Review: The Art of Nikolaus Harnoncourt Indeed! 

I heard Harnoncourt with his own orchestra in London many times.... he was fantastic, with a capital F. Karajan disliked him massively, and tried to scupper his career. Thank heavens he did not do so.... best for me? Haydn "Drum Roll" symphony 103. It is majestic.

I love his Vivaldi Op. 8 set. My pals and I in college would simultaneously laugh and be in awe while listening to it.

Dave, on the topic of bargain priced box sets currently available that you may or may not have noticed - the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert by Paul Badura-Skoda, recorded on about a half dozen different period fortepianos which were mostly part of his personal collection. They had disappeared for a long time but have been reissued by a different label.

Looking forward to your videos on Monteverdi and Biber etc! I also had no idea that Harnoncourt recorded William Schuman's violin and piano concertos.

Dave. Great job with highlighting this one. I do love these Art Of boxes. So much fun and such value.

Even after all these decades of L'Orfeo recordings, scholary editions, etc., I still prefer the first Harnoncourt to all the others.

Mazel tov on reaching 13K subscribers Dave! Now I have to listen to Shostakovich’s Symphony 13 all day to “celebrate.” Unfortunately Babi Yar Is a very timely subject.

What an acheivement! I just wish they had made it a 25-cd set that would include Telemann's Tafelmusik, Mozart's double concerto (featuring Gulda and Corea) and so on. I think he is an artist that really matters. Don't you have any plans to check through his Sony box set? I'd be really grateful for that.

GREAT VIDEO DAVE!!!!

I greatly appreciated this review. In part, it was a nostalgia trip, reminding me of how much I owe to Harnoncourt for introducing me to vast reaches of Baroque repertoire. And you reminded me of those eagerly awaited Kantatenwerk boxes with their scholarly notes and complete scores. Those were the days, weren't they? You rightly praised Harnoncourt's "wacky" Vivaldi and Handel, but also his superb Haydn, unconventional Bruckner, and much else that I have enjoyed over the years. Sometimes Harnoncourt is viewed as an outlier among the Historically Informed crowd, but, as you pointed out, he was really a "Romantic" at heart, and his performances usually had loads of character (unlike many more recent maestros). Some suggestions: Please do regale us with a Biber chat (not Justin, but Franz Ignaz von), and while you are at it don't forget his near contemporary Rosenmüller, one of the greatest of the neglected Baroque masters. Finally, I would alert you to the existence of another Harnoncourt box worth reviewing--Nikolaus Harnoncourt Conducts Sacred Masterworks on Sony's cheapest label. It's a formidable bargain, and it contains some of that conductor's best latter-day work with his period as well as modern forces, fine solo and choral singing, and one of the best-ever recordings of the Dvorak Stabat Mater. Thanks again!

I first heard the Biber Battalia at a concert in the 90s by the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Unfortunately they never recorded it as it was beyond amazing. (ditto a perf of a Dvorak piano quintet with Imogen Cooper that was so magical that I was nearly in tears by the end. The performers hugged each other at the end.)

I have to check out Harnoncourt now.

One of your best quotes: "It's perverse, but I love it."

When it was announced that the Teledek "complete sacred Cantatas" of J.S. Bach were appearing on CD (one or two sets a month as I recall), that is when I decided to buy a CD player. Each set alternates between Harnoncourt and Leonhardt. I somehow missed my chance to buy set #23 when it was distributed in the US, but, always hopeful, I found it recently, in a still unopened box as the only classical CD in a discount store that I normally would never go to! My top treasure with the "Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky" Sony set. Thank you for filling out Harnoncourt's story. He was despised, and therefore almost never played, on the LA classical station.

I would love a video devoted to Orpheo. I hope you do it soon.

Thank you for your work.

I love "Die erste Walpurgisnacht", and particularly this recording. Also, it's a great companion piece for "Midsummers Night's Dream". Btw, nobody gets killed, neither in Goethe's ballad nor in the cantata. The heathens just frighten away the "dumpfe Pfaffenchristen" and have a good laugh.

A very nice posthumous Harnoncourt/COE release recently appeared last October on ICA in a shell-styled container of a multi-CD set of the 4 greats -- Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms -- in previously unreleased live performances. The sound is great, the eccentricities are charming, but overall tasteful, and the conductor's intense, dedicated collaboration with this ensemble reaches new summits. It would be challenging for you to review, and for us to hear your comparisons of Harnoncourt's other countless versions of these same works. The major labels, Warner and Sony, released no less than three complete Beethoven (Amsterdam, Concentus Musica Wien, and COE) and Schubert (Amsterdam, Berlin, and COE) symphony cycles, all in modern digital stereo, and in addition, the live Beethoven 5th and 7th in this new ICA release really blaze with passion and clarity after the players get over working through slightly restrained starts. Please help us navigate through this recording industry clutter.

Great review, Dave. Now...Top Five (or Ten?) recordings of National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine...in the spirit of supporting great music amidst severe oppression. So many very, very good releases (some of which you've covered previously).

Another great video. Did you ever consider adding a tam-tam crash at the end of your videos? I think it would be kind of cool. Thanks

Regarding Nikolaus Harnoncourt's fast version of the slow movement from Vivaldi's "Winter" concerto: In Vivaldi's sonet paragraph, which is accompanying this movement, he is actually describing: "Resting inside beside the fireplace on a rainy day". But until Harnoncourt came along with his creative recording of "The Four Seasons", I couldn't hear the rainy weather in this movement - regardless of how much I tried. Because every ensemble and orchestra on all of the other recordings available played it so-o-o poetically beautiful and so-o-o idyllic. I was only able to imagine gentle snow flakes, slowly coming down from the sky. But, boy, is it raining here!! We can clearly hear the rain drops hitting down on the paving stones outside (aggressive violin pizzicati), and the thundering sound of the rain coming down on the roof (tremolo-figure, played by the cellos). It's raining cats and dogs! I like it. 😃

I recall hearing Harnoncourt's recording of Vivaldi's Opus 8 and asking whether he was trying to make Vivaldi into Bartok. Sure, it is perverse, but it is interesting and memorable for all the right reasons. The Four Seasons has typically been made into a boring exercise... but not there. I am surprised that his recordings of the Vivaldi Opus 8 and Handel Organ Concerti aren't readily available. They are unique in all the right ways.

i love many of his Bach cantatas, from the beautiful, lyrical BVW 1 to the scorching BWV 105. Compare the latter in the reverent performance by Ansermet to the agonized sounds Harnoncourt produces.

He did a really good album of the 23rd and 25th Mozart piano concertos with Buchbinder and the Concentus Musicus Wein, too. A live record, I believe, you hear the sound of the hall. I thought of the Schumann symphonies as music that worked better on period instruments for a long time, because Gardiner's records were better than the other ones (Thielemann, for example) that I heard when I was starting out as a collector and first tried Schumann. But now that I've heard Bernstein and Sawallisch in Schumann, I've finally understood.

You are so entertaining and persuasive at listening to new music.

Harmoncourt and the concentus musicus wein should have done a complete Haydn symphony cycle

Did they really misspell Schuman(n)?!

Too bad they stopped with Bruckner and did include Franz Schmidt's Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln.

There goes another $35...😀