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Soundtracks To Our Lives Weekending 25/03/11
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Fitter Stoke
Fitter Stoke
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Re: Soundtracks To Our Lives Weekending 25/03/11
Mar 27, 2011, 10:02
Inspired by our great conductors thread, I played and compared recordings of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony by as many of the BBC Music Magazine's Top 20 conductors as I could access: all of them, in fact, except Boulez, Beecham and Mravinsky. Without going into the individual strengths and weaknesses of each, I was struck by how different the music sounded in each case - sometimes sweet and lyrical (Abbado, Haitink, Barbirolli and Monteux), sometimes searingly exciting (Klieber, Bernstein, Toscanini, Karajan and Szell), or - best of all for me - cerebral and other-worldly (Giulini and Furtwaengler). The others ranged between the ordinary (Rattle and Mackerras), overdriven and charmless (Gardiner), still-born (Davis), or too damned quirky to make sense (Harnoncourt and Fricsay). No-one recording was ideal, but I'd choose Giulini if forced to own only one from the conductors listed. His 1981 Fifth with the LAPO is a stunner, and beautifully recorded too. Furtwaengler's 1943 Berlin recording is my historic choice: you can literally feel the tension as the allied bombers fly above;

Sir Thomas Beecham 'English Music' - a superb new bargain box set of Beecham's unparalleled Delius recordings, augmented by relatively unfamiliar works by Bantock, German, Berners and Bax. I was moved beyond words by the version of 'Sea Drift' included here. Beecham was a thoroughly unpleasant individual who reserved all of his God-given charm for the music he conducted. His recorded legacy is really quite special - although it doesn't include a Beethoven 5, unusually enough;

Van der Graaf Generator 'A Grounding In Numbers' - I was underwhelmed by this at first, but repeated plays have revealed this record's considerable delights, not least Peter Hammill's underrated guitar talent. Short songs suit VdGG surprisingly well these days;

Queen 'Queen II' - impressive new CD remaster, getting close to the original 1974 LP for sheer heaviness. Mighty fine album too, as are all of Queen's first four long players. Thereafter they gradually descended into commercial direness, half of 'Innuendo' notwithstanding;

Deniece Williams 'My Melody' - classy Philly soul album from 1981 from a very talented lady with a four octave vocal range;

Also played and enjoyed bits of:

Madness 'One Step Beyond'
The Concretes 'The Concretes In Colour'
Gilgamesh 'Gilgamesh'
Lindisfarne 'Roll On, Ruby'
The Proclaimers 'Life With You'
Jake Thackray 'Jake In A Box' selections
Miles Davis 'Seven Steps To Heaven'
Dr Feelgood 'Malpractice'
Pitch Shifter 'Industrial'
Echo and the Bunnymen 'Porcupine'
David Sylvian 'Sleepwalkers'

Int music brilliant.

Have a great week, all

Dave
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Soundtracks To Our Lives Weekending 25/03/11 (Joolio Geordio)		 Replies:
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