ethereal, virtuosic, sometimes a bull in a China shop, sometimes a mystic dreamer, sometimes a bricky in a hurry … but always operating on an elevated level, or almost always …

Niel Tingley writes:

I’ve been checking out some newly mastered LPs from the EMI catalogue including a 1968 Klemperer Beethoven 7 that I have to admit I’ve never seen of heard (yet). Who regrets parting with they LP collection?

Just some of mine – I’d love to read about yours. Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams (Warner Books),  a compact little book set in the early 1900s, time viewed from different imagined angles – hugely descriptive, a real dazzler – skews your perspectives in the most creative way.

The Poems of Frederick Seidel 1959-2009 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) – raw, combative, strangely beautiful, political … a real discovery.

Otto Weininger Sex and Character (www.kessinger.net) – it absorbed Wittgenstein and isn’t too far removed from Houston Chamberlain and other fantastical reactionaries. Itchy grains of intuition mixed in with some very weird misconceptions … influential in its day, but something of an embarassment in ours. Instructive, revealing, depressing.

Swansong 1945 (Granta) by Walter Kempowski – ‘a collective diary from Hitler’s last birthday to VE day’. Read about 130 pages so far. Absorbing chronicle from the Bunker to despatches from abroad – harrowing, enlightening, uplifting, touching. A wonderful read – one of my books of the year.

… is it all subjective? Do musicians make the best critics or, in that context, is the ‘art of listening’ (without an agenda) more important? Do you value critics as much for knowing you’ll disagree with them as for knowing you’ll agree with them? Do you have favourites who you trust implicitly (no need to names names, just whether you have? Please discuss … this could take us places!

… for starters, some great Russians on Melodiya. Vladimir Krainev’s bullish and rhythmically taut set of the Prokofiev concertos (under Kitayenko), more imposing by far than his Teldec set. Samiil Feinberg in Scriabin Mazurkas, two exquisite miniaturists working for a common magical cause (Feinberg’s  Bach 48 on Pristine is as unmissable), and Magda Tagliaferro (on Heritage), in Reynaldo Hahn and Schumann. Years ago these and other recordings like them would have been the exclusive property of sleuth-like collectors, but not now. I could go on and on, but who would like to add to the list? Any pianist from any era, ancient or modern.

… take Handel’s Op. 6 concertos – the (period instrument) Il Giardino Armonico set … marvellous … some others too … but what about the likes of Scherchen, Richter, Busch, Karajan, Schneider, Neel, Lehmann, even Marriner and Leppard …  are these guys merely past-masters who were good in their day but who are unsuitable for our more scholarly age, or do they still have something to tell us?

… did Sibelius ‘improve’ En Saga, the Fifth Symphony or the Violin Concerto; Schumann the Fourth Symphony; Bruckner his Third or Eighth; Brahms his Op. 8 Piano Trio; Beethoven Leonore (ie, Fidelio)? I have a fondness for the ‘original’ Bruckner 8, expansive and unwieldy as it sometimes is, and the tighter-fisted ‘orignal’ Schumann 4. And what about Mahler 1 with or without ‘Blumine’ and Mahler 6 with its middle movements placed either 2/3 or 3/2 (if you know what I mean!)

Comments could be interesting.

A few favourites of mine, for starters:

Every fool is a sage when he keeps his mouth shut (Tuscan saying, quoted by Allan Cameron in ‘In praise of the Garrulous’)

Poetry is a pheasant disappearing in the brush (Wallace Stevens, quoted in ‘Poetry as Life’ by Samuel French Morse)

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance … and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process (Henry James, ditto)

Music associated with someone you’ve lost. Can you listen to it afterwards, and if so, how long does it take for you to brave the association and listen again to the music … as music? Or does it depend on the music? Is a great symphony or sonata, because of its innate artistic strength, more likely to survive these associations than a popular song or ballad? And what about using classic works at funerals (not necessarily a funeral where you’ve done the choosing)? Does the short-term funereal association taint the experience of later listening?

Mahler Ten, for starters: the various versions, and the recordings of those versions. And the principle of preparing a ‘performing’ version. How, given the evidence that we have, does the work fit into the Mahler Canon? Is it by now well established, or are there any of you out there who still have doubts? And Bruckner 9, that jagged, harmonically audacious set of finale ‘fragments’ whether played as is, or in the context of a ‘completion’. Schubert 7/8, too … all very different ‘cases’, but interesting topics to pursue.