Enjoy more than 3,500 videos featuring critic David Hurwitz, founder and Executive Editor of ClassicsToday.com, covering the best and worst classical music recordings, as well as commentary and discussion of all things classical. This is classical music for pleasure, without the usual snobbery and "high culture" BS. Check out conveniently organized playlists for beginners and aficionados alike, grouping videos by composer, work type, ideal recording lists, historical period--everything you need to enrich your knowledge, satisfy your curiosity and have a great time listening.
A music critic for more than three decades, David Hurwitz holds MA degrees from Johns Hopkins and Stanford Universities. Hurwitz is the author of more than a dozen books on composers such as Mozart, Mahler, Sibelius, Haydn, Dvorák, Brahms, Beethoven, Shostakovich, R. Strauss Bernstein, Handel, C.P.E. Bach, and Mendelssohn. His musicological articles have been published in noted scholarly journals as well.
I had a CD of Lovro Von Matacic and the Czech Philharmonic performing Eroica that sounded wonderful -- both in sound quality and performance. It was in stereo and dated from 1959. I had the original Urania recording which has gone missing for several years (I still have the jewel box but not the CD), I just purchased a Suraphon recording of the same performance coupled with Korte's Flute Stroy since the Urania CD is impossible to find. BTW I always liked my Furtwanger/Vienna recording of Eroica recorded in the Musikverein on September 26 & 27 1953, It is an old Japanese EMI recording (it says the digitization was done in 1984) that must be one of the first discs I purchased. The sound quality is superb, and now I don't have to feel brainwashed about liking Furtwangler's Beethoven.
Thank you for the review, Shostakovich 14 is such a fun piece to listen to, it's unfortunate that this performance is not very impressive. And that Rostropovich recording is indeed by far the most dramatic and powerful! By the way I saw that Australian Eloquence are releasing a two volume Josef Krips edition and it looks quite interesting. Are you planning to cover it and do you think it's worth getting?
I love these performances. I wanted to offer some thoughts about their reference status. Musical criticism, at least initially, has given both Chailly's cycle and Rattle's cycle similar immediate acclaim. Chailly's in particular seems to be a firm recommendation in many quarters, despite you finding it less than ideal. However, as time has worn on, the consistent availability and name cachet of the Abbado cycle has ensured its place among the significant cycles, while it seems to be consistently recommended from a wide variety of sources in "best of" lists. Meanwhile, the Rattle cycle seems to have fallen by the wayside, and the Chailly is increasingly seen as a "modern" outlook on the works that may not appeal as the one and only cycle to have. I don't know if this is also your view, or if I have characterised the situation correctly or not.
He was always one of my favorite conductors. I heard him often at Tanglewood when I was a teen and immediately appreciated the clarity of his interpretations and the refinement of the playing he achieved. I much preferred the beautiful string sound he always found to the rather scrappy and occasionally crude sound of the New York Philhharmonic strings under Bernstein. When Leinsdorf conducted Mahler 5 on tour with the New York Phil (in Detroit), it was the best I had ever heard the band sound. And the performance was the closest to Bruno Walter's recording (my favorite, alongside Leinsdorf.) Of course, he Met performances were world-class in every way. When I met him at Tanglewood, he was kind and happy to answer my questions. (The circumstances were funny - I was listening to a rehearsal of the - dare I say - appalling Barenboim rehearsing Beethoven. I didn't realise that Leinsdorf was standing behind me tilll he said - rather disappointing isn't it? We stayed in touch via letters for years. Before the end of his life, we had planned to recorded Stravinsky's Persephone (with Candace Bergen as narrator) but his health precluded us making the project. Not that it matters as you rightly say, I love his Boston recordings. Brahms 2 ranks with the best, for example.
Interesting coming to this video after I just played the 5th with Stenz this past weekend. He was wonderful, into big gestures and not weighed gown by detail. But I’m scarred by his tempo in the Finale!
The one I thought would be a shoe-in did not get a mention: Chailly in Leipzig. What a turnaround that was from the things he did in Amsterdam! Never mind that I detested the bits I heard (it's not about me) but this was big when it came out, and as I remember pretty much exactly in the vein you look for in "new references". I believe it stayed in the catalogue for longer than these things usually get too. Days, even.
There exist Brahms recordings by at least three conductors who actually knew him: Felix Weingartner, Max Fiedler and Julius Prüwer. None of them sound like the period-instrument crowd doing Brahms's music.
Big time congrats, David! You’ve put the classical world on a higher plateau than any else has. Thank you for making us classical lovers feel more relevant in main stream society. ☺️
Thank you. I ordered the box on the basis of your review having grown up with the idea he was the best of the second-tier conductors. I was stunned and enthralled by what I heard. I loved the box so much that I immediately ordered the Legacy box even before listening to your (lengthy) review. There were giants in those days, and Ormandy was indispensably one.
Thank you for 4 wonderful years of enlightenment in the realm of "classical" music. I just wish this type of programming had existed 40 years ago as I struggled through undergraduate and graduate musicology, during which prejudiced 2nd generation music history professors spewed such crap that non-Germanic music was not "worthy" of musicological research! Even my "esteemed" dissertation adviser ridiculed my research choice of Puccini (and the other post-Verdi Italian composers). "Why would anyone want to research on such 2nd rate musical claptrap?" Thank you for validating my musical taste from all those years ago!
