Slippedisc comfort zone (30): Nights in the garden
Daily Comfort ZoneAlicia the great.
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A marvelous work and performance by De Larrocha. Rubinstein was especially good in it and all Spanish music he played. I remember outstanding performances by Gonzalo Soriano and I think the excellent Jorge Federico Osorio; an air-check with William Kapell anmd Stokowski; and saw Claudio Arrau play it with Enrique Jorda and the San Francisco Symphony.
No, Alicia THE GREATEST!!!
I was lucky enough to see her when she came to London on a number of occasions. Wonderful and I have this cd. Must get it out and listen again. Thanks.
Maybe it is just my impression and based on inadequate checking around, but it seems to me that this beautiful work by Manuel de Falla, together with D’Indy’s Symphony on a French Mountain Air and the Symphonic Variations by César Franck, are works that were commonly heard on radio (including broadcasts of “live” symphony concerts) in my youth but hardly ever now. There are a number of concerted violin works that I have the same impression about including Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole (and his Cello Concerto now that I think of it).
The common element all these works share is a demand for nuance and patience. There are many works which benefit from nuance but which can still give pleasure even if treated (and often are treated) with almost brutal thrashing about, but not these. I am not saying they are hot-house flowers, but they place demands on performers (and in a sense, on we listeners) which are under-valued today it would seem. Or maybe I am just in one of my grumpy “get off my lawn” moods today.
what’s a radio…?
A box that I constantly listen to classical music station. On Tuesday evening concerts of all concerts by San Francisco symphony.
Faure’s Ballade, Debussy’s Faintasie, this Falla, Chausson’s Poeme, and violin concertos of Vieuxtemps, Saint-Saens,Wieniawski, and Ludwig Spohr also are now rare. It’s noticeable that many of these and those Dave Nelson names are French, rather short except for D’Indy and the Lalo Symphonie Espagnole with all five movements, and very nuanced indeed. Tastes change, nuanced players may not be as plentiful as in the days of Gieseking, Cortot, the Casadesuses.
Of course the same can be said of many operas and orchestral works.
True, Edgar.
You’re just mentioning concerted works, but I’ll add Sheherazade and Capriccio Espagnol to your list – two great orchestral scores (both with significant solo passages) by Rimsky-Korsakov which are rarely done nowadays.
And Caucasian Sketches, that great multi-movement tone poem by Ippolitov-Ivanov!
Greg, I thought of Sheherazade and Capriccio Espagnole, and also Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien, but had already named enough. I miss many of these old familiars of broadcast and concert programs, while such programs have grown shorter in many cases.