Was your first your best?

[alanbeeb]

Haven't heard that Organ version of the Sonata - might try it sometime.

Benediction de Dieu dans la Solitude? A masterpiece, surely?

I listened to Roberto Plano's recording last night, as recommended here a year or so ago by Todd A..... its nice. Too frilly and show-offy for my taste though. I'm always thinking with Liszt music that this is a show, its an act, its not genuine - except maybe with the Sonata.
Had to restore myself with Brahms op.118 (Garrick Ohlsson).

 

[mattgbell]

Happens far too often to me, and even if I later realise my initial exposure to a work was a bit of an outlier I still tend to prefer it to anything I hear later. Obvious examples being Karajan’s ‘63 Beethoven, Haitink’s Mahler, Böhm’s Wozzeck, Richter’s Rach and Tchaikovsky etc.

The Böhm Wozzeck is wonderful.

Here's a thing: the Mackerras Janacek operas are unsurpassed for me. I guess most people first experienced Janacek on LP/CD thanks to Mackerras, and there really hasn't been anything that's come close since. The stand-out (yes, I'm bonkers) is his From the House of the Dead. (Also happens to be a great hi-fi test recording.)

 

[lawrence001]

Taking a couple of incredibly famous works as examples;
Holst's The Planet Suite performed by the LSO with Sir Adrian Bolt, forget the year of my recording, still remains my favourite.

However, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, I can't even remember the version I had originally as I much prefer the Acadamy Of Ancient Music with Christopher Hogwood, most other versions sound sterile or soulless to these ears.

I couldn't quite get on with Hogwood, or a few others like the Drottningholm and Pinnock on Archiv but I finally settled on Pinnock's earlier recording, I think it was on the ASV label in the late 70s. It was later re-released on those crazily cheap big box sets, I forget the name but it's worth buying for that and a few other recordings.

 

[lawrence001]

Me too - except that when I heard Norrington I became sure I preferred Karajan,

It`s a good job we`re all different.

And Norrington was my first complete 9th! Still like it but I'm sure there are quite a few annoying edits all over the Norrington/EMI recordings which used to drive me nuts when I was young. I did really like his Mendelssohn 3rd and 4th cd though, another first for me but that's one I'll definitely stick with as my favourite.

 

[lawrence001]

The risk of allowing a first recording that you hear of a great piece of music to become an all out favourite is that the recording and performance can become as important or even more so than the actual music.

This is of course absolutely fine. There are no rules saying otherwise.

But, I think there can come a problem with it all the same. If you listen to the same music in concert or on the radio [or even a different recording], it can be difficult to enjoy the music as presented so easily as it ought ... I discovered this with regard to the Brandenburg Concertos over thirty years ago when I had the Menuhin Bath Festival HMV set. I wore out two sets in about two years from playing and playing them. In those days Radio Three used to broadcast more evening concerts of this music than it seems to these days, and I noticed that I would be quite critical in my own mind of performances' deviations from Menuhin's performance. I realised that Menuhin's performance was assuming too much importance relative to the significance of the music itself.

So I bought two other completely contrasting recordings from the vintage period and the latest digital HIP recording. Adolf Busch's set on EMI from 1935 and Trevor Pinnock's DG recording. These two could hardly be further apart stylistically, and also neither is very similar to the Menuhin recording ...

After twelve months I had to replace the Busch transfer to LP [EMI France References] with new, and the Pinnock I got second time on CD.

I found so much in the Busch set that it remains probably my favourite recorded performance of the concertos, and Pinnock eventually faded from my collection, given to a friend who adored them! In the mean time I had encountered a live Radio Three broadcast of HM Linde from the Queen Elisabeth Hall in London including two orchestral Suites, the D Minor Harpsichord Concerto, and First Brandenburg. This was a revelation in that it really showed that the balance of musical lines actually does work splendidly when using an appropriately small group of strings in Baroque set-up, ... and a Harpsichord ...

That was in 1985, and I soon bought the Linde recording of the Brandenburg on EMI Virgin. Later I found the early '50s recording from Mogens Woldike in Copenhagen, and only this last Christmas obtained the 1946 recording in Paris under Klemperer. [I also have by chance the Klemperer Philharmonia set].

The amazing thing to me is that I can listen with total pleasure to any of these recordings - contrasted as they are - without anything but concentration on the music. The Menuhin and Pinnock sets have faded from view, but I never miss a live broadcast that I have a chance of. In Herefordshire I bet there has never been a professional performance of the set!

So I have two special favourites. Busch and Linde, and you might wonder what possible connection these two might have. Stylistically very few, Except for one fascinating glimpse. Though not on the recording for EMI August Wenzinger used to perform First Viola da Gamba in the Sixth Concerto for Busch who led from the First Viola. Wenzinger went on to record the set [now completely unobtainable], and HM Linde would perform in Wenzinger's Orchestra, the Scola Cantorum Basiliensis.

So there is a cultural continuation there!

I could tell fifty similar stories of rediscovery of music from different perspectives - different recordings, fresh ideas from live broadcasts - that only served to help in deeper understandings of the music in question.

One exception is that from day one Klemperer's 1957 EMI recording of Beetrhoven's Choral Symphony has remained immovable as my favourite, over the likes of Kleiber, Bohm, Karajan, Cluytens, and many more, though I did hear a wonderful Royal Festival Hall relay with the Philharmonia under the very aged Lovro von Maticic in 1982 or 1983 that remains forever etched in my memory as being one of those white heat concerts where every went not just well, but at a sort of higher level. Of course there was no commercial recording of the conductor and orchestra [and chorus of course]. But I live in hope that the BBC will one day allow access to this performance by streaming or something.

Sorry for the ramble. George

Pinnock is my favourite, couldn't get on with Goebel and a few others (although I enjoyed his fast tempi when in the mood) and can't listen to them played on modern instruments, nor any baroque for that matter. Do really like Jacques Loussier though strangely! And a bit of Bach on piano.