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Tchaikovsky on disc
Posted by Rob Barnett on March 24, 2023, 6:49 pm
My apologies if this is already common knowledge but I wanted to draw attention to a free access discography of Tchaikovsky's music. It lays claim to covering 'recordings' from 1890 onwards. For me it's a fascinating document - no doubt given the proliferation of PIT recordings the compilers are on a hiding to nothing but even so this impresses.
This can be added to the free pdf discogs at CRQ Editions and MWI's own national discographies.
The author/compilers of the Tchaikovsky are Brett Langston and Uwe Sauerteig.
It is up to date as of November 2022 and the authors say they welcome corrections.
While on the subject of this composer I should add that I found much to appreciate and enjoy in David Brown's huge 3 or 4 volume study of PIT and his music. This was one of my epic reads during lockdown along with a few handsome Phaidon press biographies (Britten, Stravinsky) and on a non=musical front Theodore Dreiser's An Am,erican Tragedy. I know that it (the Brown) has been out for decades but even so it makes a good read. Apologies for rambling. Rob
Re: Tchaikovsky on disc
Posted by Jeffrey Lague on March 28, 2023, 1:16 pm, in reply to "Tchaikovsky on disc"
As one who has started to read more novels than he has actually finished I can endorse your choice of Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" as a thoroughly worthwhile read. I've also ploughed through most of the work of Thomas Wolfe ( a younger contemporary of Dreiser ) and found it similarly compelling.
Jeffrey - good to hear from you. Have for years been looking for knowledgeable recomms for reading the Great American Novel. I like Dreiser's loquacious style - backwards and forwards over the same sentiment. Grateful if you wd recommend the best reads among the Tom Wolfe novels .... and why. Still have your private cassettes of the Holbrooke piano music which served to introduce me to much of his unusual keyboard work. Do drop me a separate email - via John Quinn or Len. Regards. Rob
Dreiser and Wolfe are the only American writers whose works I've read in any sort of quantity and I'm sure I've missed much that is worthwhile from other writers. I've read most of Wolfe and found it very absorbing; at his worst (in my opinion) when he attempts the occasional purple passage, the bulk of his work -which apparently is , to a large extent, autobiographical - is down-to-earth and earthy. Anybody easily offended shouldn't go near it (he uses the N word over two hundred times in the course of his writing, not, I hasten to add, maliciously or degradingly but because he reflects the society of his time). It's difficult for me to recommend one title as I've enjoyed them all (and they are all written on very similar lines) but you might like to try "Of Time and the River" or "You can't go home again" as a starting-point. I read them all as books, but, if you're short of shelf-space and have a reader, you can get all his works very cheaply in Kindle form.
By the way, did you know that the Laurence Olivier film "Carrie" was based on a Dreiser novel ?
I suppose that, being a great admirer of Joseph Holbrooke's music I should also be an avid reader of Poe, but I can really only take him in small quantities. I've been much more inclined to read the work of another of Joe's enthusiasms, Zola.
At the moment my piano playing has been restricted due to a tennis elbow -and I don't even play tennis ! I have prepared (and played individual numbers from) Holbrooke's Grande Suite Moderne and am hoping to recover enough to make a home recording of it soon so , if and when, I'll let you have a copy of it if you're interested. I'd also like to battle age and infirmities by including it in a lunchtime recital at one of the London churches if they'll have me. Like most of Holbrooke's piano music it's very taxing to play and I'll have to be careful to choose the rest of the programme with one eye on not over-exerting what little technique I have left. Certain pieces by Henryk Pachulski would probably fit the bill - elegant, refined and charming music which is largely neglected. As you probably know -and to give it a tenuous relevance to this particular thread - the Pachulski family were closely connected to the estate of Madame von Meck but it was probably Henryk's brother, a violinist who played chamber music with the young Debussy, who was instrumental in engineering the break that Tchaikovsky had with his patron rather than Henryk himself as an internet article claims.
