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Ron Dough
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« Reply #240 on: 21:20:12, 20-04-2007 » |
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That's actually the Barshai recording, t-p...
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #241 on: 21:24:31, 20-04-2007 » |
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It's a children's playground insult. I'm not surprised you don't know it, t-p - grown-ups don't use it.
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #242 on: 21:26:28, 20-04-2007 » |
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I obviously made a mistake because I remember looking at Kandrashin. I set my eyes on Kondrashin. It was around 50 of dollars or pounds or euro (don't remember).
I actually used to like Barshai, but it is not complete recording.
The student is not going to order until I get there on Monday and will tell him what I want.
I am going to find the other site.
I don't think Shostakovich picture shows him as a sly-boots person. It shows a dreamy very intellectual young man who is listening to something inside himself. The fact that his eyes are narrow at this moment doesnot mean he is cunning person. I don't think he was cunning or tried to pass himself off as something he is not.
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Bryn
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« Reply #243 on: 21:32:11, 20-04-2007 » |
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #245 on: 21:44:28, 20-04-2007 » |
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Kondrashin, t-p: you won't regret it.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #246 on: 21:53:16, 20-04-2007 » |
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Sums Shostakovich up pretty well, I'd say Not sure I would agree in total, Bryn. The youthful Shostakovich was anarchic young man with a sense of fun and theatre. He was poisoned into becoming withdrawn by Stalinist thugs, by overt hints of violent reprisals against his family. Imagine the effect of sending a man to another country where his work is appreciated, with the orders to read out a speech saying that it's crap? Imagine having all your achievements throughout your career rubbished "in the name of the people" by uneducated thugs unqualified to do anything except murder? The author of String Quartet No #15 isn't the same man as the author of "The Nose". He'd been viciously and systematically persecuted until he retreated inside himself - and wrote only dense, abstract music too complex for the fools who persecuted him to understand. |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #247 on: 23:21:47, 20-04-2007 » |
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This thread is turned out to be very useful for understanding Shostakovich music and the man.
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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #248 on: 05:34:33, 21-04-2007 » |
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Stephen Jonson in Discovery series about Shostakovich Quartet 8 called Shostakovich face as Poker face. I feel so too. . . . I never knew that his marriage to Nina was open marriage. I thought they were in love and he was deeply affected by her death. According to the New Grove, he wrote to his mother in praise of free love, only defending the institution of marriage as a safeguard for family life. Indeed he persistently pressed one young lady, Tatyana Gliffenco, even after her marriage to another man, to come and live with him instead for most of the time. Is not "grubby" the mot juste here? Incidentally, we have not yet seen the photograph of the unadorned Stravinscy have we, despite its having been much discoursed upon earlier in this thread. May we still hope? |
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #249 on: 08:36:50, 21-04-2007 » |
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Syd, I speak from gut instinct here, but having worked with some extreme offenders on the cusp of reforming
for example, I think I can spot integrity a bit. I think youre barking up the wrong tree here, though i appreciate
you are aiming to be root-and-branch thorough. My mother among many of her peers was a communist in the
1930s-Denis Healey, for example, also was at that time, and taken to its logical extension coulod be said to have
supported some thing sof which -due to the spin and communications culture of the time-they were not fully aware. Likewise those who favoured Mosley until he was self-evidently crudely racist. With Free Love we are
on relatively benign territory I'd suggest until there are emotional , pharmacological, lack-of-precaution irresponsibilities. DS could also have been reacting to a wayward ex-, or more than likely being idiomatically ironic.
Am I also right in recalling that Stalin was experimenting with breaking up family culture at that time-DS might even have had to toe some official line, or think that he had better do so.
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #250 on: 08:57:25, 21-04-2007 » |
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With regard to free love, we all say one thing and do the other. It is not easy to live together for a long time and under all kind of stresses. Children are stressful for marrige too and there are other events etc.
People say the are monogamous, but it usually means they find excuses for themselves and not their partners. There are tempting things out there for both men and women. I can only say it ananimously like now and would not repeat it face to face.
I met two composer in my life, both are probably much less significant than Shostakovich it is safe to say. Both of these people are very driven and have a tunnel vision of writing and promoting their music. It must be hard to have all these music wanting to come out and then one has to organize performances etc. Composers are usually excentric for many people and they need support from the family and complete dedication.
May be Shostakovich wrote things to his mother at a low ebb in relationship.
Also marblefluget is correct of course with communists experimenting with free love etc. There was a lot of talk about it during Shostakovich life (during and after Revolution). He could be influenced. I read Nina his wife was not so keen on the relationship and he had to persuade her.
My post is so long. I am impressed with myself. This discussion of Shostakovich composer and a man is very interesting. It is helping me a lot to sort things out. I have problems to understand him as a perlon. He probably has contradictions in his character like all of us. He a little more conventional than Wagner. He did not run with his pregnant wife from debtors or had open affairs with his collegues wives.
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Baziron
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« Reply #251 on: 10:24:00, 21-04-2007 » |
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"Who was Shostacowitch?" we are asked...
1) He was a slyboots...
2) He was disobedient and insubordinate...
3) He had little real feeling for music...
4) He liked to mock and lampoon people...
5) He was vulgar...
6) He lacked maturity...
7) He was a cold person without emotions...
8 He was slipshod in his personal habits...
...hence the prerequisite conditions and nature of any possible approach to the task of understanding these symphonies.
from Sydney Grew Since Member Grew wishes (in due course) to provide us with a reasoned and credible appraisal of Shostakovich's 8th symphony, and since all the above extract (which precedes his forthcoming essay) is what is generally known as an AD HOMINEM attack, he should be aware of the serious limitations of credibility that will inevitably arise should any of the above assertions (which is all they are) feed into his analysis. He should therefore be advised to read the comprehensive article found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominembefore proceeding any further. Baz |
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #252 on: 10:32:32, 21-04-2007 » |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominemActually that's probably required reading for all of us. Including the bits about reductio ad Hitlerum and guilt by association, with which one or two or three of our members would seem to be at best rustily familiar.
Oo, and poisoning the well for that matter.
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« Last Edit: 10:47:16, 21-04-2007 by oliver sudden »
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #253 on: 10:44:45, 21-04-2007 » |
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Lizt was very good in separating a man and his music. He did it many times. Wagner comes to mind, who was not a pleasant person by many accounts. However, Wagner doesnot come to the cathegory of absolute music since he wrote operas. He was exceptional symphonist in his music.
Who are pure composers with no flows. I heard that Bach was very tempremental and got into a fight with a bassoon player.
One doesnot have to like the man, but can like his music.
Bruckner was writing symphonies. May be he was perfect from all points, I don't know.
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #254 on: 11:48:27, 21-04-2007 » |
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Just a quick thought from the airport; if Shostakovich's treatment of women is to be raised as a criticism, then it's only fair to point out that Mr Grew's much admired Litolff was an out and out bounder in the way he used them. I can't link to it from this terminal, but I seem to remember that the wiki article sets out the story in some of its nasty detail.
The point is, of course, that an artist's personal character is irrelevant to the quality of his production: many great artists have been far from pleasant human beings, driven by their talent, as t-p has suggested; many very nice people have produced nothing stunning in the way of art at all.
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