You know, I quite like the ’64 Böhm recording of Die Zauberflöte, but I have never been able to get anywhere with his ’55 version. And Furtwängler’s recording from Salzburg is very tired, IMO. The ’37 Beecham on Naxos is probably worth the budget price…
Of course, Schinkel comes to mind in this regard as well…
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Es siegte die StärkesalimondoJune 21 2006, 18:16:41 UTC
Yeah. I hear a fearsome ruckus like thunder or a waterfall.
Currently driving into the Fricsay '53. Nothing remotely distinguished about it, really. From time to time I would have coaxed a brighter tone out of the violins and a little more thunder out of everybody. But since what I want from this is performance that serves the score, rather than the other way around, that anonymous interpretation is fine -- perfect accompaniment to watching the characters "sung" by dancing blocks of wood, in fact.
Not going anywhere near the Taymor production if I can help it, despite being a little curious about what Levine would get up to down there. Wrong kind of puppetry.
Re: Es siegte die Stärkelhasa7June 21 2006, 23:29:51 UTC
Probably my favorite recording of a Mozart opera is the 1955 Giu Nozze di Figaro, which has great early stereo sound and is available on an EMI budget CD. It’s a marvel of elegant moderation. The ’62 Böhm Così fan tutte is probably my favorite ‘monumental’ presentation, though Understatement has of course come to have a much greater appeal as the hoar begins to shew at my temples…
BTW, did you ever get the Étant donnés manual? I was thinking of sending you one if not. Z=Z no. 3 should be wending its way toward you before long…
Great observations and performances I'll have to check out. Thanks as always for your kind attention -- when I was younger, "Mostly Mozart" was sarcastic shorthand for "stale fruit for rotting vegetables," so I have to relearn a lot of the fine distinctions between monumental and modest there. Turning to bits of the bone equation you've already gnawed pretty smooth.
We were just talking the other night about the Julie Taymor Oedipus Rex, which was a seminal production for our crowd, and it's funny how the gunas revolved. Julie of course cashed in after that. Her dramaturgical ideas that worked so gorgeously on the Stravinsky cycled back into the Adams Lohengrin that I so infamously hated, and in that context they were curdling. Meanwhile, here I am looking for the straight lines of Mozart, a third angle between the ancient and the new.
Educated men in present-day Germany resemble a combination of Mephistopheles and Wagner, but certainly not Faust, whom their grandfathers (in their youth at least) felt rumbling within them. So (to
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Wow. I'm glad I got to the party before they ran out of candy. My apologies for excessive tardiness. First thing that comes to mind? The whole earth had one language and was of one speech. As they migrated from the east, it happened that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they settled there. They said one to another, "Come, let's make bricks, and bake them thoroughly." From one of the earliest urban planning manuals, we get the total skinny on building something out of nothing. Only it's a trick, because the earth is just transformed from an abstract into a concrete entity, which multiplies and amasses towards structural, and ultimately cultural solidity. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for that pesky desert deity
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they let him lie for a very long timesalimondoJune 28 2006, 14:46:53 UTC
Always a little candy hidden somewhere or another.
I accuse the adobe cave and the desert entity of being, if not the same personage, then fraternal twins. Once our gesselschaft walled off the potato field -- and in fact dug it out of the ground to make our bricks -- the felix fall into polyvalent language was foreordained. The city was its own punishment and reward, supporting (and demanding) an ever-widening stream of new interpretation like old buildings keep the paint makers in business.
Meanwhile down in the boondocks the book really didn't need to be updated too often. So yeah, if this is the angel of history, then it's got two heads, Pan on the one side and Millet on the other. In summer, Millet is a myth -- except in the cities, where they talk about him year-round. In winter, Pan is a myth -- except for those digging for that last potato.
What I love about that Twain story is its probably unconscious Frazerian majesty: The man doesn't really die; he changes his name and vanishes; we bury a dummy, and cry over it, with all
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Comments 6
Of course, Schinkel comes to mind in this regard as well…
( ... )
Reply
Currently driving into the Fricsay '53. Nothing remotely distinguished about it, really. From time to time I would have coaxed a brighter tone out of the violins and a little more thunder out of everybody. But since what I want from this is performance that serves the score, rather than the other way around, that anonymous interpretation is fine -- perfect accompaniment to watching the characters "sung" by dancing blocks of wood, in fact.
Not going anywhere near the Taymor production if I can help it, despite being a little curious about what Levine would get up to down there. Wrong kind of puppetry.
Reply
BTW, did you ever get the Étant donnés manual? I was thinking of sending you one if not. Z=Z no. 3 should be wending its way toward you before long…
Reply
We were just talking the other night about the Julie Taymor Oedipus Rex, which was a seminal production for our crowd, and it's funny how the gunas revolved. Julie of course cashed in after that. Her dramaturgical ideas that worked so gorgeously on the Stravinsky cycled back into the Adams Lohengrin that I so infamously hated, and in that context they were curdling. Meanwhile, here I am looking for the straight lines of Mozart, a third angle between the ancient and the new.
Educated men in present-day Germany resemble a combination of Mephistopheles and Wagner, but certainly not Faust, whom their grandfathers (in their youth at least) felt rumbling within them. So (to ( ... )
Reply
The whole earth had one language and was of one speech. As they migrated from the east, it happened that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they settled there. They said one to another, "Come, let's make bricks, and bake them thoroughly."
From one of the earliest urban planning manuals, we get the total skinny on building something out of nothing. Only it's a trick, because the earth is just transformed from an abstract into a concrete entity, which multiplies and amasses towards structural, and ultimately cultural solidity. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for that pesky desert deity ( ... )
Reply
I accuse the adobe cave and the desert entity of being, if not the same personage, then fraternal twins. Once our gesselschaft walled off the potato field -- and in fact dug it out of the ground to make our bricks -- the felix fall into polyvalent language was foreordained. The city was its own punishment and reward, supporting (and demanding) an ever-widening stream of new interpretation like old buildings keep the paint makers in business.
Meanwhile down in the boondocks the book really didn't need to be updated too often. So yeah, if this is the angel of history, then it's got two heads, Pan on the one side and Millet on the other. In summer, Millet is a myth -- except in the cities, where they talk about him year-round. In winter, Pan is a myth -- except for those digging for that last potato.
What I love about that Twain story is its probably unconscious Frazerian majesty: The man doesn't really die; he changes his name and vanishes; we bury a dummy, and cry over it, with all ( ... )
Reply
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