I didn't make it all the way through in the end, giving up at 2.30 just after the scene where Gawain is seduced for the third time. What a wimp! (Me, I mean.) Ron, I can see what you mean in comparing the "monumentality" of Gawain with that of Oedipus Rex but for me there's something in the relentlessly hectoring soundworld of Birtwistle's piece that suggests a dramatic ebb and flow which it doesn't then deliver (well, not the ebb, anyway). It feels to me as if HB is trying to have his cake and eat it, whereas IS consciously eschews a sense of individual humanity in his characters, presenting us instead with archetypal "personae" who are, as his narrator says, playthings of heartless forces beyond their control or comprehension. (Which is more or less what HB does in Orpheus.)

As you say, though, whatever one thinks of Oedipus, it was an extremely radical statement in its time, and actually still is - compare something supposedly contemporary like Powder Her Face as an example of a stylistic mix which refuses to cohere, while Stravinsky at his best could appropriate anything he felt like and seemingly effortlessly turn it into Stravinsky.

Since the lettuce:

Mahler 3 (first half thereof) / Barbirolli - I have a Lot Of Time for this conductor in (not only) Mahler, as I think some here may know already.

Some more French orchestral music played very Frenchly indeed under Pierre Dervaux. Thanks again Ron!

Messiaen Quatuor (Pasquier, Vacellier, Pasquier, Messiaen, 1956) - very thought-provoking, not least in that the tempi are often quite different from what's in the score even though you'd think the pianist would have a pretty good handle on how it went; for that matter the cellist is from the 'original cast' too.

Robert Casadesus playing Ravel. Extremely well.

I'll keep it in mind. So much music, so little time...

All well and good, Ollie, but which recording, the BBC Legend one, or something rather better?

Been holding back on that one, due to cost, but just ordered it at bargain price via Amazon.

But Ollie, you didn't really plug it, did you. I had already hinted at it as "something rather better". It has a bit of a reputation for being superior to the BBC one. I just needed reminding to have a look at how its price was going, (£7.93 including p&p for a "new" seems pretty good to me).

[quote author=oliver sudden link=topic=137.msg56285#msg56285
Messiaen Quatuor (Pasquier, Vacellier, Pasquier, Messiaen, 1956) - very thought-provoking, not least in that the tempi are often quite different from what's in the score even though you'd think the pianist would have a pretty good handle on how it went; for that matter the cellist is from the 'original cast' too.
[/quote]

I've had the record since the early 70s. Not a version I've ever liked. I felt that the pianist had a lot to answer for - he seemed strangely unable to play in time in places.

That is his pre-war Gaspard, from 1937-1938, there is also a recording from 1954 (together with the rest of Ravel's piano music) on EMI. The two are very different, but in some ways I prefer the former, especially for Ondine. A lot of piano aficionados now perceive a big different between the pre- and post-war Gieseking (especially with respect to his two recordings of the Debussy Preludes). I'm not exactly sure at which stage editing came in, but am guessing that his pre-war recordings are less likely to have been edited? The earlier Gieseking is less polished, certainly, but in some ways more driven and intense; perhaps after the war, as artistic standards were changing and he had a greater self-consciousness about his place in the scheme of things (in due part to the hostile reception to his visit to New York, having been accused of Nazi sympathies (though there was nothing to pin on him other than the fact that he remained in Germany during the Third Reich, and continued giving concerts there and in occupied France), Artur Rubinstein possibly having had a part in stirring protests, conceivably for less than honourable motives, Gieseking being a big rival of his)? Anyhow, the pre-war Gieseking Gaspard is in some ways possibly my favourite of all recordings of the piece, for various reasons, and was certainly a big influence on how I myself play the work. Almost uniquely, in Ondine, Gieseking doesn't go for the clearly articulated, neo-classical approach to the opening figuration (as lots of pianists do, very keen to let people know that every note really is sounding - even Michelangeli's recording is a problem for me in this respect (especially so, actually)), and plays it considerably faster than most (though it is certainly all there), making it into a shimmering colouristic figuration rather than a toccata-like ostinato. Then he doesn't over-'sing out' the melody (on which subject Ravel was very clear, wanting it to be half-submerged). Elsewhere, he indulges practically not at all in what have become characteristic 'sensitive' ways of incorporating small rits and other agogics with each harmonic change, but instead concentrates on line as a thread driving through the whole piece. At times both Ondine and Scarbo he has this impulsive way of pushing ahead - perhaps more on the spur of the moment rather than as a consciously planned decision? - which wouldn't be to one's taste if one likes a more disciplined and carefully controlled approach, but I find it extremely exciting. When the passages in thirds appear in Ondine he does nothing of the usually facilitatory device of starting them a little under tempo and then building up, rather they seem an extension of the previous texture instead of markedly new type of material, which to me helps to maintain the sense of inexorable momentum towards the devastating climax.

Gieseking (one of my favourite players of all time) isn't easy to place; on one hand he can be seen to adopt a much stricter, no-nonsense approach in contrast to the expansive liberties of the previous generation of pianists, but at the same time there is an inwardness and even austere idealism about the playing, and an intense passion, that to me locates him firmly within a certain romantic tradition. What I do miss in some of his Ravel is a more stylised approach to rhythm, as can be found in Ravel's own playing (listen to the beginning of Oiseaux Tristes, for example) or in that of Cortot (otherwise I'm not really a Cortot fan at all, but something like his Jeux d'eau is remarkable, in part for that reason). Though both Gieseking and Casadesus are known as relatively 'straight' players compared to others, in other respects they are extremely different. Casadesus emerges from an extremely refined variant of a French neo-classical tradition of playing (whose antecedents can be dated back to the nineteenth century), entailing a certain studied detachment at times (which some would call 'aristocratic'; this is also sometimes said of Cortot, but I believe it to be more appropriate in Casadesus's case); Gieseking has an austerity but which has to do with inwardness and idealism rather so much a desire to demonstrate mastery through aloofness, at least as I hear it. Ravel to me kept a foot in the romantic tradition (including the post-WW1 Ravel), though it's extremely rare to hear him played in such a manner today (and not just in his piano works) when the post-Stravinskian neo-classicist approach to performing his work (and that of many other composers) has become all-pervasive. Ravel's neo-classicism is of a very different nature to that of Stravinsky, and doesn't exclude a more amorphous approach to sonority and texture (and the creation of tension through heated textures in which different lines are in conflict), or an engagement with forms of romantic diablerie which is other than simply manneristic and ironic (he said about Gaspard 'I wanted to write a parody of romanticism - but maybe I went too far!'). Gieseking to me captures this aspect of Ravel as well as anyone.

The EMI set of all of Ravel's piano music is very worth getting, contains my favourite of all recordings of Valses nobles et sentimentales other than the composer's, and wondrous performances of the Menuet Antique, Sonatine, and many other pieces. It can be found extremely cheaply here.