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Just thinking about how the entire Meistersinger would proceed when starting at this painfully slow tempo. Fledermaus and DonGiovanni are proof that he didnt know the rest of these works ( there is ülenty of music in the ouvertures that returns with TEXT! which should set the pace of the Performance...and BTW: Allegretto in Fledermaus ( occures ca. 5 times) is never to be considered the same tempo....he who constantly fussed about "Ignorants" prooves himself the greatest ignorant of all.

As soon as a principle becomes a dogma and some kind of sine qua non criteria, it also becomes a hiding place for mediocrity. It happened with historicity too. It was kinda necessary to whip up the lukewarm pool of Romantic decadence, but that too became a dogma. As for serialism - well, we have the advantage of hindsight - I have a hard time understanding how could anyone see in it the great solution for all the problems of music. It was kept alive mostly by the controversy around it and as soon as Stravinsky gave up and wrote Pulcinella, it deflated like the hot air balloon that it was. For many composers it was a phase in their creative life, a phase that they assumed and accepted, but one that they left in due time. One of my teachers (Ede Terenyi, RIP) used to refer to it - alluding to Bartok - as his barbaro period.

Celi's Brahms Requiem is 5 minutes slower than even Furtwangler's Stockholm performance, which is the almost the slowest I know. To paraphrase GBS, something only the corpse could stand. (You tube has Toscanini's BBC performance which is even slower, unusually for him, but as Dave said about Klemperer's, Toscanini had rhythm.)

The one I love is by Martin Pearlman with Baroque Boston .

This brought to my mind one moment when I was listening classical music on the radio and they played a piece that the composer had indicated to be a solo song, but some moron had recorded it with a choir. If the lyrics are introspective and the piece is made for one singer, then why the heck do it with a choir?! My guess is that somebody just wanted to do something different. Ugh!

Thanks for that video on “collaborationniste” Florent Schmitt's Tragédie de Salomé. I love lush post-romantic music like this. I feel tempted to add this 1907 version to the later one in my collection (Y P Tortelier, not Martinon unfortunately). May I digress with a request about the other Schmidt, namely the nearly contemporaneous Franz? My appetite for his Book of Seven Seals has been whetted by a review and CD extract in a French magazine of a reissue from the 60s with Julius Patzak in the lead role. I cannot trace a review by you of performances of this work, possibly Schmidt’s masterpiece alongside his Symphony 4. I note that there are several more modern issues available, including Welser-Möst, Harnoncourt and Kristjan Järvi together with another historical version from Mitropoulos. I would be great to get your take on this field before the coming winter listening season when I would like to get to know this work.

I'm glad you mentioned Haydn and also Rossini. I still remember the first time I heard his Stabat Mater with that double fugue. I couldn't believe my ears, it was like knowing someone as one of the greatest English poets and being suddenly presented with a volume of outstanding Japanese prose by the same person... If I may add my own underrated guys here: J. M. Kraus and von Suppe

Hi... I'm a bit of a Bach fanatic but I have to agree with what you say about the relentlesness of much of his production. If I try to listen to the WTC or the Goldberg Variations or etc. in one go my mind starts to wander off after a while. It's too much for my brain. But still he is my favourite composer amongst the ones who wear wigs

Hello Hurwitz! I can find Jochum conducting the 4th in a mono recording with Berliner/DG. The EMI with London philharmonics has 1-2-3, but not the forth. Not even in streams I can find it. Do you know something about it? Gracie mile!

Is there anyone in the universe with Handel's seemingly endless gift for melody? Maybe Dvorak in the romantic era, but in the Baroque era, it's Handel all the way!

I still enjoy this version on LP. But the recent Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin is pretty terrific.

Any chance that the brilliant and musical Dave Hurwitz is related to the brilliant and musical Phyllis Naomi Hurwitz ?

I had the same epiphany as you did with these works courtesy of Andrew Manse. I adore them and so much of Hāndel.

I always think of George Rochberg as the composer who really got raked over the coals for turning his back of serialism.

Dave! Can we have a top ten of Mildreds favorite recordings? Thanks!