I agree this is an amazing set. I just wish the recoded sound wasn’t so reverberant. You lose a bit of clarity. I bought this set after I listened to Abbado’s Academic Festival Overture. But when I played the others, I remember being bitterly disappointed by how mushy and blurry the textures were. Sure enough, the Academic Festival Overture was recorded earliest of all in a different venue. I forget where. But the rest were recorded later in the Philharmonie I believe. Anyway, I still put up with it and sort of got used to it. I do love the interpretations. I love that Abbado doesn’t take the exposition repeat in the first. And he plays it fast. He also doesn’t do much speeding up in the coda of the second symphony. I think it is even more exciting than versions that do speed up. Which defies logic. And the couplings are fantastic. I do think this is the highest quality Brahms but just wish they recorded it in a less reverberant venue.
Excellent book along with Galina. Bing treated Varnay shabbily, but she was in good company because he also dissed Hans Hotter. But her 1955 Met broadcast Isolde under Kempe is mandatory listening.
What I fail to understand is why SONY would hurt it's own bottom line. They refuse to release many recordings in the US. The only ones making money on these recordings are the Japanese dealers, who charge extremely inflated prices to anyone living in the US. I recently paid $45 for a recording that sells for $8 in Japan. I'm really tired of this crap. Also, SONY was the co-inventor of multi-channel discs (SACDs) and all of these recordings they are releasing were recorded originally in multi-channel, but they release them only in Stereo. What sense does this make? People will gladly pay more for an SACD, but they don't release them as such. Ten years ago, I remember paying $90 for the Bernstein Mahler 3 to complete my collection. Ridiculous!
Sony has been a disaster. I was a convert to SACD multichannel and then Sony screamed it up. I bought the Sony SCD-1 player at great cost. Last couple of years Sony is playing around with another multichannel system which includes height channels. Sony can't be trusted.
I really enjoyed your Brahms Sym. 1 review, and especially your words about connections between Brahms and Dvorak. I also enjoyed your choices, and I would like to share one more: Carlos Paita's stirring Brahms 1 on Lodia. I find his rendition with the National Symphony Orchestra to be majestic, dramatic and also warm and lyrical. Great brass, powerful timpani, especially in the final movement. A really triumphant and also heartfelt performance.
Happy 4th year of fun and fascinating videos. Do carry on Dave with more classical music goodness. And I have enjoyed revisiting many of these. Much thanks!
To me, his finest work was there and in London. Prokofiev, Mendelssohn, Mahler, Ravel. I heard him get results there that I did not hear again in his Beethoven, or indeed in any of his later work.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I view Amazon from Australia. They must simply block stuff they won't send here. The only copy I see is AUD159!!! Similarly Wand's beethoven cycle is listed as AUD333!!
As a fan of psychedelic, prog rock and complex electronic music, Bach is now a revelation for me. I can't stop listening. Loved Bartok, Stravinsky, Ives, Debussy, but not as much as him.
Thanks for the recommendation - I just ordered it in its original 1997 edition in German. For only 5 Euros! BTW, while she may not have been that well known in the US, she was certainly a huge star and always a presence in Europe!
Congratulations, Dave! Thank you so much for being an important part of my day, every day. It is one of the joys of my retirement. Please take care and keep these videos coming.
I didn't hear either of Levin's cycles until watching your video on the cycles but both are in my top five Brahms cycles. Each time I listen, there's that awful context and I don't know if that will ever fade for me. In fact, there are a lot of Levine recordings I find remarkable. Abbado's Berlin cycle is spectacular and understandably is the reference. Of course, I also love the Mackerras cycle on Telarc.
I recently re-read Gary Graffman's memoir, "I Really Should Be Practicing". I think he wrote it when his right hand stopped behaving. That was a long time ago, but it's still warm, funny, and well worth anybody's time. He talks about being one of the OYAPs--Outstanding Young American Pianists (I think he and his friends came up with the acronym). On just about every page, he makes it clear how much of his career depended on the loving help of his wife, Naomi. i'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in what makes a great music career possible.
Hello Dave, I completely agree with everything you say about Abbado and Brahms-how well suited his approach of “sweating the details” (as you put it in your Brahms cycle video) is for Brahms. The only difference was that some of the first recordings I ever heard of his were his London Mendelssohn cycle (which is also great) and this Brahms cycle, so I’ve been an Abbado fan ever since! I also like at least one of his Verdi Requiems. I also remember hearing an amazing Dvorak tone poem on the radio many years ago (I don’t remember which one). So maybe it’s just the fact that the repertoire I’m most interested in finds him at his best? Perhaps at some point I will hear the “patchiness” you describe but so far have not encountered it very much, except perhaps in some of his Mahler, which I was expecting to like more than I did. Anyway, I think you are absolutely spot on about the Brahms. It really is the new benchmark. And I’m always grateful for your advocacy of the Levine cycles-I prefer the Vienna because of the orchestra’s passionate and voluptuous sound. I did not know them until you mentioned them and I’ve enjoyed them ever since-especially Vienna. But Abbado with the great choral couplings and Berlin is just so good. I guess for me a great Brahms and Mendelssohn (not to mention his Schubert) conductor is a great conductor! maybe not as versatile as some?
I was intrigued by the Tabakov set and found them on Apple Music and ALSO found his own symphonies. Check them out. Interesting. I like the Bulgarian Dances on volume 1.
