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martle
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« on: 16:39:48, 13-08-2008 » |
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Perhaps it's a mid-life thingie or that I'm getting soft. But I've recently had a whole spate of experiences of hearing good old warhorses with completely fresh ears. You know, works that are so familiar/overplayed/done-to-death that you thought you could happily get through life without ever hearing them again. My recent re-discoveries include
Holst - The Planets
Elgar - 1st Symphony (thanks to the Norrington Prom)
Dvorak - New World Symphony (my god, it's good. Tight, clear, expressively direct.)
Rimsky-Korsakov - Sheherazade (thanks to last night's Prom)
I thought I'd probably come to the end of all of these years ago. But no. I also have to say that in not a few instances these repeat epiphanies have been thanks to these boards, and individual members thereof. So thanks!
Anyone else?
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Green. Always green.
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Stanley Stewart
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« Reply #1 on: 16:52:27, 13-08-2008 » |
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O Divine music,
Renew our hearts. King Priam
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prawn
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« Reply #2 on: 20:31:21, 13-08-2008 » |
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I've recently had a whole spate of experiences of hearing good old warhorses with completely fresh ears. You know, works that are so familiar/overplayed/done-to-death that you thought you could happily get through life without ever hearing them again. Anyone else?
Yes, definitely to all of those, Martle! (Dvorak New World thanks to Marin Alsop's new recording) And I would add the Rach Paganini Variations to your list, which I groaned at the thought of last week, but had fallen in love with again by the end.  The counter-revolution has begun...  |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #3 on: 20:44:21, 13-08-2008 » |
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Rimsky-Korsakov - Sheherazade I must come back to that some time too, it was the first piece in the first orchestral concert I ever heard. Planets: yes. That performance in Brighton, which I wouldn't have attended but for some modern stuff in the programme (  typical), sent me right back to it. My problem is that I'm not that familiar with a lot of the warhorses apart from some (Mahler for example) which are never that far from my thoughts. Tchaikovsky 4 (which was also in that first concert) is the closest thing I can think of in my recent experience. I can just about get back into the frame of mine where it blows my head off. |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #4 on: 21:21:08, 13-08-2008 » |
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I remember THE PLANETS being wheeled-out endlessly when I was a kid - I dunno whether it was simply "big in the 70s" or whether my impressionable age was considered suitable for that kind of music? But that it just dropped off my radar completely until recently... oddly enough because I was in a lollipops gig with a string orchestra (I wasn't hacking at the viola btw, I have some fellow-feeling left for audiences..) and they were playing the St Paul's Suite. We were nattering backstage and someone asked me what else Holst had written because they'd never heard any?? And I realised that THE PLANETS is practically unknown "down my way" (let alone SAVITRI... although I doubt FENNIMORE & GERDA is popular anywhere at all). I ended-up buying a cd for someone, and had a listen (you have to test gift cds y'know - in case there's a scratch on side B) - what a fabulous piece it is, better than I ever remembered!  Scheherezade too, although that gets rammed down my lug'oles rather more frequently than I'd choose - and familiarity breeds contempt with players as with listeners. It's almost impossible to hear a decent EVGENY ONEGIN in Moscow, because of its warhorse status  THINGS TO COME seemed to be very popular at one time, too? |
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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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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #5 on: 21:45:16, 13-08-2008 » |
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Planets: yes. That performance in Brighton, which I wouldn't have attended but for some modern stuff in the programme ( typical), sent me right back to it. My experience too, not having heard it for quite a while before that. Some others: Saint-Saens' Third Symphony, not for all the shenanigans with the organ in the last movement, but rediscovering that it has the most gorgeous slow movement; The Dream of Gerontius - or more precisely the second part; I have no time at all for the theology, and Cardinal Newman's verse is little better than doggerel, but hearing it again recently for the first time for ages, I was transfixed by the sheer emotional power. Operatically - and if I ever had any intellectual reputation of which to speak, this is going to blow it - Gounod's Faust; yes, it's not exactly Goethe, and yes, it was done to death in performances which sought to place a Victorian slant on the morality-tale at its centre; but done with taste, the appropriate French style and not sung as if it were a public meeting, it's a work of considerable charm and elegance and, I think, real musical merit. It helps if it's done the way the ENO did it, as opera-comique with dialogue rather than recitatives. One of these days I must try Puccini again, and see whether Tosca really is as boring as I remember it .... |
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« Last Edit: 21:48:09, 13-08-2008 by perfect wagnerite »
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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BobbyZ
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« Reply #6 on: 21:54:37, 13-08-2008 » |
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Is a piece thought of as a warhorse simply because it is frequently programmed, or is there another factor that gives it warhorse status, such as the inclusion of at least one "big tune" ? Re-evaluation can certainly occur by being reminded of where the big tune fits into the concept of the work as a whole as opposed to being divorced as a bleedin' chunk.