Agreed. Eminently worthy of reference status. My earliest musical enthusiasms were for Bach and Handel, and Baroque music generally. So when I learned, as a High School student that Handel composed 12 Concerti Grossi, I asked for a complete recording for my birthday. My dear grandmother obliged with the Leppard/ECO recordings, on Mercury here in the USA. Outstanding performances in every way, and truly a rival to Marriner. Leppard seems more expressive to me, though Marriner and his crack ensemble are, as usual impeccably polished and stylish. For modern instruments, I'd say it;s a draw. Thanks, as always, Dave, for your reference recordings series.

I really like these reference recording videos as they have stimulated me to dig out my old records. Op 3 was originally released on Argo in 1964 and op12 on Decca's wide band label in 1968. In 1971 Decca did us penniless students a favour by reissuing them on their budget Ace of Diamonds label as a compilation, which is the version I have and continue to enjoy.

Herbert von Karajans recording is the one I started listening to first when I discovered Handel's 12 Concerti Grossi op 6. I came across Sir Neville Marriners recording years later and I personally love both versions, I have both versions on CD in my collection too.

For me, conductors in general are overrated musicians. In this context, I understand all the time you have taken to explain Celibidache in this video, but it really isn't worth it. I think Celibidache has been the most overrated conductor in music history so far. Leaving aside the issue of the tempi being extremely slow (all of them), each rehearsal with the orchestra was 5 minutes of explanation for each indication. For that reason and others, he needed more than 10 rehearsals for a Bruckner symphony, and even worse, by the 3rd or 4th rehearsal everything was already said and resolved, after that, everything got worse. I still find it hard to believe that there are people who idolize him, everything he did sounded heavy, static and without direction. Go figure... 🙄

Incidentally, Hans J. Salter also composed the score for THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. Arguably it’s his most famous. In any case, thanks for another fine video!

There’s another lesson: If it’s Handel it’s probably good to great music! Try it.

I guess I should be embarrassed to admit that I like the Karajan recordings of these. As far as I know they have never been released on CD. They were originally released on 4 separate LPs.

Ive's Christmas Carol was the first song I ever sang in public (not counting Edelweiss as a kid; I quickly grew out of THAT). I love his songs. I've sung Serenity, which is sublime, and At the River publicly, Berceuse to the dogs (and they're not big Ives fans). One of these years I'll tackle General Wm Booth Enters into Heaven (who was the founder of the Salvation Army, not a mere "revival preacher").

I've always liked Liszt, but now I'm interested in checking out Chili Crisp!

Honour and gratitude to everyone evolved with this recording. Amen!

Klemperer’s b minor clocks in at 135 minutes so he does come in slower than Celi. The Mozart requiem works best when listening on UA-cam at 1.25 speed.

John Malkovich playing Celibidache, if you can believe it.

Do you like the one by Iona Brown, I guess in 1983-ish?

Thank you for this! I first heard them in college when my musicology professor insisted we in his seminar listen. Yes, indeed, the heavens opened-and continue to open every time I hear them. Such eternal freshness! 🫶🙏🙏

In the first minutes of Sondheim's "A Little Night Music", the young bride asks her stepson (who is playing a slow, mournful melody on his cello) to stop with the gloomy music, he answers, "It's not gloomy, it's profound". How can a conductor ignore the fact that singers gotta breathe? You can shape the music by coaxing them to take a breath HERE and not THERE, or to make sure they all phrase the music this way or that, but you don't want them to pass out.

Your comment about what Schmitt did to the music to create the tone poem reminded me of Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring," also originally a ballet but best known today for the later orchestral suite, rescored for full orchestra instead of Martha Graham's chamber ensemble and containing about two-thirds of the original. Incidentally, for a moment I thought it was going to be based on an alternate version of the Salomé story in which she actually wanted John the Baptist alive, but Herod double-crossed her and gave him to her dead. That version is in Massenet's opera "Hérodiade" and the 1953 film with Rita Hayworth and Charles Laughton.

Never heard of Salmenhaara, but I will!

