Give A Listen

[filkertom]

Boy, that last thread is fun. Best kind of intellectual debate. You guys rock.

Somewhat of a different debate here, relatively benign, and one that should get us some excellent recs. I was talking about music toys last week, and we just had filk at ConFusion, and dubheach was asking about musical styles for different activities, and which kinds of music people like generally. I'm gonna get rather more specific: What one or two music recordings would you recommend to people to show them "See? This is what I'm talkin' about"?

My two are:

• The 1996 recording of Beethoven's 5th Symphony by Christian Thielemann and the Philharmonia Orchestra, Deutsche Grammophon catalog # 449-981-2, which they may still have at http://www.dgclassics.com. Many musicians and conductors have a tendency to play Beethoven as quickly as possible, to show off their technical competence, and so lose all the drama of the piece. Not Thielemann. Unlike most recordings of the Fifth, this one isn't a race to the finish line, but a fierce and dramatic wall-breaker. (In the same vein, I prefer Alfred Brendel for the piano sonatas to anything by the too-fast-for-his-own-damn-good Rudolf Serkin.)
• The original cast recording of Sondheim's Assassins. The one without the new song, and sadly without the very fine Neil Patrick Harris. But the one with better orchestration, better pacing, and The Cast From Hell (Victor Garber, Jonathan Hadary, and Terrance Mann) as Booth, Guiteau, and Czolgosz. Breathtaking.

So. What one or two do you recommend?

Comments

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

I really want to hear that Beethoven recording someday just on your reccomendation.

The first one that came to mind actually is classical (I thought it would be folk but...)

Handel's Messiah with Emma Kirkby as the soprano soloist directed by Andrew Parrot with the Taverner Choir and Players.

Now I should hasten to point out that Ihaven't compared this to other early music recordings and am keen to hear the Christopher Hogwood version which also features Emma.

But when I finally got my early music recording it was like sunshine.
I had always *wanted* to like a recording of the Messiah since I've quite enjoyed singing it through the years but I really dislike big huge choirs for the most part and always found the big orchestra/big choir sound of groups like the Mormon Tabernacle to be ponderous.

Ah but Emma - her voice soars, it lilts, it flys, it SO suits Handel.

Sublime. I imagine the boy sopranos are also a delight in the Hogwood version.

How's that for a start? ;-)

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

One or two? Oh, dear. I can't do that. But I'll hold myself to four.

The Marie-Claire Alain recording of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Oh, dear lord. That's the way old Bach himself would've played it, I'm certain. I was perfectly delighted when the late, lamented Karl Haas ("Hello, everyone!") used that particular version on his radio program. As "common" as the Toccata and Fugue is, her version never fails to send a shiver up my spine.

George Szell, the Cleveland Orchestra, and Beethoven. Another 'dear lord!' experience, musically--doesn't matter what particular Beethoven piece, as far as I'm concerned, Szell's are the definitive Beethoven recordings until time travel is invented and we can hear Ludwig himself conducting.

Outside of classics, I have to go with the 1939 Carnegie Hall concert of Benny Goodman, the centerpiece being a 12-minute 'Sing Sing Sing' where Gene Krupa goes absolutely bugf**k.

Lastly, a sentimental choice, perhaps. Bob Weir and Ratdog--his then-new solo band--playing Hampton Beach in New Hampshire, the evening of August 9, 1995, barely twelve hours after Jerry Garcia had died. Bobby just unleashes this inhuman primal scream when the verse gets to "We are on our own" (goddammit, I'm honestly getting choked up just thinking about it) and there's no doubt how damn difficult this was for him to do, how much he hurt at that very instant in time--that he did it so well in memory of his friend is even more astonishing. And Rob Wasserman's bass solo version of 'Amazing Grace' is nothing short of mind-blowing.

[daundelyon.livejournal.com]

Oy, just two huh?
Well, I'll go with Gaelic Storm's (http://www.gaelicstorm.com/) Special Reserve album. It's just sheer exuberance, upbeat and danceable. It also proves that bagpipes can live in harmony (so to speak) with digerydoos and no one has to get hurt in the process. I guess I choose this one for sentimental reasons as well. They're the first band I saw live and the show was completely unforgettable.
Second, I'll go with The Corsair's (http://www.corsairs.com/) Sailor's Prayer. I really love a cappella groups, and this one is outstanding. This particular song gives me goosebumps.
Yes, I have odd taste in music, but at least I know what I like. ;)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Odd taste in music? That's kinda the point of the thread. :) I love knowing that I'm not the only one with Makem & Clancy, Zappa, Rockapella, Eminem, Enya, Frankie Valli, Groucho Marx, and Worm Quartet on my hard drive.

musicals and rock ballads

[sylverwolfe.livejournal.com]

the original london cast recording of les miserables, with colm wilkinson leading the pack as jean valjean

the album "handful of rain" by savatage, specifically the song "alone you breathe." the album is written as a memorial to the band's guitarist, criss olivia, who was killed in a traffic collision and is all in all, quite moving.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Folks sometimes ask me why I like Mannheim Steamroller so much, and I play them Fresh Aire III. After twenty-mumble years it's still my favorite of all their stuff.

