Nikolaus Harnoncourt's 5 Worst Recordings 

Whatever his faults and virtues, his Bach Cantata cycle was something! His Cantata 105 is so hot you expect the CD to burst into flame.

The Young People s concerts on PBS TV were to die for.I learned so much about classical by watching Lenny education his TV audience

I remember Bernard Haitink being rather annoyed with the Concertgebouw management because they invited Harnoncourt to perform (and record) the classical repertoire. Naturally because Haitink was being passed over, but also because "you can't get Harnoncourt out of the orchestra again." He phrased it differently, but that complaint always makes me chuckle. I wonder how many conductors were driven mad by what he did to their orchestras.

My first experience with Harnoncourt was the Water Musick of Handel....and it weird! Minuets so fast no one could really dance them, uncomfortable ornamentation, tempi I could not understand.....so you are right about this man.

Wonderful, I don’t know all of the mentioned recordings but I just think you’re right. None if the conductors could do all: Karajan’s magic with La Scalla in Pagliacci and Cavalleria but cold in Mahler, Bernstein genius Mahler but Brahms too serious and spastic. I don’t need Harnoncourt’s Brahms but OMG: some Bach or the good old Strausses & Co. in New Year’s Concert 2001 or 2003: sheer beauty.

Excellent points throughout - both about some horrible recordings, and the fact that he was a genius. His output was mixed, but he has given us some wonderful recordings, and his position in the history of music, as both a scholar and a musician, is secured.

Some of the best live experiences I've had in my life were with Harnoncourt as the conductor - including a Beethoven 9th -; his missionary zeal and inspirational writing has shaped the musical conscience of a whole generation of music students. Some of his recordings of baroque music simply brought to life music that no one would pay attention to if it had not been played with such devotion and knowledge. Therefore my criticism is done with unqualified respect: I've noticed many of his recordings feature a very bad or inconsistent cast of singers, and that surprisingly applies to Bach, Handel as well as to Beethoven or Mozart. I understand the complete Bach cantatas together with Leonhardt tried to conjure what an all-male cast in a provincial performance might have sounded like, and that can be excused when the singing is not so great, but once he became part of the establishment of top conductors some casts are simply hard to understand. It mars even his latest recording of St Matthew's Passion, of all works. It just can happen that a great conductor has not such a great nose for great singing. In the realm of HIP performances, I think René Jacobs or JEGardiner generally work with more consistent casts.

Dave, I would draw attention to Harnoncourt's great sense of rhythm. He swung! From Purcell to Bruckner. I don't think he was egotistical, just single-minded. He was a very kind and modest person. Dvorak and Haydn seemed to bring out the best in him. By the way, thanks for your amazing videos: they've deepened my enjoyment of the repertoire hugely. Darn! I think I'm going to have to subsribe!

I don't have much of his post-baroque output, but I was given his Schubert symphony cycle (I guess he recorded it twice? I have the Concertgebouw set) and have enjoyed it. So I'm glad to see they didn't make this list, though I wonder if any of them would have, had you gone to name his 10 worst?

A really good talk. That lovely comparison with Bernstein was so enlightening. In fact, I precisely didn't like Harnoncourt's Pastoral in my boxset before but I couldn't put my finger on the cause of it. I saw once the dvd's of The Young People's Concerts on sale in Hay-on-Wye amongst the best classic romance authors. How fitting a place indeed, and we miss them all now so much.

I consider myself a qualified Harnoncourt admirer: that is, I love his general approach and many, many of the specific recordings, but there are a few which I find, shall we say, hard to swallow. I also find it sometimes difficult to recommend his recordings even when I do enjoy them. For example, his second (1986) recording of Bach's B minor Mass: it's one of my personal favorite versions of that work, but it's filled with those individualistic touches that I know will turn others off. In fact, some of my favourite moments within that recording are precisely those that I know others will hate, and I can even understand why.

Harnoncourt was the first conductor that I loved, and I still considering him a genius, but in the past, especially when I began to listen to classical music, I had a very toxic cult of his personality, so, when I wanted to discover a new classical piece, I used to search his recording, and the result was that I've known pieces as the Verdi's Requiem, Beethoven Pastoral Symphony or Brahms fourth Symphony by his recordings, so I thought these recordings were beautiful. The "magic" finished when I listened to other recordings, so I discovered the truth...