Previous Message
Jeffrey - good to hear from you. Have for years been looking for knowledgeable recomms for reading the Great American Novel. I like Dreiser's loquacious style - backwards and forwards over the same sentiment. Grateful if you wd recommend the best reads among the Tom Wolfe novels .... and why. Still have your private cassettes of the Holbrooke piano music which served to introduce me to much of his unusual keyboard work. Do drop me a separate email - via John Quinn or Len. Regards. Rob
Re: Tchaikovsky on disc
Posted by Marc Bridle on March 30, 2023, 12:38 am, in reply to "Tchaikovsky on disc"
David Brown's Tchaikovsky biog was republished in paperback as 4 volumes in 2, by Victor Gollancz - a little more manageable than the hardback set. I picked up a copy several years ago for £20 in a superb secondhand/antiquarian bookshop in Bedford, situated rather weirdly nowhere near the town centre but on a residential street. You would find books there you wouldn't in Travis & Emory in London. (A lot of John Drummond's books ended up there after his death.) I don't know why the Brown is not in print because it's the best book on the composer by a country mile. Brown's the only person who has ever managed to change my view of the "Little Russian".
The Tawaststjerna Sibelius is also a favourite of mine as unsurpassed musical biographies go. That's in print (£75, 3.vol) from faber & faber.
And with this year being the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rachmaninoff I do recommend Barrie Martyn's, Rachmaninoff: Composer, Pianist, Conductor. Long, majestic, and authoritative - and In print, too, only costs £42 on Amazon!
Rambling, too...as usual.
Previous Message
My apologies if this is already common knowledge but I wanted to draw attention to a free access discography of Tchaikovsky's music. It lays claim to covering 'recordings' from 1890 onwards. For me it's a fascinating document - no doubt given the proliferation of PIT recordings the compilers are on a hiding to nothing but even so this impresses.
This can be added to the free pdf discogs at CRQ Editions and MWI's own national discographies.
The author/compilers of the Tchaikovsky are Brett Langston and Uwe Sauerteig.
It is up to date as of November 2022 and the authors say they welcome corrections.
While on the subject of this composer I should add that I found much to appreciate and enjoy in David Brown's huge 3 or 4 volume study of PIT and his music. This was one of my epic reads during lockdown along with a few handsome Phaidon press biographies (Britten, Stravinsky) and on a non=musical front Theodore Dreiser's An Am,erican Tragedy. I know that it (the Brown) has been out for decades but even so it makes a good read. Apologies for rambling. Rob
Glad we agree on the David Brown - would again recommend. A quicker read if you skip through the musical analysis of partic works espec recounting the opera plots for page after page. I have the Sibelius/Tawastjerna but found it rather dense and discouraging reading - perhaps suffered through translation even if transl was by one of the great Sibelians. I need to be more robust reader with better style fortitude. For me there are better Sibelius biogs. Happy to take your recomm on the Barrie Martyn Rach biog. Will seek it out and read. Robquote] David Brown's Tchaikovsky biog was republished in paperback as 4 volumes in 2, by Victor Gollancz - a little more manageable than the hardback set. I picked up a copy several years ago for £20 in a superb secondhand/antiquarian bookshop in Bedford, situated rather weirdly nowhere near the town centre but on a residential street. You would find books there you wouldn't in Travis & Emory in London. (A lot of John Drummond's books ended up there after his death.) I don't know why the Brown is not in print because it's the best book on the composer by a country mile. Brown's the only person who has ever managed to change my view of the "Little Russian".
The Tawaststjerna Sibelius is also a favourite of mine as unsurpassed musical biographies go. That's in print (£75, 3.vol) from faber & faber.
And with this year being the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rachmaninoff I do recommend Barrie Martyn's, Rachmaninoff: Composer, Pianist, Conductor. Long, majestic, and authoritative - and In print, too, only costs £42 on Amazon!
Rambling, too...as usual.
Previous Message
My apologies if this is already common knowledge but I wanted to draw attention to a free access discography of Tchaikovsky's music. It lays claim to covering 'recordings' from 1890 onwards. For me it's a fascinating document - no doubt given the proliferation of PIT recordings the compilers are on a hiding to nothing but even so this impresses.
This can be added to the free pdf discogs at CRQ Editions and MWI's own national discographies.
The author/compilers of the Tchaikovsky are Brett Langston and Uwe Sauerteig.
It is up to date as of November 2022 and the authors say they welcome corrections.
While on the subject of this composer I should add that I found much to appreciate and enjoy in David Brown's huge 3 or 4 volume study of PIT and his music. This was one of my epic reads during lockdown along with a few handsome Phaidon press biographies (Britten, Stravinsky) and on a non=musical front Theodore Dreiser's An Am,erican Tragedy. I know that it (the Brown) has been out for decades but even so it makes a good read. Apologies for rambling. Rob