If you can get the Dave Matthews Band's "Ants Marching" maxi-single -- I think it was an Australian release -- track 2, the live version from Providence RI, really brings out the inherent acidity of the lyrics. It's a lesson in how to be brutal without overloading your amp or smashing your instrument.

I'm sure there are others but these are the first two that came to mind.

[tiercel]

I never pass up a chance to flog people with one of these:

"Nelson Mandela's Welcome to Glasgow" composed by Blair Douglas
- African drumming and chorus with bagpipes and fiddles. I crank it every time.

"Zombie Jamboree" as performed by the Kingston Trio
- Well, really I'll make anyone listen to the KT any chance I get. Fear me!

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I also like the Neville Marriner version of Messiah,, which uses some earlier arrangements (it's based on the 1743 London performance). But I do prefer Emma Kirkby to Elly Ameling for the soprano solos.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

I can't pick just two for general favorites, it all depends on what it relates to. For instance, in the "Memories" category, it would be most anything by Carl Stalling (his music still brings out the hyper-imagination kid in me) and "I Wanna Be Committed" by Sweet (it was weird how that song was playing in the background during so many significant, and not-significant yet very memorable events in my life). For "Alternative Ways of Thinking" it would be the entire album of "Flood" by They Might Be Giants (Finally! A musical band that thinks like I do) and Hedningarna's "Tra" album (don't know why, but it leads to mystical insights). For "Fun" it would be "Operation Desert Storm" (and I'm not kissing up here, I would have listed this even before I knew who sung it) and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" by Tom Lehrer. For "Classical" it would be "New Horizons in Music Appreciation" by P.D.Q. Bach (it puts a whole new perspective on classical music no matter how stodgy it's being played) and "Hungarian Rhapsody #2" by Liszt. For "Variations" it would be "That's A Plenty" (21 versions by 20 different artists) and "Topsy" (only 8 so far, but that's because many that I found were too poor quality to keep). For "Stuck in Your Head Impossible To Get Out" category (listen once, hear the song for the rest of the day), it would be "Sing, Sing, Sing" by Benny Goodman (I would love to find a good copy of the 1939 Carnegie Hall concert, I hear a lot about it but have yet to hear it) and "Belleville Rendez-Vous" by Ben Charest.

As you can tell by the above post, I'm the kind of guy who, when asked to recommend a song, ends up giving a 4-cd compilation set ;-)

[quadrivium.livejournal.com]

Vladimir Askenazy's performance of Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto. Goosebumps! It was one of the first CD's I ever owned, and I would listen to it over and over in my dorm room in college with headphones on. I hadn't listened to it in years, and I brought it out for a friend to listen to. It is every bit as wonderful as I remember.

Love it!

[galicola.livejournal.com]

About a decade ago I taped from the radio THE BEST performance of Beethoven's 6th I have ever encountered. Because of that performance, B's 6th is my favorite symphony, evah!
That tape was always in my car, and later when I was in the army, it was always ready to play at the office (when I was alone at the office, that is. for some reason the other soldiers didn't appreciate classical music).
Alas, that tape was lost a few years ago, and I do not remember who performed it, so I cannot realy recommend it. Damn!

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Word. I don't know Askenazy's, but I cannot imagine life without Rach's 2nd or Variations on a Theme by Paganini.

[isolde-deely.livejournal.com]

I have eclectic tastes too - Enya, Enigma, the Frantics, Queen, Styx, Weird Al, David Bowie, you, Billy Joel, Elton John, assorted classical composers (mozart, beethoven, handel). These are not in any particular order, mind.

I would go with Les Miserables, most definitely. I'm not sure which is the best, though the performance here at KY Center would definitely be one I'd consider (if it was recorded)

The Handel's Messiah I would recommend no longer exists. It was performed in the winter of 1990 at East Carolina University, and the only recording the school had was borrowed and never returned. Ok, so I'm biased. I was singing in it :)

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

Hah! I've been getting re-acquainted with The Frantics (o/` Give them a boot to the head! o/`) this past month and a half--XM added a channel for uncensored Canadian comedians.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when they started: "How many can there be?" The answer: more than you think. Besides, any station that IDs itself a week and a half after starting up with "Entertaining you for over a quarter of a deci-year!" deserved a listen... yes, I am precisely geek enough to know instantly exactly how long a quarter of a deci-year was. :)

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

My bad! When I referenced the Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall show above, I thought it was '39--it was '38, and the whole damn thing is on CD (Amazon has a couple different releases). My copy is on an ancient vinyl release, and is only perhaps ten tracks--less than half the show. I have a purchase to make when I'm working again. :)

"Good copy" is a relative term: the show was recorded as an afterthought, one mike over the band directly to acetate. Some users on Amazon reported ripping the CD, running it through DePopper, remixing it as best they could, and burning their own discs.