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Dreams, schemes and themes
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #7 on: 22:01:45, 13-08-2008 » |
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Are all warhorses C19? Surely Messiah is a warhorse? Four Seasons, Brandenburg Concerti, Matthew Passion? And there must be C20 * warhorses as well? Rite of Spring, Peter Grimes?
Behind the concept of a warhorse is probably the idea that the work is popular but isn't quite serious enough (hence Handel can be a warhorse, but not Bach. Rimsky-K can be a warhorse, but probably not Mussorgsky.)
* OK The Planets is C20.
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #8 on: 22:18:31, 13-08-2008 » |
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Behind the concept of a warhorse is probably the idea that the work is popular but isn't quite serious enough (hence Handel can be a warhorse, but not Bach. Rimsky-K can be a warhorse, but probably not Mussorgsky.)
Oh, I don't know - I'd have rated both the Night on a Bare Mountain and Pictures at an Exhibition (as orchestrated by Rimsky and Ravel respectively) as warhorses. I wonder what the first warhorse of the 21st Century will be. Something by Einaudi or Tavener or Macmillan? |
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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martle
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« Reply #9 on: 22:22:06, 13-08-2008 » |
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I think warhorses can come from any era: Messiah, definitely.
Also, my reawakening interest/admiration has arisen in most cases from revelatory performances. Norrington's is a case in point. It's having someone performing the thing in a way that makes you hear it freshly, differently, that does the trick usually, I think.
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Green. Always green.
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #10 on: 02:17:48, 14-08-2008 » |
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And there must be C20 * warhorses as well? Rite of Spring, Peter Grimes?
Behind the concept of a warhorse is probably the idea that the work is popular but isn't quite serious enough (hence Handel can be a warhorse, but not Bach. Rimsky-K can be a warhorse, but probably not Mussorgsky.)
* OK The Planets is C20.
I think Mussorgsky can certainly count as a warhorse: Pictures at an Exhibition and Night on Bare Mountain surely do, no? 20th century warhorses: the Berg violin concerto is probably up there. Orff's Carmina Burana, certainly. And this year perhaps even Messiaen's Quartet for the end of Time and Turangalīla... |
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Turfan Fragment
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« Reply #11 on: 02:40:35, 14-08-2008 » |
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My strongest candidates for 'war horses' are piano concertos, for some reason.
In particular, Grieg's a minor springs to mind, as does the Tchaikovsky b-flat minor and Liszt's in E-flat; Rachmaninov's 2nd clearly belongs here, too. Is this only because I listened to them often while young?
My list is collected without regard to quality or how much I care for them -- only that they seem to fit the image I have of a warhorse, in rusty armor, trotting out onto the stage with the same demeanor as it always has, as getting performed as if uable to collapse from exhaustion.
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #12 on: 02:44:55, 14-08-2008 » |
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My list is collected without regard to quality or how much I care for them Allow me then also to spring in post haste to say the same. Of the six I mentioned there's only one I could be said to unequivocally dislike. |
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #13 on: 09:06:43, 14-08-2008 » |
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That Scheherezade was something else , wasnt it- Sinaisky allowed the thing to breathe rather than ploughing through it.. Same with Dvorak 8 and Ken Montgomery the other night-normally I loathe this as seeming-hackwork beyond the first couple of phrases.
A while back I was the band for a Grieg PC where we had to put the piano in the middle of the band-not unlike a Beethoven's conducting set-up. Really opened up the orchestration, and teh kind of thing that refreshes the players' attitude.
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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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martle
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« Reply #14 on: 09:11:16, 14-08-2008 » |
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That Scheherezade was something else , wasnt it- Sinaisky allowed the thing to breathe rather than ploughing through it.. Indeed, marbs. That's what I meant in starting the thread - when you hear something so seemingly tired and familiar being done in such a way that it seems completely new again. A great performance. An obvious observation is that warhorses are played a lot because they really are, er, rather good. On the whole. It's a matter of finding ways to appreciate that all over again, and performances like that one certainly do the trick. |
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Green. Always green.
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