With Bernstein, I felt the didactic aspect or background was perhaps the basis of an interpretation but didn't interfere with the musicmaking itself. With the Pastoral, he clearly understood it as a classical work and not as romantic self indulgence. Even the bird calls by the brook he could justify as classical cadenzas. Harnoncourt's is the only set of the Nine among twenty or so that I've ever purchased only to give away. And never regret having done so.

Only Harnoncourt had was St. Matthew Passion on Telefunken. Had heard the Woldike earlier, H sounded anemic by comparison.

Is it possible to talk about the sound of a conductor? Harnoncourt seemed to elicit a sound from orchestras that I would describe as acidic or vinegary, rather the opposite of a warm, yummy sound. That kind of sonority may work well in some repertoire, and not so much elsewhere. Not sure if he ever recorded anything by him, but would you listen to Harnoncourt do Tchaikovsky, for example?

There's an early version of Bruckner's Fourth with lots of quintuplets, all of which he later replaced. I think that goes to show that his duplet+triplet rhythms aren't supposed to be precise, they're supposed to be one sweeping motion.

Harnoncourt’s first recordings of Brandenburg 1 & 2 are absolutely wretched. The rest of the set is OK, with the 5th, IMO, being transcendent. But oh! Those first two!

His Dvorak with RCO was, surprisingly, really good. Wasn’t it?

Listen to his recording of the premier of the Wagenseil Alto Trombone Concerto once it was rediscovered. The first movement is SOOOOO SLOWWW

Harnoncourt is a pioneer of early music, but after that he's hit and miss for me.

Your observations about pastoral niceness could have been written by Eric Hoffer!

The worst CD I ever bought was the Concertgebouw Orchestra directed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt - Mozart Symphonies Nr. 39 & 29. TELDEC - 6.43107. Never heard Mozart (or anything else) played so badly. Horns and timpani are too loud, tempi are chaotic. It's a shambles. Label: TELDEC - 6.43107

When I was collecting in the 80s I had a couple of LPs, but hadn't really formed an opinion. I went to Zürich and heard performances at the opera and came away underwhelmed and annoyed. In the fabulous Act 2 finale of Le Nozze di Figaro he got slower and slower, and the singers stopped doing the staging and came downstage to stare at him as it fell apart. When the Brahms Symphony 2 came out I heard it on the radio in Chicago. Bad chocolate cake - you like chocolate cake, and you enjoy trying different ones. This time it didn't taste like chocolate cake - it tasted like flour, sugar, baking powder, etc. That's how I felt about his Brahms.

For me, Harnoncourt's worst performances include a few of his Mozart symphonies. Not all of them, by any means -- I love his Prague symphony; but a few, most notably No. 39, where I feel he botches both the first movement and the Minuet. (His general habit of taking minuets and trios in different tempi almost never works for me -- though there are one or two exceptions). I actually find such instances far worse than his Brahms, though I'll admit Harnoncourt/Brahms is neither my favorite Harnoncourt nor my favorite Brahms. BTW, I feel that his German Requiem somewhat suffers from the sanctimonious religiosity syndrome (I can't comment on the Verdi as I haven't heard it); but not his Beethoven Missa Solemnis -- either of them -- and certainly not Bach's sacred music! (Karajan's versions of Bach's sacred works, on the other hand, clearly *do* suffer from this syndrome)

Somethings are often very rotten in Denmark when it comes to our classical music life (don't get me startet) but at least Nicolas Harnoncourt received our prestigious "Léonie Sonnings Musical Award" in 1993 (preceeded by Solti who picked up his in 1992). PS: I have Harnoncourt's Aïda resting in one of my overflow boxes (quasi grave chamber just to make an obvious parallel) - still foil wrapped, and every time I happen to come across it I'm thinking: "Should I finally dare to listen to this....?"

Pastoralicity?

At least Harnoncourt was different. Do you want all performances to sound alike, Mr Hurwitz?