The organ

[AdamSmith]

Bach's lovely 'Little' Fugue in G Minor, BWV 578. Here interestingly labeled as 'digitized from the Telefunken LP,' which I take to mean 'digitized at home.' The sound to my ear is markedly better than the 'professional' transfer to CD that I'll post just below.

 

 

The industrial-strength CD version:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNy6oClg784

 

I own both vinyl and CD of Chapuis' Bach cycle. I thought the Telefunken vinyl engineers did a faultless job of miking and recording the five (I think) very different organs that he selected to best suit the needs of the range of the assorted Bach oeuvre, which he recorded from 1968 to 1970. But the reissue on Valois CD, while not a disaster, nonetheless seemed fairly clunky. As I think shows in the above comparison. (Still searching for the year the transfer was done.)

[AdamSmith]

You few who are interested will forgive me for yanking off into this fairly unrelated land of a historical Messiah. Harnoncourt's HIP. A gorgeously understated, unbloviating, unexpectedly lyrical reimagining of what GFH may have been thinking.

 

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

 

(Note the above ends with the Amen Chorus. )

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

...contrast with the 'standard' once-considered-fairly-HIP performance led by Mackerras...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRiwK1SHdOg

[+ WilliamM]

I'm certainly no organ connoisseur (though St. Sulpice is a fave place in Paris), but I did hear a wonderful organ concert at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, where the pipes are highly regarded and said to rival those at Disney Hall.

http://www.ppcmusic.org/pipe-organ

 

Even though I live on the east coast, I just happened to be near Disney Hall the day after it opened in 2003. I joined a tour of the hall, nobody noticed or cared.

 

The sound was spectacular. I always planned to return when the organ was finished, but never did. Thanks for the reminder, Kenny.

[AdamSmith]

To see Harnoncourt's powers of evolution, note how in sync with the above Mackerras Messiah was Harnoncourt's own Brandenberg 3 some years before his Handel reimagining.

 

 

In that performance he is absolutely in the vanguard. Entrancing to see how he can keep enlarging his imagination as shown in the later Messiah cited above.

[+ honcho]

And now for something completely ... (iconoclastic)

 

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1609923239307604

 

I especially like the section around 28 seconds . . .

[hedonist4now]

If no one else is to comment, may I suggest "positively original"? If the tee-shirt of the central musician is correct, may I further suggest that all is well in the "mouth organ" department of chair Paul Jacobs?

 

The legs of the right-hand contributof did not go unnoticed!

[AdamSmith]

Biographical digression. Age 18 I was an organ enthusiast but autodidact & naive.

 

Then one Randy Foy (today: https://www.ncsu.edu/student_center/music/bios/foy.html), whose organ performance degree from Oberlin was under (previously slightly remarked Fenner Douglass), mildly suggested to me, 'Well, you might like Michel Chapuis.'

The cross-discipline thought, and understanding, and then skepticism, and then argument and mutual comprehension, was so encouraged by this Governor's School thing where I met the above-referenced Foy. It brought my entire mind to life.

 

Alas the organization has been so severely dumbed-down today: http://www.ncgovschool.org

[gallahadesquire]

Best Messiah performance I ever heard ... well, was part of ... was with Sir Colin Davis at Tanglewood. He had interpretations that made sense and were loads of fun.

 

Of course, when we started the chorus "All we like sheep," singing "We all like sheep," he at lest feigned a humourous response.

[whipped guy]

Nowadays I really only enjoy historically informed Messiah performances and preferably on original instruments. Of course last year I attended a performance at Carnegie Hall of the Goosens/Beecham version with the massive orchestration... two harps as the "continuo" and all!!!! It was fun and especislly since they had not only a chorus on stage, but one on either side of the upper balconies as well. Overblown and over the top! Somehow it worked, but not something that I would return to often. I believe that they are presenting it again this season.

[AdamSmith]

And now for something completely ... (iconoclastic)

 

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1609923239307604

 

I especially like the section around 28 seconds . . .

P.S. Boulez's from ca. 1976 remains my favorite.

 

[gallahadesquire]

Nowadays I really only enjoy historically informed Messiah performances and preferably on original instruments. Of course last year I attended a performance at Carnegie Hall of the Goosens/Beecham version with the massive orchestration... two harps as the "continuo" and all!!!! It was fun and especislly since they had not only a chorus on stage, but one on either side of the upper balconies as well. Overblown and over the top! Somehow it worked, but not something that I would return to often. I believe that they are presenting it again this season.

 

Truth be told, at the Davis concert, the orchestra was pruned down, as was the chorus (only half of us sang it). At one rehearsal, the Choral Director said, "Chorus, I can understand why you're getting the performance practices down so quickly ... I chose you for that ... but can you tell me why you're LOUDER than the full chorus?"

[gallahadesquire]

P.S. Boulez's from ca. 1976 remains my favorite.

 

 

In days gone by, piano rolls were cut by hand. There exists one of Rite of Spring that has tempos about 20% faster than usually performed. Some group in Cambridge (MA) recorded it at that speed. It's worth hearing and, if it's the tempo that Ballets Russes premiered it with, I can see why the audience was disapproving and/or riotous.

[AdamSmith]

What Chapuis gives us here (a repost but sublimely worthy):

 

[AdamSmith]

Schroeder illustrates.

 

One cannot too often refer back to the wisdom of Charles M. Schulz.

[AdamSmith]

In days gone by, piano rolls were cut by hand. There exists one of Rite of Spring that has tempos about 20% faster than usually performed. Some group in Cambridge (MA) recorded it at that speed. It's worth hearing and, if it's the tempo that Ballets Russes premiered it with, I can see why the audience was disapproving and/or riotous.

Interesting phenomenon that the composer's own notion of tempo for his piece may not turn out, conductors and players hearing it alive in rehearsal, to be right. (Needless to say, entirely different from willfully Mannerist impositions of inappropriate tempi.)

 

Far-afield example is The Beatles, whose producer the sublime George Martin would sometimes suggest a radically different tempo to raise the song from jingle to art.

[AdamSmith]

P.S. I think we had here recently a discussion of Beethoven's metronome markings, which seem too fast. Did he drop his instrument on the floor and impair it? Etc.

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

What Chapuis gives us here (a repost but sublimely worthy):

 

Just remembered something Chapuis said about why he had the organist loft be microphoned in these videos, at all -- and at the same volume level as the mikes that recorded the organ pipes speaking:

 

He wanted to demonstrate how important was the organ's physical (finger and auditory) feedback from the keydesk to the performer, far in advance of the returning sound wave from the pipes (often ambiguous in any event), in guiding the performer's microsecond physical reaction to know how to perform the next keystroke.

[AdamSmith]

What Chapuis gives us here (a repost but sublimely worthy):

 

I know I have a penchant for idol worship. But in service of how to improve one's own merely human mentational capacity.