Thanks for mentioning Henri Sauget! Just finished listening to the four symphonies on Qobuz, what a great Gallic find, have given me much pleasure over the two days since you posted, will have to explore him further! 👍👍👍

Dave, you mentioned Harnoncourt adding oboe parts in his recording of the set. Well, here's an excerpt from the booklet accompanying the Marriner set regarding this issue: "Four of the concertos (nos. 1, 2, 5 and 6) also have additional oboe parts, indicated by cues in the autograph scores; presumably these were added by Handel to make full use of the available personnel when he performed the concertos at his own concerts (they are included in the present recording)". And by the way, here's another testimony to the fact that composers of olden times were just glad for any opportunity they had to use a larger, richer ensemble to perform their works.

Did Celibidache also record vocal works by Bruckner? I would have been interested in your thoughts on him doing that 🎶

Opus 3 was recorded in 1964 and was first released on the Argo label. Opus 6 was recorded in 1968 and was released as a bundle with 3 on Decca Ace of Diamonds around that time.

The odd thin g is that while as a musicologist whose favorite slice of the musical cake is choral and vocal-symphonic, I agree and yet, ever since I heard Faure's Requiem with him, every other performance sounds too fast to me. Probably I'm just too fond of some of the things that I'm hearing in his performance and every other recording just glosses over them.

You NAILED it with your description of these wonderful pieces. Also by far my favorite baroque instrumental music. People can keep their Brandenburgs, but I'd rather listen to Handel's Op. 6 a hundred times over before listening to the Brandenburgs again. No argument on the "Reference" recording. Beznosiuk with the Avison Ensemble is the recording that "imprinted" on me, but this is a work with a lot of excellent recordings out there.

I have the recording by the Academy of Ancient Music, Andrew Manze, dir. (Harmonia Mundi). Wonderful music. I also have Handel's complete violin sonatas by Manze, another amazing recording. Both are very serene and interesting.

The Bach Mass in B minor is a snooze but, then , I prefer the music of his son C.P.E. Bach over his father or even Telemann and Vivaldi. The best Mozart Requiem was recorded on DG with Karl Bohm and the Berlin Philharmonic (released in 1976). Bohm was very crtical about conductors taking Mozart way too fast which I stringly agree with his observation. Under Celibidache, the Brahms Requiem is a funeral dirge from start to finish. It didn't help having an audience member sneeze loudly at the 2 minute and 4 second mark during the first movement. Claudio Abaddo with the Berlin Philharmonic in his younger years runs an hour and 13 minutes and 37 seconds- a mere 15 minutes faster than Celibidache's version. And, David, you're absolutely correct. Celibidache should have been banned from setting his eyes on the Faure and Stravinsky. I, however, disagree about the Verdi Requiem. I don't know how many recordings I heard of this piece that made me cringe because the Dies Irae section is taken way too fast. At a fast tempo it loses its drama and meaning behind the Latin lyrics Even the recording on Telarc with Robert Shaw, the Atlanta Symphony and chorus is 1 hour, 23minutes and 28 seconds. What's the rush? This is Verdi at his most dramatic for a religious work. It's like any of his dramatic operas which has their moments of suspense and clocking in 1 hour and 44 minutes minus 1 minutes and 37 seconds of applause, it works for me.

One of my great teachers: Gerry Carlyss of the Philadelphia Orchestra, said of Bernstein....when you needed absolute clarity from the podium, you got it!

This is priceless and you are hilarious. My three [for starters] are Spohr, Czerny and Dittersdorf.

Gott in Himmel: Celibidache doing Stravinsky? Like putting maple syrup on pizza.

I have a Scribendum stereo box and a Decca box of Mozart 22-41... I'm not sure that there's much else in these boxes that is essential so I think that on this occasion I'll keep my hand in my pocket.

In all probability Celibidache looked up what “ecstatic” meant in a dictionary and by mistake he read the definition of “static”.

Massenet and fluff, Now Liszt and Chilli Crisp. I sense an ongoing theme.

I had completely forgotten about Macbeth

Celibadache/vocal works? Does the CD booklet include the number of oxygen tanks required for the poor singers?

Epiphenomena is all pseudoscience, woowoo and hocus pocus.

I believe his latest performance of St. Matthew Passion is due to end sometime next month. I will never understand why this conductor has such a cult following.