. I feel that I should reach far into the alphabet for something recondite by Xenaxis or Zemlinsky, but will only go up to Edgar Varese. I discovered his rambunctious experiments in the James Madison College library. I think the compilation disc was conducted by Leonard Bernstein. The CDs I have is conducted by Kent Nagano. And on it my favorite? Arcana or rIntegrales, I think. (OK, I play Vaughan Williams's Sinfonia Antarctica more often, but have to have something less conventional on my list, alright?) I really like the Virgil Thompson opera with a libretto by Gertrude Stein, "Four Saints in Three Acts" and Thompson's film scores, though my opera favorites are bel canto, particularly Rossini's "Barber of Seville" and "William Tell" and Bellini's "I Puritani." And when light bursts forth in Haydn's "The Creation" and the Mahler Second ("Resurrection") Symphony... and when the chorus finally gets to sing in Schoenberg's "Gurrelieder," the finale of Beethoven's "Fidelio," and, and, and... --- I wanted to write my contribution for CaptainD's writeoff without looking at my CD shelves. I wanted to list what came to mind without any systematic survey (what my freshman roommate used to call "on the sperm of the moment" even with decreased motility...) I have dispenses with diacritics, too. In that these projective test results are filed under "performers," it should be clear that my favorite is the God of the violin, Jascha Heifetz. It also provides further evidence of my veneration of conductor Otto Klemperer (the king of Beethoven performers, among other excellences). "Classical" is in quotation marks, because I consider "classical" the period of Haydn and Mozart, though well aware of the contrast at a higher level so that it also encompasses Baroque (and earlier), Romantic, Modernist, and postmodernist (for the last of these, there are the tenor arias from Philip Glass's opera sung in Sanskrit, "Satyaghara" and "Facades" from "Glassworks").  |
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