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

Elly Ameling Unfamiliar with her. I have to admit that in spite of being a fan of early music and of Emma Kirkby and Anne Azema specifically (Kirkby not least because I had the pleasure and honor of hearing her live and participating in a concert as part of a choir where she was a soloist and sitting in on a master class she taught!) Anyway... I sheepishly admit that because i like so many *other* genres of music I haven't delved as deeply into early music yet as I might like to. So other suggestions of soloists you admire eagerly accepted! ;-)

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

Smile. My husband is a pipe organist and I shall have to send him your post to read. He also likes Marie-Claire Alain and we have a few recordings by her. Don't know if that is his favorite Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I'll have to ask. I do know that it is often played "wrong!" in his opinion. ;-)

If you have an interest in pipe organs you should check out his site Organstops.org. More damned info than you could want to know about organ stops. He's even gotten a nod in a book. :-)

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

The first one is easy: Louis Armstrong and the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens. If a four-CD set is too much, then I'll focus in on Volume III, the one that includes the landmark recording of "West End Blues".

The second would have to be a musical, but which one? Probably the original Broadway cast of "Sweeney Todd". Narrow it to the last ten or so years, and it's definitely the full 2-CD set of the original cast album of "Ragtime".

[bald-ruminant.livejournal.com]

First: Metallica's (Anesthesia) - Pulling Teeth from their album Kill 'Em All.

Second: Love Theme from The Godfather, performed by Guns-n' Roses in Tokyo. You can check it out here.

[jmthane.livejournal.com]

Gustav Holst, "The Planets", recorded by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Charles Dutoit conducting.

I second on the Kingston Trio, but would also recommend the Chad Mitchell Trio with the original lineup.

[gclectic.livejournal.com]

Obviously I'll change my mind tomorrow, but amongst the two that I most often hand to people and say "you've got to listen to this" are:

Variations by Andrew Lloyd Webber (the 1990 MCA release (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000002PBV/qid=1138215360/sr=8-22/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i22_xgl15/104-1651301-0709555?n=507846&s=classical&v=glance))

Bach on Abbey Road by John Bayless (1993, out of print (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000008D9Q/qid=1138215455/sr=11-1/ref=sr_11_1/104-1651301-0709555?n=5174))

These are both cross-over albums, which is not a coincidence. The first is a set of variations of Paganini's Caprice #24 performed in various styles including rock and country on instrumentation including cello and multiple synths. This is one of two albums in my collection for which I bought a second copy specifically to loan out while keeping my original. (The other is Stairways to Heaven (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000005J65/qid=1138215821/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-1651301-0709555?s=music&v=glance&n=5174) just because of its relative rarity.) The second is a set of piano improvisations on Beatles tunes performed in the style of Bach, and are so seamlessly fused that I keep getting them confused with my Goldberg Variations.

(Apologies for the apparent commercialism of the Amazon links, but it's easier than describing the covers to you so you'll know which one I mean.)

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

I think I have a tape of a Bach's-birthday episode of Haas' "Adventures in Good Music" where he uses the Alain Toccata and Fugue. I'll see if I can dig it up. She cuts right to the heart of the piece for its own sake.

That piece is staggeringly easy to ruin. If the timing is off on (and between) the mordants that start whole piece, that's it, game over, I'm switchin' it off. Stokowski's orchestral version of the Toccata and Fugue is nothing less than agonizing, toccare being mistranslated by the maestro as ham-fisted, near as I can tell; as much as I love Fantasia, that segment usually gets skipped.

I have always loved the sound of a full-on pipe organ--I recall a program on J.S. Bach referring to them as "the 18th century polyphonic synth" or something quite like that: true enough, but I don't doubt that given an hour or so to familiarize himself with a Moog, Old Bach could've sat down even Wendy Carlos herself and taught her a thing or two about voicing and technique.

Cool website (bookmark!) That Silbermann just blows my mind. What a tone... *melt!*

Curiously, I haven't much taste for organ works outside the Baroque era or the pre-movie audio pyrotechnics at the Ohio Theater, and once we arrive at the modern era, my sound of choice is the Hammond B3, usually under the command of Keith Emerson, Merl Saunders or Brent Mydland.

[salkryn.livejournal.com]

I suppose it depends on what type of music I'm talking about at the time. I really love Rise and Inner Universe by Yoko Kanno, in fact almost anything by Yoko Kanno, for Japanese music. Also in that category are Megumi Hayashibara, The Pillows, and the Orange Range. For English-speaking bands and artists, I love John Sykes, Tom, Heather Alexander, Leslie Fish, Echo's Children, Meatloaf, Pat Benatar, and Queen. PDQ Bach is about as close to classical music as I come. I have a playlist with 22+ hours of music on it, which I listen to regularly, and probably close to 100+ hours on the computer total. I just listen to so many different artists that I have trouble narrowing it down to just a few.

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

I have Bayless' Bach Meets the Beatles and I regret to say I was less than impressed with it... although I was sufficiently impressed to wonder what Bayless' original works in a Baroque style might be like. However, I've never gotten around to looking to see if he has done any original Baroque-themed works. :)